a little bit of accomplishment goes a long way

the hulk says "wallpaper is tough" Actually it was both more difficult and easier to wallpaper than I had expected. As expected, my scrapbooking skills came in handy when lining up the pattern and my general "eye" for things being straight made the job easier. What was hard, as always, was the math-the measuring the figuring out of the numbers. I am not so good at that fancy math stuff, you know?? I honestly hope my kids don't get my math sense, because I wish much better for them.

so, here is one of the back of my head as I am hanging wallpaper, proof, that I, and not the hulk did the work in the dining room.

and, here is one completed wall. The photo is crooked, not the wallpaper.

It's too hot for words today and I have to go up and find Gabe. The girls are watching wizard of oz in the relatively cool basement and we are headed out to the mall when Sandro gets home-too hot even for the pool. I am tired, sweaty, tired of being sweaty, kind of hungry, kind of crabby, ready to have furniture in my living room... you get the idea.

transformations!!

Okay, so maybe my mom is right and I sound like a new mother obsessing and adoring her new baby, but I can't get enough of this house. It is so exciting to be decorating and working on the house, I can hardly wait to get to each project. For the last week, we have been working on the dining room, which has gone from this:

to this:


to this:


I have spent my time alternately admiring and criticizing my work. It was very tedious to fill in each line of paneling with joint compound (twice for good measure). It was very messy to sand all that joint compound so there wouldn't be any lines. It was very boring to clean up all the dust from the joint compound (more than twice). Overall, the project was pretty cool-it feels good to be working on OUR house-not worrying if we will have to paint over it, or if we will get into "trouble" for doing it.

My wallpaper should arrive soon and we are painting color tonight!! Pretty soon, I will have a real dining room. Oh, and I took the kids to the hands on house yesterday in Lancaster-just my thinly veiled attempt to do some outlet shopping. I went to the pottery barn outlet and the PB kids outlet and found exactly nothing that I wanted!! I saw some gorgeous lamps, but since I don't have furniture yet, it seemed a little silly to be buying lamps!

just one home now

Well, we did it. We moved. It doesn't seem real except for the fact that now life is settling in. We only have one place to live-no more "vacation home" as the kids called it for a while. School is wrapping up nicely and I am in full swing VBS mode as well as trying to get the house painted so that we can attempt to refinish our floors sometime in the near future. I miss having furniture in my living room a little more than I expected to.

the kids are settling in nicely-only Julianna still misses the old house, but that's just her nature. I found out from our old neighbor yesterday that my landlord ripped out the carpet (which, incidentally was like 100 years old) from the old place and my dreams of a returned security deposit have begun to wane.

I am so anxious to get the dining room and living room livable! At the same time, I feel really nervous about making decisions-it's weird! I need to pick out wallpaper for the dining room and paint for the living room and upstairs hallway before I can really get started. more pictures soon, I have to remember to bring the digital camera down and upload the photos.