Insert Catchy Blog Post Title Here...

Because I'm too sleepy to come up with one on my own. The Hubster and I had a great, fun-filled, weekend getaway to Cincinnati. We stayed in a full service hotel, so we didn't have to lift a finger. We just left the SUV with the valets and walked everywhere. We ingested WAYYYYY too much junky ballpark food. The Reds won (GO REDS!!), the weather was perfect, and the stress just kind of melted away.

Soon to be wall color in our guest room!

We're back home, now, and thus the work begins. I'm letting The Hubster sleep in a bit, right now, since we were up until after 1AM with post-trip hyperactivity. As soon as I finish this, however, I've got to get him awake and fed. Today we set the posts to move our outdoor building to a better spot. Right now the silly thing is about 4-feet off the ground, with stairs to get into it. Not optimal for storing lawnmowers and ATVs, huh? Since I'm helping him set the posts I'm enlisting his help this afternoon in doing paint prep in the oldest kiddo's room. (I need to come up with something else to call him now, since he'll be 21 in 7 months - perhaps man-child? - but, I digress.) He's coming home from college Friday, and I'm hoping to have his room painted beforehand. Keep you fingers crossed for me, as I'm attempting to cover a red wall with a sea glass colored paint (if you don't know what color that is, check out the image on this post!).

Oh, and I'm soooo proud of myself. I got everything from the trip unpacked and put up last night! No small feat, I assure you. Here's the way our evening played out, after we got home yesterday:

1. Arrive home at 5PM.
2. Throw the luggage in the house, all while yelling at the youngest kiddo to get his baseball gear on. (Game was at 6PM, but batting practice was due to start at 5:15)
3. Pack a cooler of water, strawberries, and pineapple (and Gatorade for the ball player!) to snack on. 
4. Make a couple of travel mugs of coffee to keep us coherent.
5. Dash out the door, making it to the ball field just in time for warm-ups at 5:45PM (WOOPS! Missed batting practice, but at least he got there, right?).
6. Tell the coach that we'll be back, then run up to my Parentals' house to retrieve our dog and the youngest kiddo's gear from his stay (This included a middle of the road, Chinese Firedrill that was giggle-inducing!).
7. Dash back to the game with the dog, arriving at 6:30PM.
8. We won the game by mercy rule, so we were done at 7:40PM, at which time we had to head to the store to pick up sandwich making goodies for dinner (What? Like I was going to cook after all of this?!).
9. Arrive home just before 9PM. The Hubster got sandwich stuff out and ready, I put groceries up and unpacked, and the kiddo did his chores and took a shower.

See what I mean? Now you know why The Hubster and I were up until 1AM...it took as that long to wind down! Well, it looks like it's time to dash. Got egg whites and crumpets to nom, work clothes to don, cement and paint to buy, a garden to fertilize, posts to set, and paint prep to do. Crikey, I'm tired just thinking about it!

Abracadabra, Presto, KAZAM!!

Utter Clutter, Batman!

Around this time last year we redecorated our living room. The Hubster moved his gargantuan television to the wall above our fireplace to help make a feasible floor plan, and I built melamine shelves in the little niche beside the fireplace to house all of the electronic must-haves that attach to the television. We were delighted for the shelves, save for one aspect. Board game storage was below the shelves and, while we always keep it neat it just made everything look cluttered!

Then, around June last year, the retail store The Hubster works for was doing a HUGE drapery reset. This meant that all of the floor samples were being replaced. Rather than throw these samples away the store decided to hold a silent auction on all of them, with the proceeds going to a children's charity. Ummm...all that fabric? Yeah, I drooled a bit (okay, more than a bit, but I have some pride!) and begged The Hubster to bid on my behalf. He did. We won. I was the proud owner of hundreds of drapery samples. The possibilities were infinite! To date these samples have made a panel for an odd, octagonal window in my bathroom, been shared with, and inspired a living room and dining room redo, for my mother and father; and, now, utilized to hide my tidy yet cluttered board game storage area!

This is REALLY about to happen!

The only problem was how to hang it. We bought a dowel rod, but couldn't figure out how to secure it under the shelf properly so that the brackets didn't show and there was no gap between the shelves and the curtain. This past week The Hubster and I were cleaning at my parents house and I was hanging things in a newly reformatted closet in their guest room. I saw the closet bars and had a EUREKA! moment. I asked my father if just the closet bars and brackets were available for purchase, as they were part of a kit. He wasn't sure, and I went about my cleaning with my brain hard at work planning on finding a time to head to the home improvement store and see what I could find. A few minutes later, bless his heart, he came downstairs and presented me with a package of the coveted closet bars and brackets! They were left over, and he had no use for them. Gee, you think I was excited?

The Hubster, hard at work on
his Honey-Do List!

Yesterday was the first day of The Hubster's first vacation of the year. We're heading to Cincinnati tomorrow morning bright and early for our first childless and petless anniversary trip since June of 1999! WOO-HOO!! Just a quick, weekend jaunt to a baseball game (Go, Reds!) and a nice hotel. We'll be back Monday, and are planning on spending the rest of the week getting some things done around the house that have piled up. You know the things I'm talking about...getting the fireplace cleaned up and the damper closed for summer, fixing squeaky doors and leaky faucets, some painting, and the doozy - moving our outdoor building to a lower location and fixing the floor. After we had an unexpected free day this morning, thanks to thunderstorms and a cancelled ballgame for our youngest kiddo, we decided to go ahead and tackle the curtain project. I headed to the sewing machine to cut and hem the drapery sample to the correct length, and The Hubster got busy cutting the metal bars to length and attaching the brackets under the edge of the shelves.

The whole project, from the gathering phase to the finished product, took about an hour. We're both absolutely tickled with the results, and unbelievably enough we did the entire thing without one loss of temper on either side! Now THAT is proof that it was a truly magical project!!

Abracadabra, Presto, KAZAM!!
Utter Clutter, you have been puttered!!!

Fabric Friday!

I can haz curtainz? I certainly hope so...and SOON!

Ignore my gnarly carpet. Running the vacuum is SO not on my list of Wanna-dos, right now...so I'm playing the denial card to the hilt!

Moving along before the dust bunnies attack, I got the entire 5-yd bolt of black fabric in a special bin for $5. The toile is leftover from another project, and I'll be using it for a valance at the top of the curtains. I still need a red solid thrown in there, as well as some backing material, but I still have to finish my crochet & knitting projects before I tackle this one. For now I shall bask in the glow of $1 a yard fabric....gnarly carpet or not!

365 Days of Postivity - Day 47

Today was DEMO DAY!!!! I know...the excitement leaps off the page, doesn't it? Heck YEAH I'm excited....do you know how cool demo is?

Of course I'm a little different than most people. My hubby ripped up all of the carpet, we tag-teamed the carpet tacks, I was the Master Staple Remover, we both swept up....THEN came the part I've been waiting for. I love, and I mean LOVE, cleaning under my carpets. To have the chance to get all the grime that is usually out of reach to me? Yeah, it really lights me up. Weird, huh?