Five Days… With Pictures!!

Despite a really, really awful week at work last week, progress inside the house is getting made.

• Put up the Christmas tree
• Do “something else” with the fireplace (paint or replace items inside)
• Purchase a rug pad for diamond jute rug in living room
• Purchase a rug pad for zebra rug in guest room
• Clean off the guest bed so it’s sleep-able
• Generally make guest room ready for guests
• Do a little more festive Christmas decorating
• Decide yes or no on outdoor Christmas lights
• Get a shower curtain (right now we just have a liner)
• Curtain clips for the dining room
• Hang higher curtain rod in guest room
• Do a little kitchen re-organizing
• Buy groceries (so they don’t starve while they’re here! Our fridge is usually a big cold empty box…)
• Liven up the white wasteland that is the hallway (halfway there!)
• Hang pictures in guest room and master bedroom
• Frost window on kitchen door and in bathroom (I want to try this)
• Paint front-door dresser and move cold-weather accessories into its drawers

This weekend saw a few minor updates, we are still working on digging out the guest bedroom… we’re quite close, actually and I’ll be able to post pictures sometime this week! I crossed off a few less-urgent items, even after all my prioritizing by making things bold last week. Isn’t that always how it goes? We picked up a couple of curtain rods for the guest room and hung them–they look magnificent :) Elsewhere in the house we have dark bronze but since the paint is so dark in the guestroom we decided to go with brushed nickel and I really love it.

My Christmas decorating is officially done, except for a project I have in the works to use for the I Heard A Lion Christmas party which will be at my house this year. I’m not going to start working on it until my parents have come and gone, though, so no more hints on that :) Here’s what I have so far…

We set the tree up the weekend before Thanksgiving (heresy, I know) since it was our last free weekend until the New Year, more or less. Busy busy!!

Saturday we swung by Hobby Lobby and got in a knock-down drag-out brawl (okay, not really) with the middle aged ladies in the faux greenery aisle but came out victorious with some more-or-less matching “pine branches” which were easily slipped behind the big photo frame and instantly gave the mantel the little “something” it had been missing.

Oh, and here are the curtain clips we bought a few weeks ago. I like the interest they give at the top–before the wall of curtains was a bit too “heavy,” I think. Since adding them, the curtains have the opposite problem than before (when they were too short), they drag on the ground a little more than I wanted them to. However, Doug suspects they’re helping avert a chilly draft so for now they’ll pool on the ground slightly. The nice thing about these rings is that it makes the curtains wayyyyy easier to open and close. Before they were getting hung up on the parts where the curtain rod joins together. Now they slide freely. So that’s good :)

So, looking at these photos gives me something else to add to my to-do list… steam curtains? Man they’re all really wrinkly!