Kansas Day

Last Saturday (Jan 29) we celebrated Kansas’s 150th birthday.

To do this, we took a trip out to the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge, where there are buffalo, you know, roaming. What could be more Kansas than driving around in a rusty old truck trying to find buffalo, right? (Or I suppose they could be bison, not sure what the difference is). Thanks to Paul’s trusty binoculars, from the lookout tower we could see some “little dots.” We think they were buffalo.

More important (and very telling of Kansas Culture) was the monument we saw at the wildlife refuge.

Image courtesy of a friend who thinks photo credits are lame.

You read that right–the first known white child to be born in McPherson county. He really had to work hard for that honor, you know.

Do you know when your state’s next big important birthday is?

Snow Day!

Apparently adults DO get snow days! Yesterday, after my grumpy truck post, I got a call from work telling me not to come in. Our lunch party had cancelled and nobody was expected to go out into the nasty weather (5 degrees Fahrenheit and nasty, strong winds). So I enjoyed an unexpected day at home! You know how you have those things you should do, but never get around to? I did some of those things!!

With this unexpected free time I:

  • Did 2 loads of laundry (all caught up!)
  • Played CityVille on Facebook (guilty pleasure/obsession)
  • Thoroughly cleaned the dining room (okay, thorough is a relative term)
  • Thoroughly cleaned the bedroom (this one is true)
  • Spilled chicken noodle soup all over the kitchen (how do they allow me to work at a restauraunt?) and subsequently
  • Cleaned the kitchen
  • Transferred my makeup to a new makeup bag
  • Cleaned my makeup brushes
  • Repainted the nasty inside of a kitchen cabinet (photos sometime)

All of this [more or less] by the time I would have been coming home from work.

After all of that, I rearranged the room as you saw yesterday. I’m pretty sure that this is more than I accomplish in most weeks.

Cabin Fever: Rearranging Furniture

Three posts in one day? You guys are going to think something’s wrong with me. Getting an unexpected day off of work was just what I needed–it gave me a little jolt of energy which has made me super-productive (more on that tomorrow…)

By now I think you all know what my living room is like (if not, check it out here). The room has been set up in the same way (more or less) since the week I moved in, 13 months ago. I have rearranged it a few times, been unhappy with the results, and put it back. This time I’m going to leave it for a few days to get to know the “feel.”

One of the differences between this rearrangement and previous rearrangements is the new tan and green rug my mom generously purchased for us last November. It really helps anchor the room, even at the wacky angle I’m currently testing out.

I moved the pink circle rug in from the office to help offset the empty floor I unearthed by moving the couch and sofa table. The only problem with this is that I don’t have a rug pad under it, so it slides every-which-way quite easily.

Please ignore the window. I know by saying this, it’ll draw more attention toward the window, but c’est la vie. Let me explain the weirdness, then: the towels are strategically placed to keep the snow out (no joke)!

I sort of feel like this arrangement downplays the dark green bathroom door. The old layout left more room to get to the bathroom (not that it’s difficult to get over there now–it’s fine), but since the door was directly across from the entertainment center with little in between the two visually, it made it more noticeable.

“Inside” the seating arrangement, I feel like there’s just as much room as before, but “outside” the seating area (ie, from the front door) I feel like the whole room looks bigger.

What do you think? Love it, or put it back to the way it was?