Moving On…

There are some new things entering out home. Not only am I typing on a new computer, but we’ve got a bigger treat as well.

Some of you have been to our house, and when we first moved in, the living room was kinda a storage area, and the dining room was a big toy dumping play room. As the fireplace was installed, the living room was quickly transformed from a storage room to an actual living room. Although there’s just a hodgepodge of furniture in there now, I’m hoping by next winter, we’ll get some nice stuff in there.

The dining room is about to go through such a transformation, as some sweet friends of ours offered us there old dining room table that they don’t use anymore. We’ve been offered some tables before, by some compassionate people who have had pity on our empty room, but Knut and I had a particular kind of table in mind, so we waited.

Matt and Katrina (our generous friends) got the table free from someone else, and felt that they should pass it along free. It’s double pedestal, which was just what we were looking for. The top is laminate, which isn’t exactly what I had in mind for the dining room as it’s not as formal, but for the stage of life we’re in, I think it will suit just fine. Plus, if I want formal, I’ll just use a tablecloth. I mean, our kitchen table has a wood top, and let me tell you…David could be a professional table distress-er at Pottery Barn.

They passed along 6 chairs with it, which weren’t was I was envisioning, but Katrina pointed out that even if I get around to replacing the chairs, you can never have too many dining room chairs hanging around, as they add seating to any room when you have a crowd. So true.

Want to see it?



The end chairs were already ours, but now they have a place to go.

Of course, if you give a mouse a cookie…she’ll soon think about how great it would be to have a rug under her dining room table. This small transformation has got me even more anxious to get the other things done in this room that we’ve envisioned. For instance, re-do the wallpapered walls, change out the chandelier, add a rug, and put some things on the walls, for starters.

I have to remember though, that today Knut is finally putting the woodwork back on the window that we replaced before Christmas, and he still needs to finish the cosmetic portion of the fireplace probably this year, and we plan on painting the basement and fixing the ceiling down there first, before this room is addressed. Likely, the upstairs bathroom and the boys’ room will probably be repainted before this room as well. Poor, poor Knut. That’s the one problem of marrying someone who is so good and things like this. He only has so many hours in the day, and we can’t even remotely justify hiring someone to get something done that he can do for free…in time.

The really fun part of taking a bunch of junk, ahem, I mean toys out of a room, is you start to fix everything around the house that you’ve previously lost the motivation to fix. All of a sudden, I notice that the Christmas decorations are still up, and they need to be put away, because it’s February for goodness sake.

And, of course, as I take all of the junk, I mean toys, down to the playroom in the basement, I remember that I didn’t have time to go through the toys before Christmas, which I normally try to do every year, and the toys have taken over.



So today, I’ll be separating all the toys into a few piles: things we’ll keep out, things we’ll store for another baby or a different day, toys to give away, and junk to throw away. When your house is full of cheap toys, those cheap toys break, and I refuse to superglue McDonalds toys and cheap garage sale toys for $.10 multiple times. When they break, they’re thrown.

Hopefully, I can get that done, and return to the project I started this morning of prewashing and ironing some fabric from my stash as I’m planning to whip up some non-diapering items for Nerdy Gerdy Boutique:



This is for two separate, but similar items that will be in the store. All fresh and ready for spring. Sadly, yes: I did just have this fabric lying around and I didn’t buy it especially for my store. I’m thinking I’ll be able to go most of a year pulling fabric from my stash and sewing up stuff for the “Things of Whimsy” category on the online store. I can’t wait for this fall. I’ve got this gorgeous fall fabric that I got through a fabric co-op last year that I’m dying to cut into.

So I better sign off. As you can see, I have a lot to do today.