Our Own Fun House

Before we purchased our current house, we knew there would be some changes we wanted to make pretty quickly.  Quickly has turned into over five months, but better late than never.  

The house was in great shape and was move-in ready.  However, as is the case with most home purchases, our style is not their style.  Take the hall bathroom.  This is the one the guests use, and Rose and William share.  It's nice and light, but something odd happens when you walk into this bathroom.

Here is a picture of the bathroom from the hall.  This was taken almost a year ago when we were first looking at the house.  So what you will see, was NOT our bathroom at the time. 

Exhibit A:  A seemingly innocent, albeit dated, bathroom.

Exhibit B:  You walk in and WHOA!  My eyes are going buggy and I'm suddenly dizzy.

I kid you not.  This is the reaction from EVERYONE that has ever walked into this bathroom.

Exhibit C:  From here, it looks ok again.  It's just those stripes on the left when you walk in that make your eyes go wonky.

So we call this bathroom, the fun house room.  The stripes are a royal blue and from straight on in a small sample (as I'm sure the previous home owner saw), it looks nice - mid-90's nice when burgundy, forest green and navy blue reigned supreme in home decor.  However, once they got this puppy on the wall, something went awry, which is too bad for us, the current homeowners.

SO, I go to work.  Having stripped wallpaper before, I know the horrors in store.  I thought I'd try painting over it this time.  WELL, two coats of oil-based primer later, my walls look like this:

You can see on the left where I have put on a second coat as opposed to the right, with one coat.

I can't get rid of those **** stripes!  

I don't know if I should call it quits and try to strip it off or paint it and hope the stripes disappear.  At this point, I still don't have a color picked out.  Either white or a pale gray.

I have made this bathroom unusable, so I'd better decide quick!

Rainy Days and Mondays...

...you know the rest.  At least there were a few brief moments of sunshine this morning before the ever-present, white haze covered it all with a blanket of depression.

When the kids are in school, I am in school.

My bags of crap, ready for preschool

 
It wasn't all bad.  The kids came home relatively happy. despite tears last night.  If we made it through today, we can make it through anything.  However tomorrow brings another round of horrors...more on at later.

New Year With Us

We had a lovely couple of days free of expectations, errands, school, work, etc.  We filled our days with yummy dinners, learning new songs, ice cream, puzzles, our annual movie, plenty of Netflix movies, and lots and lots of little home repair projects. 

 For the first time since we moved into our home five months ago, I have been able to take care of some much needed chores.  A week after we moved in, I started a second job, so I was working 6 days a week, and never home.  Though I'm only down to one job, I'm still not home very much.  This past week. to just be home, has been awesome.

New Year's Eve ice cream and the puzzle I am addicted to

Making homemade chicken soup in one of my favorite corners in our home.  

I spend a lot of time here.  

I learned a new song yesterday: "Fare Thee Well", sung by Oscar Isaac and Marcus Mumford. Fantastic song.

I spend a good portion of the morning putting away our Christmas tree and decorations.  It took a bit of work, but I got our front room put back together.  The Christmas stuff is great, but I LOVE how clutter-free the house feels when it's all put away.

Watching an old classic on Netflix, the original "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie.

And one last tidbit from Rose, because she is still the same crazy girl.  She has insisted for days now, that we call her Wormy, not Rose.  I wonder about that girl.