What we've been up to

Yikes, another one month hiatus from the blog! I realized that part of the reason for my departure from normal blogging is the new technology I've acquired (an ipad and a smartphone). I love having these easier and more portable ways to take pictures and share them (hello Instagram!), but consequently I have less pictures saved on our desktop for me to scroll through and think "I should blog about this". But I'm going to make an effort to get back into blogging, for the grandparents' sake (they're our main audience anyway!). And because I still have plans to someday get our blog posts turned into a scrapbook. Someday....

So here's a quick rundown of what we've been up to. Before Christmas I had a week or two in which I really had nothing on my plate (besides caring for one child and growing another). So I took a look around our house and asked myself what I could plausibly do with my growing belly. And I saw this:

Yes, that is what our entryway has looked like for the past 8 months or so, ever since we moved in. The previous owners are responsible for the taupe to beige transition that you see happening above the doorway (I guess they lost incentive halfway through the project), but I made matters worse by trying out different samples right in that extremely conspicuous spot. That was back when I had the crazy idea that we'd have the entire house painted before we moved in. Bahahahaha. 

So over the course of a week, during Lucy's afternoon naps, I hauled out my rollers and paint brushes and a stepstool and painted our entryway white. 

It wasn't just that wall that needed painting, I had to do the whole entrance area and the ceiling, two coats, which is why it took so long. But I am so incredibly happy not to have to look at that horrible half-finished wall area anymore, I think I grin every time I pass through it!

And then after Christmas I took a trip to Ikea and bought a few entryway items to spice things up. Particularly this new rug, the floor vase and twigs, and the watering can.

A much more cheerful welcome when you step in the door! 

Our January project is to clean out the garage, and we're making pretty good progress on that as well. Our goals were to: find places in our two big attic spaces for all the junk in the garage (minus things that really need to stay out there like tools and paint supplies and bikes); tear out those rickety shelving units on the side of the garage so two cars can actually fit in it; get all chemicals up very high so small hands cannot find them; and build a new workbench.

We've been working on the garage on Saturdays during Lucy's nap. Here's the before shot:

Here is what it looked like after one day. It took a good bit of time to organize everything into well-marked bins and haul it upstairs, but we did all of that and Joel got started with tearing out those units:

This was the 2nd Saturday, Joel hard at work on his new workbench (see how abnormally tall his other workbench was? Also, the reason we could remove all those side storage units is because we have a ton at the back of the garage, as you can see in this pic. The high up ones are where the chemicals are now hidden). 

And here it is by the end of the second Saturday. Such a vast improvement already! 

So really what we have left now is to finish building the workbench and find places for the pile of items we decided to keep out in the garage. It's so nice to know where everything is now and for Joel to have room in the garage to actually use the tools he's been collecting!