Picturesque

All this snow has been a huge pain to deal with.  We dig our car out, then the plows come by and we have to dig out again from an even bigger pile.  We shovel the walks, then it snows and ices over the next day.  We go out and shake off the tree branches again and again and again.  We dry Bear off every time he comes in the house from his adventures.

But there are two good things about all this snow.  1.  Snow days (I wish we got more of them), and 2. The way our house looks in the snow.  I can't get enough of the bright red with the stark white.

When we first bought the house we contemplated painting it a more subdued color like grey or wedge wood blue, but we quickly grew to love the fire-engine red color and are so glad we kept it.  Grey?  What were we thinking.  

A two-year project

You know those home design blogs where the folks post progress of their various projects and they're careful to take the photo from the same angle in the same lighting each step of the way?  This is not one of those posts.

I've managed to take and include three photos - all of which are from different vantage points and all of which have rather terrible lighting.  Be excited.

I've been collecting mirrors and artwork for the last two years to use on a gallery wall going up our large, bland, cream-colored stairwell.  It's been a long process and Blake took to calling it "this mythical gallery wall of which you speak" because I was seemingly showing no progress except for the frame piles cluttering up our library. 

A few weeks ago I finally felt like I had enough to start with (it'll be a work in progress as I collect more artwork along the way).  I kept my frame color-scheme to natural wood, silver and gold (plus an unframed canvas Blake did).  I retrieved my seemingly endless roll of painters paper from the basement and carefully traced out templates.  (*Note: putting up templates before hammering nails into the wall has saved my life - and my lath and plaster walls!)

There were a few adjustments to the scheme after the below picture was taken, but you can get the gist.  I just marked on each template where the nail would go, hammered in the nails (ok, maybe Blake did that), pulled off the templates, put up the frames, and voila!

Or, maybe it was not actually that simple.  It actually takes quite a bit of time to get the measuring exactly right, so we did this in stages.

First, the templates sat up there for two weeks as a glaring reminder of my laziness:

 



Then, my guilt forced me into action.  But not marathonic action - just small action (three frames worth):

 

Then, last weekend, we finally got our project mojo going and finished it up.  I'm really happy with the results.  The mirrors bounce the light around and make the stairwell feel infinitely brighter.  We get to enjoy Blake's photography, some old family pictures, and a Venus engraving that I love.  We're also looking forward to adding a picture of Bear when we get him next month.

 

 So, if you'll put aside my lackluster photography, it's not half bad.

Around the house

I know you've all been dying to see some grainy iPhone pictures of the current state of our home.  Well, your wish is my command.

Without further ado, I give you:

1.  The blue velvet couch. My favorite piece of furniture.  Also, a self-made parsons table and a pillow with inquisitive zebras on it.  Because who doesn't need a flock of zebras looking at you incredulously every time you sit down?

2. The entry way.  (For the record, this is not an iPhone picture...it is courtesy of Blake and his camera skills).  I love the way it looks when it's so sunny.

3.  Flowers from the garden on the kitchen counter.

4.  My new coat hooks.  Do I love them? You bet giraffe I do! (That joke never gets old.)

5.  New (cheap!) pillows for the living room couch.  I've since re-arranged them so that the patterns aren't both facing in the same direction. It's absolutely driving me crazy in the photo below. Alas. First world problems.

And that, my friends, is a quick tour of our house as seen through an iPhone lens.  You're welcome.

More of Spring

I can't get enough of our house in the springtime.  The forsythia bush blooms bright yellow and is followed shortly by the tulips (I planted them last fall and was ecstatic to see them come up in such force).  Then there's the piece de la resistance - our cherry tree. 

Blake and I have both decided that if anything ever happened to the cherry tree that we'd have to move.  It's just so much a part of the identity of the house.  Our yard would feel naked without it.

When it's in full bloom, I can smell it wafting down the street about a block and a half away.  The sun is always hitting it just-so as I'm walking home from the metro and it makes my heart burst with how much I love where we live.  The first thing I do when I get home on those nights is to crank open all of the windows and let the scent fill the house.  It feels and smells like spring.  It's magical.

On a different note, I also think we're single-handedly employing all of the honey bees in the metro area during the two weeks it's in bloom.  The whole tree buzzes happily with activity.

Baked and Fried

You'd think that Corporate America (yes, it deserves capitalization) would make it easy on the average consumer to spend a fortune.  They want you to throw money at them, right?  Well, it turns out that our range purchase made it next-to-impossible to spend.  Because of size limitations and an old house, we kept striking out on the slide-in ranges we originally planned to buy. 

We ended up with another stand alone range (not my first choice), but I'm pretty happy with it.  It's got a massive baking capacity and an induction cook top, which makes my food-loving heart go pitter-patter. 

It took some finagling, and some pushy phone calls with Sears to get it leveled, but it's now a part of the family.  It's nice to finally have all of the appliances matching...but it's making me re-think the clock and the utensil holder.  There's entirely too much stainless steel going on right now. 

Where was I?

Now that I'm through with crock pot and electric griddle meals for the foreseeable future, you know where to find me: gleefully baking in front of this beauty.

Panic! in the Kitchen

I read Born to Run last month and am now making my way tentatively into the world of barefoot running.  I've got terrible feet and am pretty much willing to try anything to help with the back and leg pain that comes with having the feet of a 95 year old woman. 

I've gotten surgery on both ankles, worn orthotics in my shoes for the last ten years, and bought the most expensive bunion-widowed, pronation-fixing shoes ever to grace the Asics line.  And nothing has completely prevented the pain.

So, I'm a convert.

I'm going to be buying some of these slightly freaky FiveFingers shoes come spring and then I'll run outside.  For the time being I've been running barefoot on the treadmill.  It has vastly improved my running posture already, so I'm looking forward to seeing if it completely reduces my aches and pains.

As I mentioned, I've been running on the treadmill.  On Wednesday, my feet were quite cold, so I decided to wear some thin socks while I ran.  I noticed several minutes into my jog that my feet had started to hurt, but I thought, "oh well, rug burn i guess?" and kept going.  When I finished and hobbled upstairs I noticed that I'd developed enormous blisters all over my feet.

Not exactly a pleasant feeling for me the next day when I put on my work shoes. 

Now, let that image ruminate in your mind while I segue into my next story.

On Thursday I was totally on my game.  I'd gotten the right groceries to execute my pre-planned meal.  I had defrosted the salmon and soaked the cedar planks.  I was feeling pretty good about myself.

I put the quinoa in the rice cooker, I chopped the broccoli, I dressed the salmon and pre-heated the oven. BUT, as I was waiting for the oven to finish heating up, I heard a loud pop from the oven and looked over to see error message flashing across the screen.  It started beeping uncontrollably - and try as I might to turn the darn thing off, it just wouldn't cooperate. 

I looked inside the oven and was alarmed to see every heating element turning on and glowing red-orange.  My oven was possessed!

Or, at least that's what I thought.  But, like any child of the new generation, I quelled my fears and turned to google.  Oh, that oracle of answers!  In two minutes I had researched the problem and found out that it was a defect with the oven (that Kenmore has refused to recall). The electrical panel had fried and it was now on overdrive. Folks had reported that their ovens had turned on and had the same error while they weren't even in the house - resulting in kitchen fires and whole-house fires.

The reviews mentioned that the only way to stop the oven from continuing to heat is to pull it out and turn it off or unplug it in the back.

Well, at this point that's not a possibility because I can barely even get near the thing let alone touch it.  I had to remove the dish towel from the front because it had already begun to singe in that short time.

There I was- home alone in a smoke-filled kitchen - with panic rising in my chest and the fire extinguisher in my hand.  I had to do something fast or face the fiery consequences.

So I ran down to our electrical box to flip the breaker.

This was a great idea except for the fact that none of our breakers were labeled.  When we got our electrical box replaced, our electrician disappeared without re-labeling anything.  We've slowly been doing it as needed, but I hadn't yet gotten to the oven one.

I spent what felt like ages (but was probably only 5 or 6 minutes) stress sweating and sprinting from our kitchen down to the corner of the basement to try breaker after breaker.  All of this, of course, being done with maximum discomfort to the twin pillows of pain residing on my feet.

I hit a breaker and went up to the kitchen to see every appliance and light in my kitchen off except for the oven.  At this point I was fairly certain that my oven had gone rogue and no longer needed an external power source (maybe I've been reading too many dystopian novels lately?).  Of course it was the very last breaker I hit that actually turned the oven off.

I was just breathing a sigh of relief and trying to fan out more of the electrical-fire smell when Blake walked in from work.

He took one look at my face and one sniff of our house and decided we were going out for dinner.

I think I'm still getting over the initial stress of the evening.

V to the Izzay

On Columbus Day weekend, Blake and I woke up on Sunday and decided to take an overnight adventure to Richmond.  I'd never been, and the hotel prices were so good, that we quickly booked a place, packed and jumped in the car (with treats in hand).

We listened to a session of General Conference on the way down (2 hour drive, 2 hour session. perfect!).  Thank goodness for iPhones and the ability to stream online content.  It was a grey day, but it was still pretty and we enjoyed the changing leaves while we listened to the session.

I will admit, though, that my favorite part of the trip down was stopping in Fredericksburg at Wegmans for lunch.  Man, I love that place (we also stopped there for lunch on the way back).  I'm like a kid in a candy store in there.  Blake and I both ended up getting two baked treats each for the rest of the drive - yes, yes, we are gluttons, but it was vacation!

I have a major design crush on the folks over at Young House Love, so we followed this list of their favorite "top fives" in Richmond while we were there.  It's a small enough city that we were able to check a lot more off the list than I thought we'd be able to. 

First up after checking into our swanky hotel (Blake's policy is to always ask first-thing for a free upgrade.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  This time it did. Awesome.) was to head over to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art.  It was free, and a surprisingly amazing museum.  The building has recently been redone - it's huge and beautiful. And, I saw a couple of Monets that I hadn't ever seen before - one of Poppies that I was absolutely in love with, as well as some modern art of dubious merit that made me question the sanity of the curators.  But then again, what do I know?  I'm not an art aficionado by any means.  I either like it or I don't.  And I just couldn't dredge up any appreciation for the gangster painted on red velvet pictured below.

After a jaunt by the Virginia State House and a ridiculously amazing dinner at Crab Louie (seriously, if you're ever in Richmond vicinity you have to eat here!) we lounged at the hotel while Blake watched baseball and I read. 

Monday brought an unexpectedly early wake-up call in the form of a loud metallic scraping noise as a maintenance crew removed the wallpaper in the hallway outside our room.  Not the perfect way to start the morning, but we found it slightly hilarious when we finally looked outside the room and saw that ours was the ONLY portion of the hallway being worked on.  Go figure.  Not to worry, Blake turned the situation into free parking and Starbucks (would you expect anything less?) so we were happy.

Much to Blake's chagrin, we spent the morning going to thrift stores.  They were great thrift stores with lots of furniture, but we left empty handed.  I had to memorialize my favorite with a photo - Love of Jesus Thrift.  Good stuff.

We'd unknowingly saved our favorite stop of Richmond for last - the Decorating Outlet.  It's the outlet store for Shades of Light which is one of my favorite places to browse online for lighting.  We ended up spending about an hour in the store and left with four lights!   Our biggest score being, of course, the long-lusted sconce for our hallway.

We left the city well-rested and will a trunk full of light fixtures.  I'd call that a success.  It was just the sort of trip we needed.  It's nice to be away from home (even if it's close to home) so that I'm not tempted to spend my time cleaning or doing laundry or filling my time with other necessary-but-not-fun things on a holiday.

Ensconced

I don't know about you, but nothing (*almost nothing) gives me as much satisfaction as getting a good deal.

I've been looking at this sconce for the past year or so on Shades of Light. It was perfect for our main floor hallway. I pinned it.  I loved it. I lusted it. I needed it.

But, alas, it was $199.00. Way too much for my frugal Mormon heart to accept.

So I waited. And waited. And cheated on my sconce by looking at other sconces at places like the Home Depot and Lowes. Oh, for shame!

But, like a tragic love story or substance addition, I kept coming back to it.

And you know what? All the waiting and lusting paid off.  This past weekend Blake and I drove down to Richmond as a spur-of-the-moment adventure, and we happened upon the only Shades of Light decorating outlet in the country. And there, sitting quietly in the corner, was THE sconce. And the price? $24.00. You better believe I snapped it right up.

Victory is mine! And it is so sweet.

 

 

At last...my rug has come along!

A rug at last. 

I've been searching off-and-on for a rug for our living room since we moved in.  It's a long room that includes the entry-way and the living room, so I wanted to get something to define the seating area as a separate space from the entry area.

For me, rugs are always the hardest part of decorating.  Do I get something with a pattern? Something plain?  Fluffy?  Flat-weave?  Will I get sick of a patterned rug?  Will it conflict with other elements of the room?  Will it hold up to the foot traffic? The list goes on.

One of my primary issues is that to get a nice rug for a room this size would normally cost a small fortune. And I'm not willing to part with a small fortune...especially not for something I'm so wishy-washy on. 

I started contemplating a hair-on-hide rug about a year ago when I cruising the archives of some of my favorite design blogs.  I love the organic shape and the fact that they're true work-horses (pun?) in terms of holding up to wear-and-tear.  But again, other than the IKEA version (which I didn't absolutely love), it was an expensive proposition.

Then - cue the heavenly choirs singing - Blake and I were perusing Arhaus before dinner one night and noticed that they had a zebra-print rug and that it was on sale!  Drastic sale.  75% off to be exact.  That put it, mercifully, in our price range.  It only took a few minutes of my incessant chattering to successfully convince Blake that, yes, we needed this zebra rug for our home. 

20 minutes later we were home and eagerly re-positioning our furniture and the rug "just-so." 

Not the best (iPhone) picture, but it looks amazing in person.

It pays to wait for a deal.

Pennsylvania Blue

When we purchased our home back in 2009, we knew we'd have to make some landscaping updates. The shed was old and crummy, and the brick patio was buckled and sloping precipitously in toward the house.  The brick required constant weeding, and caused me frequent heartburn as every time it rained, the water would come rushing in toward the house and pool by the foundation (eek!).

We ousted the old shed and replaced with with a new, updated version throughout last summer and into the winter (our projects take a long time around here, ok?), and have been saving and planning for a new flagstone patio since we signed our mortgage papers on the dotted line. 

Although we're often DIY-ers, we weren't ready to take on the leveling, foundation digging, cement stair jack-hammering and general stone heave-ho-ing that comes with putting in a new patio.

We worked with East Coast Landscaping to come up with a plan, and let them work their magic. 

They had a last-minute hole in their schedule, so they started construction while we were up at the lake.  We had them send pictures at the end of each day, and had to have a few changes made (we're pretty picky customers), but it was a fairly painless process. 

We couldn't be more tickled with how it turned out.  AND (big, important and) we've already had a couple of nasty rain storms, where, to our delight, the water rolled politely off the patio away from the house rather than rushing in toward it.  As if the patio weren't beautiful enough to look at, it also brings the sweet relief of knowing I can sleep at night without worrying that our foundation would be soggily disintegrating.

I even bought some long lusted-after outdoor lights - I like to think of them as the cherry on top of a big, delicious ice cream sundae.

Come over and have a BBQ with us soon, ok?

And then I redeemed my week...

Last week was a week of mishaps, but all-in-all it wasn't so bad.  In between the madness, I got to see a lot of friends (these ones, these ones, these ones and more), ate a lot of really great food, went out for a night-on-the-town with my brother, and caught up on some much-needed housework. 

By the time it got to the weekend, the only plans Blake and I had made was to go to the pool and relax all day.  Well, it rained steadily all day, so that plan was a bust. 

It's a rare day that we don't have anything planned, so we took advantage and puttered around all over town cutting our perpetual, mile-long to-do list down to size.  We got our break lights replaced, went to a farmers market, went to a garden center to look for a lemon tree (I really want one for our dining room, but no dice!  They're surprisingly hard to find.), ate a leisurely lunch, went to Lowes to look at lighting options, went to IKEA to find inspiration for a side table and to give ourselves a headache, and then went to a really fun birthday get-together with friends.  It was a full day, but even with the rain it somehow felt relaxed and chill.

It's pretty slow-going furnishing a house.  It's takes a lot of money (which we usually don't have) and time (which we almost never have), so it's a continual work in progress.

We picked up a lamp on clearance from my favorite store (Arhaus) a couple weeks ago and it has been looking pretty forlorn on the floor next to the couch.  So when we were out in the IKEA direction on Saturday, it sparked my memory of an IKEA-hackers post about combining two Lack side tables to make a faux Parsons table. 

It was such a simple Sunday morning project, but for $25.00 I don't think it looks half-bad.  It's probably a little more modern than what we usually go with, but I'm really happy with how it turned out and love the way it looks with the navy blue couch. 

I want to get a large basket to put in it to hide games (yep, we're finally stepping up to our Mormon heritage and collecting some board games...I never though I'd see the day!).  But, design friends, is it blasphemous to ruin the clean lines with a basket?  What do you think?

And one more thing.

Did you know that when the power goes out and the ice in your freezer starts to melt, it will drip continuously out of the ice dispenser and soak the kitchen floor?

Did you know that when you remove the ice box from the freezer and place it in the sink, it will halt the dripping, but the when the freezer turns back on it will continue to make ice?

Did you know that the ice maker will continue to make ice because it does not feel a box starting to fill up?

And when it continues to make ice at a unceasing pace, did you know that when you open the freezer door after coming home from your trip, several hundred ice cubes (along with some suspect re-frozen fish and chicken juice) would cascade out into the kitchen?

We didn't.

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th started a little early for me this year.  It's basically been a whole week of mayhem.  You know how bad things tend to happen in 3's?  Well, I'm over that limit and still going strong.

1.  I got sick last Tuesday and am still sniffling.  I went through approximately 5 Gatorade's and 2 boxes of Kleenex per day for the first few days, spent half of my vacation in bed, flew with a sinus infection (which, I'm pretty sure is on of the seven circles of Hell), and still missed a couples days of work before dragging myself out of bed and back into reality. 

2.  Somewhere between packing in Pebble Beach and unpacking in Maryland, I lost my favorite watch.  The beautiful one that Blake gave me for our anniversary. 

3.  Last night I came home exhausted from my first full day back at work to a home that smelled distinctly of laundry.  This is not a smell I dislike.  But yesterday it was a smell the confused me seeing as I hadn't gotten around to doing laundry since our return. 

I wondered if I were just making it up.  My nose, after all, was pretty stuffy and I couldn't be sure I wasn't having an olfactory hallucination. 

But after sniffing all around the house, I opened the door to our laundry/unifinished basement and discovered that my almost-new, Costco-sized detergent had fallen off the high shelf, burst, and spread all over the floor. 

It's under the washer and dryer, under the shelves, soaked into the lawn bags, goo-ing up the vaccuum.  Not only did it restrain itself to the huge puddle you see here, but there were also splatter marks across almost the entire length of the room.  You name it, the blue goo got it. 

I guess it was a sign that I should do laundry.  In order to save some of the goop (detergent is expensive!) I dipped the clothes directly into the puddle and then threw them into the washer.  No additional soap needed.   

Embarassing?  Yes.  White trash?  Maybe.  But Genius?  Yes!

I spent about two hours trying to clean up the mess, but only made it about halfway before giving up and leaving it for a weekend project. 

At least my floors will be clean.  If anyone feels like having a picnic on our soon-to-be-pristine cement floors, let me know.

5.  Oh, and today I fell in the shower.  I'm not sure if I'm 26 or 86, but there you have it.  I was minding my own business, pumice-stoning my foot, and before I knew what was happening I had hit my knee, hip and head on the tub and tile in rapid succession. 

It must have sounded a lot worse than it was, because Blake came running up the stairs to make sure I was ok.  I briefly considered claiming amnesia (re: The Vow) and screaming at the "unknown man" invading my shower, but I kept calm and decided to dry off and call it a morning instead.

At this rate, it'll be a miracle if I can make it through the weekend.

I'm 26 and I still got it.

Yep.  I may be in my late twenties (what?!?!), I've still got it.  "It," of course, meaning a teenager-looking face.

Last night I answered the friendly knock on the door in my summer work-out clothes: men's basketball shorts and t-shirt.  (As a side note: don't you hate it when solicitors use the knock that should be reserved for friends and family?  You know, the knock that is more pleasure than business?)

"Hi, are your parents home?"

(Considering telling him it's my house, but then deciding I'm too tired to deal with hearing his whole pest control monologue)  "Nope."

"Ok.  I'll just come back tomorrow."

"Oh, that's ok.  Don't bother."

This is made even funnier by the fact that he was obviously about 20 years old.

Will those door-to-door salesmen never learn?

It's ok.  I guess I can understand his confusion.  I mean, can't you?

More saving, more doing, more dirt in our car.

When spring hits each year, you can count on the fact that Blake and I will be up at the Home Depot every Saturday morning scouting out new flowers and shrubs, and waiting in the mulch line.  Home Depot is great in the spring.  There's a DJ playin' rasta music in the garden section and the flowers are plentiful and gorgeous.  All of this plus some grungy, dirt-covered clothes, and you've got yourself a party.

I've started to see that there would be advantages to owning a truck...  other than the very obvious disadvantage that you come across when you're Mormon and own a truck: getting called every weekend to move someone in our out or go to a scout camp-out. 

So for the time being, we'll remain selfish with our vehicle choice and will continue to deal with the dirt in our trunk that comes with all of our Home Depot outings.

Owning a home and having a yard is hard work.  It's a full-time job on the weekends to keep the place cleaned up, weed free, and looking presentable.  But I will say this: it's so worth it. 

I've been spending a few minutes out on the patio when I get home each afternoon, enjoying the great weather we've been having.  I get to breath in the smell of the lilacs, and be surrounded by these beautiful azaleas and other products of our hard work.  It's heaven. 

Anticipation

Sigh.  Nothing beats a weekend. 

Blake and I spent Saturday evening at our favorite pizza joint with Blake's parents and enjoyed our fourth Nutelloco in a week's time.  The staff there is starting to recognize us.  I'm not sure whether to be proud of this fact or embarrassed.

We also watched an edited copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I guess because I've read the books and knew what was coming, it was even harder to watch.  I had so much anxiety that I couldn't stop fidgeting - which drove Blake absolutely crazy.  It was a good movie, but probably not one I'll be watching again soon.  Violence against women (even implied/edited out) is just so hard to stomach.

I'm really hating the fact that my body gets used to waking up early every day and then I'm unable to sleep in much on Saturdays.  Both of us were wide awake and ready to go at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday.  So unfair. 

The Weather Channel had been confirming for us all week that Saturday was going to be miserable weather-wise and that we should plan on rain all weekend.  Much to our surprise, it was 80 degrees and sunny all day on Saturday.  We took advantage by spending a large portion of the day outside in the yard.  We mowed, we edged, we mulched, we weeded, we de-vined, we pruned, we swept, we conquered.  

I realized that I may have overdone it with the yard work on Saturday when I woke up Sunday morning with a completely stuffy nose, scratchy throat and puffy eyes and swollen eyelids.  Combine that with an extremely grey, rainy day and you've got the perfect excuse to stay inside all day napping and watching movies and re-runs of Celebrity House Hunters. 

Thankfully, I'm feeling loads better today and my eyelids have returned to a normal size.  And even though it's Monday, I'm still in a great mood because come Friday I'll be heading here: 

photo via 

DC Excitement!

It's been an exciting week so far (and it's only Wednesday!).

The Space Shuttle Discovery took a hour-long tour around DC yesterday and it flew right over my office.  I saw it out my window, but was too busy staring to grab my phone and snap a photo.  Lucky for me, Blake was a couple blocks away on the roof balcony of his office and he snagged this great shot.

It's not every day that the space shuttle makes the rounds in your neighborhood. 

Yesterday we also had our air ducts cleaned at home.  Oh the joys of home ownership.  It ended up costing a lot more than I expected it to.  On the list of things I'd like to spend a heap of money on, this falls toward the bottom.. somewhere between having to replace the plumbing and social security taxes.  So, it doesn't fall under the "exciting" category, but it does fall under the "unexpected/surprising category," which is "exciting's" distant cousin, right?

It's Friday, I'm in Love

Wow.  This week has worn me out.  It's Friday and I'm just happy I made it this far.

Work's been crazy.  We did some babysitting - where I quickly learned that I know absolutely NOTHING about babies or taking care of them (and that the best way to get a baby fed is to give the baby to Blake, who does a much better job of mushed-pea-feeding than I do).  And some meal-bringing - where I continued my trend of over-estimating the amount of food I'll need and ended up with 10 pounds of pasta salad.  And found out some bad news - that Amazon Student is no longer going to provide me with free shipping.  Grr.

And in between those things we also watched some Alcatraz, suffered through a recent episode of 30 Rock (that show is getting worse and worse...and may even be demoted off our DVR schedule in the near future), and went to bed at times too-early-to-mention on a daily basis.  I blame the fatigue on my supposedly non-drowsy Claratin. 

Blake's been a trouper all week.  Even with a migraine headache and allergies, he still puts up with me when I do things like spending the morning griping about the weeds in our yard and cursing our lawn company.  In fact, because he knows how bothered I am by it, he not only put up with me, he puts in long calls to said yard company and got them to do what we want. 

That, my friends, is true love.

This photo has nothing to do with anything above...it's just that this nook in our bedroom makes me smile.  And I'm tired enough right now that I welcome any excuse to smile.

Our house in the springtime gives me a perma-grin.

I know I know.  Every post I've written in the past couple weeks revolves around the beautiful spring we're having, but I just can't get over it.  Spring is by far my favorite season, and I never get tired of it.  It's our third year in our house, and I've been looking forward to our cherry blossoms for months. 

As happens every year, I catch people from all over the neighborhood stopping on the sidewalk or road in front of our house to take pictures.  And it is picturesque, don't you think?  The bright red house, the soft pink blossoms, the green grass and the round yellow forsythia bush?

They're not completely at their peak yet, but I am thinking they'll probably be at optimal blossom-ness this weekend.  You know what's even better?  They smell as good as they look!  When you turn onto our street you see a puffy pink cloud of blossoms and the closer you get the more you can smell them.  I was telling Blake this morning that I wish I could bottle up that scent and keep it all year round: the blossoms, the clean, fresh spring air, the forsythias.  Mmmm.  It's my idea of heaven.

In other news...

...the unfinished portion of our basement still looks like a scene straight out of "Hoarders."

This weekend the madness ends and the organization begins.  Our new couch is scheduled for delivery tomorrow morning and after it's in place I'll begin the Great Stuff Migration back to that side of the basement.  Yep, only the great stuff will be moving.  I'm sensing a yard sale in our near future.