The things I have done, and the things I have left undone

So it's official: my last day of work until 11 August was on Friday so I'm on vacation, wooohoooo!

Last summer after my vacation started I was all about the home improvement projects, the crowning jewel of which was my bathroom ceiling's makeover. It was covered in that popcorn stuff, and was molded on the part above the shower, eeewwww :( All attempts at cleaning the mold had failed miserably, so my only choice was to re-do the whole thing. You can read more about the saga here http://tallulahhouse.blogspot.com/2007/07/ohhhh-pain.html and here http://tallulahhouse.blogspot.com/2007/07/bathroom-ceiling-project-finished.html , if you're so inclined.

So my plans for this summer (I began plotting them last fall) included adding crown molding-- painted a glossy black to complement the colour scheme-- to the bathroom; patching, sanding, and painting the kitchen ceiling; and painting our bedroom (sorry, sweetie, but I'm tired of the lavender).

Well... after Liam made his presence known (http://tallulahhouse.blogspot.com/2008/03/surprise.html), my plans obviously had to change, as being on ladders, etc, is not so much a good idea when one is seven months along.

So I've scaled back. Here's is my revised to-do list:

*Finish the nursery. I know, I know, it ought to have been finished quite a while back, but between converting it from my sitting room to packing up some of my things to make room for Liam's, the whole process has taken longer than expected.

*Re-organize the pantry. Honestly, it's out of control! Everytime I walk in there the clutter freaks me out and I run out again. However, it's just going to keep bothering me (and getting worse) until I fix it, so fix it I shall!

*Continue to de-clutter. This is an ongoing project. Funnily enough, I just finished Judith Levine's book Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping (overall, I enjoyed it, although it did feel at times that the author was trying too hard to prove her left wing cred). Many times I found myself saying, "Yeah, that's absolutely true. Right on! I'm not shopping anymore!"
Of course, in the middle of the book, my friend Frances and I headed up to the Premium Outlets in Dawsonville and, well... Let's just put it this way: I got a lot of Christmas shopping done ;)

*Clean the hardwood floors. This is the iffiest of my projects, as I don't find it as easy to get up and down as I used to. Chris and I sweep and vacuum on a regular basis, of course, but as we all know the only way to properly clean a floor is on your hands and knees with a cloth and cleaner.

That's it. It's certainly not as ambitious as last year, but if I get them all done I'll be quite proud of myself.

What projects are YOU working on?
Kimberley

Ok, so I'm stalling here...

Chris is working on re-sizing the Ireland pictures (and doing other mysterious things to them, apparently), so I STILL don't have any photos to share-- I'm sorry!

In the meantime, I thought that I would update you on the baby bedding issue-- it's not Ireland, but it is something ;)

So, some of you may remember my cry for help in regard to this issue: Let's talk baby bedding...
What I didn't mention in that post was that the whole issue was further complicated by the fact that all of the bedding had to be organic. Yeeee-eeeesssss. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find organic bedding that isn't "natural" color? I'm here to tell you that it's pretty challenging. Ok, well, so I made it even harder with my determination to not buy a matching set, mostly due to cost and because it seemed that, for boys, the only color was blue and the bedding had trucks all over it. But enough of my self-inflicted nuttiness!

The walls in what was once my sitting room and is now the nursery are a lovely pale green: Rejuvenation from Benjamin Moore. I decided that chocolate was just the color to set that off (didn't want to paint again and go through finding paint with no VOC's), and began looking... and looking... and looking. After over a month of this, here's what I've ordered:

The blanket (which won't actually see any real use for a while, since babies aren't supposed to have blankets), which I found on Etsy. It's all organic, with cotton and bamboo-- not only do I love that and the funky pattern, but I'm glad I could support an independent craftsperson.




The sheet (I'm also ordering a set in "natural"), which I found on Amazon:




The bumper cover, from Kee-Ka (I know, the picture reads "crib sheet", but there's a bumper cover with the same pattern):




The crib skirt, which I found at Carousel Designs. It's the only piece that isn't organic, but I figure Liam isn't going to be breathing into it, as he will the other things:



I'm also on the hunt for chocolate valances to go over the cream curtains (which will be tied in the middle with chocolate ribbon) that are already there. I found some that are perfect on Target.com (not available in the store, of course), but they want to charge me almost $16.00 for shipping and I just won't pay that.

Oh, and when Chris and I were at Babies R Us the other day, he found a cute monkey for the wall. Is that our theme, then, monkeys? :)

So, what do you think?
Kimberley