One more thing completed

Dining room light before!


Dining room light after!

Fireplace oh how we fear thee.....

Well, when we bought our lovely little house, we were told they never used the fireplace. False. Evidently in the 80 some years they owned the house someone used the fireplace. So We got a little brave and took out a piece of cardboard that was shoved up in there. Hmmmm......
Not pretty. You can't see a thing for all the nest and crap up there.....I wouldn't be surprised if there was raccoons up there.
So we call the chimney sweep. With all the flooding that has happened in our area he is booked solid, trying to get people's fireplace clean outs clean again.......at least I think that's what he said. So in the meantime I'm looking for inserts in the off chance we win the lottery and can actually afford one....(ya know since that same flood sucked every last penny out of my wallet.)
Well, we have a Victorian sized fireplace. Great. Almost impossible to find inserts for it. Lovely. 21 inches wide. That's narrow!
(The logs you see in there are just some fake things I got Menards....they do NOT produce any heat, which is what I WANT!!!!)
So I have to think on it some more.......

Well another project started......

and not quite finished. With the holidays fast approaching we had to clean the cream colored carpet. It hadn't been done since we moved in last year. Well we though to ourselves, wouldn't pulling it out be just as much work? This stuff is just tacked down, unlike the stuff in the foyer and dining area that is GLUED down. If the hardwood underneath is in good shape we can put off sanding for a little bit, (unlike we tear up the other stuff.) So in the midst of four other projects I talked hubs into tearing up the carpeting with me. He drew a line the sand. NO MORE PROJECTS. This is it sweetie. That means no wallpaper coming off I guess. We really do need to get my stepson's bedroom completed.....drywall is such a pain. Plus the floor in the bathroom still isn't done, not to mention the beadboard........
Anyway....here's a picture of the floor and the new area rugs...I bought two of them......

What to do, what to do.....

Ok, we have a lot of trim that would look just wonderful stripped and stained. But it's not. It's this nasty dirty cream color. I've lived with for a year and I'm sick of it. I'm also sick of the wallpaper. It's bugging me. I'm also sick of the cream carpeting. C'mon people! WHO puts this stuff in a CRAFTSMAN BUNGALOW house?????? Who tears out original built-ins?????
So the other I say to dear hubby....if we're going to have Thanksgiving here we need to get the carpet cleaned. Which then leads him to peak under the carpeting in the living room. (We already know the carpeting in the dining area is GLUED down.) Yup this stuff is just tacked down and the floor under it isn't TOO bad. We could live with it for a while, (a year) before re-finishing it. So then dear hubby says, well if I'm going to tear up the carpeting I might as well tear out the wallpaper. I think to myself, that is never going to get finished before Christmas. Thanksgiving, I could really care less about, Christmas however..............

Sad Day

We had to put our 12 year old Basset Hound Miss Ruby Sue to sleep today. :-( I think it's beyond my 6 yr old's mind, but maybe not. We'll have to see. It's a sad day all around. We only had crumb sweeper now and the little white dust mop isn't quite the same as the hound dog. Have a swift safe passing to Rainbow Bridge Ruby Sue. We miss you.

Oh and did I mention?

That our house is haunted? (Even writing that creeps me out.) Yeah. About 3-4 weeks after we bought our house the P.O. killed himself. This house had been in his family for about 60 years. There are three bedrooms upstairs, two of them have remote controlled fan/light combos. The third one has a new fan/light installed by dear hubby, when we moved here a year ago. So you can turn the remote fan/light combos out by either the remote, the pullchain, or the switch on the wall. In the middle of the night the fan and lights will come on, whether or not you have the light and fans turned off by the pullchain and/or switches or not. Doesn't matter. This will happen in the bedroom that does not have the remote fan/light combo as well, but not as often. I've kinda gotten used to it, the kiddos haven't, but I have.
Then the other night I had a terrible dream. Frightening ghosts, scary hallways, sounds silly now, but oh so real in my dream. That night the light came on twice in our room, once in daughter's room, and twice in my son's room, the three year old ended up sleeping with me. When I got up the next morning and came downstairs, things had been moved. And moved weirdly. Party dress up hats my kids played with were all over the house. ALL OVER. I called dear hubby, since he was on his way home from his third shift job, had he moved them before he left and I forgot? Nope he remembered them the same way I did. The dogs were in their kennels at night, so they didn't do it. It just kinda freaks me out. I don't like to talk about it a lot at night or in the house, weird huh?

Knives are tricky things

Besides being a wanna be do it yourselfer, I love to cook and bake. I never make a cake from scratch. Bread is my specialty, and well I make a mean Moroccan Chicken Taco. So it's been quite some time since I've cut myself cooking. I mean years. But when you don't keep sharp knives, well.....you end up with your finger sliced down to the knuckle.
I have just been so plain busy I have forgotten to keep my chef sharp. So now with a throbbing hand I will be reminded of that for quite a while!
Of course this happened while my three year old was at the table wanting a slice of bread and butter, my stepson had friends in the basement, my husband was at the fire station, and my six year old was staring at me while blood was pouring down my hand, with her eyes as wide as could be. Yeah, not a good time.
Dear hubby came home shortly, but still, if it wasn't for bad luck we wouldn't have any luck at all. I think will slow things down maybe a tad bit more for a couple of days.....