Over the weekend, Steve and I went to a furniture store and LOOKED at new couches. We didn’t buy one. However, we did make progress. As in we agreed on the couch we’d buy if we buy one.

Steve has reservations about buying a couch. They are many. Here’s a few:

1. Our cat likes to sharpen his claws on our furniture.
2. Stupid dog ripped two holes in our current couch.
3. The children destroy every nice thing we own.
4. The children like to climb all over our current furniture like it’s a jungle gym.
5. We need to paint the living room first.
6. We need to finish the bathroom first.
7. There’s more, but why bother?

So, instead of buying a new couch, we bought a scratching post for the cat. It is supposed to be catnip-scented, but so far my cat hasn’t shown too much interest in it. But he’s also left the furniture alone, so we’ll see.

I also started yelling at the dogs to stay off the furniture. And am trying to teach the children not to climb over and on and walk and jump on the furniture, and basically treat our things better in general.

Like that works.

Yesterday was a snow day. Technically it was an ice day since an ice storm made the roads too nasty for driving. I stayed home with the kids and as I sat on my lumpy ugly couch and watched home improvement shows hoping they’d show me how to make the ugly couch beautiful…. Autumn started bugging me about letting her rearrange furniture in one of our rooms.

So I thought, hey, that sounds good. And we started clearing out the living room. We moved the TV to a different wall, which requires drilling a new hole for the TV cords to come in at. And since that wasn’t enough, the two oldest kids painted the ceiling. They did good, but they ran out of steam before they finished completely. I finished up by myself.

Steve arrived home with a Valentine’s card and a dozen roses. He wasn’t thrilled to smell paint fumes. (In the past he’s ordered me to not paint in the winter because I can’t open the windows.) And he arrived just in time to crawl under the house and drill the hole for the new TV cord.

And while I was cleaning the living room, everything ended up in my office. And while I was looking for a new cable for the surround sound, all of my cords ended up on my desk. And my husband’s hat. Heck, even the vacuum cleaner is in here. I’ll have to take a picture of it now and send it to AGK.

Later.

Yesterday we reached a major milestone in our bathroom remodel. We achieved light! We now have a working light in the ceiling and above what will be the mirror. Woohoo! We seem to be working slow to slower on our bathroom work. On the upside, I don’t have any contractors to be ticked off at for their slow to slower work performance. Any blame belongs to me and mine.

My husband and I were discussing the electricity issues in the bathroom. For one, he had installed the light over the mirror too low, in my opinion. I’m 5’7 or so and the light was directly at my eye level. His explanation was that it was lower for the kids.

I had to break it to my husband that our children will grow up and soon be as tall or taller than us. The light needs to be raised. He agreed, reluctantly mistakenly thinking that would be decades away from actually happening.

That’s when we started to discuss the importance of numerous electrical outlets near the sink. GFI protected, of course. I said we needed at least two outlets, which translates to four plug-ins. He insisted that one plug-in, or two outlet was plenty. That’s when I reminded him we have three girls, which translates to hair dryers, curling irons, etc. Two will not do.

I’ve been putting a lot of thought into what color I want to paint my living room. I’ve been watching Tivo’d episodes of any show that is doing living room makeovers/design.

I had thought I’d try a sandwash, which is a textured paint you can get from Home Depot. I was thinking of the color "Crystal Bay," which is a midtone blue and owuld look good with our carpet. The ceiling would be white. But lately I’ve been rethinking. Do I want to paint my living room blue? It’s hard to go with another color because my carpet is blue. I plan to eventually (down the road when all the rest of the remodeling is done) replace the carpet with Pergo flooring. I hate my living room carpet and I don’t ever want to buy carpet for that room again.

But in the meantime, it’s blue (and really less than 3 years old). If you have children and animals, do NOT buy Berber carpet. If you have a preferance for real Christmas trees, do NOT buy Berber carpet.

Anywho. Why is it that you cannot find good furniture catalogs? What style do I like? I have no idea. I need help with this room. The furniture is sad and mismatched and I hate my sofa cover that doesn’t stay on. I have a very nice bay window, but right now nothing is in front of it because what can I put there? It’s next to the TV so any seating would be prevented from seeing the TV. I’d like to do built ins. Possibly storage space with maybe cusions on top for a window seat.

Another good question is why am I even thinking of the living room when I really have no plans to do anything for several years? It would involve buying new furniture and I want the children to age a bit more before I invest in that. At least get past the Kool-aid stage.

In other business, my mom called me yesterday in tears. Less than two hours after I talked to her and she noted her hair was thinning, but she was OK with it, she called me back. Her hair was falling out in clumps whenever she touched it combed it or shook her head to hard. She was in tears. She has had her first chemo treatment and will have another one this week. The idea of losing your hair and knowing it will grow back is different than when it actually happens. But I made her laugh and hopefully made her feel a bit better. I was supposed to call Chuckie and tell him, but I didn’t. Whoops. Sorry, Chuckie (he’s my brother and probably prefers to be called Chuck).

I’ve been invited to attend the grand opening of a big warehouse-style home improvement store. It will include a discount for any purchases I make. AND it will be catered. Food and home improvement shopping. Nirvana.

I want to get a new six-panel plain white door for the doorway between the garage and the mudroom. I want a new French door for the kitchen onto the deck. And then a few other little things. Very excited about the possibilities.

Remember my list of everything I wanted to do before, well, soon? Yeah. This past weekend went by without anything on that list getting done. I started. I even pounded a few blue empty electrical boxes into one wall and thought about threading electrical wire through them. Not actually wiring them, but just preparing them.

That’s when hubby wandered in to see what I was doing. And he laughed at me before wandering back to the couch in the living room. So I followed him and sat down. Then he felt bad for laughing at me. Because see, it didn’t get done. This is why I wait until he leaves home before tackling a project. That way I avoid the laughter.

We did get something done. We had a new front door installed. Did I mention that already? Possibly since we put it in over a week ago. Just have to say I really, really like it.

I also like our recently installed 7-day preprogrammable thermostat with the touch-pad screen. At 5:30 a.m. it starts warming up our house so it’s warm by the time our alarm goes off at 6 a.m. Nice. Before hubby actually had to do this for us. Nice to be spoiled. Of course, the thermostat wasn’t on our list of things to do. But it was just $40 on clearance at Home Depot. And now we can all wake up to a warm toasty house. Plus we can come home to one too. Very nice touch. Highly recommended. Get yours now.

And then come over and help me work on my house. I still have that long list to do.

My mom’s house is a disaster. OK, not really a disaster but she has a lot of stuff and it’s all in the way as we try to make her a bedroom closet. For years, her only closet was a little spot under the stairs. But now she has a closet that measures about 6′x10′ and I can only hope she will watch some episodes of Clean Sweep and get the urge to purge so her things will fit in the closet. Not to mention get rid of about 3 of the 4 hutches she has in her living room, which is now 6′x10′ smaller than it was due to new closet.

While we were moving stuff so we could make room for the closet, I was clearing off the entertainment center. Let me just say that my niece Jessica is now turning beat red and going, “She wouldn’t!” And I won’t. But Dee, you should ask her about it. Or Keith. Or Mom. ‘Cuz we all know, ya know? Ya will. It’s so fun to tease Jessica.

So I went with my mom to a Habitat Restore and she purchsed new carpet for her bedroom and living room. But she really, really wanted this very dark wood colored room divider. BUT remember the four hutches? And the smaller living room? Yeah. I don’t know what she’d do with it either.

She swears she’s going to buy it. I told her go ahead, but she’d have to go to the store to visit it because no one will be willing to haul it to her house for her. She said her boyfriend would. And he might, but then he’d risk being forever ostrasized from the rest of the family. So.

When I was telling my mother-in-law about the trip to the store earlier she asked me if my mom was happy that I allowed her to spend money on carpet. My mom constantly complains that her children won’t let her buy anything. And I realized that no, she wasn’t happy. She was too busy complaining that I wouldn’t let her buy that room divider. Some people’s parents. Oh wait, that was another topic.

Two blogs on a weekend? Imagine that! Don’t be expecting it on a normal basis. Thanks for playing.