Weekend Plans

Today is a rare Saturday for us in that 1) we are in town and 2) we have nowhere to be. Two of our children are with my mother in law on a trip to the Outer Banks for a family reunion. So we "only" have four children-- which feels like a break for us. I have spent the last three hours weeding out emails that have accumulated in the last several weeks as we were without internet for various reasons. I would read emails quickly when I got online at various remote locations, then hit "save" with the intention of going back and answering them "later." I decided that today was "later" and have responded to a good many. You may notice that I was posting a lot of things I saved here on the blog. Good stuff that begged to be shared.

There is, unfortuately, still a good bit more to weed through. Must. Eat. First.

Curt is busily scraping wallpaper off walls in the hopes that he can get the walls ready to be painted. I wish so much that I would have taken photos of the truly hideous wallpaper that was on the walls in almost every room. He has his work cut out for him! Later today, we plan to go to a local antique shop to buy a nice mahogany bookcase we have found for our living room. If we can do it early enough, I plan to spend some time this afternoon organizing and unpacking books that are still boxed. When, I ask you, will this move ever end??

Our realtor called the other day and said she wanted to come over and see all that we have done. I paused, wondering how to break the news to her that, other than getting new appliances and beginning to strip wallpaper off the wall, we haven't done much of anything. (She is remembering the "grand plans" we had before closing.) Well reality has intervened. We bought a lot of furniture when we first moved in, and that drained our finances pretty significantly. We have set aside money to get granite countertops-- not something we intended to do right away but our hand has been forced. We discovered that part of the tile countertop that is in the house now is about to fall off (seriously, one piece just lifts right out!) and the installation guy for our smooth cooktop said it won't fit the existing hole-- and the tile is too fragile to cut into the way it is. Two strikes against the existing countertop! So we are now being forced to put in new counters before we do some things we had intended to do like paint all the brown trim and paneling. I am hoping to get some estimates for that project next week. And hopefully we will get the brown trim and paneling handled soon-- it is SO dark.

This house is and will be for some time, a work in progress. It took us eight years to get the other one the way we liked it-- and I expect the same will be true for this one. Oh well, one project at a time.

My daughter is planning to make her Martha Stewart recipe for giant chocolate chip cookies. I knew she was up to something when she started asking if margarine was the same as unsalted butter and if we had any brown sugar! Tonight my daughter and I are going to Gwen Smith's live recording concert for her new cd. We are excited to make it a little mom/daughter time. Tomorrow we will finally be back at church after many weeks away for various reasons-- that will feel good to be back. Tomorrow night, we hope to have our date night but our sitter plans are not finalized yet.

ETA: I talked to my sitter and we are on "go" for our date night-- yay!

Hope you all are having a fun weekend whatever you find yourself doing!