State of the House: April 2012

So the last home update involved turning our guest room into a guest room.  And a nursery.

At that point it was our only completely finished room in the house.

And at this point it is our only completely finished room in the house.  (Well the closet isn't finished in that room but that is fixed by cramming stuff into it and shutting the door.  Please do not open closed doors in my house. They are always hiding something.).    

I blame having to share my closet with the AC unit...

So we haven't digressed and made the nursery back into any kind of part project/part storage room.  I think you can call no digression, progress, right? And because of the nursery/guest room, if someone is coming over on short notice now I really only have 3 things I worry about:

1.) Kitchen-no dishes & the main prep table is cleaned off
2.) Bathroom
3.) Tidy up our nursery and if at all possible allow the majority of conversation to take place in this room.

A stylish house guest enjoying our luxurious accommodations.

And Baby Girl enjoying her luxe accommodations.

(**Extra housekeeping hint:  I also always like to leave the vacuum cleaner out and plugged in. If there is time I can clean the floor.  And if there is not time then I still get the benefit of my guest believing that I am about to clean the floor.  Which I usually do.  Or I just sit back and read the latest issue of Southern Living and tell myself I'm not a complete housewife failure because I do make poundcake from scratch and own milk glass as featured in one article of this month's issue.)

Pound cakes I made from scratch for housewife extra credit points

Anyway, we still have a long way to go.  And although the lack of any newly painted room and the still existing "Welcome-to-Shop-n'-Sav-Drop-Ceiling-Tiles, Y'all!" in the main room may speak otherwise, we have made a ton of progress overall on the house.

Still applicable photo taken last year.

Taking a clue from how we go the nursery done, we've trudged forward with the rest of the house. The first step with the nursery was to get rid of anything in the room we didn't want to keep.  The next was to simply get everything OUT.  (Then it was on to prepping for painting, etc, etc. that Reid mainly did.  I was probably watching on while eating ice cream to help contribute to the 75 pounds I gained during pregnancy).  After that the actual "work" went by fairly quickly.  And since I got to go back and start with a completely blank palette, the decorating part was so fun.  (Much, much, much more fun than decorating by trying to see how artfully you can arrange clutter and seven too many pieces of furniture in one room...)

5 pieces of furniture+8 chairs+massive sewing project+baby jumper do not fit in one corner of a home. 

So we have already hauled off a ton of clothes and gadgets that weren't too hard to part with.  We also boxed up a lot for possibly some giant yard sale in the near future.  Then we took more clothes off (mainly my clothes because half my wardrobe fell into the "I wore this in college and it will probably either never fit again and/or never be appropriate for a mother to wear again" pile.) 

Now...with just over 4 months left until Josephine's 1 Year Birthday Party (that I desperately want to have at our house...our painted house...), we are starting on the "pack it all up and get it OUT for now step.

And as soon as I finish this one last big order that I had...

177 down, 223 buns left to go...

These two little boxes are going to be joined by a lot more.

One piece of furniture cleaned out...34 left to go.

  (IMPORTANT:  Offers of babysitting will be accepted on a first come, first serve basis in order to be able to accomplish our 4 month deadline.  And if we do not meet our deadline, offers of having the party at YOUR beautiful home with gorgeous ceilings and painted walls will also gladly be considered.  Thanks!)