I would totally blog more if I didn't have to post pictures!

For days and days I've been wanting to write a blog post about the home-makeover extravaganza that I am currently in the middle of.

It is one of those things where part of me wants to COMPLAIN about how hard it has been to have my life turned upside-down and not be able to be in my own house for two weeks now and how STRESSFUL it is to make these decisions about what colors everything should be when there are truly a billion CHOICES with every single item and how everything COSTS more than you thought it would and takes LONGER than you thought it would and how when you do one project in invariably leads to having to do another project and then there are ever more decisions, more choices, more money...wait a minute, I think I'm complaining.

Anyways the truth is that I am deeply grateful that I even have the luxury of making these decisions. I am deeply grateful that we currently have the resources to make these little dreams a reality. So it seems pretty stupid to complain too much. Yes, very stupid.

So we're in the middle of getting a few things spruced up around here. When we bought this townhome 2 1/2 years ago we knew we'd eventually need to repaint and re-do the floor. The previous owner had a love of white spaces and while that worked really well for her as a single woman, it works terribly for me as a mother of three. The white carpet in my living room is just plain ol' ugly at this point and the walls have various stains, hand prints, and a bit of toddler graffiti on them since it seems that the kids need to give wall art a try at least once. But I have no way of cleaning the flat finish walls and despite regular carpet cleanings the floor looks hopeless. So Jason and I agreed that paint and a downstairs floor was necessary.

But you know, if you are going to hire someone to paint the downstairs and ginormous livingroom wall, you might as well just have them do the upstairs bedrooms too because realistically, when are you ever going to get around to it? And if you are getting a new floor downstairs it sure would be nice to have a new baseboard since they'll just have to do this base-shoe thing around the existing baseboard anyways and it doesn't cost much more and the installation is included. And since we're doing the living room floor in laminate, it's just going to be another series of decisions to do the kitchen and bathroom someday and then we'll have all these different floor seams in the house so you might as well just have them do the laminate in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom too. Now, if you have a new floor downstairs and nice new paint with a new baseboard it is going to look pretty stupid to have those cruddy stained "once-white" stairs that greet you right at the livingroom entrance. You should probably just re-carpet the stairs, that way the entire downstairs will look nice. Did you know that carpets come in different die-lots? I didn't. So just because you pick one color/type of carpet today for the stairs doesn't mean that two years from now you can buy the exact same carpet for your hallway and bedrooms, not to mention that you'll have brown stairs and a white hallway for two years. And it will be another process of the house being upside-down while furniture gets moved and people get hired and contracts written. Sigh.

If you give a mouse a cookie. Right?

So we're kind of doing it all. All the paint, the whole downstairs floor, and all the carpet. I suppose it's just basic stuff but it feels like a lot.

I have a few pictures of the scaffolding that was in my living room. But it's on my camera. And as much as I'd love to have a picture of it right here, I just don't feel like getting it off my camera and downloading it and then uploading it to the blog. That right there is the biggest reason of why I sometimes take forever to post something new.

So I don't have pictures, but it's an update nonetheless. (I just love now "none the less" evolved into being just one word. That's so cool!)

When it is all done I'll try to put up a few pics.

The family gets baptized

At St. Luke Lutheran Church in Claremont on June 13th. (Jason and I were baptized on May 31st.)

It was a very nice ceremony and I'm so glad that we finally found a church that we are comfortable in and are learning in. After the children were baptized something felt complete to me, like a thin circle was drawn around us all.