Daily Ramblings - Stuff

Please excuse my absence over the past week.  I have been horribly neglectful, with no solid excuse to make outside of having been relentlessly busy.

In my last post, I was preparing for the construction that was going to be taking place in the guest bedroom / craft cave.  The remaining furniture was piled into the middle of the room and covered up as the room was taken over by drywall replacement, ceiling patching, dust and paint.  Thankfully it only took a couple of days and now we're ready to move on to the next stage...which involves reorganizing all the furniture, new draperies, and finally putting up some artwork.

Meanwhile, the garbage disposal ate a gigantic chunk of one of my ceramic bowls.  We concluded that while husband could probably take the existing disposal apart, we weren't confident that he'd be able to get it back together.  So, off to Home Depot we went.  It only took 90 minutes, including a trip back to the store to get plumber's putty, to get our fancy new disposal installed.  Not bad considering we're not the confident do-it-yourself types.  Go us!  Of course, now we have the issue of the leaky kitchen faucet to deal with, but at least we're feeling confident we can replace it ourselves!  That being said, this makes me miss the days of being able to call the landlord.

In other news, after a long 2 years of unemployment, husband also started his new job this week.  From the time of his interview to the time he started working was less than 24 hours, and what a relief!  A big burden has been lifted and, for all of you out there that are still looking, I'm hopeful that you'll also find work soon!

So, as the week draws to a close, I'm very much looking forward to being able to get into my craft supplies again.  I'm loving that husband is enjoying his new job.  I'm thrilled that we can start working on the little home improvements that we've been wanted to do, but didn't quite have the funds to use.  I'm happy to report that dinner smells delicious (but more on that tomorrow).  Things are looking up indeed.

Daily Decor - Housing my literature

Since buying our townhouse nearly 2 years ago, husband and I have come to the conclusion that the work we want to do on it is truly never-ending.  The unfortunate part right now is that while husband is unemployed, he has all the time in the world to work on home improvements, but we don't have the money to fund them - the ultimate catch 22.  In the meantime, we're settling for the little things that are affordable without the financial burden of, say, granite counter tops for the kitchen.

The most recent upgrade was our living room bookshelf.  We previously had an old, totally dilapidated bookshelf gifted to us by husband's step-dad.  I'm thinking this thing might have be older than I am.  Our sizable book collection was wedged onto it, double stacked, with the risk that removal of a book would result in a literary avalanche.  IKEA was nice enough to reduce their pricing on this bookshelf, so last weekend we made the purchase and got handy with the hex-wrench.  We found a nice spot for it, in front of the large wall mirror, and even sorted our book collection into each cube by theme and author (yes, mildly obsessive I know).  It happily swallowed the books, even leaving lots of space for us to put pictures of family and other knick-knacks that haven't yet found a proper home.  We're really happy with how it looks including the cool effect of having the mirror behind it.

It may not be much, but it's amazing how the smallest things can completely change the look of a room.  Now, what to do next on our home improvement journey?