State of Affairs

Well, it's been exactly one week since the meltdown I had on my blog, and I have to say I'm a bit embarrassed ;D  After re-reading my last post, I realized how spoiled rotten I sounded, and I am regretting ever hitting publish!  But thanks to some well-written comments, I was able to regain my footing.  It's not that I forgot how blessed we are to have a roof over our heads and food on the table, it's that I refused to acknowledge it for a short time, and I definitely needed some reminders....so thanks to those of you that left me comments!

Anyway, I managed to get some things done over the last week, and I wanted to share them!  Our school/playroom is coming along nicely!

The walls are all painted, and we have one wall that is entirely chalkboard paint, and another wall that has magnetic paint on it!  I have lots of shelves to organize our toys, books and school supplies....

We still have some toys that will eventually land in Jacob & Caleb's room, but until the basement is finished and the girls move out of the little boys' room, they will continue to clutter up the schoolroom.

We found some great posters for the walls- my new favorite store is The School Box :D

We've also implemented several different ways to maintain law and order since we're now ALL home ALL day long!  I'm planning to do a post about those new tools soon....

In an effort to display our artwork, we not only painted a magnetic wall, but we also hung up clothes line across the ceiling....

Here's our calendar wall- we put a comfy chair to sit and read in the room as well, and I'm hoping to add some bean bags once we move the train table out!

This is the wall with the magnetic paint.  We did a 4x8ft section in the center of the wall, and Zack is going to cut trim to frame it in for us this weekend!

The upstairs still needs lots of work, but we are really at a standstill until the basement is done.  That will free up our storage space and get all the girls' stuff where it belongs!  I'm hoping to start painting Noah & Matthew's room this weekend so we can begin to decorate in there.

About half of our main level is done.  I finally got the clutter cleared from my hearth room and got it decorated....

The lampshade is still missing its base, but I have yet to unpack it :D  Not quite sure where it ended up!

Notice my wonderful new rooster sitting on the hearth!  I got it at Home Goods for a steal & it's one of those pieces I just ADORE!  Makes me smile every time I see it :D

The blinds in the room were so terrible and cheap that we just trashed them!  Unfortunately, the previous owners replaced all the blinds when they moved out with those cheapy, do-it-yourself blinds from some home-improvement warehouse, and they are all going to have to come down sooner or later!

I think I'm going to love spending time in the hearth room & best of all, it has no T.V.!!!

The living room is pretty much done too.  We are waiting for the curtains we ordered to arrive, and I still have to hang a few pictures, but the hard part is done....

All except for that horrible WHITE paint that needs to go!

Oh yeah, and that ugly marble around the fireplace!  I plan to replace that with stone at some point, but first we have to repaint most of the house, and we also plan to antique all the kitchen cabinets ourselves....that ought to be an interesting project ;D

It's a small room, but we'll make it work!  I found a fun clock for the entry area that I love....

 I still need to sort through and find places for all my framed pictures (they're piled up in the dining room right now), so I just have an empty picture stand on the entry chest, but at least it's mostly done!

The office and dining room still need lots of work.  The movers broke the bookshelves (2 sets) that go in the office, so we aren't able to put anything away in that room- it's a mess!  And the dining room is home to all the decorations that I plan to use in the basement when it's finished.

We're still dealing with lots of issues.  The kitchen faucet has no hot water and the entire thing needs to be replaced.  The compartment that holds the soap in the dishwasher won't open by itself and the dishwasher is in rough shape, so we're probably going to have to replace it as well.  The movers also broke my practically brand-new dryer, and we finally got it approved to have it replaced!  The frame was completely damaged and dented in, and the door kept popping open when I tried to dry our clothes! It only took 3 weeks to get something done :/

But on the bright side, the excavation on the pool will be starting next week, and the basement is on track to be done by March 9th at the latest!!  As I write, the guys are down there hammering away and putting up the final sheetrock :D

We're headed out to the science museum for family night tonight!  We are excited to look at the Georgia night sky through the observatory there, and the boys can't wait to see the show at the planetarium!  I think we're going to love having that membership!