Wednesday, March 28, 2012

My new room...




After my crazy week, we decided to take advantage of the fact that my waterbed didn't need to be emptied to move upstairs to a bigger and brighter room. After the contractors left, I had 5 nice new windows and some paneling-I am NOT a wallpaper person and can't stand the peeling wallpaper I have in some spots in the house, so while pretty as it looks I prefer painted sheet rock with designs or paneling. The paneling in the hallway is so dark and dreary, I opted for a more natural wood color.

Right now the only thing up in the room is my bed-hubby took it all apart and re-assembled it in the room and filled up the new mattress. Now I have the creative juices flowing... what color curtains, what type decor? I am partial to blue since it is so calming, but we still need to paint the ceiling (hopefully this weekend, if not the first nice weekend where we can open the windows to let the fumes go out lol)so obviously I don't want to do too much re-decorating until the ceiling is painted.

I am loving the bright sunshine and the cool breezes coming in from the tree in front of the window this summer. I even have a cat perch ready for the hallway window where my cats will be able to check out the birds and do some sunbathing too. When we bought the house, we knew it was a fixer upper, and had to do things little by little as best as we could. So far with a new hot water boiler and chimney, and now new upstairs windows and paneling we are well on our way to getting things taken care of. Living in an older house in the Northeast makes for a cold winter, so weatherization is also on our list of priorities.

Our house is a classic saltbox style, and the back part of my room slopes downwards, as there is no attic. My daughter is busy settling into the room across from us, putting things where she wants them. She was scared to sleep upstairs in her own room for the longest time, and now with us just across the hall she has decided it is time to enjoy having her own room rather than coming running to crash in my bed while daddy is working every night.

Now that Spring is almost here, well, date wise it is-but with 80 degree temps last week and 20 degrees this week with SNOW it hardly feels that way-I am ready to start decorating and getting spring cleaning done. My layoff comes in a few short weeks and I am ready to get organized around the house after a busy season.

Any ideas on how I should decorate the room? Hubby is thinking something other than basic white paint for the ceiling and windowsills-any thoughts on a color scheme to make my room stand out? How about some ideas on decorating on a budget?

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

My Week From HE--

Well, today is the first time I've checked the blog in a bit... You know the saying everything happens in threes? I am just waiting for the third event to happen, considering this week has been absolutely crazy!

First, hubby was coming home from work one morning while driving my car (his had recently died, so we were temporarily down to 1 vehicle for a bit) and out of the patchy fog he saw a face coming straight for him... and then a body-a very BIG one.

I was still asleep when he called, and let the answering machine pick up. When I heard him say car and DEER one right after the other I knew the results would not be good. I picked up, and that was when he told me he was headed home and sure enough, a big doe came bounding out of the fog and hit the car. If it had been a few seconds earlier, she would have ended up in his lap and he would have or could have been seriously injured. As it was, she went through the back driver's side window shattering it, and up over the roof is my guesstimate. While there wasn't any blood in the vehicle, there was a lot of fur.

Because it was so foggy, hubby and the police officer called to the scene couldn't locate the deer, so no deer meat :( They did find blood and lots more fur and the officer seemed to think that the deer had been badly hurt and he was going to check back as soon as the fog lifted to see if he could put it out of its misery. My guess is that the coyotes found it before he did.

So my car is at the shop, almost ready to be fixed after a few days with a rental vehicle. One that I am too scared to drive. (it is too big for me lol) I had around $2000 damage to my car, and it was fixable-and hubby was safe, that is all that really mattered. Hubby was a bit traumatized though, since this is his 3rd deer incident since I moved back to Maine. (one was a fender bender, the other completely totaled his Isuzu Rodeo) The next night, as he was coming home from work in the rental, on the highway this time (no back roads for him even it is shorter!) he saw a whole herd of deer on the side of the road and figured there was no escaping the deer this time of year.

Then, as I was peacefully minding my own business this past Saturday afternoon watching TV hubby came in the bedroom and asked me what all that water was on the floor. Since I had my back to the area in question, I turned around to see that my waterbed mattress was leaking :( We had one of the waterbed mattresses with baffles in it to make it almost completely motionless-but in times like this one is desperate. Hubby spent most of the day draining the mattress, then sucking out more water with a wet-dry vac and finally cutting a hole in the damn thing and chucking it out the window to drain-but not before I had a good 2 inches of water on the floor in the bedroom. It was very heavy to lift the mattress even with all that water out of it, I bet it weighed at least 800 lbs still.

On Sunday we made the hour and a half long trip to South Portland to get a mattress... they only had full motion mattresses in stock so it was going to be interesting. Finally we arrived back home exhausted and began the tedious project of setting up our bed upstairs (downstairs had too much water and since my son moved out we had a spare room) and filling the bed. It was now late Sunday night and I gave up and fell asleep on the floor... The next morning, this past Monday, I woke to aches and pains from having slept on the floor for 2 nights in a row. Back when I was younger it wouldn't have bothered me but for a peri-menopausal 46 year old I was NOT a happy camper. I went to work and managed to clear my desk of what I needed to do before leaving early to get some much needed sleep after hubby informed me that he had filled the bed while I was at work.

I napped most of the afternoon, trying to stave off an impending migraine while trying to stay on my bed and not roll off due to the new wave motion. My 10 yr old thinks it is the bomb and happily told her grandmother today that she loved the new bed because if you are sleeping and someone gets on it everyone else bounces up and down.

So now I am waiting for the 3rd thing to happen, and hoping it is not too serious. Call me superstitious but I believe in the power of threes... One day, I will be able to look back at all of this and laugh-I know it. Just not today...

So that has been my week folks... how was yours?

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Fun at Chuck E Cheese...


My daughter and her cousin Diego having fun at Chuck E Cheese... (my daughter putting on her unhappy face with me for taking ANOTHER photo!) Hmmm... wait a few years and I will bet she will want to take too many photos to put up on Facebook, and all her own social media sites lol.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Fantastic Follower Appreciation Giveaway!

Wow! I've been a GFC follower of Sparkling Reviews for awhile now, and was totally blown away by the awesome giveaways she is having TODAY ONLY on her blog.

You are going to have to check it out, and you have to be in it to win it! Hurry though, because it all ends tonight...

Here is the list so far:

64GB iPad 2

2. $500 Best Buy Gift Card

3. Kobo Vox

4. a Disney Cruise for 4! * transportation not included, must get to Port Canaveral FL

5. Unamore Leopard Print KitchenAid mixer

6. $1000.00 Coach Gift Card

7. MacBook Pro!

8. Apple Prize pack (you gotta see this one!)


and she also has a couple of other regular giveaways going on too-

you can enter to win a $500 Amazon Gift Card here ends in 6 days :)

and a $20 Applebee's Gift card here which ends tomorrow!

Good luck, and please check it out-I'm still in shock at all the awesome prizes she is giving away!