What I did on my summer vacation (day)
I don't typically spend July 4th at my house. Generally, I'm with Gayle doing some shopping, lounging, and fireworks watching. And, if all scheduling works out okay, I take in the family gathering as well. This year, that wasn't to be the case. A work thing was supposed to prevent me from being out of town at all this past week (that ended up falling through at the absolute last possible second) so I had planned to use the mid-week day off to catch up on things around the house. And boy did I ever catch up on things around the house.
The day started, as many often do, with a list. This is what the list looked like at the end of the day!!
The list got almost completely finished - with two exceptions that were, in my best guess, pipe dreams that I would ever have the time or energy to get to them. When I fell into bed (very early in the morning hours of July 5) I was exhausted, but incredibly pleased with all that had been accomplished - as well as how great the house looked. Let's take a little tour, shall we?
First on the docket, was to finish up laundry. While I didn't get to cleaning off the shelf in the laundry room, I do have a plan for reorganizing that little bit of chaos so that will get done next weekend hopefully. I'd still looking for some way to disguise that shelf since it's the first thing you see when you come in the house through the garage. Even though the shelf didn't get cleaned, by the end of the day, all of the laundry was done and nothing was hanging around in here except a couple of empty hangers.
Next up...finishing the curtains for my bedroom. Remember the Lenda curtains I got at Ikea back in January? No...you don't remember? I don't blame you. I was a little worried I was going to forget all about them too. However, I finally got around to finishing them on July 4 and hanging them in the bedroom. I can't tell you how much it has softened up the room. As you can see from the photo that opened the post, Fluffy loves hanging out under them. Here is another shot of the curtains. I just added a simple brown stripe which goes great with the bedding I already have and is exactly what I envisioned when I decided I wanted curtains in the room.
I've steamed them a couple more times since hanging them so they look even smoother and prettier now.
As a reward for finishing the curtains (and because I needed to grab some milk at the grocery store), I headed over to my consignment store. I wasn't looking for anything, but I came home with two pieces that helped make the studio a much neater and happier place.
First, I picked up the orange wooden box you see on the work table. It's orange - was there any other reason I needed to get it? Not really. However, it's doing a fabulous job of corralling scissors, rulers, paint brushes, and my most used pens and writing tools. The wine cabinet turned pen/pencil holder behind it was a purchase at the consignment store several weeks ago...
The idea for using a wine rack for pen storage came from this pinterest pin...
Source: prettyhandygirl.com via Kara on Pinterest
and I thought I was going to use this as my Pinterest Challenge project...but I've got something else even better in store for that so be sure to come back on Tuesday to check that out. For now I'm leaving my wine rack as is, but I'm thinking about chalkboard paint and/or some funky color...you can already see there are some other color possibilities going on to the right of the sewing machine. I'm still hoping to get the room painted this summer. After that is done some more color fun with all the accessories can get under way.
The other purchase at the consignment store was this little turquoise table that helped "clean up" the other corner of the studio. I'm not in love with the color, but I am in love with how it gave me some vertical space in that corner. Since Wednesday, I've cleaned up that corner a little more, but nothing photo worthy. Overall, the studio is still kind of a wreck, but until I stop fussing and finally decide how I'm going to situate everything and how I'm going to paint - I think it's just going to be that way. Generally, all of the art supplies are contained again back in the closet where they belong and they aren't hanging out in little tubs on the floor anymore.
The other major project for the day was a complete clean out of the guest room and some reorg in the closet. That closet, which we lovingly call the luggage closet, was a complete and utter wreck - and the rest of the room wasn't much better. I'm happy to report that all the luggage is organized, several items went to Goodwill, and, I decided to use these two little shelves (they stack together to make one taller shelf) I'd gotten a while back at Costco (thinking I'd use them in the closet) to better display the Pluto collection that I've amassed over the years. Much neater - and you can kind of see all of them.
Another trip to IKEA is planned in August - at which time I'm probably going to (yet again) replace the guest bed. As is, the room is really uncomfortable with an enormous queen bed in it. So, if you're in the area and need a really well constructed (Loft Furniture) queen sized bed - let me know.
In addition to all of the projects, everything got cleaned really well and generally speaking the house just feels in great condition right now which is nice because it hadn't been for a very, very long while. I still have several pieces of art/framed photos I just need to decide on where they are going and get hung and some cabinets to clean and organize, but overall I made fabulous use of my summer vacation day!
I hope you had a wonderful July 4 and had a great week.
Be sure to check back on Tuesday to see the Pinterest Challenge!