blended up redhead

 

So I'd say we're 75% packed. (By the way, this isn't very impressive when you consider that we've been 50% packed for like a year.) The remaining 25% has been waiting until we're really ready to move. Which is this weekend. Yet, I just keep finding other really great things to do. Like online Christmas shop. Even though I'm technically done Christmas shopping. OR blog. Why not?

 

For those of you worried about blended up redhead on our walls, it remains. In the bedrooms. You see, it was actually a happy accident. Jess always wanted darker rooms. But I was like, dude, no. Not brown. And when we painted it on the main wall, it was most def too dark for the whole house, so we dismissed blended up redhead like a bad date with BO. And red hair.

 

Of course, then the painter somehow forgot that he'd taken our paint choices and stored them in his truck, and instead took the leftover rejects from the house and had several billion gallons of blended up redhead stirred up. Yuck.

 

We agonized all weekend over the walls. They'd finished the bedrooms and cut in the rest of the house. I've done enough painting (mostly the tanning salons I worked at, thank you Jim and Julie!) to know one thing: cutting in is the sucky, time consuming part. Rolling is the best, most quick part. There are few more lovely sounds in the world than the sound of a perfectly sticky with paint roller. Seriously. That and a can of soda popping open.

 

I digress. So we went back and got our carpet sample to decide if blended up redhead was "that bad." We stared and agonized and cried (me) about it. Neither of us could sleep. We finally decided we needed to ask for what we wanted. But with a compromise - we'd keep the bedrooms blended up redhead. (By the way, it's real color name is warm caramel. It's kind of caramely, milk chocolatey, which you can kind of see in the photos with Belle.) It does actually look nice in the bedrooms. Never what I'd choose right off, but Jess likes it, and I get my paint choices everywhere else.

 

Our painter couldn't have been nicer about the mix up. They got right to work fixing it. We went and checked it out Monday night and I'd be lying if I said I didn't do cartwheels. Actually, that's a blatant lie. Last time I was in St. George, Annabelle asked us to do cartwheels with her. My MOTHER is the only one who could do it. And with grace. Woman kills me.

 

Anyway. It looks great. I'm itching to see my paint up everywhere. And my elephant skin accent walls.

 

And also. I should probably pack?

um yeah

 

We bought a house! It's official. WE ARE HOMEOWNERS. And we love this house. :)

But that's where the happy emoticons and jazz hands end. Let me tell you about the last week. We bought a house and...

+ My desktop computer died. It appeared that I'd lost everything including my design shop files. Actually it was some nasty malware making it LOOK like I had. It took TWO computer specialists to remove the crap. In the time that it was down, I had to re-create product on my laptop. My fairly ancient laptop. It was fairly comedic.

+ My cell phone's touch screen - the one required to do anything, you know - died. I'm not due for an "upgrade" until March. Thanks to Amazon.com and my Dad (for keeping me on his Prime account), I got a fabulous $20 flip phone circa 1997 overnighted to tide me over. Until I totally bite the bullet and buy an iphone.

+ We "interviewed" five painters and hired one. While they did the white trim and ceilings (the whole house was a lovely dusty pink, including the ceilings), Jess and I tried out SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COLORS on our main room wall. Sixteen little blocks of color. It got pretty ridiculous and we started giving them alternative names - baby vomit, the hole of nothingness, blended up redhead. Um yeah. We finally settled on Cafe Latte for the main color and Elephant Skin (their real names) for the accent walls. But then? Then, the painter got our paint choice backwards and put the one we didn't want - "blended up redhead" in fact - on our walls. I ugly-cried about it. I could ugly-cry about it right now if you'd like. I have the privilege of breaking this lovely piece of news to him tomorrow. So thrilled.

+ We bought a truckload of carpet. Turns out all that free time the installer had is suddenly gone. We can't get carpet for a week. The 26th in fact. We're supposed to be out of this apartment by the 30th. And we've "extended" our 30 day notice three times already.

In short, I'm one step away from voluntarily donning a straightjacket and leaping into a padded room quite happily. I've never wanted a month to end more than I want this month to end.

Happy fall ya'll.

slow down

Sometimes you just need a foot of snow. To make you slow down - literally - and remember the important things. My to do lists these days rival the length of a decent college entry essay. But the snow this weekend helped me to sort it all out, slow down and remember that even though I'm drowning a bit right now, the things that matter haven't changed. And that most importantly, sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy what's in front of you. Literally. Snow and snowbabies, and pure happiness.

that time of year...

 

 

Alright all ya'll. It's that time of year. When suddenly Christmas is in like four hours. Just last night, Jess and I were finalizing all our Christmas events and started lining up babysitters. That is, I called/video chatted with my mother and sister and kindly invited them to come visit the weekend I could really use them. I know. I'm awesome. But seriously  - Thanksgiving is in three weeks! Christmas is just a month later! So...it's time for you to order your Christmas cards! That's right, nothing says Christmas like some shameless self-promotion!

 

 

Freals though, if anyone (or their friends or their friends' families or their families' pets) are interested in buying a Christmas card, I have a special coupon code for you. Enter FRIENDSFAMILY at checkout (it's on the very last step before confirming) and you'll get 25% off. And if you buy now (not really - if you buy whenever), you can choose a free Christmas printable. Just be sure to specify which printable you'd like when emailing your order details (don't put it in your Etsy shopping cart).

 

 

Oh, and one more thing: to be eligible for a FREE card or photo shoot by dc photography, head on over here, and play to win!

 

Merry Shameless Self Promotion! :)

butterfly babies

After Aunt Stephani gave the girls some butterfly wings, Annabelle was dead set on her Halloween plan: she was going to be a butterfly. And so was Lou. Which was fine with me. Because throw in some tulle and pipe cleaner and you've got some pretty sweet little butterfly girls. It's no secret that I find Halloween to be a fairly distasteful holiday. But each year it gets a little sweeter when I spend it with these girls. I mean, REALLY. Look at them!

Before we went trick or treating, we stopped by to visit Gram (Jess' grandma). This woman has become as dear to me as you could possibly imagine. And to my girls as well. The relationship they have with her is priceless. And although I often forget the camera, on this occasion I didn't. Thank goodness. 

This is going to be a fairly giant photo dump. But I couldn't stop the gushing. And the happiness in all these faces! So today I'm okay with Halloween. Because we made it about happy, flying, magical butterfly babies and filled the day with love.