Catching up.

Well, I've certainly neglected this blog over the summer, haven't I?

Virginia has a peculiar weather pattern I've noticed the past few years--right about Labor Day, the intense heat and humidity break and life goes back to a happy pleasant temperature. This year the pattern held true, so I've gone from too deep-in-funk to want to write, to a state of such mental alertness that I'm too busy to write. Also many of the things I've been pondering haven't been blog-appropriate, which definitely is a style-crimper. I've honestly been taken aback at how many people read this thing--people who know me in...gasp...real life! So sometimes you gotta watch what you ponder about in public!

I started off September with a little home project: overhauling what I call my "utility closet" off my kitchen. We have two closets that open off the kitchen; I believe one was intended to be a coat/storage closet and the other a pantry. Well, the pantry became a tiny laundry room, and the coat closet has held a mishmash of paint cans, cleaners, and other detritus that used to live in our very roomy utility closet back in the condo.

This closet is much smaller and did not have shelves, just one shelf/hanger rod combo at the top. Then we had stuck a small leftover bookshelf inside just to have a place to stack things.

So we pulled everything out and Todd fitted it with white wire shelving, leaving room for the vacuum cleaner to slide in and the recycle bin to slide under. Just enough room on the sides to hang brooms and a mop, and that's that.

The closet was a very unattractive beigey color with 20 years worth of scuffs and scrapes, so I painted the whole thing white, and it just looks so pretty and clean. And neat! And tidy! Is there anything better than a clean tidy closet? I don't think so.

My friend Bev came down from Ohio to Virginia Beach on Labor Day for her vacation, and I went down and spent a couple days with her there on the oceanfront. We got rained on a lot, but we still had a fabulous time. I'll try to put up some pictures once I can get hold of them off Todd's computer. We took a dolphin-watching tour on the ocean that was amazing--I've never ever seen so many dolphins! And we drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel in pouring rain, which sort of spoiled the view, but it was still exciting. I was glad to get to spend even just a tiny bit of time with Bev.

Last weekend I finally made a decision about what to do with our foyer/stairway/upstairs hallway, which all flow together. The walls are absolutely filthy, scuffed and scraped and gouged, and in desperate need of paint. And the carpet on the stairs really needs to be replaced. But if I replaced the stair carpet, then I'd need to either carry that through in the upstairs rooms or the downstairs rooms, so that it would all flow together.

I don't know why it was so har for me to figure out what to do, but we finally came up with re-carpeting the stairs, living room, and dining room. So I went to Lowe's to find a paint color and the right carpet.

The paint I chose is called Latté, from Laura Ashley. (Most of our home colors have been from Laura Ashley--love that line.) It's just a shade lighter than the original color, but warmer, and it's a semi-gloss, rather than flat. And I'm also re-painting the white trim, which is also terribly scuffed, gouged, and dirty. (Dogs and bachelors (the previous owners) are apparently awfully hard on a house.)

I've gotten the foyer all done, now I'm preparing to tackle the hallway. The stairs will be a chore in and of themselves, and Todd has worked out some idea for rigging a platform out over the stairs, which makes me queasy just thinking about it, so that will be his job and I'll stand by and pray for his safety while he paints it.

The foyer looks fabulous--so clean now, and the semi-gloss really reflects what little light there is, whereas the flat paint just sucked it up. I'll wait to get a picture till after we get the new carpet down, sometime here in the next few weeks.

So things are good, life is busy, and my brain has finally kicked back into order. It feels good.