No Longer M.I.A.

I've been MIA for nearly two months. I'm sure my blog feels like the neglected middle child, but everytime I stopped by to post something and saw that photo from Labor Day weekend staring at me... well, the prospect of bringing my blog up to date just seemed so daunting that I logged out and moved on to something else. How pathetic is that? My posting malaise seems to have started when I could no longer keep up with my J.S. "Beautiful Evidence" class. It got sidetracked for the previously blogged yard project (our grass is coming along quite nicely, thank you). Then it got further sidetracked when we took on this project:

painting the former living room/dining room (now to be the craft room/office). We begain by covering everything so Jay could paint the ceilings. Jay paints in a very specific order, so despite not giving a rat's patootie about the ceiling, I went along so we could get the project underway.
Painting the ceiling began on September 6th.

Step two: move everything to the center of the room so Jay can paint the trim, and then the walls. That killed two more weekends. In the meantime, none of my scrapbooking stuff was accessible. But it's all part of the process right?

Once we had the walls and trim painted, we decided that the 22 year old mauve carpeting just wasn't cutting it for us. So off to the carpet store and after debating between carpet and hardwood, and then mulling over carpet colors (carpet won for now just because of cost), we finally made a decision and scheduled the carpet install. That meant moving EVERYTHING out of those two rooms!

So my scrapbooking supplies and office stuff ended up in the hallway...

and the sunroom...

and the garage. I've been parking in the driveway for a month now. And I keep reminding myself that it is all part of the process.

So here is my blank slate. And it is really hard to see the colors when shooting toward the windows, but this shot lets you see that we do get some natural light in this room.

The paint is all Benjamin Moore - "subtle" for the ceilings, "truffle" for the walls and white for the trim. The new carpeting is "Smart Strand" from Mohawk (made from corn products - no petroleum! - so it is environmentally friendly) and stains are supposed to wipe right up with just water. Let's hope that claim is true, because this is the lightest color carpet I've ever installed and it is kind of intimidating!

We are now slowly moving stuff back into these two rooms. The difference here is that I've put my foot down and am not allowing these rooms to become "storage" (which is what they've been for the past two years since the kitchen/sunroom remodel). So only items that are staying and need a permanent home are moving back in. Which is a slow process. I've taken two van loads of stuff to Goodwill and sold some no-longer-needed scrapbooking supplies on Craigslist. And so it goes... I'll post more photos when the rooms are really back together!

While all of this was going on, we had Farm & Home Oil out for our annual heater maintenance. And our furnace got red-tagged. Cracked heat exchanger. Ever have this happen to you? It's not fun.

Well, the timing sucked. Right in time for a string of unseasonably cold days and nights. But one week and eight thousand dollars later (thank goodness they have payment plans!) we are the proud owners of a new Thermopride furnace with Riello burner and an Amana air conditioning unit - both of which have lifetime warranties on the major components.

And that, in a nutshell, has been my life for the last two months. No scrapbooking has been done. But the room is getting closer to finished and I feel the creative muse rising... stay tuned!