Virtual tour: foyer and living room

One of the frustrating things about getting settled in a new house is how lots of things wind up ALMOST done but getting any one room all the way done seems nearly impossible. We did the impossible last weekend and put the finishing touches on the foyer and living room. Wanna see? Walk this way . . .

You enter our home through a vestibule, really kind of a walk-through coat closet. We put up a quote that seems pertinent both to Kansas and to Army life in general:



Enter through the front door and turn right at the quote, and you will go through yet another door and find yourself standing in our freakishly large foyer:







And here is the living room:







I'm hoping to get the rest of the main floor done by Thanksgiving (except for the kitchen curtains, as my sewing machine needs to go into the shop for some work).

Mr. Stinky tries again

Mr. Stinky has yet another potential bloom. He had one a couple months ago that I never bothered posting, and it dried up and fell off before it ever opened. Then about a week ago, he popped out with 2 more. One of these took off, and the other one withered away. I'm hoping this will be the blossom that finally opens. Not that I really NEED a flower in my kitchen that smells like carrion; I'm just tired of being thwarted. Also, one of his arms is turning yellow. I'm not sure if I should cut it off, but I hesitate to do anything while he's trying to flower:

Halloween leftovers

I've been watching one of the pumpkins in our front yard gradually disintegrate and was pretty sure a squirrel was enjoying it. I caught him in action through the living room window yesterday:

Skirting the issue

I love to sew. Sometimes I wonder why I don't sew more often. Then I try, and suddenly I remember:



Still, I did manage to make Annabelle's skirt for Grease this afternoon:



As you can see, it's a Harvey skirt instead of a poodle skirt.

Jamaica photo book

I just remembered that I never shared the photo book I made of our trip to Jamaica this past summer. Now that the weather is cooling off, I'm ready to go back!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Weekend to-do list

1. Replace Eddie's missing claw covers. We need to get back on that now that we've got the new sofa. Speaking of . . .

2. Take a picture of the new sofa to show you.

3. Work on indexing projects.

4. Make poodle skirt (actually a kitty-cat skirt) for Annabelle for her Grease costume.

5. Get to the grocery store and plan some meals. Pizza tonight, Polish sausage last night, and rotisserie chicken the night before that. It's probably time I actually cooked something.

6. Finish painting our room (that's actually on Fred's list).

7. Continue setting up my office. We swapped our bedroom out for my office, and I love the new arrangement. The new bedroom is super quiet, and the new office gets the morning light.

Let's see how much actually gets done!

Lucky cat

Annabelle called me at 6:45 this morning from the bus stop to tell me that she and her friend Christina had found a cat that had almost gotten hit crossing the street. He appeared to have a broken leg, the bus was there, and they didn't know what to do. I told her to hang onto the cat and sit tight. I hopped out of bed and pulled on pants, shoes, and a jacket and ran out into the darkness to see what was going on.

The girls and I brought the kitty into our house, where they held him in the kitchen while I ran to the basement for our cat carrier. When I got a closer look at him, I could see that he had his front leg caught through his collar, which was why he had been limping. I grabbed scissors and cut the collar off. The kitty didn't need any encouraging to go into the carrier, so we loaded him up and took off.

I dropped the girls off at school and took the cat to the vet here on post. He had a rabies tag, so I figured we had a good shot at finding his people. They scanned him at the vet for a microchip, and sure enough he had one (required for pets here on post), so they were able to call the owners to let them know to come pick up their cat.

It turns out the kitty's name is Tigger. Not the most original choice, but I have a red dog named Ginger, so who am I to cast stones? I hope that Tigger's owners are a lot more careful in the future about making sure that he stays inside!

I promised the girls I would get a picture of him at the vet's:





When I got home, the sun was just coming up, and the holiday lights were on in the park across the street from my house. I snapped a quick shot, but it doesn't do the scene justice:

Uniformly handsome

Mike has an Air Force ROTC scholarship for college, and for the first couple months of the fall semester it was looking like it was Not His Thing. In fact, when he came home for a visit in mid-October, he sounded pretty certain that he would be dropping it for the spring semester. But then somewhere in the past couple weeks it started being a little more enjoyable, and now he thinks he will give it another semester before he makes up his mind. (The first year carries no payback option should he decide it's not for him.)

So this may be the first of many photos of Mike in uniform, or it might be the only one you'll ever see:



Either way, I think he's a handsome young man with a lot on the ball, and his dad and I couldn't be prouder of him!

Paying respects

Word went out yesterday asking Ft. Leavenworth residents to line the main road through the post with flags for the funeral procession of SFC Charles M Sadell, who died last week after being injured in Afghanistan earlier in October. The procession was set for 2 p.m., and I thought I would have plenty of time to get home and get my flag if I left the library at my normal time, 1:30. The plane carrying his body was early, however, and they were already blocking off the street by the time I headed out. I took back roads, left the car on the other side of the park, and made it home by foot with just a few minutes to spare. All those flags were an impressive sight:

Back to our regular programming

Tap tap tap . . . is this thing still on? So, long time no talk to, huh? I'm not really sure what to make of my recent posting malaise, the bloggy blahs, you might call it. I have participated in NaBloPoMo for the past few years though and didn't want to miss it this year. Maybe writing every day will jump start my enthusiasm for blogging, no?

So, let's see, what has been going on in the past couple of weeks? Mike made a weekend trip home from college and enjoyed several days of pampering. Annabelle is in Grease at her school, and rehearsals are keeping her super busy. Fred appears to like his job and keeps normal hours for the first time in forever. And I am finishing up my last month of working at the library here on post and getting set up to switch over to a law school library for next semester. Graduation in May! Woo hoo!

Annabelle's school did a series of novice plays at the beginning of the year, kind of a way for new kids to break into the program. She was in Family 2.0, a one-act absurdist play that reminded me a lot of Edward Albee's The American Dream. I recorded it using the video settings on my still camera, because apparently my video camera is such a dinosaur that the PX no longer sells tapes for it. I'll need to get something better before Grease, but here's what I did manage to get:



You can follow along with the script here, but I warn you that it is raunchy with a capital RAUNCH. They tamed it down quite a bit for the school performance.

So anyway, back to the blog. I am going to post every day this month, even if it is nothing more than my Facebook status, which is now:

"Bonnie Boyd Taylor needs recommendations from her Leavenworth peeps: dentist and dog groomer, preferably not the same person. (Then again, that would be awfully convenient!)"

Wildlife fun

Last night Fred and I were lying bed watching TV when we heard Annabelle shriek from downstairs in the kitchen. Seconds later I received a text from her alerting me to the presence of an enormous roach. We ran downstairs and found her standing on a chair, pointing at the stove. I hopped up on a chair myself while Fred grabbed a broom and began poking around under and behind the stove. When he was unable to drive the varmint out, he grabbed a can of bug spray and sprayed the perimeter of the base of the stove.

As we went back upstairs, Annabelle kept commenting on its gigantic size, and I asked: "Are you sure it was a roach and not a mouse?" She admitted that she couldn't be entirely sure, as she wasn't wearing her glasses when she was it scurry past.

This morning my mouse suspicions were heightened when Harvey was obsessed with the stove. And then this afternoon I returned home from picking up Annabelle after school and found Harvey on the steps to the basement "playing" with a furry little ball. I hollered for Annabelle to corral the cats and dog and bring me a box. She stood at the top of the stairs armed with a broom to prevent him from getting past her, and I ventured forth with the dustpan and box.

The poor little dude scampered back and forth, and I alternated between shrieking like a little girl and saying, "Oh, he's so cute!" Finally I was able to get him into the box, and we ran for the back door.

Fortunately I had the presence of mind to ask Annabelle to grab my camera, as this is the most blog-worthy thing that has happened around here in days. Before we let him go in the grass, I took his picture:



Then we tipped the box over, and he scampered out and into the tall grass.

Girls going wild

Fred left this morning for a week at the JAG School in Charlottesville. The last time Annabelle and I had a week alone together was when Mike went to Europe over spring break while Fred was deployed. We made a trip to Kansas and then had her wisdom teeth removed. Our plans this time around are not nearly as ambitious or traumatic.

We dropped Fred off at the Kansas City airport this morning and then headed out to do a little shopping before stopping for lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant. Looks like shopping and restaurants will figure prominently on the week's agenda, and we are also going to try to catch a movie Wednesday evening.

Our big accomplishment today was stopping by Home Depot for some flowers to spruce up the front porch. I have to admit that 2 shopping carts full of flowers and planters looked much more substantial at the store than they do up against that big ol' porch, but it's a start:





The 2 baskets that are currently sitting on the steps are going to hang from hooks in the ceiling, but I can't reach that high, so that will have to wait until Fred gets home. Also, I think I am going to get smaller pots of mums to go up the steps on either side. Or maybe alternating mums and pumpkins?

I also replaced my summer wreath with an autumn wreath today. It makes a nice frame for this artsy-fartsy self-portrait:

Weekend report

This past weekend was super-busy, but we did get a lot done. We started off with the post yard sale on Saturday morning, where we managed to turn a bunch of unwanted junk into approximately $450. The rest of the weekend was all about painting and unpacking. I keep thinking that I will wait to post pictures until one room, ANY room, is 100% done, but that just isn't how things are happening here. Instead it's a little bit here, a little bit there, a little more here. So I'm just going to say to heck with it and post evidence that we are in fact taking care of business.

First off, I have to say that this house is freakishly hard to take pictures in. It doesn't get a lot of natural light, but flash tends to wash out the paint colors and make them look funny. So instead I get mostly dark and fuzzy pictures, but oh well.

I guess you could count the front doorway as "done," as it has been painted and we have applied the wall sticker I ordered from Amazon:



The second-floor bath is also almost done as well, except for some basic organizing. Fred has painted, replaced the shower head, and assembled the storage tower that sits over the toilet. The walls are the same yellow as our kitchen, and the curtains on the window are actually shower curtains from our previous home:



I can't wait for the living room to be done, but that won't happen until the new couch arrives in November. Here's what we DO have done though:







We are also making progress in the dining room. The table is almost entirely cleared off, but that silly white cat is still there:



The built-in china cabinet in the dining room is almost together (and if you look through the door to the right, you can see Annabelle doing homework at the kitchen table--BONUS!):



Next on our agenda:

-Pick a color for my office.

-Paint our room the gorgeous light turquoise color we've picked out.

-Paint Fred's office Macadamia.

-See if Analytical Gray is the magic bullet for Annabelle's and Mike's room and, if so, get them done. (Speaking of which, I am too easily influenced by paint color NAMES. For example, there was a gray called "Dorian Gray" that I wanted desperately even though it was totally the wrong shade.)

AWOL

Things have been pretty quiet around here lately. We got distracted from our painting project but are now back in the game and working in the foyer and our bedroom.

Annabelle has been busy with school work. Fort Knox High School operated on a block schedule, where 8 classes were spread out over 2 days. Here she has 7 classes every single day, which shortens the class periods but seems to increase the amount of homework (or at least to decrease the amount of time given to get it done). She has a part in a play next month though, so she is excited about that and happy to be finding her Kansas people.

Mike's reports from FSU are encouraging. I don't think any of us expected it to be so emotionally exhausting to start college on the heels of a deployment and cross-country move, but he is settling in nicely. He is doing well in his classes and participating in the swim club. He also has callbacks for the circus tomorrow and Wednesday!

Fred is enjoying his new job, and we are enjoying seeing so much of Fred. He walks to work each morning and then comes home at lunch. We are getting spoiled by having supper when the sun is still up.

I'm working 2 mornings a week at the post library and getting credit toward my library science degree, which I should be finishing up (finally!) in the spring. I've spent time in the copyright permissions office and am now working in the archives, looking up copyright information on old German books. Fun!

Since I don't have any recent painting photos to upload, please enjoy this picture of Harvey, taking a nap on Annabelle's Algebra II book:

"I saw it in the window, and I couldn't resist."

First day of school

Annabelle left a little while ago for the first day of her sophomore year:



She decided that her lucky socks clashed with her outfit, so she is carrying them in her purse instead. Here's hoping this is the beginning of a great 3 years!

Laborious

As my grandmother pointed out in the comments to my previous post, we have put the labor in "Labor Day" this weekend. I think poor Fred is looking forward to going to work tomorrow just so he can get a break. He has been painting like crazy!

Here is the kitchen, which is Sherwin Williams' Hinoki, as is the butler's pantry and our bathroom on the second floor:



On my monitor at least, this seems to be a pretty true representation of the color. It's a delicious buttery yellow, just like Karla suggested.

The living room and dining room are both Ecru, which looks too yellow here and is actually more on the green side:





The dining room table is still cluttered with all sorts of stuff that we're just not sure where it should go. Where should one keep the white cat, for example?



The weekend hasn't been all about painting though; it has also been about shopping. We went to Nebraska Furniture Mart on Saturday afternoon and ordered a 55-inch television, a sound system, and a Blu-Ray player. Later on, I ordered 2 of these things, which I think might be the ugliest furniture I have ever wanted:



Annabelle and I test drove one in person the other day and fell in love. It rocks! It reclines! It has cupholders! It is the furniture equivalent of sensible shoes, but since they will be hidden away in our man cave on the third floor, who really cares?

Then we ran into La-Z-Boy and picked out and purchased a new red sofa in under 15 minutes, which has to be some sort of record:



Today I made another score off of Craiglist. We have to put the cat food up on something to keep the dog out of it, and this is how we had it in the butler's pantry:



Thanks to Craigslist and a nice lady in the suburbs of Kansas City, now it looks like this:



Everything is clicking along quite nicely, but I'm afraid we have something of a purple problem going on in the foyer. Remember how we had chosen Sherwin Williams' Mature Grape? I'm afraid a better name for it might have been Smuckers. It looked for all the world like grape jelly, although it was better after the second coat. We made an emergency run back to Sherwin Williams and brought home samples of Cordovan and Marooned. Marooned is the one in the middle, and it's the one I like. Fred hates them all but if pressed prefers Cordovan, which is on the right.



Thoughts? I'm wondering if we should just give up on purple (which breaks my heart) and go with a gold or olive drab, maybe something from the dining room rug:



At least we didn't have trouble picking out flags for the front of the house!

Something old, something really old, and something new

I've been doing a bit of shopping lately for stuff for the house. For example, I was dying to get an old-fashioned glider for the front porch. I started haunting Craiglist, and found this one:



My eventual plan is to strip it down and refinish it like some of the ones on this site.

I also have been searching for an antique armoire for the foyer, as there isn't a coat closet anywhere on the main floor of this house. I happened to mention that to the designer at Sherwin Williams when I was looking at paint, and she just happened to have one that she was selling. So this is now officially ours, but Fred has to go back on Friday with a strong friend or 2 in order to get it down her stairs:



And then today Annabelle and I bopped into the Polish pottery store in town, looking for hooks for a valance project I have in mind for the kitchen. No hooks, but they had just gotten in a shipment of Polish pottery jack-o-lanterns, and I was unable to resist. So now I have this handsome fellow on the mantel in the dining room:



In painting news, we have selected the colors for our kitchen/butler's pantry (and our bathroom on the second floor) as well as the living room and dining room. The kitchen and butler's pantry will both be painted in Hinoki, which is really kind of buttery yellow but for some reason looks pink on my computer screen:



The living room and dining room are going to be Ecru, which is a beigey color with a hint of green in it:



I'm thinking of using that color in the vestibule at the front door as well.

But then the foyer . . . what to do about the foyer? I'm all about the purple these days, so I brought home a couple sample paints to try out. The one I'm most excited about is called Mature Grape:



Fred has a 4-day weekend this week, and we are hoping to completely finish off the first floor.