summer's come

And the living is easy. But also very busy. And hot. Being in the third trimester in the middle of summer and without air conditioning is not much fun. At least we have a pool in our backyard! Maybe it has been the heat that has kept me from being very motivated about keeping up in the blogging world. It sounds plausible so that's my excuse. And we have been very busy!

A couple weeks ago we realized that we're going to be here (instead of moving to Missouri like we hoped) until the baby comes, at least. So in response to that I threw myself and Clay into a number of house reorganization and renovation projects in an effort to make myself more upbeat about staying in a two bedroom apartment with an almost 2-year-old, an energetic puppy and a newborn. Since we are in an apartment and there's not much I can do with the actual "house" itself these projects mostly involved completely reorganizing closets, moving furniture around and (here's where Clay came in) replacing our old furniture items with new ones that needed work.

Here's a sample of what we worked on:


This is an antique dresser that I found at a yard sale for cheap. I wish I had a "before" shot of it - it looks absolutely amazing after all the work we (mostly Clay) put into it. Clay stripped off the old varnish, I sanded it and Clay re-varnished it and fixed a few minor cracks and things. I'm loving it.

We also got Clay a nifty (BIG) gun rack to hang in our bedroom and it adds a nice rustic touch with his Grandpa's rifles hanging on it. I think it looks especially nice hanging next to my Renoir painting. Margaret also got a new dresser and I repainted her crib - which it's been needing badly since her teething days.... And I also found a couple cute little wooden items for around the house (coat rack and toilet paper holder) that I painted and decorated.

The impressive part is that we did all of this within a few days time, frantically working to get it all done before Clay's parents came in for a visit. I think we finished within an hour of their plane landing. We had a great time with them - taking them on a road trip and camping on the Oregon coast and in the Redwoods. It's been good to take things a little slower since they left and I finally feel like I have things pretty much back in control. At least as much in control as they were previously.