Not Really a Quiz

How do you think we spent our weekend?

a) Hopped on a plane and took the kids to Disneyland Paris.

b) Lounged about without a care in the world.

c) Watched the kids race happily through the autumn leaves, chase a wild rabbit, roll down hills and climb trees (with help), pick out pumpkins, and swim during the days; and paint the kitchen and (most of) the utility room a really, really bright, cheerful yellow and put together and hang new curtains and related necessary paraphernalia in the living room in the evenings.

For those of you who mentally picked a), hahahahahaha. Get real. We didn't win the lottery Friday. We're not that lucky. And, for the record, I don't know how we're ever going to survive retirement if we don’t win the dratted thing eventually. ;-)

If you picked b), well, ok, you may have a point about my less than stellar parenting skills on occasion. I'll work on that.

And if you picked c), you've been following our 'let the children run wild through the parks and gardens while we still have semi-decent, dry weather' (which ended today, sadly) theme of late, and the condition of our still 'new' house and garden which is slowly, oh-so-slowly, being turned into 'a home'.

The bright yellow kitchen paint ('Sunkissed Yellow') was selected after splashing up five or six different shades of paint from sample pots up on the walls over the prior week, much to the amusement of the boys. I just finished painting the utility room this evening. And the two pairs of living room curtains were bought last weekend at a small chain store that's gone into administrative (bankruptcy) proceedings, meaning just about every set of curtains in the store was on clearance because they're closing down. Bad news for them; great news for us. Because we got two pretty nice pairs of curtains for a lot less than we would have otherwise paid.

So it was a fairly productive weekend, by our standards. We spent some fun outing time with the boys and actually got some serious house stuff done as well. Plus, on Saturday morning G zipped into town to pick up a secondhand piece of furniture –a tallboy-- that I had on hold. I happened to stumble across it at one of the charity shops I frequent with the boys earlier in the week. And, as luck would have it, it happens to be the twin of a piece I picked up in a similar fashion last spring, except it's in slightly better shape and is in a lighter stain. Woo hoo! I plan to sand both pieces down and paint them so they match. They're a little unorthodox for bedroom furniture – a bit on the tall side (hence the name?), with two big drawers on top and a cabinet with two shelves on the bottom. But I hope they'll look good in our room when they've been spruced up a bit.

Of course, when I'm going to get around to sanding and sprucing them up is an interesting question. Seeing as I also have two matching wooden bedside tables with drawers that also have to be sanded down and repainted. (They were also a great secondhand find; I picked up for a whopping £5 each at a charity shop back in Edinburgh.) And not to mention the secondhand bedside table and chest of drawers I picked up for Ramekin for £2 and £12 respectively, as well as a little £5 bedside cabinet I stumbled across for BooBaaa two weeks ago. They all have to be sanded down and refinished and/or painted, too.

And not to mention the fact that we still have a lot of other rooms that could use some color on the walls, including the boys' room. And more curtains, some of which require shortening, to hang. And we still need to build some closets into our bedroom….

The list just goes on and on.

So from my perspective, I guess the better way to look at my fake pop quiz is in the approach.... It's not that we don't have the money for a trip to Disneyland Paris right now; it's just that we don't have the time. And long-term lounging is out of the question because we're focused on making our house a home.

See that wall behind us? It needs color. Serious color. And mom says crayons won't do.