Too busy to blog?

I guess so. We've spent the weekend working on the house, repairing exterior doors and trying to get them painted.

I convinced Zorak to let me paint the exterior of the balcony door slate grey - just so we could see if it worked. With the somewhat blah, 1970's brick exterior, we need a nice trim that makes the house *pop*. I thought perhaps slate grey, or a dark charcoal, would do the trick. There are some bricks of that color, and it's the color of the trim in the master bedroom. (Trying desperately to tie the colors together at this point, so the house doesn't look like Rainbow Brite's been massacared in here.)

Actually, I should say it WAS going to be the color of the trim in the master bedroom. Thankfully, I still have yet to get around to prepping and trimming that room. So, back to the story (for the record, the weekend, as a whole, has been as disjointed and erratic as my writing is tonight - for that, I apologize) I put it on the door, and... It's a Hershey Bar! Our balcony door now looks like an enormous Hershey Bar. Not, um, quite what we were shooting for. As a matter of fact, we'd nix'd the color chip that came with the grey we put on the walls because it was more brown than grey. This one, though, it looked grey. I could have sworn it was grey. The ladies in the paint department said it looked grey. So, it's official. We are all color-blind in fluorescent lighting. The balcony door has one half-hearted coat on it, just so we could put it up.

We did finally purchase curtains for most of the rooms. Ivory Battenburg lace for the kitchen. It might be a bit much, but it's only two small windows. Hopefully nobody will notice. We needed something with a little body to it, to help keep the cold out. It needed to be free of fruit, barnyard animals, and creepy faceless dutch children. That left us with the Battenburg.

I bought some linen-colored cord to use as tie-backs for the blue canvas duck curtains in the boys' room, and some curtain rods with a little bling in 'em. Then I bought plain vanilla rods, plain vanilla white lace, and a little plain vanilla ice cream for our room. No, wait, we already had ice cream. Anyway, maybe nobody will notice the unpainted trim for all the blindingly white lace stuck to the windows?

Then I picked up these great denim curtains for the nursery. They have tab-tops done up as overall hooks. I'd found a pattern for that very thing over the summer, but hadn't mustered the hutzpah to sit down and stitch it up yet. (Seriously we have how many pairs of overalls that need to have the latchy things repaired? And I haven't made it so far as to find out what those things are called, let alone have gone out to buy them and do the repairs. Make curtains to match? Hee hee. That's so funneeee!) But now, thanks to mass marketing, I don't have to! Hot dog! I'm washing them up tonight, and will hopefully apply the Thomas edging to them tomorrow. (Cut, pin, straight stitch. THAT much, I can do.)

We tried once again to take a family Christmas photo. How'd it go, you ask? Well, we got some beautiful shots of the kids. A great photo of Zorak and the kids. A nice one of me and the kids. And John even took a relatively decent one of me and Zorak. But one with all six of us? Yeah, we'll try again Friday. I may try over the week to get individual shots and see if we can make a montage instead. I think that might be easier in the end.

OH! And we think we've nailed down the Christmas buying process. Someone had posted a little poem a while back:

Something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read.

What a great way to figure out what to get! (I botched it, though, and thought it was something to "play with" rather than "wear", but hey, I'm always up for buying a new sweater!) So, the Big Gift - to be shared by all the kids, is a GameCube. We bought Miss Emily some additional Duplo blocks, not because we need more Duplo blocks (not by a long shot), but because these had flowers and pink blocks, and Daddy's heart just got all soft and squishy when he saw that. (How can you resist a soft-hearted Daddy?) We're going to have to do some hardcore looking for books. Thought I'd found just the right thing for James, but the release date isn't until March of '07. I'd feel like a bit of a heel giving an IOU for Christmas if it can be avoided...

Then we sat down to take a breath, and whaddya know, it's Sunday evening. Wow. But it's been good. The boys love their sparkly new curtain rods. Smidge had three of four vibrating fits over the mere thought of finally getting his Thomas curtains. The house is looking more and more Christmas Ready with every passing day. Oh, yes, it's good.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy