The last week has passed in a blur of plaster dust, dropcloths, primers, paintbrushes, rollers and visits to hardware stores. This old ladder has been our faithful friend.
We are giving the girls' room a makeover, and painting was the first step. We painted over the pale blue (with blue and white checker stencilled border) that I put there way back in 1995. The blue served us well, even though we ended up having two girls we had a nice blue and yellow colour scheme happening.
But lately the blue and yellow scheme turned to multicoloured as millions of soft toys arrived on the scene over the years, and the walls turned to not-so-blue and the ceiling to not-so-white. A paint job was well overdue. With Steve recently out of work the time had come.
For a week the girls slept in our room, we slept in the living room among the piles of paint equipment and soft toys, but today we moved our bed back into our own room, and tonight the
girls will sleep in a bright, white, clean, lovely room.
Over the next weeks we'll have new beds and bookcases delivered, and I'll be able to show you their finished room!
But I can show you one thing I've done - how cute is this lightshade? And only a few dollars at Hot Dollar! We are loving it.
Life has been way too busy lately - what with painting and organising and decorating the girls' room, work, teaching stamping and scrapbooking classes and preparing for my Jane Austen party. I am looking forward to a much calmer life after my party next Saturday.
Today we left home at 8.15am, drove south for over an hour, the girls danced in an Irish Feis (and won trophies! Emily got a 3rd place this time!) then drove half an hour north east and had lunch with my sister, then drove another half an hour north and the girls played in a band competition (where their band was awarded gold!), then finally we drove another hour north and arrived home around 6.00pm. 
The last 5 weeks there has been a change in my life. Every weekday I wake up at 5.45am, creep around the dark house getting dressed and bumping into things, then I quietly open the back door and shut it behind me. With the click of the door shutting I find myself in the cold dark morning. I walk through the backyard and out this gate, then through another gate and I am on the street. A few blocks later I meet up with my two friends and we walk to a local park and do 4 laps and head back home, a total of 5km. As we walk around the park the sun rises, sometimes spectacularly. This morning, after rain last night, the mist lifted softly from the valleys and then disappeared altogether.
