Pain

I get migraines regularly. Thankfully I'm blessed with aural migraines, so it is usually not a big deal. I can feel the migraine coming about an hour before it hits, and can medicate in plenty of time to avoid it. Sometimes, when I get tired, I can't think reasonably and I don't realize that the fact that I can't see well means a migraine is coming. When I have to take my medicine in a rush, I also have convinced myself that eating non-stop will help prevent it. If I actually think this through, I come to realize that it is probably more to do with giving the medicine time to work, rather than the massive amounts of food I've consumed. In a headache stupor today, I conveniently forgot this logic, and ate a whole box of cheez-its before the pain subsided. The only problem now is the massive cheez-it induced stomach ache.

Double the C, double the S, and you will always have success

Danny Tanner taught me how to spell that word back in the day. And we have had some recent success. We waited out buying our Puerto Rico plane tickets to try and get the lowest possible price. Back when I started looking in January they were around $890 (ouch!) We finally bought them last month for $468. I was a little nervous that they would come down more, but when I looked today they are now averaging $750. Looks like we win!

Look what I found

150 calorie ice cream sandwiches. I think that should be some sort of oxymoron.

Kid's Shoes

By buying these in the little boys section, I save $17. You know you're jealous of my tiny feet.

Big Fat Project

My puppies decided to get me an early Mother's Day present. They knew how much I wanted a new front room, so they kindly shredded the carpet in there. Not only did I get new carpet, but also some wainscotting and new paint. Aren't they sweeties?

Here is where we started. This room was already on my list, but was somewhere around the #10 thing we needed to fix in our house. Sadly, this pushed everything else way back.

First we removed the furniture, and then started in on the chair rail and trim.

We bought supplies from Lowes. This power roller turned out to be an absolute dream, although it was a pain in the butt to clean, We finished painting a whole day earlier than we had anticipated.

After about 8 different paint choices, Dalan got fed up and just bought my most recent favorite before I had made up my mind. It worked out great though. At least we painted a sample section first.

We had to deal with a lot of problems from the previous owners, the paint in the corners was so poorly done that it was cracking, and we could just peel it off in sheets.
The door frames did not match the wainscoting we wanted to install, so they had to come down too. I forgot to take a picture of the 'before' frame, but here it is torn out. (you can also see my couches in the kitchen, we got to eat out for a week, my scale was thrilled).
Saturday morning Meg and Steve showed up to help. Probably the best thing that could have happened to us. They were troopers and didn't even have to use a step ladder to reach the ceiling. Dalan and I gladly let them take over the upper parts.

Phase 1 finished. It was so nice to not have to worry about dripping paint on the carpet!

The stair area was already painted white, but we decided to brighten it up a few shades, I think that it made a huge difference (but I'm not so sure that you can tell in the picture).
Scout tried to help. She even dipped her nubbin in paint, and wagged her tail against the wall.
This has actually been really nice to help tell them apart, we may keep this as a permanent Scout feature.
The windows framing our exterior door had a lovely yellow trim. We decided that we should probably paint it to match the rest of the room though.

We also had some hot lace window treatments. I 'accidentally' threw them away.

Installing the wainscot turned out to be slightly more difficult than we originally anticipated. Finding the angles in the bay window was easily the most time consuming part of the project.
One door frame installed, yea!

Installing the vertical wainscoting was a blast, it went so quickly!

All painted
Not only was my house a sad/pathetic mess during the whole thing...

So were my babies :(

Ready for carpet.
Yea! Pretty carpet, we got an awesome deal from Ogden's Flooring.
Tobey is pretty happy with it too.

Sob

I get that you weren't a main character, and therefore the most likely to go. But to be taken out by a door? I think that you deserve a more dramatic farewell.

a fruity whiff

To help me get all of my fruits and veggies in, I have bowls of snacks on my desk today. Thanks to the bowl of strawberries I keep getting a whiff of childhood. Somehow the combination of fresh strawberries and my office smells exactly like one of my plastic Strawberry Shortcake dolls. weirdy.