I had a post started and got distracted and shut down the browser and poof, not even a draft left to recover with. I’m not going to rewrite it, it was brilliant and insightful and I just don’t think I can repeat the greatness of it.

But in the interest of keeping this thing going again, I’ll show you my weather.

It was very rainy. But the rain has stopped and the sun is out. Now it’s windy.

Let me know if the video works for you! I keep forgetting that my camera has a pretty decent video setting, I’ll try to remember and use it more, especially if it’s this easy to post them here.

I may as well try to get regular again. So, what’s been going on here? Well, the addition is done. It looks damn good, too. Right is a corner of the bedroom after the carpet, but before me. Left is the same corner after me.

It still needs that decorator touch. But before we do much more in there, we need to get some other things around here done. The deck isn’t built yet- probably be early spring before we get to that, but it’s ok, not like we use it in the winter. We just plain ran out of time, and really, who wants to build a deck in the winter. I’d be out there trying to hammer and stuff with mittens on. The hammer might slip out of my mittened hand and injure someone. That would be bad.

So while we wait for mitten weather to come and go so we can get back to that, we’ve moved on to updating the dining room. We had a hand-me-down dining set that once belonged to my sister-in-law’s grandmother. It was in pretty bad shape when we got it but no one else wanted it and the china cabinet, while scratched and pretty ugly, was big. Plus it had interior lighting which thrilled Pat. He liked having company over just because it gave him an excuse to light up the ugly china cabinet.

But the ugly beat up furniture began to fall apart. The china is now in the basement holding stuff I probably won’t ever use again, the chairs are all long ago trashed. We’ve moved the family computer into the den, so the room is down to the table, which sits in the center covered with crap.

We pulled up the nasty, nasty carpet (which still covers the living room floor for now… ) and found the wood floors are in pretty good shape. Yes, I know they need refinishing and if we don’t reseal them now we’ll probably wish we had. But all I want to do is clean & shine them up, throw down an area rug, and get on to the fun part- furniture shopping!

I was playing with photo-manipulating software (Photomatrix & Paint Shop Pro X) and came up with this.

(click to see the big pic)

Here’s the original shot:

That’s Tim with his friend Aaron and Aaron’s brother Will heading off to go fishing during our camping trip a couple weeks ago.

I’ve got 16 years’ worth of baby and kid stuff in my house. Some of it is still shrink-wrapped. Most of it is in great shape. Baby gear, toddler stuff, toys & games galore.

I also have 20 years worth of household stuff, again, some new in the box (mostly gifts…) I was going to have a huge yard sale for all of it, but there’s so much baby & kid stuff (and this isn’t all of it, lots more still to bring up to the garage from the basement storage!) that I’m going to have two sales, the first one Kid Stuff Only.

I’ll let you know when I have a date!

We finished it a week or so ago but I just got around to taking photos. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. The yellow tile isn’t quite so YELLOW with the new flooring and paint color. I wish I had more before shots to show you how UGLY it really was, but there are a couple shots of the old floor in the set at flickr.

A little bit of color in the backyard. Sadly these may not survive till next year- they’re very close to where the foundation will be for our addition!

I haven’t made brownies in almost a year- definitely not since I went on the South B**ch diet last winter.

But I ain’t dieting tonight!