a new project ~ baby grand

we were semi-gifted a baby grand piano. 

john david's aunt needed to place it in storage and well, we had a place to store it!   

there were scratches on the top from it being in storage before...  

the wood underneath, once the finish was off, was in great condition.  the scratches were just on the surface and the wood was in good shape. 

 the pieces that can be removed have been taken off.  and this is what the room looks like while this is going on.  this might take a while. 

p.s.  one day while sanding the top in the garage, the children were riding bikes around the block.  it dawned on me that come school time, I would have lots of time on my hand for this project. 

so, I put it neatly away and will pull it out once school is underway. 

how i do things

after asking my husband (for three weeks) to help move a bench down two flights of stairs, i decided to just do it myself.  creating padding out of a pillow and wrapping the pillow with a sheet held tightly together with zip ties, i pulled/bounced the bench right down to the front porch.  it's been out there for two weeks now and he hasn't noticed. 

christmas decorations

the children and i decorated for christmas the day before thanksgiving.  it's a fun thing to do with that day off for them.  plus we celebrated christmas with out of town family on friday after thanksgiving.  the decorations above are on the downstairs *nice* tree.  little man has a collection of fire engines, m1 has fairies and m2 has snow buddies.  they get a new ornament each year. 

 the children's tree.  as always, they enjoy pulling out craft projects from sunday school and school that fill this colorful tree.  the angel on top was made in 2008 by m1. 

new fabric

fun new fabric on the piano bench

these chairs were bought with the intention of recovering them (so i've had them like three years, i make snap decisions). found some modern fabric and got to work.
with the extra fabric from the piano bench i made matching pillows trimmed in the grey/white fabric. they look great with the sherwin moody blue walls.

broken

we have had numerous things broken around our home in the last six weeks... just to list a few: my car that got crunched up in an accident (now replaced with an 08 honda odyssey), the dishwasher that was out for 14 days waiting on an ordered part (yep, hand washing breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes, pots and pans, cutting boards, etc gets old quickly), the leaky disposal that had three cracks in it while i was hand washing all those dishes, our back door dead bolt that would not open, my laptop that died in mid-october has now been replaced with a black friday bargain, the top of our 15 year old christmas tree finally fell off after two years of being held in place with the blind cords, the dresser drawer pulls on the newly refinished piece of furniture in the girls room, and the light on my sewing machine. seriously crazy!

why?

why does a smoke detector battery die at 2:38 in the morning and not 2:38 in the afternoon?

a confession

i have not cleaned my house since the middle of june... (pausing.... pausing.... pausing.... waiting for katy to pick herself up from the floor). oh, i have swished the toilets or vacuumed when the carpet/floor demanded, and dusted when the children could write legibly on tables ~ but the deep cleaning and organizing that i love to do has not been done. i C.R.A.V.E. order and routine and our summer was anything but that. traveling back and forth to the lake left little time for cleaning. i decided early in the summer that we were going to have a fun one and the other stuff could be done once school started. i am paying for that now and it is overwhelming! the first day of school i deep cleaned the girls room ~ windows, light fixture, woodwork, dusting, i did it all. the second day of school i tackled little man's room. and then story time started and field trips and homework and soccer practice and piano lessons and then i broke my nose. i could not do much for about a week. so here i am today still with a throbbing face wondering when my deep fall cleaning will start. maybe tomorrow...