Paint Makes A Difference

I've never really shown many pictures of my living room to you.  I've always been just a bit embarrassed to do so thanks to the walls and paint color choices of the previous owners of the house.  However, thanks to a fresh couple of coats of paint and a little rearranging of some furniture, that's going to change.

Here's a couple of before shots from two differents angles taken back in October:

In this shot you can see the wall color is a neutral brown, but it had a LOT of pink in it which just didn't go with anything that I owned.

And here you can see the unfortunate wallpaper:

And here is the transformation:

 

I need to get some window treatments up, but I haven't yet decided what I want to do with them.  

In this view, I had a Picture Bomber:

And yet one more angle:

At this time of day, the light is poor and the pics came out just a touch dark.    Can you see the little table to the right of the back door?  This is what it looks like up close:

The cabinet is filled with antique teacups.  At this point, the collection has outgrown it's cabinet, but until I find a better display for them, it will do.  The picture above the cabinet is a cross stitch project that I completed about 17 years ago.  The tea pot was acquired while on a trip to Scotland.

So, what do you think of the change?  There's still some tweaking to be done, but I love it already.

Super Mom

So when last we met, I had painted one 23.5 foot wall in my living room and it took me half a day to do that properly.  Since then, I've turned into Super Mom.

We decided that retrofitting our old trampoline with a new spring pad and enclosure was not cost effective.  It would have cost us more to do that than to buy a new one.  So we did.  Onto Craigslist it went and I managed to sell it for ten dollars more than I spent on it.  The lady said she was coming to get it and I met her and her two children and knew there was no possible way she was going to be able to take that thing apart by herself.  The two of us barely managed it.  We could really have used a man's muscles on that project.  But it's done and out of here.

The next morning I thought, what the heck, the Eldest and I can put the frame of the new one together and we again, barely managed it.  I am an official ten pound weakling.  After the husband came home it turned into this:

The Youngest in Mid Jump

Then, I tackled the living room and finished it in a day, by myself.   It's not all put back together, so I can't give you a good pic of it yet, but the transformation is amazing.

Since then I've been immersed in End of School activities.  It's been exhausting and I can't wait until school is out so that I can sleep late!

As far as knitting and crafty stuff?  I started the last sleeve of the Mystere Sweater, but it's slow going.  I've got second sleeve syndrome I'm afraid.  Other crafty stuff has been out the window.  I just haven't had time, but I'll get there...

Oh, and I'm learning to cut my own hair, but that's a story for another day.  :)