Lots of Irons in the Fire

When you read DIY blogs with any regularity, you are presented with beautiful "before and after" pictures of amazing projects.  These blogs make it appear that these talented people live their lives sequentially, going smoothly through one project start to finish before they begin their next amazing project.

My life doesn't work that way.  Not even close.

Right now, I have a lot of irons in the fire.  If kept a photo log of them all, I would present them in nicely laid out progression of completed projects.  But I don't...I'm lucky if I can remember to snap ANY pictures along the way.  Still, I'm doing some fun stuff, so I thought I'd share some of it with you.


Finishing the garage gave me space to start working on others things.  In addition to the bathroom off the laundry room, I've decided to tackle the red bathroom.  Yes, red.  Learning to put on make-up with a red bathroom was quite a challenge, let me tell you.  This bathroom is the only room in our home that hasn't been painted in the five years we've lived here.  Why?  Because the paint was so horrible (it bled red every time I wiped it down), I was just sure that I'd have to use oil-based primer and it would be a horrible job.  When I was at Home Depot earlier in the week, though, the girl at the paint counter encouraged me to try Behr Ultra, Home Depot's new paint with primer included.  Painting meant the weird chair rail needed to be removed and, look, there is a strip of wallpaper that needs to be removed.  Yippee! 

Why did they leave this when they put up the chair rail?

  A lot of work needs to be done before I can think of actually painting, but still I am thinking about it.

For $2.50, I brought home a "flat" sample of the color I'm thinking of using.  She promised it would cover and I think she's right. 

There has been no bleed through. I'm so jazzed!  Maybe this won't be the horrific project I think it will be.  Yeah, I know, it will still be a big project.

While I was upstairs, I decided to add this shelf to our closet.  I love it.  It finishes the closet perfectly and gives me some much needed storage (which, you might notice, I already filled).

Love this shelf!  Only $12 and some effort!

In between all of this construction, I've been raising this cute girl...

and turning her into a crazy cat lady.

Should I be worried that Valiant took this pictures of his sister and the cats?

One of my cats thinks she's a dog and sleeps on the dogs whenever she can.

Cat-Dog?  (She's certainly big enough!)

She also heard that I'd decided to add pictures of my shoes to their respective boxes to make my closet more organized and wanted to be in on the project.

Needless to say, the project isn't done yet.

Oh, and Buttercup and I started volunteering at a local animal shelter two days a week.  (Valiant says he can't do it because he'll want to bring all the animals home.)

Still working on the laundry room and the attached bathroom.   So, here's the truth...I don't think anybody's life actually flows neatly.  I think we can make ourselves crazy holding ourselves to those "after" standards.  Life is messy, even when the pictures aren't.  The fun starts when we embrace it all. 

Yep, a lot of irons in the fire.