Random thought of the week: Ugly Sweater days are dangerous because someone will inevitably  forget which day it is and remark on someone’s awesomely atrocious top… only to find out that no, Ugly Sweater Day is tomorrow.  Oops.*

• Cookies baked: 7654
• Gifts wrapped: 13
• Christmas shopping completed: 100%**
• Shelves painted: 3
• Shelves installed: 5
• Holiday parties attended: 1
• Dishes washed: 657420
• Naps taken: 1***
• Rooms frantically cleaned: 2****

*No, this didn’t happen to me, but it was close call.

**A full week before Christmas even. I win at adulting this year.

***It was glorious. Never mind that I meant to do something productive with that time, it all go done eventually.

****If  we tackle a room a day we should be in pretty good shape… Thankfully we’re not actually hosting Christmas, but we are having the in-laws here for a few days after and our house currently looks like it was ransacked by schizophrenic elves.

This was the weekend o’ bathroom painting.

• Coats of white paint: 2
• Coats of blue paint: 1
• Smudges left on the shower curtain: 1
• Painty foot prints on the bathroom floor: 2*
• Times hit in the head with a roll of paper towels: 1**
• Hardware store trips: 1
• Christmas decorations purchased: not enough

Starting to look pretty good, huh? It still needs another coat of blue and the trim could probably use another coat too.

*I caught them while still wet so they cleaned up nicely

**I asked Matt to get me more paper towels so I could clean up the aforementioned painty foot prints and he just threw the roll at me while I wasn’t looking.

Is the end of Daylight Savings Time messing with anyone else?  It’s 8:00 and I’m already in my pjs and vegged out in front of the TV.  Around 7 I was convinced it was nearly 9 and lost all motivation.

• Bags of leaves removed: 9
• Bags of leaves remaining: 5
• Sawdust kicked up in the bathroom:  A good cubic foot*
• Swear words used to describe the idiots who inflicted unspeakable horrors on our bathroom: Eleventy-billion
• Hours spent agonizing over light fixtures: 3
• Boxed unpacked in my study: 6 (!!!)
• Concerts attended: 1**
• Photos organized: 319***

Nothing interesting to photograph this weekend (bathroom updated coming soon!) so have a photo of Prague.  Because Prague.

*I’ve been attacking the window trim.  There’s a chunk that needed to be patched and another two chunks that needed to be sanded down completely to removed glue, yes glue, residue.

**SPCO who rallied amazingly after their violin soloist got injured and they had to redo 2/3’s of the program at the last minute.  This included a guest conductor who conducted Beethoven’s 7th from memory with no score in front of him.

***I’m about 1/2 way through getting our Europe photos organized into a book, but I’ve uploaded so many (since I upload them all and then edit so I can see what fits well where)I think I’m about to crash Shutterfly any second now…

I’ve gone into Halloween Party Mode lately.  We’re having people over next weekend since Halloween is my Favorite Holiday Ever (costumes, candy, pumpkin carving… what’s not to love?).  Matt’s still been in productive mode adding attic supports and insulation.

• Hardware store trips: 1
• Rolls of insulation crammed into a compact hatchback: 5
• Craft store trips: 1
• Pounds of Holiday crap bought: 5*
• Party menus planned: 1
• Grocery trips: 2
• Costumes sewn: 2
• Felt hearts cut: 24
• Feet of lights strung: 24
• Faucets replaced: 1
• Swear words while replacing said faucet: lost count**
• Girly(ish) mirrors added to bathroom: 1
• Cats pissed we’re not leaving the door to the porch open: 2

This is literally 1/2 of the downstairs micro-bath (with new mirror and faucet!).  You can sit on the toilet and wash your hands at the same time.  It’s still really nice having a second bathroom.

*Just an estimate.  Joann had Halloween stuff at 70% off so I stocked up on candy corn colored lights, LED tea lights, table cloths, foliage, and plates. The only problem was that the tablecloth I bought wasn’t actually labeled and ended up being round instead of rectangular.  Oops.  I’m just going to make it work though. And we stocked up on Halloween candy since we have no clue how many kids we’ll get trick-or-treating

**We replaced the faucet in the micro-bath and there’s barely no space between the sink and the toilet so it’s really awkward to access anything under the sink.. It was also the first replacing a faucet with a drain stopper too.

We had family in town this weekend so productively dropped a little bit.

• Family members visiting: 2
• Food brought by family members: tons*
• Custom furniture pieces acquired: 2**
• Vacation pictures shown: 75***
• Bags of leaves raked: 11****
• Hardware store trips: 1
• Mums replaced: 1
• Plants potted: 4

We also shifted around all the crap we have in our basement to prepare for some glass block work we’re having done this week (replacing the rotting basement windows with glass block).

*My mom was apparently cooking all last week and brought it all with her.  Chicken cacciatore, pulled pork, banana bread, granola… I’m afraid she doesn’t believe we eat.  We also have leftovers for about a month.

*I had a furniture design class my senior year in college which was ah-maz-ing.  My mom’s been storing assorted crap in the garage until we had space for it… which we do now!

***This was the edited version, I really took over 1500 pictures and eventually need to finished the photobook I was working on.

****When we were buying leaf bags Matt was convinced we’d only use about 3…. nope.  Our yard is small but deceptively leafy. Luckily there’s a compost site about 5 minutes away from us so disposal is easy (and free!), although we can only fit about 4-5 bags in either of our cars at a time.