Despite having a horrible cold, I’ve been full of energy this week. I’m going room-by-room, throwing out stuff I don’t want and cleaning like a mad woman. The house is looking better and better by the minute. It makes me happy to have a clean house.

Last night I put J.R. and his friend Austin to work. They climbed up on the kitchen counters and dusted the top of the kitchen cabinets, and the ledge that holds all my knick knack stuff that runs along the ceiling in the kitchen and the family room. They did a really good job, but they were both sneezing like mad. Man it gets dusty up there!

See the lovely light fixture? The globes got busted when they had an air soft gun battle INSIDE MY HOUSE while I was away shopping one day. The bathroom lighting fixtures look the same, and were also part of their madness that day.

Since I couldn’t throw the kids out in the trash, I threw out the air soft guns instead. Grrrrrr.

kitchen, kitchen cabinets, cleaning, house

I posted the pictures yesterday of my dining room/front room. I think I’m okay with the how the dining area came out, but now I need help with the other half of that room. As you can see in these two pictures, my son has all his musical equipment sitting there. We are going to move all that up to the loft in the next picture, leaving that space empty.

I’ve got a very small section to work with, but I’d like to create some type of sitting area there. Along the white wall is 64 inches and along the red wall is 80 inches. I thought maybe a couple small chairs with a small table. I also had an idea to get a few pieces of a sectional and square it up to the wall. Don’t even get me started on light fixtures. I haven’t gotten that far yet.

Here is a 360 view of the room I have to work with:

Man I need my carpet cleaned!!! It’s a work in progress. Do any of you have any ideas?

living room, front room, loft, furniture

I got bored today of my messy front room/dining room. It always seems to be the place where all the crap ends up. I even packed up Michael’s old computer that was sitting in there, with a big ugly CAT5e cable running across the room hooked into it.

I sectioned off one side to use as the dining room, as seen below. The right side just has a couple guitars and amps that are going up on the boys loft as soon as I find just the right chairs for that corner. I want to create a small sitting area there.

I moved my foyer table from the left of the front door to the right. When you’re sitting at the dining room table, you can see it better. The small lamps add kind of a neat lighting in that area also.

I have a long way to go, but so far I’m liking it a lot.

front room, dining room, living room, furniture

Boy am I tired! I woke up yesterday with a cold, and now I’ve got a running/stuffy nose, watery eyes, and I can’t stop sneezing. We had a really great weekend though! We drove down the California to surprise Michael’s dad for his birthday, and he was REALLY surprised. We had dinner with the whole family, then drove out to their house to spend the night.

(More pictures can be viewed on my Flickr stream)

In the morning we got up and went up the mountain to Idyllwild. My ex’s family has had a cabin up there for years, and we all spent a great amount of time up there on the weekends. They finally put it on the market, as no one has used it in over 8 years, and it sold really quickly. I wanted to take one last look at it, get some pictures, and take a few items home that had some sentimental value to me. There was even some of the boys baby clothes that I found in a drawer.

It was bittersweet, and I shed a few tears while I was there. Not really because I missed it, but because my boys grew up there, and so many happy times were spent there. I hope the new owners create as many good memories there as we did.

Idyllwild, CA, California, mountain cabins

See the tree on the left?

• Yes, the one that provides shade to my bedroom, my son’s bedroom, our loft, and the foyer.
• Yes, the one that help keeps the sun from beating down in the late afternoon when it’s 115 degrees outside.

My neighbor decided to cut it down this morning, raising the temperature in my house by about 10-15 degrees.

Thanks asshole. You tree hater you!

trees, nature, tree huggers, neighbors