Back to Blogging

Now that the crazy pumpkin nonsense is gone, I'm going to get back to blogging on a semi regular basis. 

I'm so glad that I took a break from blogging over the summer.  It was our busiest summer yet.  Blockette went to two different summer camps, and I chaperoned at one of them. (I think I'm still recovering from the excessive singing of the Frozen soundtrack.)  We also had summer dollar movies, vacation bible school, a trip to visit my mom, and Blockette was in a musical.  It felt like we were go go go all the time.

 

Once school started back up, I didn't much feel like blogging either.  

Mid August, one of our cats, Basil, began to get very sick.  

Two days before school started we found out he had colon cancer, and we had to put him to sleep. 

I always thought Basil was more of Mrblocko's cat, than mine. 

 I didn't realize how much of a role he played in my day to day life at home until he was gone. 

 It's taken me a few months to just stop looking for him when I pass his usual hiding spots. 

 That silly little furball left a pretty big hole in my heart.  

In order to keep my mind off missing the little guy, I decided to take on some big projects.  The first one being re-doing our spare/computer room.

Here's a bit of a before picture:

The room was this horrible green that was somewhere between lime and pea soup.  Why I chose that color, I have no idea.  It gave everything in the room this yellow hue.  BLECK!

And lets not get started on the computer hutch.  It was about 12 years old.  You know, from the days when monitors were so huge two cats could sit on top of it with no problem.  The hutch took up nearly half that room. 

Blockette had also outgrown her small little brown table.  While she has a desk in her own room, there are times where she wants to work next to me while I'm on the computer.

Finally, the biggest reason for redoing this room was for my mom.  When she would come to visit she'd have to sleep on a air mattress on the floor.  We actually WANT her to come see us so I thought it was high time she had an actual bed.

And here are the afters:

I picked out a purple for the walls that has a bit of grey in it.  Then I painted all the trim and the closet doors white so the grey in the paint wouldn't overwhelm the room.  The closet doors were essentially the same color as the door to the room and the floor. 

The desks, shelves and chairs were from IKEA.  I put the desks together all by my onsies.  Mrblocko helped with the shelves though.

Then I went through my stack of unframed cross stitches, bought some inexpensive frames, and hung them up on the wall.  The framing isn't the best job ever, but it's much more satisfying having the cross stitches up on the wall than lamenting in a drawer. The walls still look a little bit bare.  I have every confidence that I'll find more things to hang up as time goes on.

I also had some fun with spray paint.  That crate, in the picture above, next to the bed...it used to be bright spring green.  I sprayed it with a gray paint that's supposed to give it a hammered look.  Eventually, I want to get a piece of plywood cut to fit the top so it functions more like a nightstand.

Also, if you look at the first picture, there's a mirror.  We had it hanging up at our previous house, and I hadn't been able to find a home for it since we moved into this one 8 years ago.  I spray painted it black and dry brushed white paint once the black paint had dried.  It has this mottled gray look that ALMOST looks like stone...if you squint.  It also makes me happy to see it hanging on the wall.

The room looks so much bigger, and brighter too!  While it's not magazine perfect, it works so much better for our family's needs.  I can't help but pat myself on the back for the results of my hard work!