Call Off the Search... We're Still Here!

Okay, okay, I know we've been kind of absent from the blog lately, but we have been SO busy for the past 2 weeks. Both of our jobs are crazy busy right now and probably won't slow down until right before Christmas. All of our non-working time has been spent focusing on house related projects. As some of you know Matt and I will be hosting Thanksgiving in the new house this year. We are very excited, but there is lots of work to be done. Let's go over the guest list... We have my parents, my sister and also my grandparents all coming from South Carolina to stay for 5 days and 4 nights. Yes, you counted correctly, 5 people total + us makes 7... in a 3 bedroom house..... poor hot water heater!!!

In preparation for our visitors we planned some projects to have done before everyone came. These aren't necessarily things that had to be done for their visit, it's just given us a good excuse to put our to-do list in overdrive. So below are the things that we have either tackled or will be completing (hopefully) before everyone arrives on Monday evening.

• paint the dining room - done
• paint the larger guest bedroom - done
• paint the guest bathroom - done (but not sold on the color)
• paint the smaller guest bedroom - done
• order new kitchen table and chairs - poor Matt spent 5 hours last Sat putting them together, a round of applause for the hubby!
• order new headboard/footboard for guest bedroom - it's here and we like it, just didn't come out the color we thought it would. So, yes we will be painting it this weekend
• order new dresser for guest bedroom - okay, so we didn't quite get this done, but luckily we had a sample sale at work this week and I snagged a very ugly console table for $40. This will be painted and dressed up with some new knobs this weekend as well. This and the bed will be my first experience with painting furniture, so fingers crossed!!
• get new shower curtain, etc for guest bathroom
• hang stuff on the walls - so, I think I have mentioned this before about me, but I am a hangaphobic (no, that's not a word, but my post, my rules!). I get so nervous hanging things on the wall because I feel like there is such a sense of finality to it - like it can never be changed. It drives Matt up the wall. We have so many mirrors, wall decor, art, etc just sitting in closets and the garage and it just keeps sitting there. We are going to do our best this weekend to try and find homes for them!
• cut the new grass and trim hedges and bushes - this is all Matt. I'm not a yard work kind of a gal. Truth be told too Matt gets very nervous when I "try" to help. I'm very clumsy and I think he's scared I'm going to take off a finger with the hedger.
• grocery shop - man, I don't even want to anticipate what this grocery bill is going to be. I've never fed 7 people for almost a week. We'll see what that's like I guess.
• clean
• clean
• clean
• did I mention we will have to clean?!?!!! Okay, admitidly Matt and I are not the biggest clean freaks, but we do like to have a sparkling home when we have guests. We aren't like nasty or anything, we just don't dust as often as we should and I hate cleaning a bathroom like no other thing in the world. And our floors are always dirty even though I vaccum frequently. Between the dog, 2 cats and fact that we both wear our shoes in the house, there's always dust and stuff on the floor. I was so excited when we bought this house that it was all hardwoods, but let me tell you, it's not that great. You see every strand of dog/cat hair, every dust bunny, every crumb, leaf, etc. Oh well, Matt made the horrible mistake of giving me a homemade gift card for my birthday. It entitles me to 25 "Non-Monetary" requests of my choosing. Hope he likes cleaning!! I will probably redeem all 25 this weekend :)

Okay, so there you have it. It's exhausting and all you had to do was read it :) We'll be back soon with many more reports. We have to dish about my b-day and we will have lots of material from Thanksgiving I'm sure.

XO, Erin