The Evil Red is Gone!

So, we pretty much got rid of all the paint colors I hated this week, and that is part of the reason why we have not posted in a week--we have been busy tag-teaming the painting, which usually meant Brett doing most of the work while I cared for the kids, though I did help a little with the painting when I could!  Crazy us decided that since we were planning to paint Ginny's room anyway, we might as well repaint the living room, dining room and kitchen too, and why not try to do it all in a week and a half so it'd be done in time for Sorin's birthday party yesterday evening!

Here is Ginny's new princess room, which was initially the only room we were going to do:

Before:

After:

So, yeah, we couldn't cram anymore Disney princesses in there if we tried :)  Luckily, Ginny really likes princesses and has been excitedly jumping on the bed and pointing out all the different color dresses the princesses are wearing, and has been calling each one a "beautiful princess!"

And here are the before and afters of the living room, dining room, and kitchen, the dining room previously being an evil red color that has been making me more unhappy than I realized until the glorious moment when it was gone!

Kitchen before:

Kitchen after:

Living room before:

Living room after:

Dining room before:

Dining room after (complete with one wall that has magnetic primer for Ginny and Sorin's decorating!):

We always do this kind of thing, doing nothing for long stretches of time and then trying to do everything at once rather than adopting a more gradual, sane approach to getting things done.  And I think our problem is that we have yet to master the art of maintaining anything, our weight, our home, a schedule, etc.  When we finally get motivated to act, we always go to extremes, and then once we finish our short burst of insanity, we are exhausted and to recover we revert back to our minimal effort ways and wind up back where we started.

The next time we get an idea we should probably force ourselves to pursue it slowly, forcing ourselves to work a little at a time for an extended period rather than going full throttle for a bit and then slowing back to a crawl.  I guess this blog has been challenging in a good way in that we couldn't achieve our goal in a week or two, so we've had to figure out how to keep going once the excitement of the first few weeks wore off, which is one of our biggest struggles, but the progress we're making has made me so much happier, especially now that I've released myself from cataloging hell and feel free to just trash or donate anything I don't need or love without documentation.  I also have noticed that my usual flight of the bumblebee cleaning routine that is put in effect before having guests has gotten shorter and easier now that there is less stuff to deal with and more of that stuff has a place so I know where to put it.  Good thing, too - because with all the work we were doing painting, we didn't have nearly as much time as usual to clean up for Sorin's party!