This is why they call it LABOR day

Three-day weekend. Day one...poke around, walk the dog, hang out, go to see Dark Knight at IMAX.

Day two. Morning. Looking at the old, hated grey carpet (that was born white, long ago). I wonder...

...what's under here? Hey...looks like wood. And it seems to be in pretty good shape.


Let's pull it up! Come on, guys!

This is looking pretty good...on to day three (and in the mean time, Brett is busily painting the trim around the new doors, and the carport supports).













Definitely an improvement over the carpet. We are surprised to find that while there are some flaws, the floor is actually pretty clean and unmarked.


The end result: worth the cramps in my hand from pulling one thousand carpet staples and a hundred million feet of tacking board.

Please, people of the future, should you read this...do NOT put down carpet over wood floors. You're doing future generations a great disservice if you do.

But I'm really, really happy with the result. And I feel like I had a very productive long weekend. The trim looks great too.

Now...time to go to work.

Santa's been here!

This year for Christmas, we decided to forgo buying each other a lot of gifts, and instead got a few items for our home that we'd been wanting for years. Mainly, we wanted to get rid of our old bedroom furniture. The dressers and headboard we had were the ones my parents bought me when I was around 13 years old...that's some old furniture! It was sturdy but had gotten pretty beaten up. So we headed out to the furniture stores of South Puget Sound, and after some shopping, found a lovely craftsman-style set at Macy's. It was a little more than we wanted to spend, but so nice; we decided that we'd check one more store, then come back and get the set.


That last store was Dania. We've bought a few things from them and always had a good experience. So when we walked in to the Tukwila Dania and saw the exact same bedroom set that we'd already fallen in love with at Macy's, but for hundreds less, we were thrilled! It was so much less that we decided to get a new dining room table, in a matching style, and still spent less than at Macy's!




So we spent a few days re-organizing the rooms, and getting ready for New Year's. We're having a few people over, so I'm glad to have things clean and nice. We didn't get a tree this year; time just got away from us, with all of the other things going on, so we decorated our little ficus and strung a few lights at the last minute. Jupiter didn't seem too disappointed with the unconventional tree.



Today we'll go visit Brett's mom for a bit – I have to work tomorrow, so we can't stay late – and then, I have to admit, I'm going to be glad Xmas is over. I get very little time off around the holidays, so it's never the magical event I remember as a kid. But we do our best to make it special for each other; really, though, I think we do a pretty good job of making all our time together special.

Anyway, happy holidays and happy new year to all!