Love of Sunshine

We had planned to spend Halloween at our friends’ parties in the city. With the parties not easily accessible by BART, we were hoping the Bay Bridge would be open by tonight, but no such luck. So, we decided to spend out first Halloween in our new house handing out candy and watching movies. Unfortunately, we hadn’t decorated our house at all and what fun is that?

So, with $8 worth of black construction board, a scrap of red cellophane and a light beam projector from Target, we had ourselves a haunted house:

I cut out the eyes and taped the construction board over each window. We drew the curtains (which are luckily white) and lit them up with swirling light from the projector. My fingers are still sore from cutting out all those eyes, but I think it was well worth it.

As a finishing touch, the Mr. set up purple/orange lights to line our walkway. He then used some of our purple and red cellophane to tint the front porch lights. Together we set up some pumpkins, skulls and “bloody” wine glasses in the window next to our front door.

We got tons of compliments from the parents and thought it turned out not too bad for a couple of hours of last minute decorating.

So, I’ve been at work until at least 8pm every night this week. The Mr helped make some progress — we had another big drop-off at the Salvation Army donation center. I think this is the third since August! Both of us have a ton of stuff and we need to weed out a lot if we’re going to fit into this house together.

Tonight, though, we’re going to be checking out a craigslist find: a small accent table with landing strip potential. It’s a bit late in the Entryway Week, but better late than never. It’s become apparent that we can’t realistically have our landing strip next to the door, so I’m hoping that just across the room, in a small corner that we would otherwise ignore, we can find a good space. Currently, boxes, my office shredder (notably NOT in my office), some shoes and a very large bookcase occupy that area.

The heavy IKEA bookcase we have (one of two) blocks a lot of light from the stair well and has become a huge clutter-collecting surface. I’m hoping that with a smaller table that’s specifically designated for a few items, we can cut down on the clutter monster in that area.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Update: Foiled! One of the wonders of Craigslist is that a good percentage of both buyers and sellers are completely flaky. I called the girl selling the table at 6pm today since we had agreed that I should show up between 6 and 7 to pick up the table. When she answered the phone, she was ordering food at a restaurant. She asked if I could come by tomorrow and she would call me back in an hour with more info. I haven’t heard from her since. Well, I suppose I can email her once more and if she doesn’t come through, I’ll just suck it up and look elsewhere.

Today, while I addressed Thank You cards for our wedding gifts, the Mr just started knocking repairs off our list. The windows in the kitchen, bedroom and stairwell that had been previously stuck have been pried open. We have all new hardware in the master bathroom (which means we can hang more than one bath towel at a time! Joy!) The old shower curtain has been removed. The old protective film that our landlord’s contractor left on our front windows have been stripped.

In the process, we also discovered new problems (it never ends, does it?). One of our front windows has a crack and we really need to wax or otherwise work on getting some smoother action on some of the previously stuck windows. Still, it was a good day’s work and the house looks better for it.

Plus, we also sold my little pub table to a lovely ATer looking for a smaller table for her place. Yet another thing to check off our list. The rest of the week was fairly slow, but thanks to my sweetie, today made up for a lot of lost time.

We now have a new dining room table–a craigslist find in excellent condition. Now we have a nice, sturdy Ethan Allen table which my 6’3″ honey can comfortably sit at and we don’t have to get creative when we have more than 2 people to dinner. With the extra leaves, we can even fit a dozen without people having to get indecently friendly.

My lovely, but small, dining table (also from craigslist circa 2006) has been relegated to the garage until I can take photos of it. Then it will find itself on sale on the web once more. Looks like we’ll also have to get rid of our giant Markör shelving unit. I’m not terribly upset — it’s a huge clutter collector.

I know we’re behind on the Cure schedule, but hopefully this weekend I can catch up. Fortunately, the kitchen is still pretty clean and organized from our move-in cleaning, though if I get really ambitious, I may try this method of purging* since our kitchen is pretty well stocked. However, I have to admit that when it comes to cleaning dishes I’ve been a bit remiss — at least with the ones that can’t go in the dishwaher. I guess I should try to get to those tonight.

On the plus side, we did upgrade/green some of our dining room items: we replaced our old placemats and we got cotton napkins so we don’t use paper towels constantly. We haven’t gotten into the habit of using them consistently just yet, but we’re working on it. We’ve never used them regularly at home, so we have to change our thinking that not only is it okay to treat ourselves to cloth napkins at a regular meal, it’s actually good for our wallet in the long run.

* I love her decluttering method, but completely disagree with her determination that you should have no more than 8 place settings and her assertion that, if you cook for more than 8 people at a time, you should rent. She obviously didn’t grow up in a large, extended family.

Tonight was a complete wash. I worked late and the Mr got us take-out from our favorite Chinese restaurant. Some quick web browsing to catch up on AT and find a muffin recipe for this weekend. And now to bed.