It's the Little Things...

Wouldn't you see this
every time you walked into a room?

My Vet and I have lived in 5 homes (4 houses, and 1 apartment) in the past 15 years. Each and every one of those houses had previous owners who did things that confounded me. The previous owners of our current home were truly diabolical though. We have been slowly remediating the quirks, though. When I tackled a project in the living room it was a small thing that has relieved the most mental stress. I flipped the outlets in the living room right side up. Huh?!?! I know that is what you are thinking. Let me elaborate. Every outlet in the entire house was installed upside down. For almost 6 years, every time I enter a room my eyes have been immediately been drawn to the outlets, every time I plug in a vacuum, I am reminded that I needed to get to that. Those of you who have known me for a while are probably not surprised at this display of OCD.

This is the outlet I use the most
often when vacuuming. Pretty
huh?

So with a handful outlets, outlet covers, screwdrivers, and a lamp, we got to work. We turned on every light in the house, and plugged lamps, fans, radios etc. into every outlet we could. Then systematically flipped switches in the breaker box (Labeling as we went, check one more quirk off the list!). As the power was shut off to an outlet. the outlet was unscrewed and flipped right side up. Those that were cracked or broken were replaced. There were a few brown ones that were replaced with cream colored ones. I prefer straight white, but the majority of existing outlets were almond/cream, and this was suppose to be a cheap and easy project. Since the few brown ones were exclusively in one room, you may be wondering why I decided to change them out? So the entire house would match, of course! Did I mention OCD yet?

After screwing the outlet back into the wall, broken or discolored wall plates were replaced. It took a few hours to work our way through the entire house, and to give me mental relief. My OCD is now back in check and I will now longer be distracted from counting my steps as I walk through the house!

Easter Morning

You can tell from the photo that I didn't get the fireplace project finished before Easter. I did make some progress on Saturday, and you can see the boxes of tile are sitting there ready to be hung.

I am not here to rehash my unfinished project, but to share the joy of Easter. Even with my newly lit living room I still couldn't get a good picture of the kids, they were too busy dashing from egg to egg, and I was too distracted to actually mess with the camera settings. But I like how this photo captures their energy.

Girls are all smiles as they find their baskets and spy some eggs.

Table scape courtesy of the table
runner my sister quilted, and
some of the linen napkins I made
for my wedding reception
so many years ago

They found all but One (We found that one SEVERAL hours later.)

Happy Easter!

Have I told you how awesome my kids are? While dying eggs this morning I was trying to get a nice photo of the girls. They were so busy coloring, I couldn't get them to smile. In every picture they were intently working, while saying "cheese", while" smiling nicely". It was only after having them say "Jesus Loves Me!" Did I get genuine smiles and the spark in their eyes. How appropriate on this Good Friday.