Closet!

Tom finished my custom closet today! EEek :) This is in our master bedroom. We are not planning to do this to the other closets. Not sure what we will do with those yet. I love that the top shelf is not the full width of the closet. The bottom shelf is the full width of the closet. I had envisioned that the bottom shelf would be lower, so that we could fit bins on top as well as below the shelf , but it might still work out- my dresses just graze the top of the bin as you can see in the last picture.

We used bright white paint on the inside of the closet. I know... I know. I keep using bright white but again, the lighting is what I am thinking about. There are no lights in the closets. Also, we are choosing to leave the doors off of all the closets. There were flimsy and in terrible shape. The sliding tracks were bent, and one half of one closet door was missing completely anyhow.

What do you think?

Curtains!

I had bought a bunch of curtains from Meijer that were on clearance very close to us moving all into the house. I ordered some curtain rods from Khol's. They are less than impressive to say the least. I would NOT recommend them. I didn't return them only because I got them so cheap, with free shipping, and do not want to spend any more time to find good ones right now.

So any way, I've had them for a bit now and have bugged Tom about getting them put up nearly every day. Pretty sure he wants to kill me.

He got them up! Who knew that it could be so challenging though!?

Like... how far to the left and right of the window trim? 
How far above the window trim vs how far down from the ceiling? 
Or - put them right in the trim? 

Let's just say there a few too many holes in my walls following this "experiment" and I know for sure Tom has plotted my torture. They still aren't how I would like them- they aren't all uniform (some rooms are higher than others) and I'm still not sure about the measurements. But we finally just put them up and will stay that way until we both have enough energy to try this again. We have privacy and efficiency!

So, I'm begging - If you have some insight, PLEASE COMMENT!

A picture from the first attempt at putting the rods up. We changed it.

Dusted

Today I started to finish a project- I wanted to scrap/sandoff the remaining glue left behind when we stripped the wallpaper in the hallway. Even while taking the wallpaper down originally, we were scrapping a lot of glue, but there is too much left behind to ignore. Not only am I concerned that if I left it, the glue would seep through the primer and paint, but the texture it left on the walls was terrible! I am convinced that they had applied the glue to the wall and then also used preglued wallpaper. There's so much glue!

Tom was hunting for the weekend and I began this project in the morning. I still hadn't finished until late after he got home. He helped me finish. My right arm and elbow had gone numb! I still just can't believe how much glue was used to put up that wall paper. The only way to get this stuff off was to sand it. 

 I taped up some plastic to try and contain the dust. There was just too much! Can you believe this?!? After I finished sanding, I used the shop vac to get up as much dust as possible. Then, I did take some hot water and sponged the walls down again. I just don't want this stuff to seep through the primer and paint. 

Finally, it's done though. I am excited to get the paint up! We are just going to use the bright standard white. There's zero natural light in this hallway. Bummer!

Paint it... Well... not Black...

At this point, the floors are refinished, the walls and ceilings are primed. I  picked out some colors. Literally just went into Lowes and picked from the color cards. I just crossed my fingers that they would work out. We used Valspar Reserve with a flat finish for the living room and the three rooms. The ceilings we used the standrad bright white because to me, there is not enough natural light in the space to use an eggshell color.

We started painting the color in our room and the small rooms first so that we can finally move our bedroom from the living room and our boxes from the garage.

We did Urban Sunrise, and I LOVE this gray.

We did the painting in this room just after we finished the hardwood floors, so it was done much earlier in October, but I just never got around to posting about our colors.

It is perfect!

 We did the same color in the two small rooms. We used Cinncinnatian Hotel Hannaford. Isn't that quite a name for a paint color? I guess you can only have so many variations of beige before you need to get super creative! 

We kind of hate this color. I feel like I am sitting in a fish bowl!

One thing...

A question occurred to me today. It's not an uncommon question. But for some reason I felt I could genuinely answer it for possibly the first time.

If there was one thing you can do to change someone's life, what would it be?

My answer is very simple. Yet I feel it's power is profound and not widely accepted.

I would hug that person. 

Most might think that a hug would not make that much of a difference. But watch people. When a person genuinely accepts another's embrace, their response is quite simply, joy.  

And as I have pondered before, joy is what we are truly seeking, not happiness. Happiness is a very shallow emotion and emotions change so quickly. Yet joy is something we experience and is much more fulfilling. The things that bring us joy don't change as frequently, whether it's an activity or a person, we will return to "it" time and time again to be fulfilled.

I've never seen a person unsatisfied with a hug that they accepted from another individual.

Now, I know there are people we wouldn't be happy to hug or to receive a hug from. But when you have been accepting of that person, have you ever been dissatisfied by their embrace?

Our society today discourages platonic embraces. I know, because I was a public school teacher. I was asked not to hug my students good bye on my last day in the classroom with them. How sad! And I find our nation in general, is SAD.

People are busy. Working, going to school, or just simply distracted by monotonous media of many forms (TV, internet, catalogs, magazines, etc.). And we are FOOLED to think that some medias are social. We get shallow satisfaction from participating in medias such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and SnapChat. We miss out on the most fulfilling aspect of human interaction by participating in these passive exchanges.

People need hugs. I'm convinced anyway. What do you think?