Friday High Five

I thought this day would never come. Ah, Friday, glorious Friday! This has been a very busy week. After having company I find there is always a lot to get done, just to get life back to normal. It was also a full week after a short one the week before. That's always hard to cope with. Really, shouldn't all work weeks be only 4 days? We should start a petition!

1.  Wow! Does our place look amazing! Dan and his father managed to get so many projects done around the house while he was visiting. I never expected them to do so much. They brightened up the guest bedroom by getting rid of the old grey and red color scheme. The room looks so much bigger now with its punchy yellow and blue walls. They also painted several doors in the house, painted the front hall closet door, changed all of our light switches and moved all of the heavy furniture out of the room down stairs and from the upstairs room to downstairs. We are finally in the home stretch and will be able to go look at carpet for the nursery, this weekend.

2. After all the renovations that were done in our home last week (my husband and father in-law worked overtime to get everything done... and what an amazing job they did!) we still need to organizing a lot of things, especially in our new guest bedroom/offices. I have a cupboard in our former guest bedroom/offices, however, it was damaged when we moved and then damaged again when we tried to move it to the other side of the room. The sad fact is, this cabinet will NEVER make it down the stairs in one piece. I have a lot of crafty stuff to store so I definitely needed a new cabinet. I found a really great one at Canadian Tire. We went to pick it up last weekend but the only one they had in the store was really badly damaged. My dad was able to help us grab another one with his truck (since it is pretty large). My parents also helped us take it all downstairs. That was a lifesaver since i'm not supposed to be doing any heavy lifting. The cabinet is still in pieces in the basement, but we should be able to build it in the next day or two. I love storage!

3. I also decided that it was time I got a new desk. The desk I currently have is in really rough shape. I purchased it at a thrift store for a whole $5. It's never been in very good shape, although it has served me well. The thing I really liked about the desk was that it had a lot of storage. I started looking around and found one that I was really interested in at Ikea. Dan and I hopped in the car on Tuesday night to take a look at it. It was disappointing. I thought the desk would actually be a lot bigger than it was. It wasn't very wide and definitely not deep enough to use my Cricut on it.

 See how much storage this desk has? There are shelves inside the cupboard, 2 drawers, not to mention the shelves on the hutch portion. It also has a white board on the back. I thought it would be perfect. Just as we were leaving, Dan spotted another style of desk that I have never given a second thought to. A secretary desk. We spent a few minutes checking this one out and I was very quickly falling in love! Inside both the top portion and the bottom there are shelves that I can fill with all kinds of junk! The front panel pulls down to create your flat desktop and there are more shelves inside that part that will be perfect for holding paper. I really hemmed and hawed over the price. It was about 3 times more than I was hoping to spend. I suppose in a way to justify the purchase to myself, I have decided that since I paid so little for my current desk I should definitely splurge on this one. I think the plan is to go pick it up tomorrow morning. The only downside to this desk is that it is solid wood. I know, you're thinking it's crazy that I would rather have press board than wood. The thing is, with this particular line that Ikea has, the press board has a really nice, smooth, shiny, laminate finish. Whereas, the solid wood is just stained. It's a more dull finish and I don't like that you can see the wood grain. It's a flaw I have decided to live with.

4. Wednesday night a girlfriend of mine invited me to an Arts fundraiser that she had an extra ticket to. It's a good thing that these tickets were comped to her, because they were $200 per person. It was a black tie affair and neither of us knew what to expect. The food at the event was delicious! However, everything was served in very small portions. We were still hungry after we left so we went to grab some dinner. It was a very fun night! Despite the rather dull event, the company was great! We spent hours chatting away. It was definitely a nice way to break up the monotony of the week.

5. Last night Meghan came over for another round of soap making! As usual, we tackled 2 batches. (I really should get a third mold so that we can get more done in one sitting) The scents we chose this week were Lavender and Peach Bellini. We had a bit of trouble creating a good lavender color. A chemical reaction often turns my liquid colors into mud when we add them into our soap, so you never really know what you are going to wind up with. Eventually we did get a nice color. It's maybe a little more grey than lavender but it will do the trick. We also added a little bit of pale purple glitter and lavender buds to the top of the soap, just to make differentiation easier. We had run out of any color that may resemble peach so we had to improvise a little bit with the Peach Bellini soap. We chose to stick with a natural colored base but added in some peachy and coppery glitter. It turned out really nice when I cut it up this morning. And both scents smell amazing!

I hope everyone has a great weekend full of fun and rest! On a side note... just over 50 days until Mexico!