Home Sweet Home

Since I have no knitting progress photos to post, and I don't think I've posted pictures of our house, I thought I'd do that today. We're mostly unpacked, and slowly furnishing and decorating. It seems to take a really long time, maybe because of having a baby, maybe because we are not very good at making decisions.

The cats love our stairs:


Behind Geronimo, you can see the main color of our house paint. This is not a color we would have chosen. I'm not sure how well it shows up, but it's sort of a pale lemon-lime. Like a margarita, but not as fluorescent and a little more yellow. It's not hideous, but if it weren't for the two-story foyer (really just a yard by a yard spot between the front door and the stairs), we would have painted already. That's what happens when you buy a pre-owned home :) And it could be A LOT worse. This is just "not our color" instead of "so hideous we can't live with it." There are other weird things, too, like the IKEA lighting fixtures, which just aren't our style, but we've (and by "we", I mean "my dad when he visited") replaced three of these with ceiling fans, because there was only one ceiling fan in the house when we moved in, and this is Atlanta! It's hot! I have no idea how they lived without them, but it's much better now.

The guest bedroom and Lilah's room have long dormers, about 10 feet, which is like a hallway to the window. They really don't have a function, but I love them. My writing desk will go in the dormer in the guest room, and in Lilah's, we're going to get a toy chest and cushion for a window seat. Lilah's walls were already a nice butter yellow, go perfectly with the Pooh accessories we picked out, and don't need to be painted:


We're pretty darn happy with our bedroom. We got a bedroom set (our first real grown-up room furnishing), picked out curtains, and found linens. We love it. The wall color isn't really what we would have picked, but I think we've made it work well. Here's a corner that doesn't show the boxes that still need to be unpacked into drawers:

I have three boxes labeled Winter Clothes. Hahaha! Probably, I can just leave them in boxes in storage. They were necessary in Wisconsin, but not so much here.

ETA: (Boy, I had to edit a lot this time. I couldn't seem to remember everything I meant to post.) Happy anniversary to us. Matt and I celebrated 5 years of marriage on the 10th.

Knitting: The shrug is going really well! I love the Pakucho Organic Cotton and I have about 5 inches done (out of 19), so I have real progress. I am about to the point where I have to decide how to join the yarn. I was thinking the Russian Join might be too bulky in worsted weight in a lace pattern. I might have to actually swatch a couple of joins to see what's less obtrusive. Funny story: I had to relearn the long-tail cast-on for this project. I learned it once when I first started knitting, then I learned the cable cast-on and never did it again. You should have seen me. First, I ran out of yarn 2/3 of the way through, then I wound up with two feet of tail.

Reading: I re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and now it's Matt's turn. I'm reading The Science of Harry Potter (good eye, Rachel!). It's really interesting so far. I've read about different ways we might be able to make a broomstick fly, and I'm looking forward to the chapter on invisibility cloaks. It's written by a scientist who asked other scientists to sum up scientific principles on the theory that "magic" is just really, really advanced technology. Like how gravity used to be considered magic. It's very tongue-in-cheek, but does a great job of explaining things like the physics of flight and wormholes. So far, he hasn't come to the conclusion that we're capable of reproducing the magic of Harry's world, but he touches on the principles that might allow us to someday.

ETA: I finished Putting on the Dog by Cynthia Baxter. It really wasn't that good, and I don't feel I'm overly picky when it comes to cozy mysteries. The sleuth was nosy and wishy-washy. Her annoying boyfriend whined through the whole book. Jessica kept saying how great he was, but I never saw it. Although, she was really no prize either, insisting that she wanted to make it work with the boyfriend in one paragraph, and getting drunk and slow-dancing with a movie star alone in his mansion in the next. Then she'd get mad that the boyfriend was jealous. The solution was really telegraphed quite a bit, too, and I didn't care that much by the end. If I weren't so compulsive, I would have stopped halfway through.

I also read Halfway to Half Way by Suzann Ledbetter. The first in this series (mystery/romance) is South of Sanity, and these are cute. Hannah works at a retirement community that serves as home to some elderly busybodies who love to solve crimes. She's kind of their den mother. They're good-natured, funny, light reading, and I enjoyed this newest installment.

Writing: Not a thing.

Cooking: I made hummus, yum! And I've stir-fried and made pasta, but nothing too exciting.

StringBean, once I got the hat on Lilah, I started trying to turn it around, but she was having none of it! So there it is, backwards. And heh heh to "the thing that happened" etc. ETA: a non-backwards hat pic: