More home construction

School started here this week. Bailey was most excited about it. She's a sophmore this year.

I always take a picture of her on the first day of school, so here's this year's picture.



Isn't she adorable!

But, this post is about floors.

This is our old dining room.

In the picture above you can see Bailey and our nephew, Raylon. Raylon is living with us while he attends the University of North Texas. His older brother lived with us a couple of years ago, so it was his turn now. Bailey is enjoying having a brother around.

This is my office, which is officially supposed to be a formal living area, I guess.

Let's see how many pictures Twister can get into.

And here's our family room. Please ignore the mess.


One more picture looking from the family room, back towards the dining room and my office.


This week we replaced the carpet in our downstairs areas and put in wood floors.

Here's my new dining room.


This is from my office, looking through the dining room and into the family room.


Here's the family room. Yes, there's football on the tv.

There's ALWAYS football on the tv.


This is looking into my office from my dining room.


You can see two computer monitors on my desk because I'm working this weekend. Hurricane Irene has me hopping.

There's still a fine layer of dust on everything in my house from the construction. I'll get it all up eventually. Yeah, right!

Home Improvements? And a little help please . . .

This summer will go down as the summer that was almost as hot as the record summer in 1980. It's been miserably hot here. I can't wait for cooler weather. I'm really 100% OVER summer.

This summer will also be memorable to us as the summer we did some home repairs.

One of the storms that hit us back in early June caused us some roof damage, caused some of our windows leaked, and caused some ceiling damage in our bedroom where the roof leaked.

Since we had to have our bedroom ceiling repaired, we decided to take this opportunity to have our bedroom painted.

I should explain how everything happened though. We knew who our contractor was going to be, we just weren't sure when he was going to be available. So, one day during lunch I was running through Wal-Mart with my coworker and we stopped by the paint section and I picked out four paint swatches that I liked. Then I put them in my purse and didn't really think about them again for a while.

Then one Tuesday I get a call from my contractor saying that he will come out the next day to do the work.

Did I go out and get more paint swatches? Did I go out and look at paint selections any more? Did I even spend more than five minutes reviewing the choices I had in my purse? The answer to all of these questions would be a big NO.

So, now that you have the background story, let me show you some pictures.

This is our bedroom.


When we moved into this house this was the first room I painted (thus the bad edging job).

Here's the other half of our bedroom, and Twister of course.


I should point out that these pictures were taken early in the morning. Our bedroom gets the morning sun and therefore the color looks much brighter than it would have at night.

I should also point out that I don't think my room is ever this clean.

One more picture - Twister was upset that he wasn't in the first picture so he had me take this one.


Ok - so now you know how our bedroom used to look. Now, keep in mind that I spent about five minutes reviewing paint color choices. And I never even read the paint names on the paint chips. This would prove to be a critical mistake.

Here's our room now. And these pictures were taken at night, so the room is a bit more subdued than it might be in the morning sun.



I've changed out the coverlet, and the pillows to try to blend with the new room color.

We are not thrilled with the paint color (the paint job was great, just my bad color choice). However, we are not about to have the room repainted, nor am I going to repaint the room myself. It's too hot here and I'm too old.



And I should have known better than to stick with this paint when our contractor started laughing at the name of the paint, "Sweet baby boy."

So here's where you come in. I love the iron piece we have on the wall. It was from my Grandmother. I like how it stands out more with the blue paint than it did with the brown. I thought I would play off of the blue and black theme when I chose the black throw blanket and pillows.

However, when Rominal came home one night and saw the new bedding, he just laughed. He is not a fan of the new look. Luckily for me he is an incredibly good sport and is not fussing at all. Apparently he never liked the brown paint either. His comment was that he lived in the brown room for 8 years, he can live in the baby blue room for 8 years too.

He is thinking we need dark blue bedding. I guess I'm stuck on the white bedding because fist of all, I just bought it, and second because my initial plan was to have the faintest of blue color on the walls. I wanted the color to be so soft that it almost looked white, and then have nice peaceful white bedding to go with it.

Well, you can se what happened.

So, any suggestions on how to make this work?

Delivering Cookies

So, I haven't blogged in a while. I just haven't had much to say I guess.

It's hot here in Texas. Very hot. We have had over 30 days in a row with temperatures over 100 degrees. If we stay above 100 through next Saturday, and it looks like we will, this will be the longest streak of 100 degree days on record.

Did I mention it was hot here?

Today Bailey and I delivered cookies. A lot of cookies.

Last week I made two batches of these cookies. They are my Mother and my Grandfather's favorite cookie. The recipe makes a lot of cookies too.

I put them in the freezer and let them chill, then I bag them up in freezer bags so that my Mom and Grandfather can pull out 9 cookies at a time. Once they have defrosted, they taste fresh baked.

Here's what they look like in individual bags.



At first I thought I could use my little cooler to transport the cookies, but as you can see, they wouldn't fit.


I had to use my large cooler.


Mom is most pleased to find all of these cookies. She took half of the cookies and she is so disciplined that she can make these last a long time. She will eat just two a day. I wish I had that kind of will power!


After we delivered cookies to my Mom, we took cookies to my Grandfather.

My Grandfather, and my late Grandmother, have been ever so lucky to have a woman named Gloria help them out on a daily basis. Gloria has been such a blessing to us. When my Grandmother was alive, she loved to look at family pictures. She and Gloria spent countless hours going through tons of family albums. Gloria now knows more about our family than I'm sure she cares to know.

It takes a very special person to care for the elderly, and luckily for us, we found her. We are thankful every day that Gloria is a member of our family.

Here's my mother, my daughter Bailey, and Gloria along with my Grandfather.



Grandpa is now 91 or 92 years old. Yes, I should know for sure, but it's late here and I can't call my mom to verify his age this late at night.




My Grandparents owned a toy distribution company that they had started from the ground up. They worked very hard, but they always had time for family. Grandpa was especially good at magic tricks, and he always managed to found a quarter behind our ears when we would visit.



He did so much for me and every member of our family, I am ever so happy to make him cookies.