Unplanned progress

I never expected to get anything done this weekend.  Yesterday was my total down day, and today, we had plans to host my in-laws for mother's day, so I was fully expecting no progress.  But Kip had other ideas, so I went along for the ride.

Penny, as always, was in the thick of things..."helping" as we put together our mail-order bookcase.

We FINALLY got the guitars hung too.

And here is the final result for our organized hobby corner.  The bookcase is assembled and filled with books on painting, photography, home-brewing, masonry, religious studies, and general fiction.  We are assembling a few family photos for the top and the hat boxes contain many more snapshot not organized (yet) into albums.  These are part of those crucial "what to grab in the event of a fire" items.

As a final treat, we hung two mixed media (watercolor, pen&ink) pieces we purchased from one of our favorite Cape Cod artists - and fellow Fresh Paint gallery artist of Kip's Selma Alden.  We love her work.

The task list is not yet done, as we still must tackle the closet doors and the grid of Kip's photos.

But I could not be happier with the feeling I get when I step into this room.  While work must be done here, it is still a haven...which was exactly what we hoped for.

Hiatus

Not much has been happening at the cottage this week.  I had a whole lot of work to do at that place they pay me to go to every day, so no time to work on the house projects.  I must say though the home office is getting a lot of time spent in it, even though it isn't about finishing the decorating. It's been purely about using the space for its intended use - work at home.

Our bookcase arrived from the Home Decorators catalog order (although still no sign of the blinds from JCP...) and we'll put it together soon.  We've also selected, printed, and framed the photographs from Kip's collection to go up on the wall, but decided to wait for a time of patience and attention to hang 9 identical square frames in an exactly spaced grid.

The closet doors also remain uncut and unhung.  But today, for me, was a total day off.  I started the day with a couple of episodes of Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 in bed...and by 10AM was downstairs scrounging up some breakfast.  Then I found myself comfortably ensconced on the couch watching the rain pour down and the wind howl around outside, while I watched the next 3 DVDs in the season set.

I did take on one small task...as I watched the wind howl I realized our pool cover and the cement blocks holding it in place were in serious danger of flying into the pool.  I doubt this would be a good thing for the 10 year old liner.  So I rigged up some boards set between and weighted down by the cement blocks to minimize airflow under the liner.  I also decided to untangle the hose and hook it up and begin refilling some water into the pool under the liner to further support the cover.  This was rather ambitious of me today...and took me all of about 25 minutes.

After that, fully spent, I returned to the couch with my glass of diet pepsi and my LL Bean blanket and dissolved back into the cushions.

Some weekends, when I blow off errands and tasks and projects, I find my mood disintegrates as I realize I've wasted precious time off from office duties.

Today?  Absolutely no regrets.