After Pictures - Living Areas

Day 3 of our Great Clean of 2012, and we worked on the living areas - kitchen, living room, family room, entryways.

Living Room - we (Will) installed our new sofa covers and colorful new pillows! Our two couches in the living room are quite sad. One was a used couch we purchased in 1998 (from a somewhat sketchy used furniture store in Junction City). The other is a used couch that we got from our friends in 1999 - which had been used by my friends' parents for something like TWENTY YEARS beforehand. That means that on average, our couches are about 58 years old. I love their new look!

I actually (1) finished putting pictures in the collage on the fireplace mantle, and (2) put pictures in and hung (okay, Will hung) a new picture frame that we received for Christmas on the wall. This is momentous because we have exactly zero printed out pictures. As it turns out, you can upload pictures to Walgreens' website and pick them up about 45 minutes later - who knew??

The room is also de-Christmased and the train table is back to its rightful position (behind the couch). Last year, we wanted to wait until Epiphany to take down the tree. This meant that all ornaments were put away around April 1st.

Entry way from the garage - installed hooks so that we can hang up backpacks, etc. when we first come in. (I didn't take pictures, but we also cleaned up the entryway next to the front door and put in even more hooks. Clearly we love hooks this year.)

Family Room downstairs - another cube makes its appearance! This one has all of the kids' games and puzzles so that they are easily accessible.

The "grown-up" game shelves! (Would anyone like to play Trivial Pursuit??)

Couches in the family room. Notice that no laundry is on the floor, because all laundry is DONE! Booyah!

Kitchen - put away all of the Christmas presents, random stuff, etc. etc. Finally filed/cleaned out the paperwork hanging on the walls and in the boxes in the bookcase in the back. I discovered several gift cards that I had forgotten about (and some that I honestly didn't know existed - like a $50 punch card for open gym at the gymnastics place in town for paying in advance!). Will also replaced the bulbs in the chandelier. There are about 12-15 different bulbs - previously, two (2!!) were still working.  (The gingerbread house is still on the table because we promised the kids they could eat it after Christmas.)

Main part of the kitchen - nothing on the island, hooray!

Our greatest accomplishment in the kitchen was the Art Desk. Or, the Place Where Papers and Random Creative Inventions Go to Die. I don't think I took a picture of it before, but if you have been to our house, you can attest to the mile-high mess that it was. Now, not only are the art supplies organized, there is even room to actually create art AT the desk. Crazy.

Besides cleaning, we also took advantage of the chance to relax some today. After church this morning, we went out to lunch with some of our church friends to a local Mexican restaurant, which was a lot of fun. Later in the afternoon, Will and I went running together!! I am so ecstatic that Will's foot has healed enough that he can run again...not to mention that he is almost 30 pounds lighter now than before, so he was really flying. It is hard for me to keep up with him now!

Later this evening, we headed over to Julie and Charlie's house for Game Night while Greg snoozed. We played a very fun cooperative game, Forbidden Island, along with my favorite board game ever, Chronology (did you know that toilet paper was invented in 1857??).

Julie and Charlie prepared some very tasty (and addictive) fudge, plus had copious amounts of liquor on hand. Hands down, RumChata won.

Meanwhile in DeSoto, the kids did in fact play Star Wars Monopoly today! We really miss them and are excited to pick them up and see them tomorrow. I'm not exactly sure when that will be since the weather is threatening to snow tomorrow, but it will be great to be with them on New Year's Eve!