Cool

It was a pleasure to finally find a pool being used on a hot day! No, not native New Englanders -- transplants, like us. I love the color combination of the icy blue with the pink. I also love the idea of keeping a flock of real flamingos on the front lawn -- wouldn't that be cool? Obviously the zoo knows how to keep them from flying away, and contained by just a small fence.... This is the kind of thing I say, with excitement and energy, to which Ken responds by looking at me with an expression of kind of bemused terror -- "ah, are you serious?" -- well, yeah. Just as serious as wanting to put in a few killer holes of mini golf out front, but I haven't gotten the green light on that project yet, either.

It's kind of why our house still looks really un-put-together, unfinished, inside. Ken and I have very different tastes and styles, so we compromise to the point of not really doing very much. Our furniture just gets plopped down in each room along a path of least resistance, there's no real sense of design or style. It has hit me just recently how awful the place looks -- 17 years of the same old faded posters in frames on the walls, a weird hybrid of knick-knacks and Lego constructions, pieces of furniture from our pre-marriage apartment days that are so beat up it's not funny. Ken has agreed to a room-by-room clean-up, clear-out, re-do; it won't be so much about buying new stuff as it will be about getting rid of stuff we don't need and making the place look more put-together. Some fresh paint, all new curtains. I really, really hate making curtains but the faded, frayed scraps hanging at the windows now definitely need to go. I'd like to come home at the end of the day and feel good about the place. Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, I was just utterly delighted to have received this award from Sandy! It's one that's been going around the world quite a bit -- how cool is that? And I get to pass it along to seven others, who are:

Natalie
Leslie
Dawn
Cocoa
Helen
"Quilt Pixie"
and Linda, even though she's taking a break at the moment

So the deal is that you pick up the graphic here, from my blog, you include a link to me, and then you pass the award along to 7 others.