End of the Week Update

Keith has been in the UK all week (he left on Sunday) and he finally gets home tonight! We've all been missing him (Belle always asks for him when she's going to bed and realizes she didn't get to kiss her Daddy goodnight!) and can't wait to have him home again! I've been pleasently surprised at how my first week totally on my own has gone. Of course, I've gotten by "with a little help from my friends". :) We've seen Erica, Nikki, Halle a couple of times this week, so that helped with adult interaction for me and energy release for Annabelle, and Kimberly came over last night to help with the kids while Nicole helped me with our weekly "get the house back in order" date. It always helps to have so many friends around who love to hold Corgan. As much as I love to hold him, when he gets in that "I have to be held or I'm going to scream" mood, it's always nice to have someone else to hand him off to occasionally. Keeping busy has helped the week to fly by too. Aside from the Halloween-related outtings, I've had a couple of projects going on (like reorganizing the under-the-stairs closet and the hall closet) which have kept me busy. There was one night this week that Corgan was up lots, but other than that, he slept pretty good. So, in summary... this week wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. A big thank you to everyone who helped me survive, and yea for Daddy getting home tonight!

Things have stalled on the house for a little while. The trees and grass are all out of the way now, and some foundation dirt has been brought in to start settling. We're currently on septic and well water, and we are going to need a new septic tank as a part of the addition so before sinking money into that, we decided to check to see if city utilities were available to us now. After going around between a few different "cities" who kept passing me around saying we weren't their responsibility, I ended up finding out we are out of luck for now so we're proceeding with the septic. So, now we have to wait until next week for the septic permitting process to get started. Hopefully that won't take long and we'll be on our way again.

We've decided to go ahead and order some of the fixtures/furnitures so that we'll have them when we need them and we won't risk them being discontinued. A couple of things we're ordering now are the vanities for the bathrooms. I LOVE the ones that I've picked out. For our master bathroom, the room is going to have a "Rustic Italian" theme. The tile that I've chosen, Casa Dolce Casa's Le Argille tile in Terra Rossa (see below), looks a lot like terra cotta, but has a high variation in color. I LOVE it! The walls will have a Venetian Plaster faux finish like the one that I did for my sister-in-law a couple of years ago. It will be in a neutral-ish yellow tone. And the vanity for the master bathroom is a reproduction furniture piece from Home Decorators (see below). I love the look of it and all of the drawers that it has. It's crazy that awesome furniture like that is actually cheaper than the built-in cabinets. Also, all of the fixtures are going to be an oil rubbed bronze finish. I can't wait to see it all together!
Master Bathroom Tile:

Master Bathroom Vanity:

The kids bathroom is going to be a polar opposite of the master bathroom. It will have a wainscoting of white subway tiles on the walls, light, bright green paint on the top half of the walls with blik wall decals on them (the Tumblers in kiwi and Critters in aruba), an all white vanity with a protruding sink (see below), a round tilt-mirror, and a black tile floor. The fixtures in this bathroom will all be chrome (similar to these). Right now I'm thinking that the shower curtain in this bathroom will just be plain white since there will be so much going on on the walls. I think this will be a fun kids' bathroom for a boy and a girl too!

Kids' Bathroom Vanity:

I can't wait until it's all ready to use!