Doogan playing with a table

We recently got a side table that has a lamp attached to it, and a magazine rack on the bottom.  Here's Doogan enjoying the new toy.

Video 1

From 6.24.10

Video 2

From 6.24.10

Absent

Yes, I've been absent lately.  Last week was a challenging week.  Blake upgraded some of his sound equipment and there was a bigger learning curve than we expected.  But, we are past it now, and smarter for it :)  I'm proud that he and I figured it out.  That's all I will say about that, and will spare you the recap involving tears and late nights.  We're sane again now.

I've been reading a lot lately, still.  It really is my escape and I love that I love to read.  It's so "me."  My office manager here at work, oddly, has the most awesome taste in books.  Some of my best reads have been suggested by her: "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle", "The Pillars of the Earth" (which started my love affair with author Ken Follett)," another fun author named Lisa Gardner, and most recently, the author Jodi Picoult.  I just finished "My Sister's Keeper" which, yes, was recently a movie that was deemed "awful", but the book was really good.  After that book I am now reading another book by her called "The Plain Truth", which I am liking even better that the Sister's Keeper one.  Her writing does have a way of grabbing you and flowing you through the story.  Her subjects of her novels are always some contemporary controversial topic.  They're clean novels and thought provoking.  I'm enjoying her and will continue to read through her repetoire.

I also have been listening to "The Swan Thieves" by Elizabeth Kostova on audio book.

I listen on my 20 min drive to work, and that has been really fun.  My recent book club read was "The Bufflehead Sisters" which I enjoyed a lot but don't feel comfortable recommending because of some scenes in the book.  It mainly focused on a deep childhood friendship and it's evolution into adulthood.  Our next meeting is this Saturday, I'm so excited!

Blake gets home from Arkansas tonight - he headlined at a Festival there last night.  In the rain.  But he said about 40-50 people stayed and toughed it out in their lawn chairs under their umbrellas :)

Haven't done anything to the house lately.  It's kind of a wreck right now.  I'm counting on this weekend to inspire me to clean up.  Then, my immediate to do list includes:

• Painting the Guest Bath laminate counter-top - yes I'm going to paint it.
• Find wall sconces that do not require an electrician to wire them
• Finalize my decision on Master Bed, Guest Bed, and Living room ceiling fan purchases
• Hang the new Hobby Lobby decorations I got in the office!
• Hang the framed prayers I made for Blake at Christmas in his practice room - yep, they still aren't hung

I think that should keep me occupied for a bit.

Mirrors

I love decorating with mirrors.  And white lights! In fact, at my wedding the only decor I really had were white Christmas lights and mirrors and greenery. 

Blake and I had found a magazine picture of these 3 huge floor mirrors leaned up against a living room wall - just gorgeous! We'd been on a hunt to find something similar since we have such a massive living room with nothing on the walls.  We kept looking and looking and mirrors were just SO expensive!  Usually, they were at least $200 for the size we were wanting.  The ones in the picture we liked so much were $400 a piece.  Yikes.  There are starving kids in Africa, I don't need three $400 mirrors.  But!!  We found some mirrors at Kirkland's this past weekend that were close enough to what we were looking for that we sprung for them - and best of all they were marked down to clearance for $40 each. Blake hung them immediately and we got some sconces we are going to mount, too.  But we'll need an electrician to wire them.  We're hoping next weekend we can arrange that.

Here's the mirrors Blake hung.  We wanted them chunkier, but for $40 a piece, these are perfect.

And here's Blake modeling the sconces :)  They'll sure be pretty all lit up.

Love my hubby. He measured everything out and it's perfectly level. Like, Perfectly.  He's such a stickler on all that.  I just commented - you should be glad I'm not hanging them, they'd just be eyeballed and called "good." He smiled and said, "I know. That's why I'm hanging them."  And that's also why I'm not the one that irons in our household.  The way I iron drives Blake crazy, so he does it.  I'm not complaining.  Have you ever seen that "Everybody Loves Raymond" episode where Ray fakes that he doesn't know how to do laundry and even ruins something just so Deborah will do the laundry for him.  Yeah, I kind of do that with ironing.  But Blake pulls the laundry card on me all the time (saying he doesn't know how to do it) so I declare us "even."  I may need to verify with his mother if she ever trained him to do laundry.  I think he's faking (except he did shrink some shirts one time).