A Few Days Late!!!

:-D
I LOVE the library -- it's so quiet and comfortable, my kids pick out tons of books and love to sit here reading them.....I should have stuck dinner in the crock pot, then I could stay all day!!!!
I was here Tuesday, too, but I got distracted by all the Pinterest pages I had open, and didn't have time to blog......Pinterest is becoming VERY dangerous for me....!  I can easily lose hours looking through there.  Tuesday, I got caught up in recipes!  Usually I'm very careful and discerning about what I pin when it comes to primitive pictures and ideas, but I just totally lose that focus when I see recipes!  And then I created a "secret" board for recipes to try before adding to my "Yummy" board, and that was IT......I was out of control!!  I think I have 400 or more pins on that board!!!  I guess it's time to make something from those recipes, right?! :-D

Anyway, the other thing that happened while I haven't been blogging is that Brian had his summer vacation last week!  Oh, it was wonderful.....I love having him home and with me!!  Of course, now that he's back at work this week, it's thrown me all off -- I haven't done ONE thing I wanted to all week!!  I just can't seem to get that lonely feeling for him away from me after having so much fun doing things around the house with him.  The excitement is missing!  So I have been sitting and looking through all my magazines every day.  At least I can say I've been organizing them, which really means moving the piles of magazines around and changing out the ones in my "Favorites" box for different ones! LOL  And today is Thursday again, so he'll be home tomorrow - YAY!! :-D

Another thing that we crossed off my list when he was home were the thresholds!!!!  That's where the last ugly remnants of the old floors that we covered were showing, and now they are GONE!!  Yippee!!!
There were four doorways (without doors) that needed them, and they were all different sizes - the kitchen one even has one of our heating/air vents in it! (poor planning on our part when we extended the kitchen wall! :-P)
Here are the before and after pictures (I love looking at them! :-D)......

These all need to be painted still, and I can see the laundry room floor in these last two pictures should get another coat of paint too! (that's one of the jobs I was supposed to tackle this week....)
Here's the last one.....

This is where the new wood floor joins the kitchen -- doesn't the stain look great?!!  I love it!
And I think Brian did a great job making the space for the vent cover.  It was a little tricky - he had to use the jig saw to cut the edges of the square while it was here on the floor! - but it's perfect!!
I guess I should have taken a side picture, so you could see the shape and height of them, but I'll do that when I paint the others.  I had him cut them so they looked like the old raised thresholds I see in all my favorite pictures!! :-D  Of course, the kids keep stubbing their feet and tripping over them (haha!), so I am getting lots of complaints and comments ("we aren't actually IN an old house you know, Mom!"), but I LOVE them and I told them they'll get used to them!! :-D

Now let me show you the other really FUN thing Brian made for me!  When we first moved in and I started changing the house around, I decided to do something about the long white joining seam that ran along the entire ceiling in our family/living rooms.  You see, because this is a manufactured home, both sides were delivered here separately and then put together on site, so they covered the ceiling "seam" with a long white piece of pressed wood.  I painted it two different shades of brown to make it look more like a real beam, and then I had Brian put 2x6s on the walls on both ends of it, and painted them the same!  It made it look better, even good, but I've always thought it needed something more.....so I asked Brian to put up another piece of wood on each side.....

.....before......and.....

After!!!!

Of course, I was supposed to paint those this week, too, but....well, you know the story!

I really like them!!  I just hope they don't look too fake.  I mean, they might look dumb.....you can tell they aren't REAL.....   Once they are painted, I hope they will look good.  I can't wait to hang things from them!!!

The last exciting thing I wanted to share with you was something that is oh so familiar around here......

.....a mangy, skinny, sad, sorry little dog found us.  Isn't she SO sweet!?!! :-)  My mom said there must be some kind of animal ESP message going on out there to come to our yard if they need help! (I even saved an injured wild bunny once!)  And at least this time she wasn't a victim of the losers across the street (although the kids over there tried to say they were keeping her -- ahhhh, NOPE!).  She wandered into our yard covered in ticks and burrs and some kind of black oil (and no collar).  And she was so timid and even afraid -- she loved to be petted and have attention, but as soon as we moved our hands around near her, she would duck and cower and try to crawl away! :-(  In case you can't tell, she is also pregnant.  So we fed her and I called my dearest angel-helper who I've turned to with all my dog problems, just to ask advice, but she told me, "Bring her!".....isn't she wonderful?!  She has NEVER turned a dog away!  So I drove her there the next day, and by nighttime, she had found a wonderful home for her!!!  And those people brought her to the vet the day after that, and the vet did an ultrasound and said she has 4 puppies that are about one month along! :-)  My friend told me that she LOVES those people so much, she could tell just by watching her with them at the vet's!  Isn't that the best thing?!!!  I love that she has been mistreated and alone all this time, and now she is getting all the love and attention that she wants!  It just delights my heart!!! :-D

There are SO MANY abandoned and unwanted dogs down here, it's probably going to be a lifetime thing for us.  But like Brian said, we can't turn our backs on an animal that needs us, no matter what.  I am SO grateful that he feels like that, because I could never refuse to do anything I had to to help, and it makes it so much easier that he believes the same and wants us to help -- I don't have to sneak around!! Haha!

Alright, I guess I need to get going!  I am waiting for a call-back from the phone company guy who is working on the line re-do, because this is starting to take too long.  At least I am getting a credit back from them for last month and this month, if necessary.

And oh, how lovely, guess what it's doing outside.....here's a hint: it's the same thing it did last night, and the night before that, and the day before that, and for two weeks before that!!!  RAINING!
Do you know that we have only had TWO - count 'em, 2 - days that were 90 so far this year???  That has to be some kind of record, because every summer for the past ten years it has been 90 or above for half of June and most of July and August!  Do you know that it's been hotter at my mom's in Massachusetts than down here??  WOW!  Not that I'm complaining about that, but I'm just so surprised!  I didn't think that could happen here!!
*Sigh!*  Good thing I have a book tote bag to wrap my laptop in!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!  I almost feel lost without any big projects looming over my head.  All I really have left is painting.....maybe it's time to start planning another room.....???
Shhhh!....Don't tell Brian I said that!! ^-^