In which we get expensive new windows and immmediately cover them with Valentine window clings

We've been busy around here.  Too busy to blog.  But I'm so eager to share my progress!  Here's another before.

And after.  It's not done, but we've come a long way.  The wallpaper has been stripped (thank you Nana!), the walls primed and painted, and a really painful amount of joint compound was applied by my bare fingers to a crack that ran all the way around the dining room between the crown molding and the ceiling.  Ouch.  But I'm loving the colors and the way things are coming together.  I need one more vintage Louisville postcard for the frame to the right of the pass-through (Churchill Downs, I think--I found one online), and I want to make a family calendar for the other side.  We ripped off the old, ugly rubber baseboard in the kitchen but have not yet purchased new, wooden baseboard.  Pictures still need to be hung in the dining room and some of the trim is not yet painted.  But wow!  I'm feeling so pleased with how "mine" the house is starting to look.  I'm also vowing to take a break from major painting for a few weeks, though.  We need a break to focus on other things and avoid total house rehab burnout.

We did squeeze in some Valentine-making time.  I let Dorothy use the hot glue gun for a while, then changed my mind after she was such a wimp about touching some glue before it set up.  Maybe it was a bad call to let her use it in the first place, but I really do think she's a wimp.  :)  Either way, we glued faux flower petals, scraps of lace, and hearts we punched out of pretty paper onto purchased blank cards.  Kind of like halfway homemade.  Dorothy enjoyed making them, which was good since we needed enough for her whole class.  I also had adorable coupons printed from Pear Tree Greetings and I thought they turned out very sweet (the photo is on one side, the coupon is on the other).  I think the print quality is better for the money than from some photo sharing sites I've tried.  I sent the coupons to our family and they've been well received.

We've also been busy getting more colds and ear infections--argh!  It seems like the kids and I have been endlessly sick this winter.  I'm blaming too much upheaval in our home and not enough downtime, but maybe it's just that both my kids cannot keep their hands off germy objects or out of their mouths.