D-Day hangover

I'm nursing a few hangovers this morning. There's the "oh how I love my sisters-in-law and my New Mexico besties" hangover, after a weekend where we were lucky enough to host them. There's the "is it possible to have so much fun in one weekend and connect with so many fun new friends?" hangover. There's the "oh wow, I ate and drank sort of an obscene amount this weekend" kind of hangover. And last but not least, there's the D-Day hangover.

Our D-Day was Friday afternoon, when our first official weekend guests arrived. Since we moved in, Friday was the date we knew we'd be revealing our place to family, in an unfinished-but-most-definitely-getting-there sort of way. We'd been working so hard getting ready for the big reveal by the time Friday rolled around... even if our big reveal still missed key features such as a kitchen floor or dining room furniture. The painting, the hanging, the organizing... just exhausting work making it happen, and I know we couldn't have pushed any harder than we did the last few weeks. I'm proud of us, and the payoff was huge... so very worth it as soon as T's family walked through the door. Here's a little of what they saw:

Victorian Fug mantel no more! Here's the super-simple mantel that our carpenter made for us, which features simple shelving to help store electronics and space on the wall for our oh-my-word-why-didn't-I-realize-it-was-so-big television. Do I love the idea of having the television over the mantel? No. But is there anywhere else in the room it can possibly go? No. So I've moved on. And why are the angled shelves so asymmetrical, you ask? It's because they're doing their best to deal with the insanely angled wall behind them. Here's hoping that as the rooms and walls get completely furnished, I'll stop noticing. We're planning on painting the insides of the shelves at some point, which I think will help in that regard.

Living room, still "cozy." We've decided we probably can't get the wall that closes off the living room taken down until the end of the summer, so until then we'll just deal with the space issues it creates. (And try not to invite more than two people over who needs seats.)

Speaking of needing seats... welcome to the dining room! I sold our bar-style table with high stools on Craigslist, but our new table won't be delivered until the end of the month, at which point we'll start shopping for chairs. T wants to set up a temporary Moroccan lounge in here, complete with a hookah. Hmmm.

Paint, almost everywhere. Also almost everywhere: sticky notes listing which items will be hung where. The sticky note on red: "Family Gallery Wall." That Ikea bag: full of said family photos. We'll get there.

Oh, Azores, I do adore you on our kitchen walls. As long as it took me to settle on a color, I'm thrilled with this one. And also thrilled that the new pantry door we ordered is currently leaning on an opposite wall, ready for us to install in place of that old bifold door. See the coolers on the floor over there? Full of condiments and cooking ingredients that will be hung inside the door once we get it up. That's going to be a very happy day. 

My home office, aka the "guest overflow on an air mattress" room. I have a few small items to frame and hang, but otherwise this baby's done.

The bathroom. You've seen it before, but dang if it doesn't make me happy enough to show again.

The guest room. Goodbye garish yellow, hello BM Classic Gray. I wanted a calm and neutral room for our company, and this color fits the bill perfectly. 

That's all for now, unless you want to see evidence of a failed ceiling fan installation in our bedroom. Related: we've got to find a handyman/electrician/magicman, stat.

Thanks for reading after my neglectful behavior over the last two weeks. For what it's worth, getting over the D-Day hump defintely means that blogging is back on the agenda. (As soon as I take more Advil for this pounding head of mine.)