October progress

Stephanie completed most of her living room/dining room home improvement project after Ike in October. She decided to take the yellow draperies back to World Market and found instead some thin white sheers, which she used on the half a dozen windows (which also have unusual white blinds) in the rooms.



Then she hung - in some cases, for the first time - some things on the newly painted green walls, including a scroll with my name in Korean that Penny had had constructed in Korea for me while I was there in 1995.

(Before we had a big argument) Stephanie and I had kissed on the rooftop of our Antigua, Guatemala hotel - during the summer 2007 mission trip - and our intrepid colleague Doug was there to take the picture - and he got a big color printing of it made - which we had framed at Michael's. This was near what Sara called the romance corner of the living room/dining room - and so we put it up there. I have mixed feelings about placing a picture of ourselves in our dining room - and in a slightly intimate pose - but it is a cool picture - and it was a beautiful evening.

Now - we get to another sore point. Stephanie has been looking for a replacement dining room table for the used one we got from her Mom (and her Grandma) years ago. The one we've got now is wobbly, maybe a little out of fashion, and it doesn't have a leaf, so we can't expand it (and even slide it around) to serve more people. The one time we've had a little dinner party with a majority of adults, it was pretty difficult. Below are some pictures of the existing table (with then new - replacing the Florida plastic ones - placemats).

I think that many of the tables she's looking at have been too big. Either way, we often don't have money and the Guatemala trip and car repair are currently eclipsing this. Stephanie continued to move around the room, cleaning, hanging curtains and pictures, and redesigning. Below she is hanging the sheer curtains in the window that overlooks the turtle terrarium.

And then she put the terrarium back and stepped back and took a picture . . .

. . . and then rested back on the couch, where it all began (the first step of the living room/dining room redesign - you might recall - before tearing down the wall paper and border and painting the walls bright green this summer - was finding an affordable yellow microfiber couch that would actually fit into our living room (after getting the coffee table in 2005- and then the runner in Guatemala) - back in summer of 2006.)

Good work, Stephanie! We'll find the perfect dining room table eventually!

-- Perry