brrrrr...

well, this was the view outside of my house on monday morning...

of course, now it's wednesday and there are only tiny patches of snow hiding in the cool shadows...but still, it was a very, chilly and wintery greeting...once again reminding me that the warmer months are still far enough away. guess i should get around to taking the last holiday decoration down. i don't know why i haven't - probably because it's outside and i don't see it constantly. until i leave the house or pull up the drive.

amelia seemed nonplussed over the snow. she was much more intrigued with the glass pieces i have temporarily on the bay-window. she sprouted upward recently in a bit of a growth spurt and can reach more things. better move them out of her grasp.

of course, she flashed me an innocent, "ma, i PROMISE to be totally carefully with your crystal bowl" look.

i have all my cute valentine's decor up already. i don't have a lot of it and just started collecting some pretties this year. but, there are adorable, little felt hearts adorning some of the cabinets in the kitchen, a "sweetheart" of a welcome sign in the foyer and a budding, pink heart wreath perched above the bed in the master bedroom. i find i like to slowly acquire my decorations for the holidays…each new year brings with it a host of new decorations…eye-pleasing color combinations. i like my collection to be a mish-mosh of favorites, coordinated accordingly and placed in different areas of the house. it’s nice to look back and say, “i remember i got that the year…” and have some memories associated with that inanimate item.
in other news…dining room is coming along slowly. hubby pulled the chair-rail this weekend to expose the wallpaper underneath and i have taken those remains down. my husband’s eager handiwork left some nice gashes in the wall, but nothing that a little spackle and sanding can’t remedy.

there are a few tricky areas i have to tackle next, and they’ll probably have to wait until my husband’s around, which means mustering up some patience for either this weekend or next weekend {we have some family obligations this weekend, which may mean it gets put off….ho hum…}. we have to take down the control box to the central air and take down the wallpaper around that {weird, huh?}; and, we have to exacto-knife the second pattern of wallpaper that goes from where the chair-rail used to be {about mid-way on the wall}, down to the floor where there’s another chair-rail molding that runs along where the floor and wall meet. Since the wallpaper runs behind that molding as well {ugh}, the exacto-knife will be used to cut the wallpaper neatly along the rail since we’d like to keep that up and not tear it down. but, after that, i can run to the paint store for the fun part…getting the paint! more to come in the next few days...