November 3, 2011

I'm a little behind in my posting for this week since I was too lazy on Sunday to write and this week has been busy with working on the house.  The weather has been relatively warm, at least for Wisconsin, and so far we haven't experience any snowfall.  Unlike other parts of the country, especially our last house in CT.  Jo and I are mentally preparing ourselves for the cold winter and are working on getting a gas fireplace insert installed so we can warm up quickly on those days the cold winds get the better of us.

We had several visitors this last weekend.  Friday night, John and Linda stopped by, on their way to Lake Geneva, for dinner and to see the latest in our house renovations - more on that below.  It was a fun evening as we got caught up on the latest news for all their kids.  Saturday, my Mom and sister came up from Chicago, mostly to give the merchants in Chicago a little time to restock all their shelves as my Mom had been visiting my sister for several days by that point.  But also to see us.  We toured the Impressionist exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum - really worth a visit, but it does really help to tour the exhibit with an artist who understands some of the explanations.  Also, if you do go, check out the signs by the paintings.  Whomever wrote them must have been seeing if they could use every arcane word they knew - I think they succeeded - but it did make reading all the signs fun.  After wearing out our feet, we stopped for lunch at the City Market in Shorewood, before heading home to - yes you guessed it - see the progress on our house.  Quite the theme.  Mom had gotten an IPod Touch and she wanted some games loaded, especially Angry Birds.  When she started playing, it just seemed like a great photo moment - so that's her, playing Angry Birds (ain't technology and advertising great).

Sunday was a cold and drizzly day, so after our morning exercising we tinkered around the house.  Most of the our efforts went towards getting my study painting started since the floor is being refinished in that room (in fact, it is happening as I type this, talk about noise).  The afternoon was filled with kids trick or treating, as Milwaukee decided to have Halloween on Sunday afternoon.  It was the first time in 10 years we had actually had anyone come by for candy so it was quite the treat to see all the costumes.  Fortunately, we bought entirely too much candy so there is some left over for us. 

One the home renovation front, I finished painting the kitchen last week and spent this week on my study.  We are nearing the end of the renovation (not the painting), as we finally have a functioning bathroom on the second floor.  No more having to go all the way to the third floor in the middle of the night.  The tiling is finished and our vanities were installed at the end of last week.  Just a few more items to finish up and we can finally start to declutter the house.  While we thought we had hit our maximum clutter a week ago, I was wrong.  We now have furniture in the hallway since we had to completely empty two of the bedrooms to get the floors redone. One of the upcoming weeks, I 'll devote the entire picture spread to shots of the various projects that are now done.