Fourth of July Miscellany

What did y'all do to celebrate Independence Day? I'll give you a little Instagram (the hubs' iPhone) hint as to how we spent ours...

Since there's (still) no new baby in our lives yet, and my parents came to help us play around with a shaky ceiling fan (well, the boys did that), we agreed that it might be nice to achieve one or two longstanding to-do's on our list. Enter: table and chair set purchased around Christmas, stage right. (And that picture above? The view of our credenza/sideboard has been obstructed by the HUGE box the table was living in, which got daily clawings from Beardslee and chewings from Jasper. Chewings - that's a word, right? Regardless, Dave hasn't been this excited about house stuff in awhile...and, y'know what? I'm excited to have a put-together space for the baby to come home to.)

 

What better way to celebrate the birth of our nation (and distract us from the birth of OUR little one) than to accomplish some procrastinated projects? In this case, one of the biggest jobs was clearing out the space prior to setting up the table. Sorry, I don't seem to have a before picture of the disaster we were dealing with. Let's just say that we couldn't invite friends over (even those close friends who gladly ignore clutter) to entertain for low these 6 months. Or so. I'll remember this bad-hair-day-picture of Dave setting up the table (by far the easiest part - chairs, fine but lengthy process) the next time we're sitting enjoying a meal or getting our arses handed to us over a game of Scattegories.

I-n't he cute? And handy, too. Again, I don't have pictures of us working on the chairs, but we only purchased four - mostly because of the minimal space we're working with here. The plan down the road is to get a couple of parson's chairs (or something else possibly upholstered) for the ends of the table. For now, we're absolutely smitten.

Oh, and I did lots of hanging! ("We must hang together or we will most assuredly hang separately" -- wow, we really DID celebrate the Fourth in style!) Here's one example - and they're not crooked in real life. They're black-rimmed mirrors that came as a set of 3 for $9.99 from The Christmas Tree Shop; the third is elsewhere (and has a different frame style). The other neat thing about this picture? That's the Boston Massacre print that we got for Dave during our last Boston trip (we got it a rustic frame, it's pretty darn cool). Oh, and you can see the colors I'm considering for the dining room. Needless to say, I HATE THE RED. Hopefully I can "get the red out" before six months pass...again. Which also means I'll be hunting for a fun new rug for the space, too - or switching the living room one in (quite the neutral) and finding a new one for THAT space. Decisions, decisions.

I also hung the nursery art (it's damn near 99% finished, canyabelieveit?!) and switched out the wall hangings (my Katharine Hepburn autograph, a print on handmade paper replicating a 1683 publication entitled "The English House-Wife", a bulletin board) and the third black-framed mirror into the office. Lots o' hammering...and, yet, none of it seemed to "loosen" that baby! Dang it.

But, the holiday wasn't all household chores and "why did it take us that long to do that?" funness. It was a tad too humid (pregnant lady + a guy who prefers 50 with rain = don't fare too well in humidity) to grill like I'd intended, so I used my brand new (another Christmas gift, holy crap! I wanted the other one to bite the dust first) eco-friendly grill pan to grill up some organic hotdogs from the farmers' market, and for lack of corn-on-the-cob, we made do with frozen corn and salads. Throw in some "John Adams" (if you have never seen this mini-series, put it on your bucket list...seriously, it's THAT GOOD) and it made for a nice, relaxing-yet-productive day! Nevermind the disappointment of not watching "Yankee Doodle Dandy"...or delivering our own.... We make our own happiness sometimes.