The Hallway

 The title of this is a little creepier than the actual post.  Although, the above picture of what we started with in the hallway, is pretty creepy.  

 After taking out the ugly shag carpeting, the hall looked about 100% better.  But a little too blah for me.  After thinking about it for a while, just about 2 years, I realized I wanted a red hallway.  Sooo....

I chose the color "Lady in Red". 

 

I love my red hallway.  I think it turned out great.  The white trim runs throughout the house, tying everything together.  But all the white also adds a nice contrast to the dark red in the hall.  The sparkly mirror in the back is my favorite thing, after the red color.

 The built-ins were also left white, although they get dirty fast, so some days I think of painting them brown.

 The paintings are leaf prints the kids' created.

I loved the idea of a collection of round mirrors, all painted white.  Round mirrors were hard to find and a bit pricey, so I made my own.  I used round mirrors I got at a craft store and used clay saucers the kids and I painted white for the frames.  A couple we made out of craft sticks and painted white.  I told the kids I wanted them to look like bubbles floating down the hallway:)  They were all for that idea.

 

Are my Kids Eating the Pencil, Markers, Crayons, Glue Sticks and Other School Supplies?

And if not, where do they go exactly?

When we moved to our new house one of my first projects I completed was this area for the kids to keep their school stuff.  I bought the fabric pockets at the Container Store for this project.  The hook and basket combo I bought there several years ago.  I just used name tags to label the pockets because that way I can change them next year.

For some bizarre reason I thought this would help them locate their homework, do their homework and then take their homework to school and hand it in to the teacher.

All it has really done is allow the children to easily locate the pencils, markers, crayons, erasers, scissors and then... I don't know what they do with them.

When asked the kids are all completely flabbergasted that the stuff has all disappeared.  None of them ever use the school supplies in the cups and when they do, they always, ALWAYS put them back. 

Not even a week ago these handy dandy flea market find cups were filled with all kinds of school supplies.  As you can see, they are now mostly empty.  Logically there should be a large pile of pencils, markers, glue sticks, crayons etc somewhere in my house but there isn't.

My first theory: A school supply sucking black hole located somewhere in the kitchen.  Which leads me to question why the black hole is always leaving dirty dishes on the table.  This theory isn't the best one because it's very picky about what it makes disappear.  Mechanical pencils and glue sticks are it's favorite.  It won't eat broken pencils and backpacks left under the kitchen table don't get devoured either.

At around the same time the cups all turned up empty, all the chap stick disappeared as well.  With that clue another theory might be that one of the kids has opened a mobile commissary for their school friends out of their backpack since none of them own trench coats.  I know they don't have trench coats because I haven't picked them up off the floor in the kitchen.  Yet another thing the black hole won't suck up, coats.  This theory breaks down in that none of them is sporting extra cash to spend. 

OR and I'm leaning toward this explanation, the kids are eating the school supplies and washing them down with chap stick to make the whole kit and caboodle pass more easily.

Yikes! A big freaking hairy spider!

So after discovering this dude in my kitchen sink I'm thinking about just boarding the place up, putting out a for sale sign and cutting our losses.  I kid, mostly.

A Funny

One of the exciting things about getting a new house is getting to choose the paint colors.  We still need to add another bedroom so for now Taylor and Olivia chose to paint their room bright yellow and blinding orange.  Luckily the room is in the basement so I don't think this combination will result in retinal damage. 

I've been dreading painting because the kids are so excited about getting to help out.  Since the floor in Taylor and Olivia's new room needs to be replaced I decided to start there.  I just knew they would get bored with the whole thing quickly and no longer want to help me.  But alas, those kids really love to paint.  Lucas did finally decide he didn't want to do it any more but the rest of them really hung in there. 

One of the new toys I bought for the new house was the Black & Decker paint stick.  Chris got to use it first, but then I went to town with it.

It worked really well and after about an hour this is what the room looked like.

Which is where the funny part enters into the equation:)