Not to get all Barbie Dreamhouse here, but if I had a different bathroom, and a different husband, wouldn’t this be neat on my toilet?

Toilet Tattoos has some cool designs.

Meanwhile, still packing . . .

So tomorrow I have to wait at my empty house for the phone guy. From–get this–8am to 5pm. “If he’s not there by 4, go ahead and leave,” the customer service rep said. Nine hours? Good thing I’m a lady of leisure.

I think I just broke the paper shredder, but whatever. I’ll go take out my anxiety at Staples when I return it (we just bought it).

This is our bedroom; the dark brown floors go awesome with the pale cloudy blue. It is hard to tell precisely here, especially with the attractive painter’s paper protecting the windowsill.

Moving Day is Saturday. And Sunday. And maybe Monday, too.

So, instead of buying a lame-ass wanna-be modern desk with glass and cheap metal, we asked the contractor to build a desk into the office. This is the left side of it, it’s got room for two people to work simultaneously, and our clever painter painted it white and put a high-gloss lacquer over the top. Very Apple of us, I think.
The blue tape is marking off where the builders drilled holes for the wires to feed through down to the outlets.

Eventually, I will actually WRITE at this desk**. Plus it’s got a skylight right above, yay!

Megan
*New Pornographers lyric.
**And write about writing here, and not about my dumb old house.

The Infamous Closet

We had originally intended this closet to be a walk-in, but adding space to our bedroom meant it was a regular-size closet, i.e 24″ deep (betcha didn’t know that, did you? Well, now you do). A really wide-approx. 9′ wide–closest, which meant either end would be unusable unless we got creative. So we did. We have two rods hanging back-to-front at either end, then a nice row of shelves, seen here, then a middle side-to-side rod in the middle. Very California Closet of us, although the shelves are immobile. The blue of the room is called “Exhale,” and is a lovely cloudy day blue. Hard to see precisely in this pic.

Perhaps there is a bright side to having shared a house with my mother: I am not particularly perturbed by the utter chaos of the apartment as we continue to pack. Granted, she left when I was 13, but I think that was long enough to get me inured to a fantastically messy abode (I have already mentioned, but she’s a recovering hoarder. She just told me she finally got rid of a sweater she bought in the ’60s, and she found the bottle of perfume my dad gave her when I was born. It was all evaporated; I am, after all, 43).The husband, OTOH, grew up in the opposite situation. Poor guy.

But how often are you ever to make everything ALMOST EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT? (Price and other opinion person depending).

Never, I’d say.

This last room is the Son’s, who chose Bayberry Blue as a compromise to a black room. His door, radiator, and loft bed will all be black, however.

I’m too busy to be funny, except in my head, where I come up with all sorts of witty retorts when SOMEONE says something SCATHING about SOMEONE ELSE’s ability to pack, plan, clean, etc.

But the end is in sight, that is if you move a few of those boxes. Then you can see it.

I have a lot of books.

Yikes. See above. Will resurface as soon as possible.

Today the two teams of painters–one hired by us, one provided by our contractors–started painting the house. The Eight Year-Old chose “Bayberry Blue” for his room, provided his radiator and door are black (”I’m a goth! I’m a goth!” he crowed).

One of my painters told me he and his band are to be inducted into the New Zealand Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame this June. How cool is that? Plus he’s got the awesome accent, although I got confused when he told me he needed ‘caulk.’

How cool is this?

Spinning free from all traditional storage systems, the Shoe Wheel is an ingeniously designed mobile storage unit with 20 expandable pockets that can hold up to 30 pairs of shoes depending on the type.

Best of all, the Shoe Wheel is simple to use: Shoes are inserted into the pockets through elastic bands, which secure them snugly into place. The pockets are easily adjustable to fit a variety of shoes - sneakers, stilettos and flats. Just rotate the Shoe Wheel to make a selection.

from Rakku