A Healer’s Geste

Monday Housekeeping: Weekend Surprise

I’ve been planning a bedroom redo (or, “do” — it was just white walls with our random collection of oddments) for a year and a half now. After 6 months of thinking about it, I set my sights on our tenth anniversary as the deadline for actually completing it, and I decided it would be a surprise for Matt. Then, a few months ago, he decided he’d take the boys camping and to the Arlington (WA) air show in early July, and I decided that that solved my problem of how to accomplish it as a surprise (9-5 isn’t a great time frame for painting and decorating!). So, while Matt and the boys were gone Thursday-Saturday, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work during child sleeping times. Matt took the camera, so I didn’t get a “before” picture, but I had a bedroom “before” picture from my Spring Challenge set that is even worse, so the contrast will be all the more stark:

From bedroom

The transformation:

From bedroom

I am amazingly pleased with it. Matt was surprised, even though he ended up coming home early and catching it before I’d finished cleaning up (and the rest of the house was a disaster!) or had hung anything. So he retained his position as the one who hangs all things on the wall, and even the big things like replacing the light fixture and putting up the curtain rod were done on Saturday! Matt has dubbed the room, “resplendent.”

So, my weekend was a whirlwind of work, but it was immensely satisfying work. I am still on an emotional high from it — all my ponderings and machinations “worked” and it all came together even better than I imagined it would! I am so used to sitting down in my room and looking around, thinking about what exactly I’ll do to the room, that it’s startling to sit down and see what I did to the room.

This is my new place for my own quiet times:

From bedroom

Moreover, contributing to the emotional high, I lost 4 pounds last week! Three weeks of no results, then POW it all hit at once. I forgot, but that has happened before and seems to be how my body works. I have cheated very little all week on the no-sugar, no-starch-for-dinner, very-little-starch, very-many-vegetables plan. It helps that I think my system particularly works well with the high-protein plan. I even tried kale chips again, this time following the recipe, and I actually really like them! Even the kids all liked them and wanted seconds! Matt was still burned from my attempt last year (in which the chips were also burned), so he didn’t try them. But I think they will end up having a regular spot on the rotation, because a big bunch of kale at the grocery store is only $1.50. While the boys were gone, Ilse and I had “girl food”: chicken and lots of vegetables. We ate two bunches of kale chips between us (and Knox had some too), so that might have helped the loss, too. Two more weeks of this food plan, then our anniversary trip where all bets are off, then I’ll reevaluate and recalculate. I am currently at the lowest point I’ve been so far (I’ve been here twice and then back up a few pounds over the last year), so I hope I can break my plateau this week if I stick to it.

Well, another two weeks of swim lessons begin this morning, so I need to kick this day into gear so we can get out the door!