Whew, we had such a lovely, lovely week with our guests. RaChelle and Claire stayed about 24 hours on Monday/Tuesday. Three little girls! Cate enjoyed taking Claire to the Children's Museum down the street from us and we definitely, definitely (a Cate-ism) went to the Bread Peddler. Anna came on Wednesday and stayed until Sunday morning. We walked, we hiked, we ate, we book-shopped. Also went to Seattle with Miss Jane & Anna on Saturday. A beautiful day in Seattle. We really think Anna should plan to visit us EVERY SUMMER. Everyone agrees. Of course I took absolutely NO pictures. Bad! But really, this picture of Cate has to be at the top of some post, any post. It's a classic. 

Our babysitter, Regan, is going to be a high school junior in a few weeks. I keep telling her – SEE – look at all these lifelong friends I have – I made them at NNU! There has been a parade of wonderful women visiting us since we moved here – Missy and Anna and RaChelle and Kori. I swear, they should add me to their roster of recruiters. I am that persuasive. 

Now it's real life again and I am doing my fifteenth load of laundry and wondering whether I should put it away or just keep stacking it on the bed? Cate spent the night with Grammy last night so Telfer and I could do some painting up in my closet/office. It's looking so good. Telfer's bookshelf project is coming along really well. I am trying to exercise patience (not my most developed virtue) – I get so excited about this that I literally start to twitch.  

Eleanor is town for almost a month (she took this picture of Cate) and we are so happy to have her around, even if she is studying. We think she should move to Seattle or our spare bedroom. Claire and Nate are here for the weekend (helping Nana get settled). RaChelle and Claire are coming for a sleepover on Monday and Anna is coming on Wednesday and staying through the weekend. Yeah for friends!

The weather is just beautiful. Since we don't have air conditioning I am not a champion of HOT but I think 75 is pretty great and the fact that smores and a fire and a sweatshirt at night all go together makes me think I will live here forever. 

Our bedroom is really large which is good in some ways but is kind of tricky in others. We were feeling a little blah about the room so we did two projects that make our bedroom look so much more put together.

We changed out a normal light fixture for a more bold look – a DIY branch chandelier that I saw on Little Green Notebook. Basically you screw a whole bunch of y-shaped socket adapters and add light bulbs. The whole thing cost less than $40 (including light bulbs). We love it. I had the idea to add a ceiling medallion to make it look a little more finished. It's definitely a statement. My dad, the electrician, is not nearly as impressed.

Then we put together a gallery wall above the bed. The hardest part was choosing the photographs. I didn't know Costco's photo department can make 8x10s in an hour, did you? Also, all of our photos are taken with an iPhone. Lazy! Surprisingly though, all of the photographs look really great in the 8×10 size. We took the mats out of 21 Ikea frames (I can't remember which ones they were) and added pictures. I arranged the frames in an order and then Telfer painstakingly hung them. He is ridiculously good; hanging three rows of seven frames each is not exactly easy. As you can see, a glass of red wine helps the process along.  

I love this project. All the pictures are so special to us – a lot of them are from our time in New York and the pictures of the girls are almost too much. I just stop and stare!

I have said I would post pictures of our bathrooms before but it's so hard to take good pictures of small spaces. Consider yourself invited to come over and take a look yourself. Our upstairs bathroom is amazingly awful but very functional at this point.

Witness the shower area. The previous owners were going for a spa feel but obviously ran out of steam. Seriously, it's like a locker room for junior high boys. We could fit 10 people in here easy. 

See the tile? There is a dive Mexican restaurant in town (good food though) that has THE SAME tile in the women's bathroom! I about broke my neck racing back from the bathroom to tell Telfer. There is a whole other closeted toilet area that I am sparing you from.

The downstairs bathroom is what we are focusing on now since we have had experience renovating a small bathroom before and it will be much, much cheaper. We are going to do a lot of the work ourselves but with children we can't really do everything that we would like. We will recruit my dad for the electrical work as well as someone for the plumbing and tile. Telfer still wants to do the demolition. So manly.

We have a propensity for buying houses from little old ladies that like pink and wallpaper. It's really not the best combination.

We think we will start on the bathroom downstairs in September but we are still getting a sense of how much this will cost. Here's some of our ideas on Pinterest if you are interested. This is the bathroom for bathing babies and dogs so I don't even think we are going to put in a shower. Just a handheld wand for the bath. I am looking forward to bathing my girls in a bathroom that doesn't look perpetually filthy! 

Anyone else obsessed with Pinterest? I looove it. Basically, you can clip and store and share pretty things you find on the web. I am really finding it useful for all our home projects – keeping track of ideas and products and colors. Look at my boards here. If you sign up make sure you tell me so I can follow you!