Sorry for the silence!

I've been so busy the last week, haven't had time to blog. And I haven't been reading blogs either - hopefully I'll catch up in the next week or so.

The source of the busyness? Decorating.

Mostly because I'm having a party at Hallowe'en and I'd like my house to look like someone owns it, but also because I'm sick of it. So far we've managed to decorate precisely 3 rooms in the 3.5 years we've lived here, one of which is the bathroom.

Although we have a new kitchen, it looks a mess because there's no floor (bare concrete) and no wall tiles. The dining room needs the wallpaper stripping and decorating, the hallway is a horrible yellow with an orange border (I hate it), our bedroom is the messiest room in the world and consequently is filthy because there isn't room to clean. The whole house is full of stuff that doesn't have a home and needs sorting out and storing. Oh, and dog hair.

Mostly I just put up with the fact that I hate it, because I'm too lazy/tired to actually do anything about it.

But not now. The exercise thing is working I think, I actually feel like I have energy. Some energy at least.

So I cleared out the living room. I planned what it will look like - the colours, the furniture, everything. It was decorated with wallpaper - okay wallpaper I guess, but not what I'd have chosen. A beige-ish background with green patterns above the mahogany-coloured dado rail, and green stripes below - to be fair, it looks like a council house living room. The sofas (one two-seater, one three-seater) came with the house, they are a kind of tapestry effect of mostly yellowy-beige with greens and pinks mixed in.

But not any more. I've painted over the wallpaper, a creamy colour on the top and a pinky-brown underneath. All the woodwork's now white. I've bought new fake suede curtains which are a similar colour to the lower walls, and we're giving the sofas away to an organisation which redistributes unwanted furniture to those in need (e.g. families rehoused because of domestic violence). In their place we'll get a nice new two-seater in brown or camel or similar, and two chairs like the comfy wooden ones they sell at Ikea, as most of the time there's only the two of us here anyway and two sofas take up too much room. We're getting some cupboards as well, to hold all our videos and DVDs. And when it's all done I might have a nice calming grown-up room that I'm not ashamed to invite people back to.