What a difference a day makes

Well, I'm happy to say that I'm in a much better mood than I was yesterday. I don't really have a good explanation for this other than it must still be some postpartum hormone fluctuation. When my husband came home for lunch today (Yes, I'm very lucky that my husband works very close by and comes home for lunch every day!) he asked how my day was. I told him it's actually a good day unlike the day before. "I was miserable yesterday," I said. "Yes. You were," he agreed. Well, at least he's truthful.

So, being in a better mood, I'm taking inventory of some changes I'd like to make in our house to hopefully make it a bit more homey.





First, we have this corner of our living room. We have a very small living room with barely enough room for our sofa and love seat. Right now I have an old victrola cabinet I bought years ago at an auction in the corner. But, this is the only space where I can feasibly fit a bookshelf. I would like something that is tall, and probably black. I'm thinking of checking out Ikea since they usually have cool, reasonably priced stuff.






Here is why we need a bookshelf. Currently I have books shoved on the bottom two shelves of our corner cabinet in the living room. As you can see, the top two shelves contain our china, my vintage glasses & punch bowl, and some of my grandmother's antique serving platters. I'd like to be able to display these items a bit better & use all the shelving for that purpose.






This is the area in our kitchen/dining room where I'm considering moving the old victrola cabinet. This is the area between our front door & a window. Notice the plastic piece covering a hole in the wainscoting. There used to be an old, rather ugly propane heater here which my husband removed. (Our home was built & owned by an Old Order Mennonite family before my husband bought it. There was no electricity. And, the heating was by way of the propane heaters in various rooms, and radiator heat supplied by a furnace. We still use the radiators, but removed all the propane heaters). We haven't repaired that area of wainscoting yet, so I'm thinking the cabinet would hide it nicely.






Finally, here is a bench that I purchased at a yard sale last year. We have it under our food cabinet facing the kitchen. It has worked out nicely because my husband can sit there and talk to me while I'm preparing dinner. The down side is that the children use it to climb up and look in the food cabinet for snacks. The bench is definitely weathered & I'm trying to decide if I want to sand it down and stain it or paint it. If I do paint it, what color would I use?





So, these are couple of projects that I'd like to tackle. I'll post pictures of the 'after' looks when I'm done.