Old and new.

Yesterday I rented a U-Haul and moved all the large furniture to the new house.  Everything else can fit in the car with a few trips, or in one trip if I borrow my parents' van.  Soooo close.  I will OFFICIALLY be moved out this week.  Goodbye renting, hello owning!

I haven't slept there yet, but when I do I think I'm going to pop open the bubbly that my realtor gave me as a gift, sit on my front porch, and enjoy the new pretty place I can call home.

And THEN I have to get ready for the housewarming.  I've scheduled it for Saturday, July 24th... and it will help to have a deadline so I feel a bit of pressure in getting things completed.  The floors are done, the living room is painted, the dining room needs another layer of paint, and the kitchen needs another layer as well as a cabinet makeover with paint.  I also will be renailing the quarter-round to the baseboards, and then repainting the them because when I stained the floors I got a bit sloppy on the edges.  After that, I need to repaint the vents and sand down and stain the one for the dining room.  After THAT I get to decorate... that's the best part!

I'm not even going to worry too much about the yard for the housewarming party.  It is going to my project next summer, I think.  Yes, I'm going to pull weeds and clean it up a bit, but as for the big yard makeover... that can wait.

As for furniture, I'm temporarily borrowing some pieces from my sister so 1) she doesn't have to put them in storage and 2) I can wait on buying everything now.  I have her kitchen table and chairs, a small two-seater sofa for the sunroom, and her bed frame.  My grandma is now living with my parents, so I got a side table of her's, and a sofa-bed that we will put in the office.  We'll turn that room into a bedroom for hosting international students from IUPUI (as long as everything goes well) because it will give us $500 extra  a month!

I'm going to search for a corner sectional for the living room in a beige color (I'll accent with pillows, etc.).  I looked online for a rug today and found a massive discount on an 8' round white flokati rug.  Flokati rugs are made from natural wool, and this one looks so cozy for bare feet, and will add a bit of whimsy in my living room.  Here is a sample of what a flokati rug looks like (mine will be round):

I also have been looking out for a vintage-looking chandelier that I can repaint and hang in the living room.  Here is one I found on craigslist, and I'll be picking it up this week.  I will remove the shades permanently, and repaint the entire chandelier (probably the blue accent color I'm using in contrast with the orange walls):

The more I pick out what I want, the more I discover this whimsical, quirky side of my personality.  This is the first time I'll be able to really show it completely.  Owning is so much better than renting... DO IT!

Be back soon.

Peace,
Kelly

Doin' stuff.

I know... where have I been, right?  Doing stuff.  Lots and lots of stuff, and having lots and lots of moods, and I decided that I'd take a break from this little place.

I have six days of school left: Tuesday-Thursday this week, and then Monday-Wednesday next week, and the kids go home on Tuesday.  Super close, and ready for summer!

I'll get my energy back when next week roles around.  In the mean time, I decided I'd like to post this article written by Elizabeth Gilbert in O magazine.  I stumbled across it tonight, after beating myself up again for a number of things I think I should be better at, and it made me feel better.  I promise you'll hear more from me when all the school crazyness wraps up.  In the meantime, read this:

Nearly all the women I know are stressing themselves sick over the pathological fear that they simply aren't doing enough with their lives. Which is crazy—absolutely flat-out bananas—because the women I know do a lot, and they do it well. My cousin Sarah, for instance, is earning her master's degree in international relations, while simultaneously working for a nonprofit that builds playgrounds at woefully underfunded public schools. Kate is staying home and raising the two most enchanting children I've ever met—while also working on a cookbook. Donna is producing Hollywood blockbusters; Stacy is running a London bank; Polly just launched an artisanal bakery...

By all rights, every one of these clever, inventive women should be radiant with self-satisfaction. Instead, they twitch with near-constant doubt, somehow worrying that they are failing at life. Sarah worries that she should be traveling around the world instead of committing to a master's degree. Kate worries that she's wasting her education by staying home with her kids. Donna worries that she's endangering her marriage by working such long hours. Stacy worries that the capitalistic world of banking is murdering her creativity. Polly worries that her artisanal bakery might not be quite capitalistic enough. All of them worry that they need to lose 10 pounds.

It's terribly frustrating for me to witness this endless second-guessing. The problem is, I do it, too. Despite having written five books, I worry that I have not written the right kinds of books, or that perhaps I have dedicated too much of my life to writing, and have therefore neglected other aspects of my being. (Like, I could really stand to lose 10 pounds.)

So here's what I want to know: Can we lighten up a little?

As we head into this next decade, can we draft a joint resolution to drop the crazy-making expectation that we must all be perfect friends and perfect mothers and perfect workers and perfect lovers with perfect bodies who dedicate ourselves to charity and grow our own organic vegetables, at the same time that we run corporations and stand on our heads while playing the guitar with our feet?

When I look at my life and the lives of my female friends these days—with our dizzying number of opportunities and talents—I sometimes feel as though we are all mice in a giant experimental maze, scurrying around frantically, trying to find our way through. But maybe there's a good historical reason for all this overwhelming confusion. We don't have centuries of educated, autonomous female role models to imitate here (there were no women quite like us until very recently), so nobody has given us a map. As a result, we each race forth blindly into this new maze of limitless options. And the risks are steep. We make mistakes. We take sharp turns, hoping to stumble on an open path, only to bump into dead-end walls and have to back up and start all over again. We push mysterious levers, hoping to earn a reward, only to learn—whoops, that was a suffering button!

To make matters even more stressful, we constantly measure ourselves against each other's progress, which is a truly dreadful habit. My sister, Catherine, told me recently about a conversation she'd had with a sweet neighbor who—after watching Catherine spend an afternoon organizing a scavenger hunt for all the local kids—said sadly, "You're such a better mother than I will ever be." At which point, my sister grabbed her friend's hands and said, "Please. Let's not do this to each other, okay?"

No, seriously—please. Let's not.

Because it breaks my heart to know that so many amazing women are waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning and abusing themselves for not having gone to art school, or for not having learned to speak French, or for not having organized the neighborhood scavenger hunt. I fear that—if we continue this mad quest for perfection—we will all end up as stressed-out and jumpy as those stray cats who live in Dumpsters behind Chinese restaurants, forever scavenging for scraps of survival while pulling out their own hair in hypervigilant anxiety.

So let's drop it, maybe?

Let's just anticipate that we (all of us) will disappoint ourselves somehow in the decade to come. Go ahead and let it happen. Let somebody else be a better mother than you for one afternoon. Let somebody else go to art school. Let somebody else have a happy marriage, while you foolishly pick the wrong guy. (Hell, I've done it; it's survivable.) While you're at it, take the wrong job. Move to the wrong city. Lose your temper in front of the boss, quit training for that marathon, wolf down a truckload of cupcakes the day after you start your diet. Blow it all catastrophically, in fact, and then start over with good cheer. This is what we all must learn to do, for this is how maps get charted—by taking wrong turns that lead to surprising passageways that open into spectacularly unexpected new worlds. So just march on. Future generations will thank you—trust me—for showing the way, for beating brave new footpaths out of wonky old mistakes.

Fall flat on your face if you must, but please, for the sake of us all, do not stop.

Map your own life.

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed (both Viking). 

This article was taken from here.

Hope it made you chill out.  It helped me.

Peace,

Kelly