Laundry, spackle and fairy house construction

1. It's funny how I will go for days without finding the strength to walk into the laundry room. The piles grow and they cease to be divided into 'whites', 'lights' and 'darks'. If there ever was a load of clean laundry sitting in front of the dryer, waiting to be folded, it has long since been compressed into a dense mass of wrinkles or dumped out and mixed in with the stinkies. The dirty clothes simply get chucked into the room....somewhere...anywhere....because the whole thing is a lost cause and it's obvious to everyone that I'll be starting from scratch anyway.

And inevitably there's the day when someone runs out of something...undies, pants, favorite shirts...and I pinch my nose and get in there. Start sorting, get loads going. And I am always surprised at how satisfying it feels to do load after load. It becomes a pleasure to turn that disgusting mess into lovely, warm, clean piles. Today was a laundry day and I've had the machines going non-stop and I'm starting to see the floor and it feels amazing. There will be favorite shirts available tomorrow!

2. I made kale chips today. I washed the kale, dried the kale, sprayed the kale and seasoned the kale.....the baked the kale at 275 for 25 minutes.....

It looked like:

And it tasted like:

So I decided on:

3. I finally spackled, sanded and repainted the holes and dings in the walls that I've been meaning to get to in, oh...I'd say, a year and a half. It only took me about 10 minutes once the spackle was dry. Why is that? Why does it feel so absolutely overwhelming to get the paint cans out? It's not like we store them on a mountaintop. They're on the bottom shelf in the garage, for crying out loud!

But still! I did it! And now I don't have to cringe everytime I look at the huge hole by the pencil sharpener or the blob of dry spackle under the two-sided clock.

And that....is awesome.

4. The basement is coming along! A few progress photos:

The framing up and the girls sweeping up sawdust:

The drywall is hung! I am so excited about the playroom under the stairs!

Mark testing out the projector...

The consequences of drywall dust....everywhere.

5.  I've decided to put a fairy garden in the window well near the kids play area downstairs. It is going to be so fun! I love creative stuff....as long as it doesn't really matter how it turns out.

I'm hoping I can achieve something like this:

or this:

How cute is this?

And hey, I wouldn't mind this:

I'm hoping it doesn't end up like this:

But I'll settle for

So much fun!!