While we figure out what we are going to do, we're still going to operate as if we're putting the place up for sale in March. That means that we have a number of projects to do before now and then. These are all things we wanted to do anyhow, so if it turns out that we stay, this forced us to get our act together. If we leave, well, we needed to do these things anyhow to make our house more compelling for buyers.
One of those things is spiffing up the laundry room that leads to our back porch. It is the one room in the house that we haven't touched - at all. I'm ashamed to admit that also means that we haven't lifted a finger to even clean it. All that resides in there is our washer & dryer, our dirty towels, our mops & brooms, and our carpet shampooer. Looking around this morning I was so disgusted by how much dust has accumulated in there. So we're going to do something about it. Over Thanksgiving we're going to re-stack our washer & dryer, paint everything white, redo the floors (right now it's the rolled vinyl and it's coming up), and rip out a rickety closet. It isn't exactly what we hoped to do with that room (we wanted to turn it into a second bathroom), but it'll be enough that if we do sell, it'll look like a nice(ish) laundry room as opposed to the dingy gross room it is now.
The burst of creative energy I got discussing what we are going to do in that space led to me cleaning the living room & dining room. I purged a bunch of stuff from our china cabinet (I have no idea why I was saving magazines from 2007), wrote to my brother-in-law about taking some excess furniture off our hands, and rearranged our mantle. It's not drastic, but with the fig leaves dead I needed to mix it up a bit.
Later today we're going to go shopping for a new bike for Alan and a coffee maker for me. I also want to hit up Whole Foods before we come home. Having watched Rick Steves's episode on Grenada and Cordoba I want to make paella for dinner. Also, since we had to abandon plans to go out to the pumpkin patch and apple orchards today I need to pick up some apples to make the apple crisp recipe I found earlier this week.
It's been cool these last couple of days, but today begins a warming trend that will stay with us for the full week. By Friday it's supposed to get back up to the 80s. I hate the weather here.
Mmmmmm paella!!! I've never tried making it ... Way intimidating!!!
ReplyDeleteYou know, it's not actually that hard to make now that I've done it a few times. Time consuming, yes, but relatively easy. The key to having a successful dish is the quality of the ingredients. We used homemade chicken stock that I made a couple of weeks ago and I think that made all the difference in the world to the overall flavor. We also didn't overload it with too many ingredients this time - just the aforementioned chicken stock plus boneless chicken thighs, shrimp, onions, garlic, chopped red peppers, saffron, olive oil and salt.
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