As you may have noticed from earlier blog postings, the kids and I were out of town for the summer. The husband came back and forth a few times to visit, and did his retreat-type stuff for the year, but I figured the time with the kids out of the house would be ideal for some necessary home improvement projects. So, I scheduled some folks to come out and install new carpet on a day that the husband was home but the rest of us were not. AND the husband decided to paint the exterior of the house. 

easy, right?

We moved in seven years ago now, and the house was freshly painted then. 

It looked like this:

Which I guess would be the color of these:

I never much liked it, but better is the enemy of good enough, as they say, so that’s how it stayed. Until this summer, because it finally needed painting. 

What I wanted was a non-threatening, happy yellow.

So the husband and I went to ye olde home improvement store and picked a paint chip and off he went back home to paint. Well, when I got home, it was probably 90% done. But it didn’t look like this:

It looked like this:

See?

So, I tried to live with it for a week (well, four days anyway). And honestly, I think it’s a really fun color. But it was just tooooooo flashy for me. Totally my fault. The husband does not care what color the house is. But I do and it wasn’t right.

So, back for more paint and back to work. (And it was H O T.) But much better this time:

I really love it. And the lighter color allows for the other thing I really wanted, which is a red front door. Hooray!

And here’s what I wore to go to Mass and help almost none with the painting.

Separates today! Normally I love full skirts, but they can be tricky with a full belly. I think this works, but only with a fitted shirt. Skirt: Mimi Maternity (bought for my sister’s rehearsal dinner when I was expecting number three); shirt: Target; shoes: old, DSW I think?; earrings: a gift from my Aunt Michele’s trip to Hawaii; necklace: came in a box of dress-up stuff our dear neighbor sent to the girls, but I liked it so much, I kept it for myself! bump: 25 weeks

School starts tomorrow, and I’m really looking forward to getting back into our routine, but I’m also feeling less prepared than usual. We’re starting earlier than we normally would (but later than we should have) because new baby is due at Thanksgiving and I plan to have our first semester done by them. So, if we start tomorrow, that’s sixteen weeks of school in . . . fourteen weeks. Oops. I do think we’ll be able to manage it though. We’ve doubled up weeks before.

But with being gone all summer and the painting this weekend, and still trying to get the inside of the house put back together after the carpet guys moved everything out of all the rooms and replaced it in what could only be described as a rather haphazard way . . . I feel like I’m getting a crawling instead of a running start on the school year. I’m about to finish assembling some binders for the big kids and I’ve got (almost) all the books and supplies we need.

So . . . ready or not, here we go!

Thanks to the ladies at Fine Linen and Purple for hosting What I Wore Sunday.