One of the best parts of living near my family is that my dad is handy.  He can fix just about anything and likes to putter.  I’d asked him before Christmas if we could have some new bookshelves for the guest room.  I wanted them to be big, to fill a niche wall we have that has basically no function.  He started working on them and today, he came over to install them. They are a built in unit, 92″ wide, 7 ft tall, solid oak, five shelves each.  Our books will be so happy in them!

We’re trying to do small little things around the house to improve living here and yet not spend huge amounts of money.  Last weekend, I’d had enough of the horrible bamboo shade over our bathroom window.  I’d never liked it but replacing the glass with something opaque was going to cost us over $250.  So off to Home Depot we went and bought some privacy film for $15.  Gone is the bamboo and the window looks great!  We now have an opaque window that allows tons of light in and no more dusty shade.

We also purchased new curtains for our bedroom.  With the new bed, we bought a new quilt but the curtains were still remnants of the previous owners, burgandy sheers.  I knew I wanted something else but I had no idea what.  We hated the fact that all of our sleeping in mornings were basically ruined by the sun pouring in  through those curtains.  But not now.  We have lovely khaki curtains to match the new bedding and they were on sale!  We’ve been able to sleep in past 7:15am this weekend and that has made me happy.

Not sure what the next little improvement will be.  It all depends on if the state can settle the budget crisis here and we get paid.  There’s talk that after February, we won’t get paid because the district will be out of money.  It makes for very uncertain times around here.
Last night, we had some nice down time after a long week.  We’d tried to have an unplugged night on Friday but this latest round of Risk didn’t go as well as the last time (read: I was losing and I’m a sore loser who wanted to throw the board across the dining room.  I walked away from the game to take a shower).  So we did a round 2 last night and had a nice dinner along with some quality down time.