"like baby, baby, baby, oh"

~justin bieber

um, I must confess, I like this song.
I must also confess that I do NOT like the sloppy, messy, southern boy hairdo. yuck. it's like a comb-over for teenagers. I have yet to find someone who it actually looks "good" on. If you happen to have a haircut like this, I'd be glad for you to change my mind. but so far--yikes.

anyhoo.

so, this morning, for the sake of my sanity, I stayed home. and cleaned. and now I can see all four chairs and the ENTIRE dining area table. I also went through the mail, did the dishes, did laundry and all sorts of other goodies. and I did it all while wearing my new cute nightgown. which is something that some people might wear as a dress.

it is so comfortable I already want it in another color! I have lots of stuff from my bachelorette, but not all of it is "lounge around" worthy.

anyway, it was kind of funny to wake up this morning and go "you know what? I am staying home and I am CLEANING!" and being pleased with that decision. But now that I have put up much of the wedding craft stuff and organized items and put up a suitcase and thrown stuff away, I am pleased as punch that I did so.

and I purposefully did not take a before and after picture because, well, I just didn't want to admit that my house looked like that at one point!

one area done and many to go...now that Matt and I are done planning a wedding, and now that we have new goodies to enjoy, we are doing some serious cleaning and purging! I am also pleased because I happen to only have a few summer weddings--two in june, none in july and two in august--and none to attend until october--so we are going to have some freeeeeeee weekends!

I'm also working on a "reward" basis...

1. When our bedroom and bathroom are completely clean, we get to repaint said bathroom and put up our new shower curtain. We also get to put up our double curtains in the bedroom. We are still going to use the ones we have up but also add a light-blocking curtain too. I. cannot. WAIT!

2. When our kitchen is clean we GET to go through our items and reorganize the kitchen. You might not know this, but I actually really enjoy organizing things. Grouping and using space more efficiently makes me quite happy. It will also help us get rid of things we don't need.

3. When we clean out and organize our garage, we get to buy our beer fridge that we "gave" each other for Christmas. It also means I get additional freezer space, which is awesome because I get so much produce in the summer!

4. An organized living room = buy a new couch, using our rug we bought (see image below--we got the green one--I wanted the yellow one because it's pretty much my new favorite color, but Matt said no.) and getting a coffee table that doesn't break apart every time you move it. I'm also hoping to put up some pictures on the wall, we shall see. And I really want to get a Wii, but I don't know that Matt will go for it. We sometimes think it sounds like an awesome idea and sometimes don't. We shall see.


5. And then there's the guest room. Our plan is as follows: put mattress in cover and put in attic. Put desk in room for yours truly. I will still probably do a lot of editing on my laptop, but I'll also have the option of using my wireless keyboard and big ol' monitor. AND it will allow me to do my crafty stuff up there instead of taking over the dining area table. When we have guests we will bring the mattresses down from the attic and I'll just use my laptop. I'm pretty excited about this, I gotta tell you...

6. And then we'll tackle what we call "the basement." We don't spend a lot of time down there, and until we are done elsewhere it will continue to serve as a catchall. But eventually, eventually, it'll be all spruced up too. :) It is definitely last on the list.

I'm hoping we get all of this done by, oh, August-ish. It sounds like a lot, but I really think a couple of Saturdays and we'll be good to go. We shall see!