Late January Update: Mostly House Stuff

Keeping up with my early and mid-month themes so far this year, I will attempt to close out the month with a post as well! I have already made our traditional Friday night pizza dough and it's rising in the oven, so I'm taking these minutes back while the girls are getting their hairs cut in the kitchen (the proliferation of the mobile hair stylist is one of my favorite post-Covid advancements).

Diving in - our gameroom sectional got kind of delivered today! Two of the three pieces were supposed to come, but one of them was wrong (it's a sectional, it seems obvious we'd want all pieces to be the same color and fabric), and the other is supposed to be delivered next Wednesday. Someday perhaps we'll have all three pieces in the same color and same fabric and that will be very exciting. But for now, the one piece is more seating than we had in that room and it's very soft and pretty and the cats have already approved it.

In the last two weeks other new items have also appeared!

Our entryway chandelier, which I love very much and will look VERY beautiful with the dark teal credenza we ordered and will maybe finally receive in February. It's a statement piece and it is not made of glass like the original fixture that came with the house, which James and Landon broke four pieces of almost immediately by playing sword fights with curtain rod boxes.

The curtains for our bedroom also came! We now have translucent screens for during the day and blackout drapes at night. Finally no more heavy dark gray, and yes to all the gorgeous plaid flannel wool.

The whole room just makes my heart rate slow and my body feel safe and cozy and happy. After 18 years of marriage and general adulthood, 6 moves, 2 apartments, 4 houses, 6+ job changes, 3 kids, and a constantly evolving style and I feel like this is the room that fits us exactly right now. It makes me so happy to be in it.

Somewhere else that makes me happy- my completed office!! Which is good, because I spend more awake time in there than my beautiful bedroom.

It's 90% done- the shelves need to be styled, but functionally and aesthetically it is finished and beautiful and comfortable and chic and I love it so very very much.

This was the room we changed the most. When we bought the house it was painted entirely dark gray, from ceiling to trim to doors, curtains, and light switches. We took it back to white, had the built-ins painted a beautiful green, added custom black-out shades for guests, and gorgeous velvet curtains I fell in love with and designed the whole room around. The rug is from the Fort Worth house, as is the desk and couch that pulls out to a decently comfortable queen sized bed.

The desk chair, coffee table, and side table are new and make the room look luxe and complete to me. I also found the chandelier on Facebook Marketplace for $50 and even though I told myself I could live with the old one, this is SO MUCH BETTER and the used nature makes me feel good. The closet in the room is HUGE and now holds all our skiing and hiking clothes, shoes, and gear, plus our memory bins, extra storage items, a standing fan I got for when my parents stay here, and about 65 other things. There is a full bathroom directly across from the study and a pocket door you can close to close the study and bathroom together in their own little hallway. It works out great. We really didn't need a dedicated guest room, and with Landon leaving for college in 3.5 years (sob) the last thing I wanted was more empty rooms.

I love the gameroom over the garage which gives the kids a big room to play in when they have friends over. It's the Texas equivalent of the basements we don't have. The gameroom is the last truly unfinished room because we're waiting on a carpenter to finish building a bookcase for the back wall which will let me unpack our final boxes - all of books - and get the room settled. Well that and the missing 2/3 of the couch. For now we use it mostly for ping pong but we play ping pong quite a lot.

I'm almost even getting good at it, though Cora gets more style points for her facial expression and tongue involvement.

And finally, I've been matching our new livingroom couch throw pillows to the cat, which I've been told is the highest form of high style.

For those who are not as obsessed with HGTV and getting looks into other people's houses as I am, I have do have other news and updates. I spent part of last week in Washington, DC, speaking at a Women Corporate Director's event that was fabulous. This week I was in Houston for an event after the ACI FCPA conference and then a CLE we hosted and broadcast from our Houston office. I got to talk SEC Updates to a couple hundred people while wearing leopard print shoes to jazz up the subject matter.

The children are also doing things, though as they get older I find I naturally include them less in my narratives and I have no pictures of them because they go on most of their life adventures without me present. In my favorite news of the week, Landon asked out his first girlfriend and I'm driving them to play minigolf on Sunday which is the freaking cutest thing that's ever happened and I screenshot his texts where he told me about it and I am lovingly pasting them in his baby book.

He also swam at Districts, won the 100 fly by a whole lot, won with both his relays and set new school records, and got 3rd in the 100 back and he is very excited about Regionals next weekend.

My parents were there to cheer him on. And after 4 hours of a long hot swim meet they were rewarded with a double-header of basketball games for this girl who scored her first basket and generally did GREAT.

She also moved up in gymnastics and acted in her first school play where she was a snow leopard with one line which she said with great volume and gusto.

Yesterday was Maggie's 4 year adoptiversary. It is so hard to believe we've had her for four whole years. I feel so lucky to get to give her the life of luxury she so deeply deserves after her horrific start at life.

We finally uncovered her raincoat in the boxes in the gameroom and she is SO relieved to not have to get her sweet velvet-y head wet anymore when it rains. It was hard on all of us for a while there.

It's been chilly and rainy, so when not covered in my own raincoat, I've been trying out a preppy slouchy kind of style with wool pants and sweater vests. I haven't bought any clothes for a while. I've decided I have to wear every outfit Bonnie made me, and any other item I bought last year, before I get anything new. Unsubscribing to store emails and being intentional and creative with my ensembles has been fun.

It's now 9:30 pm and the kids are in bed, James has a meet tomorrow, I'm caught up on emails, and Milo would like everyone to be quiet because he only got 20 hours of sleep so far today.

(And yes, he's still on his diet. It's going great and he hates it.)

My goal is to post again before the end of the month. I have so many thoughts that pop into my head during the day and there's never time to capture all the magic and mischief of this time in our lives. I ran into someone in Houston who has a friend who reads my blog. She was so excited to "meet" me through her and I just wanted to say hi to all of you, thank you so much for reading, especially now that I post so rarely and they're always some collection of "here's what just happened and also what's on my phone." Even these make me so happy to re-read later on, so thank for making me feel like I'm talking to someone and giving me the impetus to write. Happy Friday to you all!