Seeing Things Differently

I’m not spending much time in most of the rooms of my house lately.

When I get home from work, the pup is keeping me outside (she’s sick with a respiratory something or other, so while she’s under the weather I can’t take her to the dog park, which means more mommy/puppy time in the front yard to give her exercise). So I’m trying to use it to my advantage by doing random little improvements in any spot I happen to have her in. Part of it is because I want to feel productive, and I feel like I’ve been neglecting the house. Part of it is because since I’m spending so much time in one spot, not picking at it is aggravating me.

For example, I was outside letting the pup do her business, and just couldn’t neglect the shrubs any longer. They were getting massively overgrown, and I’m starting to have to pay more attention to the bamboo issue spreading from my neighbor’s house to mine (even though she got rid of it on her side, the little sprouts can rapidly grow out of control, and it was too late to not affect my yard).

Out came the hedge clippers (then of course, the puppy whining in fear of her mom sporting a massive electrical tool) and then so did a ladder (I’m not exaggerating when I say massively overgrown).

Training Charlie indoors also means that I’m spending a lot of time near the laundry room and in the kitchen. Which means I’m looking at this wall, where the two kitchen pantries are (you can see the opening to the dining room on the right):

And I’ve been staring at this little spot, imagining it more like this (forgive the obvious shortcomings with Photoshop):

What do you think? The kitchen’s future design plans are to be nice and bright (hence the wall color change on the right), along with finishing off the trim in white (I don’t leave them unfinished on purpose; if I’m working on trim in another room and still have a little paint left on the brush when I finish, I’ll go to the next room and use it up), so I think a dark chalkboard wall might create excellent contrast. And if I have a chalkboard wall, I won’t need the menu chalkboard anymore, so that will be removed, patched, and possibly adorned later with artwork.P.S. Don’t forget, the Uprinting giveaway ends tonight! Winner will be announced tomorrow.