I am completely exhausted from last week and this weekend, so I just don’t have the energy to write about all the things I planned to right now.  But since I am a blogaholic, I just dragged myself out of bed to take pictures of some (very little) office progress.

We finally moved our large Ikea Expedit bookcase into the room, here’s a lil peek since it’s full of clutter right now…

Hey there’s me in my pink pajama pants! The piggy bank is from Target a few years ago and Mike laughed at me for buying it.  It got a little banged up during the move, but I had to include him. I seriously took a pile of random stuff from my desk and stuck it in one of the cubbies until we get some more storage….

We stuck the printer on top of the bookcase for now, but it’s probably not staying there.  It makes the bookcase a little top heavy and though we’re probably going to bolt that thing into the wall, the printer will probably be more functional if lower. We got the little linen storage bin from Lowe’s this weekend, but that level isn’t staying in there 🙂

I’m currently using the other linen bin to store my camera stuff on one of our shelves.  Yes that still has a tag on it.  Apparently we do that a lot until we’re sure we want to keep things.

And we started putting together our other Expedit bookcase.

Now my pink pajama pants and I are crawling back into bed! 🙂

Yesterday we got around to stacking all of that firewood we got last week…

And then we covered it up so it’s nice and dry.

That’s an eight foot rack and we’re definitely going to need another, we hardly put a dent in that ginormous pile.

Earlier in the day we made a trip to Lowe’s for a wheel barrow and found some fireplace tools we actually liked.  They’re from the Allen + Roth line which is always so good to me.  I’m pretty sure I love all of their stuff.

They’re actually the bronzey-brown color I was hoping to paint the slate.  So with all of the materials we needed plus a chilly night, we were able to light our first fire in the new house.

It wasn’t exactly roaring at this point, but you get the idea 🙂  And the house still smells so wonderful!

No, we’re not having a baby.  We came home from dinner tonight to find this…

As if turning on the stove MULTIPLE times wasn’t enough, the kittens have now discovered the under the sink cabinet full of hazardous materials.

Two days ago we ordered a cord of firewood.

I came home from work to see this giant pile at the end of our driveway.  We have a wood burning (obviously) fireplace that we are very excited to use for the season.  We had one in our condo and since it was a third floor unit, we usually didn’t put the heat on until December.  So we knew we definitely wanted one again, but when we got our house option sheet, it wasn’t offered!  Apparently people don’t really want them and prefer gas? Insanity! Luckily, our special request was granted and we got our wood burning fireplace.  The smell is so wonderful and cozy, plus the kittens love it.

We ordered the wood locally (from a place around the corner) and we were excited to hear that all of that wood came from our very own development when they chopped down trees to build houses.

You see, I really try to be as environmentally conscious as possible, I was raised that way.  So I never thought I’d buy a new house and once shook my head at the thought.  But the ignorance won and it was just better financially.  So I still feel very incredibly guilty every time I think of all of the animals I left homeless.  It felt a little better to know that we will be using the wood for an alternative heat source (that maybe creates smokey pollution) but at least it didn’t travel far and is being used practically.  It helps me sleep better at night okay?!

So what are we doing to do with all that wood? We ordered some outdoor wood holder thingys off amazon and for the inside, we bought a little basket from Target.

Since we love our recycling baskets, we thought we’d get a bigger one for the wood.  It has nothing in it and still has the tag on it actually…

All this time I thought that said “arabica”, like the coffee beans.  Whoops!

Our fireplace is one of our many works in progress.  Right now it has an awkward, I-wasn’t-thinking-creatively, candle holder in it, which I do like.  But I’ll probably step up my game in the off season 🙂

And since my friend Laura told me today that she enjoyed my background/foreground pictures, I figured I’d give her another one…

The fireplace itself is currently half tiled with some of the tiles we used for our kitchen backsplash.  I wanted to include them in the family room because of our open floorplan.

It still has to be grouted and we have to figure out what to do with the rest of the fireplace.  I found some high heat paint for the black metal parts and I plan on changing out the gold hardware.

But the dilemma is what to do with the black slate bottom piece (that is ugly and cloudy in this pic)..

I wanted to paint it a shade of brown, so I don’t waste a good piece of slate, but I’m worried about the VOCs in many of those concrete type paints that the guy at Lowe’s told us to use.  It’s our family room and we and the kittens are always in there (here, I’m here now…)  Does anyone have any experience with painting interior slate?

Anywho, we’re definitely looking forward to the holiday season where the 5 of us are cuddled up the fire.  If only we could have gotten a fireplace in our bedroom too!

After I realized that I could downsize the Oreos to a smaller jar, I knew something had to be done.

Thank god I ate 4 before the warning was issued!