Personal Day = Cleaning Day!

I took today as a personal day from work...we get 2 a year and they don't carry over.. I realized a few weeks ago that it was almost the end of the year and I hadn't used up any of my days, so I needed to act fast! Originally I thought I might use a spa gift certificate I got as a birthday present from Brandon last year..but then I would have had to wake up early with him, drive him to school, hang around for a few hours til the spa opened, and eventually pick Brandon up from school at 3...didn't really sound like fun

So instead, I decided to just let the day unfold...

Ironically, I did get up early (to make Brandon's lunch) and instead of crawling back into bed, I made breakfast and coffee, watched GMA and then magically had the motivation to vacuum, dust, rearrange furniture, do a few painting projects, wash several area rugs, and basically do a lot of household tasks that had been hanging over my head for a looong time.

Because pictures are more fun than words sometimes, here's a look at what I did:

Love my Dyson!

(and that was after vacuuming 1.5 rooms...yikes...)

Rearranged these 2 side tables to make one big table and made better use of our space!

(I don't have a good "before" picture otherwise I would have posted it!)

Tidied up the coffee table and corralled all our "stuff" into baskets!

A bookcase-type thing the sellers left behind

(Can you spot it in this picture?)

We used it during the remodeling/painting process too to rest paint brushes/materials, etc

I wanted to bring it back into this room, but it needed a little update first. So I found some black spray paint in the garage and went to work:

It's upside-down in these pictures, because I knew I didn't have a full bottle of spray paint left so I painted the bottom first - that way if it looked horrible I wouldn't finish the rest and you'd never see my mistake!  But thankfully, just one coat of black spray paint gave it a black/brown effect that I really liked, especially because you could still see the grain of the wood.  I ran out of paint halfway through so I still need to go back and paint the top part of the shelves/sides, but I couldn't wait to put it in the room and add some accessories:

I switched up a couple things in the close-up photo to balance things out a bit

Maybe someday I'll do floating shelves on that wall, but for now, this works - and it's free!

My other painting projects from today:

A mirror my Mom had grabbed awhile back..it was pale green with pink edges 

(can't really see the pink, I know!)

Metal towel bar from the downstairs bathroom

Spray painted white! (along with a coat hook rack left behind by the sellers!)

Whew....I'm exhausted, but it was worth it...I'm currently washing/drying more blankets and thinking of washing the living room curtains too, since they are COVERED in cat hair...I'm hoping they'll shrink up a bit in the dryer too..then maybe the cats won't be able to use them as napping spots!