Last Weekend's Successes...

Hey ya'll... I know, I'm behind on my posting.  This has been a VERY busy week!  So here's a few updates... last weekend we had an awesome trip to Saturday's Market, and Tim picked up our new friend, Michael J. as pictured above.  He's quite the dapper gentleman.  In other taxidermy news, Tim also picked up the bat below at Jubilee Day; sorry, he refused not to be glaring in the photo. 

That bat was apparently a harbinger of events to come, because we have had a bat in the house three different times this week.  We knew there was a small pod of them in the attic, and I could accept them as the excellent bug-catchers that they are.  Now, they have overstepped their boundaries.  I do not need them to catch bugs for me down here in the living room.  No thanks.  It might just be that I'm a tiny bit afraid of bats.  They are so flappy and unpredictable.  And squeaky.  I am not the type to jump up on a chair if I see a creepy crawly thing, but flying creepy things is just another story... anyway... we have done a bunch of research and learned that they basically need to be "excluded" by waiting until they fly out at night and then blocking up any entrance-way that is a quarter of an inch or bigger.  In this house, there are few gaps that aren't at least a quarter of an inch!  However, compared to the VERY large price of paying a professional to exclude them, it looks like we need to think about doing it ourselves.  Yep, my skin is crawling.  I'll let you know how that goes, whenever we get up the nerve to do it. 

In other last weekend news, we made the first new-house trip to Ikea, and it was pretty successful.  I got some cute little plants and things... a few typical Ikea odds and ends, but also a new coffee table...

Some decor for my office...

a new table/desk for my office...

Cushions that totally redeem our flea market chairs...

Some new picture frames, which we put our excellent posters from our recent San Francisco trip in...

And a bunch of time spent like this...

I'm pretty pleased, though.  These pieces were really helpful in pulling things together.  I also picked up this Craigslist find, an awesome new desk chair, from an equally awesome couple.  Truly, one of the best parts of all of this Craigslisting has been the super folks that I have met along the way.  So good.  People are actually nice out there, despite my sometimes low expectations.  Hooray!

I also picked up this fantastic bar for the kitchen, a la Craigslist, that has really changed the feel of the kitchen.  I am so happy to have it!  It has resolved some of our counter-space issues, and will make it much more tolerable until we are able to re-do it the way we would really like it, complete with new cabinets and counter tops.  

Also, we (Tim) cut a hole in the basement door to allow the kitties access to their newly arranged "facilities."  We are all grateful that they now have their privacy.  Truly. 

It was a good weekend... then, we had an electrician come by and give us some estimates for replacing the knob and tube that we have running through the house.  Our house has old veins.  It is going to be a lot of cost to complete it all, but we can tackle it bit by bit, so it should be alright.  It isn't as much of an emergency as the plumbing work was, so that's a relief.  More update to follow... it has already been a busy weekend!