A few updates so you know I haven't died.

 I haven't died, I promise.  We've just been so extremely busy.  For instance, today, I sanded down three walls, then scraped off popcorn ceiling (just enough so I can paint) swept everything up, and then washed all those three walls and another one, filled holes in those walls and in our foyer, and sanded that all down.  I was going to start painting tonight, but my arm and shoulder protested loudly and I listened.  Anyway, here's my six paint samples I tried before picking our color.  Funny how they all look so different depending on the wall they're on.  Can you guess which one I went with?

 The far left one.  It's the same color as the 3 other colors next to it, only it's lightened 75%, the next is lightened 50%, the next 25%, and the next is full strength Simplify Beige  by Sherwin Williams.  Only we matched it at True Value, because that's like a half a mile from our house and the closest place to sell Sherwin Williams is 2 hours away. The next color is too dark (but we'll probably do that one in the boys' room when we get rid of their apricot colored walls), and the next color is too yellow. Anyway, we named our custom color Milo Froth.  Milo as in this Milo:
  Leo likes to make it frothy.  Anyway, so we've painted our kitchen and two bathrooms "Milo Froth."  The little girls room is also now painted.  I want to post pictures of that room but the carpet kind of kills it.  Leo made shelves in the girls' closet too.  And then he raised the closet bar thing in both of our closets and added an extra shelf in ours too.  He's made shelves for the bathroom downstairs (I stained them, thank you).

 Oh and this is our foyer, it's cement with nasty black stuff on it from the carpet being glued down.  I spent a good hour scraping up black foam stuff with an ice breaker tool.  Something like this: 
Then Leo did the same in the bathroom.  And then the nice people at the flooring store lent us their professional scraper, which Leo spent another 2 hours scraping the foyer again with that, and I spent a good hour or so in the bathroom.  The second time with the professional scraper we also dumped hot water on the cement to break up the glue.  Good times, let me tell you.   But we needed the cement as clean and smooth as possible for when we lay the LVT down.

 And this was Isabel and Elena's room that I also sanded all three walls (one wall has mirrors) to get off the remnants of the wallpaper glue.  It looked like this after I sanded and I was worried it wouldn't cover well when I painted so I took a picture so I could ask (after the fact) if something went wrong what I should have done.  I'm smart like that.  :(

 But luckily nothing went wrong and their room is no longer floral wallpaper or the lilac that was painted underneath, nope, now it is a lovely True Value color South Shore.  Pictures soon I promise.  Well, maybe in January.

 We took out the 70's trash compactor and then Leo knocked out part of that stubby little side of the cupboard, and as we speak he's putting in a shelf he built and I stained to hold my Bosch and underneath my grain mill will fit perfectly. Yes, our kitchen floor has looked like that for the past month with the carpet torn up.  But we're putting underlayment over it, so no need to scrape for hours, plus it's wood so we couldn't anyway.  But still it makes me happy that I DON'T have to scrape it.

 This is our living room mostly cleared out of boxes, when we first moved in, we couldn't walk through it.

 One of my favorite things I found in our house, a mirror held up with bandaids. Nice.  Also, my other favorite, a mouse trap behind the trash compactor.  How did they ever expect to know or get rid of a mouse if one was caught back there??!?!?

 Sebastian was styling.  Seriously.

And yes I'm cramming in Thanksgiving, but only because I don't know when I'll have the chance to blog again.  (Living room and dining room and foyer to paint, LVT coming in this week, so we could start putting down flooring in a bathroom or something, and a bathroom still needing to be painted.)

 Anyway, Thanksgiving was awesome! We went first to my sister Andrea's and she had an awesome game night/adult's party, which Leo won the game!  And then the next day we went to my Mom's church building for Thanksgiving.  It was so much fun.  And then the next day we all came to Mom's and played games and talked and ate great food again.  Leo and I made it to the temple, and I got a pair of hiking boots to wear around this winter in the Black Friday sales.

 I love our full-sized vans. My siblings and I rock our style.

 Yeah, I didn't take many pictures.  Sorry.

 But I did take pictures of the pies.  Yumm!

And that's the end, I need to go start sewing--I have a couple of things to finish by Christmas.  Ahhhh!!!  When will the insanity end??!?!?  Just kidding...it's nice to be able to fix up our house.  I'm actually worried whether we should be doing more (scraping off all the popcorn ceiling--now would be the perfect time--but I'm tired, and we'd have to buy more paint then for the ceiling, but the popcorn ceiling is in pretty shoddy shape.  And they painted all over it in patches by the walls and it looks bad, especially once I painted on our beige color that doesn't match the white that they made mistakes with. Errr....I don't know what to do.....)  We did put up a Christmas tree although most of our decorations are staying packed this year.  That's a good thing though because of Jubal the Terror and his ornament wrecking abilities.  And we did go make gingerbread houses with the kids at their school.

Ana, by the way, is playing basketball at the high school.  Anyway,  sewing...must sew.   Goodnight. I'll try to post again soon.