What do you do when your husband's deployed?

Why you redecorate of course!  Paul has been gone a little over a month and I've wasted no time getting the house clean and organized.  I've come to realize who the messy one of us is and his name begins with P.  I do say it is nice to donate tons of stuff to Big Brothers Big Sisters Foundation (and they even come pick it up!) as well as donating books to my local library which also has a dumpster out front for recycling paper as a fundraiser. 

Luckily I had a couple of strong men (David & Mat) to come over and move furniture which I am sure they were excited about (especially since David had just moved into a new apartment the day before lol). 




The living room got a new rug for Emma and no more recliner

The master bedroom used to have a dresser on this wall



which got moved to this wall along with the dresser from the guest room

the dresser from this wall got moved to the guest room



the guest room bed got rotated to a new position



along with the dresser from the master bedroom

the upstairs guest room finally has curtains and the bed was moved (these are the curtains from the nursery which now has white panel curtains instead)

no more junk in the corner!

and the man cave (with the recliner)

notice the lack of crap on the desk

So, I've had a great time throwing out crap, de-cluttering, organizing, and decorating.  I come from a long line of hoarders (ahem) so it is difficult for us to get rid of stuff, but it sure feels good to have more room in the house and finally get rid of boxes of old papers and what not that I've been carrying around for years.  Now if I can just get Paul to throw away receipts!

Apparently our house...also a pig pen

So Paul has taken to calling me Pig Pen (sooo funny) and apparently our house...also a pig pen.

Our housecleaner started today. No, we did no suddenly win the lottery. When my dad asked what we wanted for Christmas I quickly realized that having to clean our house may put Paul over the edge combined with all the other chores he's had to take on with my bedrest coupled with the sheer length of my bedrest so I immediately said housecleaner please!

Having watched a little too many Criminal Minds and seen too many Dateline/48 Hours specials I was a little leery of hiring someone off say Craigslist. Who knows what kind of psycho I'd end up with???? So a friend recommended care.com and I checked it out. It is this whole awesome website where people advertise their services for senior care, pet care, housecleaning, babysitting, etc. and the website does all the background checks and references (which you can access). I emailed some people and actually only interviewed one, checked another reference she gave me besides the website ones, and voila...we have a housecleaner!

She started today (at 10am and was here till 5pm and only charged me $100) and let me just say...she cleaned areas I always think about cleaning and never do like under the bed! Every week I look at the bed and think about how many dust bunnies are living under there...well, not anymore! She dusted things that desperately needed to be dusted and mopped the entire house! The guest bathroom tub has NEVER been so clean...seriously, like magic. And she did laundry and washed the dishes in the sink. And she brought all her own equipment and supplies. How great is she!

If you can't tell I'm a little enamoured of my housecleaner. I did feel a little bit like a tool laying my fat ass on the couch while she cleaned around me, but what are you gonna do? I may have to go back to work after the baby is born just so I can afford to continue to have her come clean the house. Her cleaning...way better than mine! So worth it! Ahhhhh....