A productive weekend getting ready for listing the house.

I pared down our upstairs bookshelves and dropped off 2 big boxes of books at a local library. I can't believe how many books we have, but many are back from our college days. And books are one of the few things I'm happy to give my kids for holidays and birthdays. Most were purchased in the huge used book department at the Paramus Barnes & Noble. It is such a temptation with books up to 75% off or paperbacks for a dollar. Of course, I boxed up many to take along with us too, and will put some, especially ones the kids have grown out of at our future garage sale.

I took down family pictures from the mantle, dressers and bathroom walls. It is weird to take away personal items. The house now looks so desolate. Where is the life? Not to mention I loved looking at pictures of the kids when they were little.

Doug has been painting and scraping. Last weekend the bay windows in the dining room and living room. We had replaced them with energy efficient double glass versions a little more than 2 years ago and had never painted the preprimed frames. He painted the windows, windowseats, and mantle. It looks so fresh and beautiful. He also painted the upstairs bathroom to remove the last traces of the flying squirrel problem we had last year. Gosh, we should have done all this years ago.

Of course, there was also the usual work of the weekend: three loads of laundry and cooking many meals. At least I combined baking corn bread for last night's chili dinner with blueberry-cornbread muffins for Renee's school snack today. It's her week to bring snack for the class.

I'll try to post some after pictures tomorrow. I'll try to get organized enough to do before and after pictures in future posts.