In Which We Learn A Thing or Two

So I'm letting some of the girls I go to church with come and have girls' night at my house tonight, and I just can't motivate myself to clean off my kitchen counter.  I'm going to blog instead.  I did promise to post pictures of the finished room, didn't I?  I wouldn't want to go back on my word.  That's just not like me.
Any way.  First, let's travel back in time a couple months...
I don't really remember when I'd say April sometime after the floors got done, my bestest friend Nicole and I went to IKEA and got two new shelves for my front room.  It's not that the other two got damaged in the Christmas Flood of 2011 or anything.  We just needed more book shelves.  Kurtis and I are collectors of books I guess you could say.  We put the other two shelves in the tv room and are using them for our dvd collection.  It's also pretty big.  The new shelves have been sitting in the bay window of the front room ever since, just waiting for some wonderful person to come along and put them together.  I figured, get the wall done, then put them together.  Well, Monday, Kurtis decided he was tired of waiting and wanted to put them together.  No, no.  Even better idea.  He would have Zachary help him put them together.  So after our dentist appointments and dinner, Kurtis and Zach set to work.  Tuesday, I asked Kurtis to help me bring the other two from the garage and we started bringing up books.
I have this weird problem.  I live amongst a butt load of clutter.  I haven't figured out how to organize things at all.  But.  I do like my books alphabetized by the author's last name.  And my cds need to be in alphabetical order, too.  I like to eat my candy so that I will end up eating the flavor I like best last.  I can organize my brain to do those kinds of things, but my kitchen counter looks like my mail box vomited all over it, or there was an explosion in the Stampin' Up! factory and it landed on my counter.  I can't keep it clean for long.  I don't like it.  My mother would love to come and help me out, but I don't want my mother to help me out.  Or anybody for that matter.  I just need to figure this one out on my own.
So we alphabetized our books while I gave a lecture about putting them back on the shelf.  I know my husband ignored it (he always does), but hopefully the kids won't.  There's more of them.  It took a couple hours.  Then I let Zach stay up and while Kurtis supervised, he put that last shelf together all by himself.  I feel such pride.  My baby's all grown up and building furniture!

 Kaleb wanted a turn with the drill, too. :)

All finished with Monday night's shelf.

 Hooray!  I'm done and I can go to bed!

 Riley is glad to have his reading place back.

This is my dream couch.  I want it to go where the white couch is now.  Sometimes, I think it would be nice to have unlimited amounts of cash.

 These are all of our fiction books.  Our non-fiction books are in those boxes and we are debating where to put them at the moment.  I'm not really worried that the last shelf isn't full.  Give it time.  Our kids are becoming book collectors as well.

 The bay window needs some furniture now.  But we threw out the purple rocking chair.  It was falling apart.  I have a chair that needs to be reupholstered and I will put it there when it is done.  We just ran out of money for the other one.  Sigh.  Eventually, this room will look the way I want it to, and then we will move.  It's the curse of this house.  The lady we bought the house from said the same thing when she moved out.

This is Riley's art work.  The top one he painted in second grade, and we thought it was frame worthy.

Then he brought home the second one sometime in May, and we thought it was also frame worthy.  Kaleb is really jealous and is setting out to make something frame worthy, too so he will get a picture on the wall.  He he.  Sibling rivalry.  :)