nesting.

I've always been a very deadline-driven person. Once Mr. Hope and I made the decision to go into this cycle, I knew there was a clock running on how long we had to get certain things in order. Like our house.

Our HOUSE.

We have a 3BR, 1BA (yes, ONE) rancher that I purchased prior to even meeting Mr. Hope. It was supposed to be my 3- to 5-year "starter" home, but I read this article years ago about a family who didn't buy up, they just put their money into upgrading the small home they already had. Theirs was paid off when friends who had bigger houses were drowning in debt. Mr. Hope and I were like YES, THIS IS WHAT WE WANT, TOO.

But guys, come ON. One bathroom? ONE? And it's a teeny-tiny one at that.

So now the tentative plan is to sell in (you guessed it!) three to five years. But first, we need to put some serious elbow grease into the place.

We've been purging crap for years. Literally, years. I come from a line of borderline hoarders. So does Mr. Hope. Together, our crap proliferated. Now, during our third year of purging (fourth year?) we are almost - ALMOST - there.

Last week I got an estimate on fixing the walls in two rooms of our house. The elevator version is that the original owners of this house put wallpaper on bare drywall, and subsequent owners painted over it, and when some of the paper started bubbling up I peeled to see what was underneath. So there are two rooms that have patchy walls that need to be fixed and I am NOT paying someone to remove the paper. It would be cheaper to replace the drywall!

But I digress.

Yesterday Mr. Hope and I spent a lot of time in the third bedroom. The room that started off as my office, became his office, and will at some point become a bedroom for Future Baby. (We still don't call it a nursery, because I can be superstitious like that.) The plan is to paint it a rich navy, which is gender-neutral but also works as an office color. Before we can get to painting, though, we need to clear it out so we can hire the men that will make the walls suitable for painting in the first place.

The scarier clock is on the furniture. When I first bought this house, I purchased two vintage pieces from the 1940s that are the perfect size for Future Baby (including a dresser that is the ideal height for a changing table). The problem is that the people who owned the set before me painted the pieces avocado green. They painted the vintage hardware a cheap gold. And they didn't paint ANY of it very well. Plus, it was at one time this gorgeous maple.

So Mr. Hope and I are testing an eco-friendly paint stripper to see what's underneath. And if it's worth stripping everything, or if we want to just want to repaint it all.

(Here I must confess that I have already decorated the nursery room in my mind. It is navy and coral and aqua with burnished gold accents. And if Future Baby turns out to be a boy instead, it is navy and kelly green and butter yellow. And if we get really lucky, and end up with Twin Future Babies, then the whole plan is shot to shit because the room is way too small for multiples. On the upside, my office is Tiffany blue, which could make for a very nice nursery bedroom regardless.

EZ Diet update: As of this morning, I'm down 7.2 lbs. In less than a week. Tomorrow will be the official one-week mark so YAY for that and YAY for it not being nearly as hard as I thought it would be.