My list of preoccupations grows...

I just found out this past weekend that I am allowed to paint my apartment! Originally I was told that I would have to repaint the walls to white when I move out, but actually all I have to do is just prime them. That's not so bad right!? I mean I'd have to prime them anyways if I was to return them to white, this just means one less step in the end. I've already chosen some colors and I'm pretty sure I'll stick with them. The living room will be 'Costa Mesa' which is a sort of gold color. It's not metallic at all, more of a yellow with a teeny hint of olive in it (if you're interested you can check it out at Home Depot in the Glidden paint samples). Next are the bathroom and kitchen which will both be painted the same color - 'Woodland Mystery' green. Not on the hunter side of the greens, but not a mint green either. It's a hair blue for a sage, but much closer to sage than teal (again, if you're interested check out HD). I decided to paint the bathroom and kitchen the same color just because the apartment is really small to begin with, so I don't want to make it crazy with a ton of colors. Actually the bedroom will be the least colorful on the walls. This will be painted 'Desert Floor.' It's a nice light tan color, and since the drapes, furniture, and linens are all really dark I don't want to make my room into a cave by painting the walls dark too.

I'm really excited about painting - aside from all of the work I think it's going to be fun to do something new for a change:) I'm still working diligently on the blanket I started crocheting back in college. Just the other night I finally put together some squares I've recently finished. I calculated that I am 1/6th of the way done. Which means that of the 240 total squares needed to finish this blanket, I have finished 40. The good news is that I'm getting really fast at it now, so it only takes about 15-20 min per square. I'm only hoping that the JoAnn's still sells the yarn I'm using because I seriously understimated the amount of yarn it would take to do this! As for the other items on my list of things to keep me preoccupied, I started a puzzle a while ago but had to put it away because it was taking over my coffee table. Not to fear, I kept the parts in tact that I had already solved! It was a 1000 piece puzzle of M.C. Esher's "High and Low." It wasn't so bad for a while there, but I got to a point where I just couldn't find pieces very quickly - this was exacerbated by the fact that all the pieces were black/grey/white toned and therefore all looked the same. I also am reading a couple of books. The first is a re-read of the Harry Potter series (see Mom, I told you I'd read them again;-), and the other is a book called "Dancing Naked in the Mind Fields" by Kary Mullis. For any of you who are up to speed on science or Nobel Prize winners of the last 20 years, Kary Mullis won for inventing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and his book is based on his life and times... Not so much an autobiography as I expected, but it's not a bad read so far! My friend Tim lended it to me, and it's funny how much I can see some aspects of his own personality parallel with Mullis' in this book:)

As it turns out I am expecting some pictures soon in the mail (cough, cough did you send them yet Shane? cough ;-). They're from Brett and Jessica's wedding, so I'll post some of my top picks as soon as I get them - stay tuned!!