The wallpaper coming down in just 30 minutes should have been a tip off that the glue wouldn't be such a cake walk.

Last night, Mark spent a few hours on the acreage with his new riding lawn mower while I tackled the Swan Lake bathroom.

The steam cleaner really does work on the glue and it's not actually that hard to scrape off, it's just tedious and slow going.

Most of this wall, the biggest one, is now glue free. Some of the higher areas are glued since I'm not that tall. Either Mark will have to do that, or I'll be doing some climbing with the steam cleaner.

This wall and part of another only took 3 hours. 

Wearing gloves was a good idea because I ended up pretty sticky, though I somehow managed not to get glue in my hair. The last time I painted a bathroom, I thought it was a good idea to stand on a kitchen chair, in the tub, while drinking red wine and using red paint. 

Turns out, red paint is not the same color as red hair.

There's a good chance I'll be back at this tonight since we're in a bigger hurry to get the house ready after the break-in, but at least we made friends with the sheriff's deputy and got a lot accomplished. 

Plus, my seeds are sprouting! But, more on that later.

Last night I was packing up the car to take things to the new house and I planned to use the steam cleaner in the bathroom to get the wallpaper glue off the walls and get that room cleaned up and ready for paint.

It wasn't to be.

Mark texted me that someone had broken in to the shop and taken things and rifled through all of our boxes. 

Luckily, they hadn't gone into the house, and if they'd tried, they didn't get in. 

We spent the night rearranging things, moving more valuable things to safer places and installing more locks. 

As the night went on I found myself more and more upset that someone had broken a window, climbed in, opened a garage door, backed their truck into the shop and taken our things. It's less about the things than it is about them being in our space. 

I never understood why people got so upset about that until last night. It's a very unsettling feeling to know someone was in your space, uninvited and unwanted. 

We're having a chat with the sheriff's office today and taking additional safety precautions in the meantime, as well as looking at other security measures we can take. 

While Mark was locking things up, I took great joy in watching this sunset. Even though it had been a tough night, a view like this always lifts my spirits. No thief can ever take it from us either.

Then I came home, poured a glass of wine and watched this clip from Smash again. Cheesy maybe, but sometimes I just need a song to make me feel better.

This wallpaper was nice on it's own, but coupled with the translucent green/teal glass tile with swans painted on a line of them, it was just too much.

We picked up a scorer the other day and so I started with that. After a small section of wallpaper scoring, I was worried I was pushing through to the wall. One of the corners was peeling a way, so I pulled it up to see how the wall was looking and much to my surprise, the whole piece peeled off easily.

Alone in the house, I was rocking out to local radio and almost shouted "Hallelujah!" Afraid of getting my hopes up, I moved on to the next section and amazingly enough, it came off too. My biggest problem was I kept bumping my head on the ceiling while walking along the counter to pull the wallpaper off. 

I discovered a few gems, like the missing section under the light switch, varying paint colors under the wallpaper and my favorite was spots where they miscalculated and added little bits to cover the holes. Like this one.

In about 30 minutes, victory was mine and all of the wallpaper was down. Can't say my nails much appreciated the project, but I'm happy with how things are looking.

Next we'll use the steam cleaner to get the adhesive off and see how we're looking to really make progress on picking out paint colors. 

Victory is mine, yo!

Last week, I got started planting my seeds in pots and picked up some plants from our gardening freelancer at the paper as well as a trip to opening day at the local farmers market. 

For less than $20 at the market, I picked up two tomato plants, two bell pepper plants and two mint plants, though one is for my friend Erin. I had already acquired two other tomato plants from the woman who writes gardening columns for the paper. She bought in a bunch of plants for us to take home.

From seed, I've planted snap peas, carrots, chives, basil, oregano, dill, thyme, and a few others I already forgot. 

I am beyond excited about our mini farm and am hoping over the next few years we really can grow most of the veggies and herbs that we need. 

There's also a very good chance we'll be planting a few cherry trees and maybe some other fruit plants. Oh, and there will be flowers and trees too, but I'm mostly excited about what we can use. 

Guess we'll see how much of my great-aunt's green thumb I've picked up.

Monday Motivation is back! 

What makes you come alive?

For me it's good journalism, newspaper things, working with veterans, helping young or new to the beat journalists with military reporting, outdoor adventures, travel, making new friends, figuring out all the things we can do with our new house, getting to know my new state of Montana, time with family and friends.

These walls are comin' down.

From where I'm standing in the living room, we're looking into the dining room, with laminate floors, then on to the kitchen, with tile floors. Because it was too much to ask to have any sort of consistency in the flooring selection.

So the current game plan is to knock out the wall directly in front of me on the left, and the right side to just past the outlet since that's where the wall is on the other side. There's a closet further to the right, so for now, we're going to end up with an island of closets in the middle of the house. 

We'll extend the laminate, and get rid of the square of tile at the front door, to the hallway and create a threshold. For now, the carpet stays in the closet, because otherwise, we'll have to adjust the door and all kinds of things. 

This wall is coming down too. Behind it are cabinets, the oven and a countertop. We're going to knock it out, make a bar style countertop, add cabinets to the back of the top ones and voila. 

We're not completely sure the heights and colors of everything yet. We're figuring out the coloring of the cabinets and the countertop and how to make it all tie together. 

I'm pretty excited for the much more open space. Eventually, we'll probably redo the flooring to fit our styles and needs a little better. That blue carpet is super squishy thick. 

Expect to see some progress on this in the next few weeks. Boyfriend wants to have it mostly done by the time we move in completely. 

I've mailed in my popcorn ceiling sample and will be plugging away at the Swan Lake bathroom wallpaper as I eagerly await the results. 

(P.S., that's boyfriend's dog, Moxie. She's a sweet pup. More of Grover is coming, as it's been demanded by a handful of y'all.)