Distressed

We are really excited to be hosting a lot of visitors this coming summer, starting in a week.  In full transparency, I must admit however, that I've found since starting my "at home mom" gig when we moved here, I've confirmed what I already suspected - I hate cleaning.  A lot.  I apologize in advance to our upcoming guests about this.  I can always find something better to do than clean. 

A few weeks ago, Nate, Isla and I were having one of our family tooth brushing sessions in our bathroom and Nate and I peered into our shower and agreed that it could really use a thorough scrubbing.  I thought about this while Isla napped for the next 2 days and then decided to just do something super similar instead:  I bought an antique desk and started refinishing it (equally as productive, as least).  Like most new activities, I approached refinishing a piece of furniture naively...I mean, how hard could it be?  You know what?  It's hard!  And I have no idea what I'm doing.  I don't even know if the right word is refinish...or refurbish? Or maybe re-vamp?  In any case, as the kind man at the paint store informed me, "It's a very simple process of painting 2-3 coats of paint, then distressing, then waxing it."  So far, the only thing distressed is me!  This project was intended to be my "break" from triathlon training, yet I had an epiphany this afternoon while painting the 3rd coat on - perhaps I should have cleaned the shower. 

Here's he progress so far:


On the upside, once we have a desk in the house, my 33 year old husband can finally take is international business phone calls from home while sitting at a desk rather than laying on the floor on the phone as if he were a 10 year old deeply engrossed in his batman coloring book.  He always looks so precious and child-like doing this, but then tries to stand up after an hour and inevitably twists something in this back and reminds me that getting older really sucks.

On the downside, between this activity, training, my very energetic one year old, and Nate traveling a ton, I'm a bit behind on blog posts!  Not to worry. Upcoming posts will include:

- The New Zealand Top 10
- Qantas is my Everything

And whatever else I think up while swimming.  Other major Aussie happenings include Cup Day preparations!  Cup Day is like the Kentucky Derby of Australia and they've really done it right here.  The festival lasts an entire week with a special name and theme for each day of horse racing, and for the big day of racing, Tuesday (Cup Day), it is actually a national holiday and everyone is off work.  The Cup Day fashion theme is "colour" and we will be heading to the track for it!  It seems the entire city of Melbourne gears up for the celebration of Cup Day - billboards on the highway, specials at every restaurant, and every store has a line of fascinators in the window.  If the actual day is half as fun as the preparation for it, we are in for a treat!

This is unrelated, but, in closing, here's another great coffee sign that caught my eye yesterday: