A quickie before hitting the shower and heading to Mass.

We survived Junior's last birthday party of the year. Guests started to arrive around 1:00 and the last left around 10:00 last night. I figured the child would sleep late--what was I thinking? He was up by 6:00 looking for me to put his new basketball hoop on the back of his bedroom door.

My SIL made up the goody bags. This years theme--Pirates. Last night Junior was running around with a napkin do-rag, eye patch, a sand pail for a peg leg and one of those telescoping thingies while singing "Yo, Ho, Ho and a Bottle of Rum..." I'm hoping someone will email us a picture (our camera's not working) or we will try to recreate it when the darned camera is working again.

I'm a little afraid to go downstairs. The house is a disaster. Why did I spend so much time cleaning before everyone came when after requires even more clean-up??

As I said before I start the new job tomorrow, what I didn't tell everyone I had to buy a new computer for it. The system we bought back in April has Windows Vista, I need XP for the job. After a little research I found out I couldn't load XP because Vista wouldn't find the drivers required? I had to special order a system with XP because all the "stores" in the area are only selling new systems with Vista. It came Thursday I hooked it up Friday. The geeky BILs supplied a monitor and a router which will be installed today and soon my already way too crowded home office will be even more crowded. The office is my catch all room (aka junk room). What a mess.

I can't decide which I should do first the office or the rest of the house.

ETA--cleaning up the house wasn't that bad, just some straightening. So, it's on to the home office.

Bookcase = Clean House

My husband and I had been arguing discussing whether or not we should take a bookcase my mom wanted to give us. The DH doesn't want another thing brought into our already over crowded house. I on the other hand wanted it because I knew it would fit perfectly in our upstairs hallway. So yesterday I called and worked a little guilt left him a message at work, knowing he was on the road, and told him it was a family piece, passed down from my grandmother and I wanted it. Then I went and picked it up.

Somehow putting that bookcase in the upstairs hall lead to cleaning the entire house.

The plan was to use it for extra bathroom storage, as we have a teeny, tiny bathroom (100 year old house), so this lead to cleaning out and reorganizing the storage that was in the bathroom. Which lead to scrubbing the bathroom. Actually first I decided to vacuum the upstairs hallway so it was nice and clean under the bookcase. I had to move what was upstairs in the hall downstairs. It's hard to describe, kind of a long and narrow planter thingy that I was using for towel storage and decorative value. It ended up in the dining room with a dried floral arrangement in it,which looks great, but I made a huge mess putting the dried stuff together. This lead to dusting and vacuuming the dining room, and if the dining room is dusted and vacuumed, then the living room needs to be done. If the living room is done, then the front foyer needs doing. And if I do something with the foyer then I should really re-organize the toys and and stuff on the front porch. And of course if all this gets done, then the kitchen might as well get cleaned, though I didn't re-organize the cupboards.

Who knew one bookcase would lead to a clean house? :D

And then I realized it's two days until Easter and I needed to make chocolate and bake cookies to bring to my in-laws and I had 48 plastic eggs to fill for the kids Easter Egg Hunt.

PS I managed to make 3 lbs of chocolate without eating any. I've been very good and am now counting down the hours until Lent is over and I can have chocolate for breakfast Easter morning.