Birthday Week, Wallpaper and Paint*

There are certain elements of supply teaching that I absolutely love.

Right now I’m sitting in the staff room of one of my favourite schools on my prep period. As everything has already been prepared for me, and I wasn’t needed elsewhere in the school, I now have 76 glorious minutes of absolute quiet to sit and relax.

There are many things that frustrate me that I could complain about, but for now, these quiet moments momentarily overshadow everything else and it’s enough.

Especially after the craziness of last week.

You see, it’s birthday week! My beautiful girl turns one on Thursday, and we are celebrating all week long. We had my family over yesterday and ended up with 20 people in my little house. It was loud and crazy but so fun. It was worth the hectic preparations that went on for days ahead.

As we knew our home would be busy for a while, we decided it was time to fix up our entrance way. When we moved in, the front hallway walls were two-toned with a greeny-grey paint on top and a hodge-podged blue wall paper on the bottom, with a skinny white trim separating them in the middle. The wallpaper was ripped and glued on in pieces, and we think they were trying to make the wall look like stone.

(It didn’t look like stone.)

We’ve just left it as it wasn’t a priority, and my motto has really just been: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

It certainly wasn’t broken, it just wasn’t terribly attractive. But we finally bit the bullet and I spent every free moment last week stripping wallpaper and glue from the walls. It was a big job—especially with an extremely curious toddler who wanted to “help”—but I got it done and on Saturday we had someone come in to patch up our walls. Neither the Hubster or I are drywall experts, so we figured it was probably best to have someone come in and help us smooth them out.

We were hoping to have it all done and painted by yesterday, but the massive snowstorm that blew through set us back a day and the walls needed two coats of “mud” which was more than we figured.

So we we still rocked a two-tone entrance way at the party, it was just paint and drywall this time. (Which I still view as an improvement. ha) I decorated around it and honestly, I don’t think many people noticed or cared. We were up until after midnight the night before trying to get the house cleaned and decorated, and I learned that preparing food for 20+ people is no small task. But everything got done–my home was full, my heart is happy and Ruby had a blast.

And, she didn’t like the cake OR the icing. Part of me was so proud that she preferred her avocados to the cake, and the rest of me wondered how my kid didn’t like cake. haha

Painting starts this afternoon—ceilings first , then walls and trim. So excited!!