The Glamorous Life. Not.

In the spirit of keeping things real...here is the non-excitingness around our casa lately.

I have been in the midst of swapping out our wintery decor for something sunshine-y.  I'm trying to force the whole "if you decorate it, spring will come" thing.  That means we have accessories galore, sitting all over the place...just waiting to see if they make the cut or go back into the closet.

On top of that, our "craft room" aka our second guest bedroom has looked like a bomb went off for weeks months now.  I decided it was high time I emptied it {obviously onto our living room/dining room floor} so I could sort through things and organize my project list.

And then there was the electrical work.

You see, back in October, when stupid Sandy left us without power for a week...we decided to invest in a generator.  Then we thought it'd be a great idea to hardwire it to our house.  For that, we'd need an electrician...and unfortunately, it took until this past week to get that electrician to the house.  Of course, while we had him, I figured it'd be a great time to move an outlet and add another.

The hubs and I love to have string lights on our mantel {especially during fall, Christmas, winter...and well pretty much all the time}, so having an ugly cord hanging off the mantel and plugging into the wall just wasn't a cute look.  Plus, if we want to plug things in on the buffet {like when we put Christmas lights on there this past year}, we had to have our plugs hanging off the buffet to the same outlet we plugged the mantel lights into.

Easy, and much more attractive solution?  {Okay...so the solution was only "easy" for us because we just paid to have someone do it.}  1) Add an outlet on the mantel and 2) move the outlet that was showing on our wall, to an area that would be hidden by our buffet.  Woo-to-the-hoooo...no more cords hanging all over the place!

And why haven't I cleaned up and put our furniture back in place?  Well you DO see the horrendous drywall tape bubbled up in the picture near the fireplace don't you?

Yea, that ugly eye sore.  Ugh.

That crack was there when we bought the house.  I asked our contractor to take care of it while they were doing the other major things in our house.  They did, but the tape soon started to pop off the wall.  I'm no expert, but I feel like it has something to do with the fact that we have plaster walls, and sticking drywall tape on there might not have been the best solution.  I hopped on Angie's list to find a professional with a great reputation, and had him come by to give me a free estimate to fix the crack.  He said he'd need to cut that area out, use fiber glass mesh tape, and then patch/sand/patch/sand/patch/sand. 

He also said it's something that may come back every few years because our house is old, and well, has plaster walls.  {The proximity to our fireplace could also have something to do with the crack.  Changes in temperature = expanding and contracting...makes sense to me!}  The repair seemed easy enough, and I thanked him for stopping by...and then I made a list of materials I'd need and went to Home Depot.

I have grand plans of patching this crack {along with a smaller one in our hallway ceiling} myself.  I figure if I screw it up, I'll need to have a professional come in anyway....so why not try it first and see if I can save the $200.

Wish me luck.  I will probably need it. ;)