Cleaning, organizing and planning, oh my!

I was all ready to go to the gym...I was about to tell the girls to get their shoes on so we could go...and I twisted my ankle.  Heard it go "crunch" and everything.  Ouch.  So I'm not going to the gym today after all.  Hopefully tomorrow it'll be healed enough.  I was pleasantly surprised when I weighed myself this morning, though.  I'd lost two pounds since the beginning of the week!

Instead I'm cleaning, and doing laundry.  We're washing sheets and blankets today.  And cleaning the trash heaps ... pig styes ...um.... oh, yeah, they're called bedrooms.  Or at least they will be when we get them done... I am so sick and tired of the constant mess.  I guess we (all of us, but especially the kids) still have too much stuff.  Time to purge again!  We'll call it spring cleaning, since spring weather has arrived.

And I'm getting ready for my next project.  Hubby is going to be traveling next month, one week in New York and one week in London.  A long time ago, I used to take advantage of his travels to do a home decorating project, and surprise him when he got home.  I haven't done that in a long time, partly because he doesn't travel much these days.  So I've decided that this time, I will.  It's "sooper-seekrit" so I won't be posting on Facebook about it until he sees it, but I'll post here since he doesn't read my blog.  I'm going to paint the kitchen and make new curtains.  It doesn't sound like much, but I'm totally changing the color scheme in there.  We recently got a new loveseat and chairs for the family room, which is open to the kitchen.  So I want to coordinate the two rooms.  I want to have the family room painted blue(I'd do it myself, but it's a really tall room) to set off the chocolate brown in the furniture.  The kitchen is going to be opposite: chocolate brown on the walls, and blue for the curtains.  I'm doing the kitchen first, so Hubby will see what a nice color combination it is, and be convinced that we should use it in the family room too.  I'm considering glazing the kitchen cabinets to make them darker, but not as dark as the walls; right now they're oak-color, builders'-grade cabinets with no hardware.  I'd love for them to be darker and have some nice handles and pulls, but new cabinets aren't in the budget this year, so I have to work with what we have. 

Oh, I almost forgot to mention what I'm going to do for "art"... I have a bunch of antique crocheted doilies made by Hubby's great-grandma, grandma, and great aunts(most are over a hundred years old!) and I'm going to frame them, with some of the curtain fabric as a background, and hang them on the walls.  Since they are so old and delicate, I've been afraid to use them, lest they get stained or torn.  This way, they'll be seen, but not destroyed.  I'll put some in the kitchen and some in the family room, to tie the two rooms together.  The tricky part will be finding frames large enough without breaking the bank...