How in the world did I collect so much stuff?

This weekend has been very productive so far. Yesterday we finished painting the kitchen and the main areas, and P installed the light fixtures in the kitchen and the dining room which took a little longer than we thought since our light boxes in the kitchen were small and had to be adapted (of course). But they are all up now and they look fabulous! The kitchen ones are round fluorescent fixtures with brushed nickel framing, and the one in the dining room is a pewter with alabaster light cups, and they just look great. I couldn't be happier with that part of it. And the light is much brighter and prettier, so it's easier to see now in the house.

I also started lugging in stuff for the garage sale, and what a pain this is. I will never have another garage sale again. At this point, I've labeled so much stuff that I'm committed now and we are going to do this next weekend, but I don't know that I will ever want to do another garage sale again. Ugh. It's just unbelievable. And we probably won't even make that much money! I told P that if we clear $250, I'll be happy, but there are so many things that are 50 cents and 25 cents, I don't even know if we'll clear that. I just know that I never want to amass this much junk in my life again. Ever! And that stuff is not coming back in the house. I told P that whatever we don't sell is going straight into the cars and we're taking it to Goodwill. A big part of me just wishes that we had done that to begin with and just gotten the tax deduction! This labeling and pricing of everything is just a LOT of work!

Today, P promised me he would finish sanding the dresser so I can start staining it. I read all the instructions for the conditioner, stain and finish that we bought, and it's definitely a doable one day thing if I can get started in a few hours. The conditioner only needs thirty minutes to set, the stain needs two hours between coats, and then the final coat needs three hours before I can put the top finishing coat on it. I'm really excited about this...I've been dying to do this to the dresser for MONTHS now. I might be able to do the bookcase too, but we'll see...the bookcase only has polyurethane on it and no stain, so I would think it would be much easier to sand and prep for staining, but I don't know.

That's all that's new from this corner of the universe. We're just keeping very busy and counting down the days until the kitchen is done. One week and five days to go.