I've been so busy, I forgot I had a blog.

Or the other appropriate title would be 'Our house got robbed & in addition to life, I've just been waaaay too busy dealing with insurance, detectives & security systems to think about this here little blog'. But that would be too long of a title, now wouldn't it?

So yes, I've been an absentee blogger these days. In one of those "it will never happen to me" moments, our house was robbed last week. It's not fun, it's not glamorous, and I sure as hell find myself a little (okay a lot) nervous to come home alone most days. We were lucky in that the intruder made off with mostly jewelry (some of which were family pieces, that sadly, we'll never see again) and the sister's netbook & ipod. Ironically, said intruder was relatively respectful of our property, with the exception of this....

They kicked in our side door, taking the interior moldings & half of the wall with it. Lovely, eh? As upset as we were about the robbery itself, this door nearly put me over the edge. What a freaking mess. Luckily, the husband's contractor friend showed up bright & early the next morning to repair the door (we'll replace it as soon as the insurance settles, whenever that may be....), and we were able to rid ourselves of those projection screen stands that temporarily secured our door.

Ironically, the bulk of the mess came from the police & their fingerprinting dust....

Area rug....ruined. I crossed my fingers that the insurance adjusters would have sympathy & tell me to purchase a new rug ASAP. But instead, they told me to call a cleaning service to remedy this little issue. Which isn't so bad, I suppose. But it's certainly not the West Elm or Crate & Barrel replacement I had in mind...

But onward & upward! It's time to move on & get to some stuff I meant to talk about earlier this week. We finally got around to replacing the light in the real, real entryway. Remember when I dabbled with the idea of having a professional come & install overhead lighting? Well guess what...a $29.99 sconce from Home Depot won.

I begged the husband to replace the light right away. Afterall, I'd be welcoming my book club friends through these doors in a matter of days & people generally like to be able to see where they're going when it's dark. Which ended up being just one big LIE, since the real reason we needed a light was to welcome our friends to the husband's surprise, "Yay! You have an MBA!" party (I got really good at lying that week....).

But sadly, the light is just decorative at this point. The wiring is all f'd up. I'd always wondered why the old light never worked? Well, there you have it. The husband was so annoyed with this fact that after a solid 30 minutes of working, everything got tossed aside in a huff. And we're no further along than when we started. But it sure does look better! 

I also finished painting the steps. Hoorah! Lack of lighting kept me from tackling this project on weeknights, so whenever a spare moment presented itself on the weekends, I was painting (scratch that...I was actually frantically painting a mere days before the husband's party....I'm the poster child for procrastination). 

Oh my. I looooove that this is complete. Amazing what some painted risers can do for your home! I'm still debating about installing a runner, but that's way down the line, if ever. Snow & salt is much easier to clean off the wood floors!

So that's about it! I'm hoping to get my house mojo back in action...enough to be posting more frequently! With Thanksgiving just around the corner (um, quite literally!), I'll be sharing my thoughts & ideas for how we'll be celebrating next week.

Hint...this year it involves a kitchen. Just sayin'.