I really like throwing parties. I know it's not a particularly noble pursuit, but I get a huge kick out of—to borrow a term they use frequently on House Hunters (at least when the wife isn't making jokes about the husband giving her all the closet space)—"entertaining." Even before Pinterest made two-bit Martha Stewarts out of all of us, I always liked throwing parties.

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You may remember that Sean wrapped up a tire for my birthday a few months ago with the promise to build me a tire swing. And it turns out he's a man who's true to his word!

Go on, add your swingers joke right here. Just try not to. 

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We are currently in the middle of a bathroom renovation, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, which for some reason I saw fit to write as though I was rapping it (there are just so many good words that rhyme with renovation!)

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I am fueled, for the most part, by instant gratification and so the idea of getting our house in shape slowly has been one that I've had to adjust to. When we moved in almost two years ago—almost two years ago!—there was so much I wanted to change and fix and decorate that it felt like I'd never get it to a place where it felt like home.

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One of the things I've wanted for a really, really, really long time is a red front door. Pretend each of those "reallys" is a decade and you get the idea—alright, maybe not a decade, maybe five years. Door years are like dog years, perhaps: each human year you want yours to be a different color feels like five times as many when it isn't. 

But guess what? The thing about a red front door is that it's not actually all that hard to achieve. You just kind of buy some red paint and go to town. 

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One of the things I've always wanted in my house—and forgive me for my silly aspirations; you might want an original Saarinen but I aim a lot lower and dream a lot smaller, apparently—is a sunburst mirror.

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It is not, perhaps, my most noble goal, but one of the things I've always wanted to do is to throw a New Year's Eve party. I know, I know; some people have long-held dreams of running marathons and writing novels, but for me, it seems,  the pinnacle of achievement is wearing a sparkly dress, hoisting aloft a bacon-wrapped date, and toasting the impending year underneath half a dozen handmade tissue pompoms. 

What, it's not like I'm proud.

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Hey, do you remember when I found that bar cart at an estate sale for ten bucks and had my husband stand there with his hand on it—like those Keep Your Hand On The Car competitions they used to have at state fairs, except with fewer deep-fried Twinkies—so that I could run and find someone to give me a price on it before another bargain hunter bought it first?

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Thank you so much for all your lovely comments on my home office makeover! I was blown away by how kind you all were about the end result, and now I want to invite everybody over to work with me in there and I'll make us all pumpkin spice lattes* for our 4 o'clock treat. (What, you don't have a 4 o'clock treat? Why, sometimes I have a 4 o'clock treat and elevenses—which is, as you might expect, an 11am treat.)

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You may remember that I decided to turn my spare bedroom into a home office approximately seven million years ago. Slowly but surely, I've finally got it how I want it, and I'd love to show you how it all turned out.

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