#and the gal there gave my spouse a fan deck of all their colors

[raspberryconverse]

This fabric is absolutely adorable, right?

Nobody ever talks about this (that I've heard, at least), but one of the most exhausting things about buying a house (that you plan to stay in for a long time) is how exhausting decorating the whole thing can be, especially if you're not the only one who lives there.

To say my spouse and I bit off probably more than we can chew with our house is an understatement. It was built in 1945 and only had one owner, so there have been a ton of things that need updating, just to live (electrical, drain tile system, roof, furnace, central AC, stove, mold removal). We closed almost a year ago and fully moved in last June.

We have hardly any artwork up, but we do have all but one of the bedrooms painted. The last room is going to be our home office (we both work remotely, though we could go to our offices if we really wanted to, but we rarely do). This room has been the last to really nail things down on because it was the one where the roof was leaking around the chimney and there was mold behind the wood paneling. We just haven't been able to figure out exactly what we want to do with it decor-wise. One of the main things it needs right away is curtains. My closet is also in this room and if the door is open the window has a clear sightline of the built-in my spouse uses. There is often nudity (though I honestly don't think anyone can get a really clear view of either of us changing, but my spouse disagrees).

Today we decided to go to a fabric store in the city (Chicago) to find fabric for curtains. We've been to Ikea and browsed what other retailers had online, but nothing really caught our eye. It was a good choice because we found the fabric above. And now we have a jumping off point.

We hit a few other places after and at some point in the afternoon, it occurred to me: this is my next cross stitch project

I plopped it in Stitch Fiddle and made some adjustments. On my last trip to Michael's, I needed to pick up more of my spouse's dress color to finish our wedding record and decided this would be my next project, so I bought all the blacks and grays and some 18 count aida cloth (I usually use 14 count, but Stitch Fiddle said it'd be enormous and 18 is about as small as I'll use because I'm old and my vision is getting worse). And now that we're going to have cute rainy day curtains, this is going to be perfect! It's probably going to take me forever, but oh well.

Nobody probably thinks this is as exciting as we do, but it has been a long ass time since we've done some house stuff and not only agreed on something so easily, but also not fought at all in the process. And this room has been plaguing us too. We are so burnt out with decision fatigue and our relationship has really been suffering because of it. But today was a really good day! We had no idea what direction to go with the office, but now we finally have something and we're both really excited about it.