What's Up With Wal-Mart?

For the last 4 weeks, I have stopped at the local Wal-Mart every couple of days to see if they had actually gotten in a shipment of the base color paint I have needed to paint the rest of the inside of the house. Thanks to the "economic downturn" Wal-Mart is reorganizing a lot of their stores. They said originally they had intended on building a "bigger" store to take the place of this one. From the looks of the store, it looks like they are trying to convince people they are fitting more into this store by rearranging the aisles. But if you really stop and take a look at what they are doing, they have a whole lot less "stuff". The aisles have been broken up and are much shorter than they used to be. Rather than 1 long isle of something, they now have 1 short one and a noticeably smaller selection. This Wal-Mart used to have a nice fabric department with lots of sewing notions and crafting supplies. Fabric...Gone! Sewing notions...Mostly gone! Crafting items...down to one side of one very short aisle. Lots of stuff gone or severely reduced and yet, I cannot see where there is any new items or that any one section has grown. And lots of spaces are constantly empty-like they don't have enough stockers. I think it is because they don't have enough stock. Because has anyone ever known Wal-Mart to not have something(like my base paint) for weeks on end?

Anyway, I finally got the paint. I won't even go into what an ordeal it was to get it mixed correctly....Ugghh!

And this weekend, I have started covering the nasty seafoam green color. Forgive the clutter everywhere I thoroughly have the house tore apart-cleaning, painting and trying to eliminate "stuff"...

With a lovely beige. See the difference...


Initially, I had wanted to paint the living room and hall with the same khaki color I used in the bedrooms, but it was just way too dark and lighter shades of it looked too blahhh. The khaki looked good with the gray countertops, which the beige doesn't, but we are planning on putting tile throughout the house, so I'm hoping for new countertops too(hint, hint honey??) So I struggled over the color for quite some time. Finally, I said the heck with it and just picked out a bland beige color to at least get rid of the yucky seafoam green...
I just couldn't picture anything with that puky green color staring at me. The ceiling and walls are actually two different shades. I really like the ceiling color-it's called Oats...whoda thunk it right? LOL...so even if I eventually pick another color for the walls, that one will stay. Walls I don't mind painting...I hate ceilings.

I was pretty excited to finally get to put my Mongolian saddle up where I had always wanted to put it. But now I don't think it works there. The details are what's really pretty on this 100+ year old saddle and you just can't see them when it is waaayyyy up there...

My Honey brought this neat tidbit home for me from one of his hitches in China. He was touring one of the Ghengis Khan sites and he said when he realized the Mongolians were notorious horsemen and then saw this saddle he knew it was the perfect gift for my 35th birthday.

My goal is to figure out how to properly display the really neat things that MH has collected in his travels, throughout the house, without cluttering things up so much you can't appreciate each item. There is a lot. This poor little house is brimming and this is just MH's stuff. I haven't moved any of my stuff out here. We were joking about needing his/her houses. I suppose I will simply leave the vast majority of my things in SD and I'll just bring a few of my most valued treasures. I know society is all about telling people they don't need to hang onto "old" stuff anymore and that they should de-clutter their lives. But there is "clutter" and then there are things of sentimental or financial value that way too many people just get rid of. Sometimes the line is obvious...sometimes it's pretty fine.

Now that I have the house completely tore apart, I'm going to have to hustle to get things back together before MH gets back from his hunting trip. It kind of freaks him out if he is around when I'm working on these things, but if he is gone and it's done when he gets back, he always likes it. Maybe that is because I told him if he doesn't like something he has to be the one to change it back.;-)