Our yard still has a long way to go, but we can't do much landscaping work until later in the fall. We did a little weeding and pruning to try to spruce it up a bit, and I potted these lovely chrysanthemums to distract visitors from the rest of the front yard.
We also planted the raspberry plants that Steve B gave us along the side fence near our compost bin. Josh mixed some of the compost in with the soil, so hopefully they will thrive in this spot.
Inside, we hung stuff up on the walls. This was a little challenging, as not everything went well with the new paint colors or available spaces.
Now I have a rather dramatic assortment of Tiffany windows in my office. These are actually just pages from a calendar that I put in some $20 frames, but they look pretty cool, and go well with the paint color.
These two paintings were done by Josh's maternal grandmother, Anne Nasvik Dennison, who was an artist. The one on the right is of a young Josh and his dog, Thor.
And we finally have curtains in the family room. We ordered this curtain rod from Pottery Barn because the old one wasn't long enough (although the old curtains still fit). It came with 5 brackets, and the instruction sheet showed it installed with all 5, evenly spaced, so that's what Josh did. When he asked me to help him put the curtain rings on, I took one look and asked him how we were supposed to open and close the curtains with two extra brackets in between the middle and the ends. "Good point," he said , and removed the two extraneous brackets so we could hang the curtains. No one at Pottery Barn could explain why the instructions showed them installed that way -- or even why they came with 5 brackets at all. Fail!
Many years ago, when Josh and I were visiting his grandmother Florrie at her house in Cape Cod, I was astounded to see her hire an electrician to move the thermostat over a few inches just so she could hang a picture by the fireplace. Now I understand. These two thermostats at the top of the stairs prevent you from taking advantage of what would otherwise be a perfect spot to hang something large and dramatic. Since this framed print wouldn't work anywhere else, we decided to hang it here anyway, but it's quite a bit higher than it should be.
I've had this folding screen in front of the balcony doors in the 'Japanese room' to provide some privacy for house guests, but I needed to get it out of the way for our open house, so I turned it into a headboard of sorts. Someday we'll have to get some proper blinds for the balcony doors and windows in this room, especially since we already have several family members scheduled to visit over the next few months. 
Josh also cleaned and organized the basement, but that's hard to capture in a photo. You'll just have to take my word for it that it is a vast improvement. We have a bunch of surplus and salvaged stuff down there to donate to the Habitat ReStore -- light fixtures, hardwood flooring, sinks, a toilet -- but since we have to put it all out on the curb for them to come pick it up, that will have to wait until we can recruit some people to help us carry it all upstairs and outside.We still have some cleaning and organizing to do by this weekend, but we got enough accomplished over the past 3 days that we should be able to tackle the rest in small spurts between now and then... And if not, hopefully no one will notice the difference.
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