I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who left such kind and sympathetic comments about Harry’s passing. It really did help Husband and me to feel less alone at such a sad time and it also warmed our hearts to know how many animals lovers there are out there. Truly, thank you so much.

We’re doing much better now. As I said to someone recently, time may be an enemy to my face and body but it certainly is a friend when I need help dulling the pain of heartache. It still hurts to think about Harry but we can’t help but think about him, especially because we keep thinking we see him out of the corner of our eyes. Is that some weird phenomenon that happens when someone dies?

We thought about Harry a lot this week because we got the first snow of the season Thursday night and Harry liked the snow. Or at least didn’t mind it. We kept thinking how excited he’d have been to go outside Friday morning and see the thin white blanket that had settled over the garden during the night. Poor Harry. He only had one winter in his short life.

To us, the snow was pretty but seemed to come a bit early in the year; we couldn’t remember it snowing before Halloween in the 4.5 years we’ve been here. It’s supposed to warm up later this week and even rain tomorrow night, so we still have time to enjoy the nice fall colors before winter really hits.

Husband and I used the bad weather as an excuse to get a couple of household chores done, including putting up some wallpaper we picked out a month ago. When we moved into our house, we wanted an “accent” wall all in our sitting\dining room, so we painted one wall dark red. We like color and liked the red but it was too dark for the room, so we thought we’d change it up with some colorful wallpaper. After a lot of searching and testing, we decided on this:



As I said, we like color and we really did think this pattern would work in the room. The background color blended nicely with wall color and with the tile behind the wood oven in the room, and didn’t (we hoped) clash too much with the dark wood floor.

We were totally wrong!

As soon as we finished gluing the last strip and stepped back to admire our work, we realized it was all wrong. The pattern is too busy, the colors not quite right. It doesn’t look right next to the tile and especially doesn’t go with the old-fashioned look of the wood walls in the hallway off the sitting room. It is, unfortunately, a big decorating mistake.





I was disappointed, to say the least, more so because it's just the latest in a string of decorating mistakes I’ve made in the house ever since we moved in. Honestly, the work I’ve done in most of the rooms in our house (i.e. paint color, curtains, furniture) makes me unhappy and it seems like whatever I try to do to fix it doesn’t work either. Ugh. I’m not so talented in the decorating/design department---I have a lot of trouble picking out clothing, too---and starting from scratch the way we did with our house has been a huge challenge.

But what can you do? I have a couple of friends who love decorating and have offered to come over and help me with ideas and advice but---this is stupid, I know---I’m too embarrassed to show them what I’ve done so far. I’ll work on getting over that, since I obviously need help and it should be fun, right?

In any case, the wallpaper is coming down. It really is a shame because it was expensive, it was a bitch to put up, and it’ll be a bitch to take down, but it must be done. It’s one thing to make a decorating mistake; it’s another to force yourself to live with it because you’re too stubborn to admit it. And Husband and I are being positive about it; we’re already talking about picking out new wallpaper. And, on the bright side, we’ve certainly learned a lot through all of the mistakes. I'll focus on that and just keep trying. It's better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all and all that, right?