aww, I'm sorry. FWIW, I think it would look awesome, and I think a half-bath is exactly the right place to do something fun and adventurous. But I don't live with you, so my opinion probably holds little weight with your husband :)

Stay! Are there ANY big enough houses in the neighborhood? Like, if you're super patient, will one come up that you can pounce on someday? If not, I'd go with the attic reno plan. Sounds like a reasonable compromise.

yay--have fun! I painted a gazillion cabinets to get our old house ready to sell (all 3 bathrooms and the kitchen ones).....and now all the bathroom cabinets in our NEW house need painting (the kitchen, fortunately, had already been updated). I will watch your progress to build up my inspiration level :)

Umm, dog? :D No, I don't, but I probably should cover up the dog smell with something :lol:

Thanks again, everyone! Having a dedicated library is seeming sort of magical so far; I keep catching kids sitting in that chair reading random books about chess or the presidents :) I don't think he had much trouble with the extenders--we put them one after the shelves were already in place (that's why the last ones aren't on yet; he wants to wait until we get all the doors on in case the shelves need to scoot around a bit more). The doors, on the other hand, have been a big pain so far--getting them to close right and stay closed. I'm not sure whether to blame Ikea or our probably not entirely level floors.

yep--they make those doors!

I have baskets from Target for mine: so the bigger ones hold a bunch of smaller stuff (some are manipulatives; some are art supplies), and then the smaller ones with no lids hold, say, geoboards along with a book with geoboard activities or whatever.

Well, our formal dining room is....a formal dining room. Sorry not to have been more creative :). It's actually a dining room/schoolroom....but it "passes" as a dining room pretty easily thanks to a couple of big pieces of furniture that hide the school stuff behind closed doors. We mostly eat in the kitchen, but we're liking having a big table to spread out at for school (and for occasional meals).

They do have a corner shelf, and we actually bought one. It's the small one on the end--it's kind of hard to tell it's smaller from that angle, I guess. Anyway, as far as I can tell it's just the regular narrower shelf, only you're supposed to buy special brackets for it and set it at an angle in the corner. This was our plan, but, despite our careful (we thought) measuring....it didn't fit in the corner. But putting them at a right angle in the corner worked out fine; we just needed to move the shelf at the other end of the wall down maybe an inch to close the gap.

:D oh, there are more books! the poetry/drama shelf is around the corner in another room. And most of the kid fiction is still upstairs in their rooms, but it will probably come down soon. But then I think I'll move the non-school related picture books to a different room on a low, accessible shelf.....and my fiction's not even alphabetized yet! I'm just getting started! We have the height extenders for the two shelves around the corner, too, just so everyone knows; we just haven't put them on yet (it would drive me crazy to have height extenders on some of the shelves and not other ones, so I just thought I should reassure anyone else who's as anal about symmetry as I am ;))

Ha! All three editions, too---I'm so devoted :D Thanks guys :)

We've never done them before (except for one I got the first time I was pregnant, which made my arm really, really sore for days).....I like to make DH get them because he teaches public school, but usually he doesn't get around to it. And DS6 has asthma and bad allergies, which also makes me consider them (he's doing two plays right now, and the director of one actually recommended that the cast all get flu shots so that flu doesn't get passed around and ruin A Christmas Carol).....in short, we have a few reasons why me might get them, but usually by the time I get around to researching it and making a decision, the worst of flu season is over and we haven't gotten them.

We still need to get the doors for the rest of them (Ikea was out of them), but I'm happy with how it's coming along. I'm impressed with how much shelves can hold when they go all the way up to the ceiling! Here's the blog entry with excruciating detail about the whole thing :) http://boxycolonial.blogspot.com/2012/09/library-progress.html

My son's lyme rash was SUPER itchy.

I leave my 11 and 9 year olds for up to a couple of hours, and I'll leave the 6 1/2 year old with them if it's just going to be a quick, 20-30 minute errand. We just moved from a house where it took me 20+ minutes to get much of anywhere to a house where almost everything is 5-10 minutes away, and knowing that I can be back in 5 minutes if need be makes a difference.

Not unless you want to get in before 4.

There are YES program tickets: http://www.disneyyouth.com/youth-education-series you have to take a class to do those, which might not be what you want to do when you only have a couple of days, but the tickets are substantially discounted. They also start at 3 days, but it looks like a 3 day ticket is cheaper than the price you're getting for 2 days.....I'm coming up with just over $800 for 6 people. ETA: oops....looks like they might not be letting individuals do this anymore. So maybe nevermind! E(again)TA: here's the individual enrollment page. tickets a little more expensive than with groups: http://www.disneyyouth.com/individual-enrollment/

I guess we picked A (although it won't be paid off in 10 years, barring some unforeseen windfall!) We've been here since May and so far we've replaced both the furnaces, had a bad leak repaired in our sunroom, painted 5 rooms, fenced in the yard, etc. etc....and we're far from finished. But it's fun! Mostly. And tiring! If it really is mostly cosmetic, I'd go for it. This house was a foreclosure that had been empty for 2 years, and it was a GREAT deal. It's pretty much the only house we looked at that wouldn't have meant making a major compromise on something we really wanted that would probably have bothered us long term (too small lot, no basement, less than ideal location, etc). Pretty much everything we're not crazy about with this house is fixable. The only thing we didn't get that we wanted was a fifth bedroom, but we can finish the basement eventually and get that, even.

DS11 finished 6B when he had just turned 10; we tried AOPS Pre-Algebra next, and it was a bust. He's now doing Jacob's Algebra happily.

twice. first time when DS1 was 15 months old, then when DS2 was 21 months. no multiples.

Our (black; all the appliances were black) fridge died midway through selling our old house. We replaced it with a new one with a stainless front and black sides. I was AMAZED at how much everyone who looked at the house LOVED that blasted refrigerator. It was ridiculous. The people we finally sold it to wanted us to leave it (it wasn't technically included, but mostly because we were hoping to use it for extra leverage for counter offering; I didn't want to move it) and we used it to justify an extra $2000 in the sale price....for a refrigerator we paid $1000 for. I think there must be some kind of mind altering drug that they put in stainless steel. So its time has not yet passed in metro Atlanta, at least....but I don't think the outer suburbs of Atlanta are necessarily on the cutting edge of home decor trends :D

We usually put Disney trips on it....travel gives you extra points, if I remember right.

I have a wall and a half of brand new Billy shelves staring at me right now, and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. Here is my current dilemma: do you think it's better to keep kid books in kid rooms or have a big family collection in one place? I can think of quite a few arguments in favor of one big collection. The two major ones are that they're at the ages where there's not really a firm division between kid and adult books and certainly not between the 9 year old's books and the 11 year old's books....so the books in my 11 year old's room are more or less inaccessible to my younger kids (he's pretty protective of his room). Also, not insignificantly, my youngest has a severe dust mite allergy, so there's something to be said for getting as many dust traps as possible (like stuffed animals and books) out of his room. The only argument I'm coming up with against getting all the books together is that it just seems kind of sad for them not to have book collections in their rooms. Historically, we have books in pretty much every room of the house. Thoughts?

I've got a confident/prolific creative writer who is much more reluctant with assigned/academic writing, too....and I'll just encourage you to stick with it. We're around 2/3 of the way through WWS right now, and his writing and confidence have come so far. One thing that we kind of discovered by accident is that he responds better to criticism when we do it all online. He'll be upstairs typing his assignments on google docs, then send it to me, and I'll give him feedback on his document.

I hear such mixed things about allergy shots! they seem to work great for some people and do nothing for others.....it's such a big commitment that I haven't wanted to take the leap yet. But we may well wind up there. Good to hear they worked well for your ds! Just an update: back from the pediatrician with a sample of (and a prescription for) Patanase. It's an antihistamine nose spray instead of a steroid. Since he only has asthma flare-ups in cold weather, we're trying just that plus the claratin out for now, and then we'll figure out the asthma stuff if he has trouble again this winter (I have his xopenex in case of an unexpected attack, but he hasn't needed it in over a year). She mentioned a different inhaler that doesn't get in his bloodstream as much that we could try if we needed it (maybe the Asmanex that mc26 mentioned?) He's just done the Patanase for 2 nights now, so it's a little early to tell; he sounds a bit stuffy right now, but he's sleeping well at night and seems to feel well. This next month or month and a half is his worst time of year for allergies, so if we can get through that without him being miserable we should be in good shape. ETA: behavioral issues aside, I'll be really happy if this works and I can get him off the daily steroids and still have him feeling decent.