Sauna!

Sorry about the poor quality photo, but at least you can see how easy the sauna fit into the room--and the new curtains, too!  The Ceragem is barely visible in front of the window on the right side.

Even though the outside temperatures have been hot and hotter with a good dose of humidity thrown in for good measure, we decided we should set up our sauna yesterday. The original plan was for it to go in the office/craft room, but since that room is many months from being ready to occupy and pretty small, we opted to put it in our bedroom, which had plenty of room to accommodate it without feeling the least bit crowded.  The ceragem bed is also in there, which will encourage us to use both with a bit more frequency.

Yesterday afternoon I had a pedicure and a massage.  I am so toxic after the stress of the move, travel and months of eating out, that every joint in my body was aching, so I thought I would start out with the massage. The therapist I have gone to for a few years happened to have an opening 15 minutes after I called to make the appointment, so I was happy I called when I did!  I have an appointment with the chiropractor tomorrow morning, and may go back for another massage next week, depending on how I feel. I took some OTC pain relievers before falling asleep on the ice pack last night, and this morning I feel quite a bit better.  I imagine that taking some steps to cleanse (such as the sauna) and a eating a healthier diet will help as well. Probably taking those prescribed supplements couldn't hurt, either!

I fixed dinner in my wonderful kitchen last night. As I was standing there with everything in reach, I shouted to Ornery in the other room, "I LOVE MY KITCHEN!!"  It is so big, and there are counters in just the right places to help me be efficient!  It took me a long time to figure out the best configuration for everything, but I am really happy with what I have done in there.

Today my focus will be cooking the food I bought yesterday and napping.  I had hoped to start working on the library, but we are both still recovering from our trip.  Here are some pictures of it right now--it is a huge mess with furniture and boxes scattered all through the room, but we have a plan to start painting the wall where the book cases will go, and once that is all done, I will set those up and move into them so that much stuff will be out of the way, and we'll just shuffle things around as we need to reach the other walls. Not as nice as being able to paint in an empty room, but certainly less work in the long run than moving everything out and back in. At least we aren't painting the ceiling in there. I can hardly wait to get it all set up!

This is the view from the doorway. You can see the edge of the window peeking  from behind the bookcase.

This is the wall we will put the book cases on.  They won't quite fit without the door being slightly closed, but the four of them should fill the wall quite nicely.

This is a view from the same corner of the previous photo. There are boxes of books stacked all along that front window wall. There are two seven foot book cases, and two that are about 7 inches shorter, but about that much deeper.  The tall ones will flank the shorter ones, and I hope to eventually put books along the top of those so they won't look shorter at all.

Speaking of paint, I don't think I said what colors we are painting in the library. We settled on a deep terra cotta color (Valspar Earth elements collection Burnished Copper) for three walls, and a brick-ish red Valspar Eddie Bauer collection Calico) for the last wall.  It isn't quite as orange as the Panera room at Miller Manor was, but we both agreed that might not be a bad thing.  I think it will have a very warm feeling, and will be one of the most frequently occupied rooms in the whole house.  (Photos of the finished project are here.)