It's beginning to look a lot like . . .

THE PARENTS ARE COMING!!!

My new house may be exerting a grandbaby-like pull on my parents (they're coming to visit me for the first time in six years; the second time in ten years), but there are important differences between grandbabies and houses.  For example, grandparents don't normally expect to sleep and eat and bathe and sit down on furniture inside the grandbaby in the same way they do with a house.

The challenge, of course, is that when I bought the place in September, I was in no position to be hosting the parentals.  I mean, one can't exactly hand one's mother a sleeping bag and point to the couch and still qualify as a respectable adult, now can one?  Obviously not.  So in the three months since my parents announced their holiday plans, I've been hell-bent on getting my house put together enough that not only would my parents survive their stay, but they might actually enjoy it enough to want to come back again before another six years passed.

I won't go into the gory details (mostly because my details don't really count as "gory" when compared to my sister's adventures with a new log cabin that has flooded three times in as many months), but I'm happy to report that as of this afternoon, I can finally say that the house is parent ready!  The place has been repainted top to bottom, and there's a functional guest suite on the second floor.  It's nowhere near finished in terms of the overall decoration/furnishing plan, but I've accomplished everything that I wanted to get done before they arrive on Saturday.  Whew!

Here are some photos:

The newly painted kitchen.

Stairway to the second floor

Guest bedroom. Still waiting on the duvet cover and a second
Euro sized pillow sham (and the bedside table is a cardboard box),
 but at least it's functional.

You know the bathroom's done to Lady's standards
when there's a pocket watch clock on the counter.

Now I'm going to try to sleep for three hours before getting up to pack my bag and get to the airport for an inappropriately early flight to Boise for Christmas Eve with the grandkids.  Fun, fun, fun!