Why I've been so scarce in these parts

The past few weeks, Mr. Fraser and I have been longing to tackle the pile of boxes still filling our garage and the basement mudroom. But every time we go to open one, we bump up against the fact that we can't unpack much more until our offices are ready and we have shelves up in the kitchen. Which means that in order to unpack, we need to paint. (We hired a painter for the living room and painted the master bedroom and Miss Fraser's room before moving in but didn't have time to tackle the rest.)

So about ten days ago I started tackling the wallpaper in the room destined to be my office, a small bedroom which had last been decorated as a nursery some 20 years ago, as best as we could judge from the paper design. It looked like this:



One wall of balloons, the teddy bear border all around. I could not write in such a room. Certainly not historical romance or historical fantasy. Not even children's picture books. Maybe horror in which an innocent author is mummified alive in wallpaper strips by maniacally cackling evil teddy bears. At least that's how I felt on my fourth pass at the accent wall with my second bottle of wallpaper removal gel.

But at long last the room is wallpaper-free, and we've painted three of the walls Oolong Tea (a midtone olive green). Once it's dry enough to tape in a few days, we'll paint the former balloon wall Okra (a darker olive). And once I get my furniture in and the research books unpacked, I'll post pictures of my new writing cave in all its glory. I'm planning to put up some inspirational images of my chosen era to keep me in the writing spirit and to drive out the ghost of those hideous teddy bears. I've already got a print of a fashion plate of a woman in a ballgown, not this one but similar:



And my military history geek with a crush on Wellington side wouldn't be happy without a good Waterloo image. Probably this one:



I'm at most halfway there, but it's such a thrill to finally have my very own office to decorate as I please!