I am... not obligated...

Yes! See that button down on the right side of the page - "Blogging without Obligation"? Well, posting a picture a day for the rest of December, or, dare I say it, the rest of the year, was a challenge I gave myself. I managed to get 19 posted, including today's, and really, that's more than I thought I would be able to do. Before I started this little challenge, I had a total of 30 posts on my blog. I've added 26 just this month (24 since starting the photo challenge), so I'm feeling very successful and pretty darn proud of myself.

And speaking of being proud of myself, in the last couple of days I've had a few other successes. The first being, I have successfully made sourdough crackers! They are not only edible, but really, really GOOD! Now if I can get the bread to both look good, and taste good!

The other success is that I mostly finished the 10 things I set out to accomplish in 2007 with my accountability group. The last of the items being to create my own room - a sanctuary for myself that is both a place to write and rest, but can double as a comfortable guest room. Well, I still want to paint and recarpet, but we did get it put together for the most part, and even had guests sleep in it last night! And it's so beautiful (looks much better in person)! I've been collecting the things for it since July.

I have to tell you a little about the day bed. More than 20 years ago I spent a summer in Germany, staying with a family. The room I stayed in had the greatest bed - a twin day bed (this one was built in) that was a typical slatted platform bed with two mattresses stacked on top of each other. This bed converted to a king-sized bed by pulling the front of the frame out - every other slat pulled out - and flipping one of the mattresses onto the just-pulled-out slats. Well, I've been looking for one of these for years! In July we went to the brand new Portland Ikea and found one just when I was ready to buy one for this new room! I've searched the Ikea website to post a link to this fabulously innovative bed frame with no luck. I believe it's called the Hemnes Day Bed. It even has three drawers in front for storing all the extra linens.

Of course, this project didn't involve just assembling the bed - we had to relocate our (very, very heavy) office furniture to the basement to make room. (Did I mention that it was heavy?) And of course, this involved lots of electrical equipment relocation that isn't quite complete, which involved getting a more powerful wireless router, which involved, well, you know how these things go!