Another Chance To Shine

I'm afraid that I have a history of questionable hostessing experiences.

There was the time that the MiL came to visit us in northern New York and I forgot to give her blankets for her bed. Luckily, the MiL is pretty chill about such things (ha--get it? chill? chilled because of no blankets? yeah), but I was still kind of embarrassed by that one. I haven't forgotten blankets since, either.

There was the time I got shingles the day my parents came to visit us here and they spent most of their time taking care of my kids and driving A. to the airport.

And there have been many, many times that my sister has been the recipient of my particular brand of hospitality. She has come to see me only to spread manure, dispose of a rotting deer, sleep in a room with a tower of bed frames (or just on a fold-out couch in the living room), and take my sons skating on the ice rink of our driveway on the Canadian border.

I don't know why she keeps coming to visit me, but she is even now en route from her home in Florida to our remote outpost of New Mexico. But I think this will her best visit yet. I have an actual room for her, with an actual bed and a door and everything!

Okay, so actually it's Cubby's room. I made that into the potential guest room by bringing home a queen-sized bed my parents were going to donate because my dad made a king bed for their guest room. I took the bed planning to put it in Cubby's room and kick him out of there to sleep in his brothers' room should we ever have a guest that needed a room.

That day has arrived.

It took some doing to transform that room from a room that is clearly inhabited by a nine-year-old boy into an acceptable guest room. But I'm pretty proud of the end result.

So of course I took some pictures for you. I should have taken "before" pictures so you could fully appreciate the remarkable transformation.

Unfortunately, I couldn't do anything about the hideous floral border thing near the ceiling that I didn't have a chance to paint over yet. Thanks, Dale.

That white bedspread will not stay on the bed when Cubby is back in residence.

I'm sure my sister will appreciate the cheesy '30s-era illustration of a lumberjack in a log jam. And the mason jar for water because I don't have any actual drinking glasses. Mason jars are still trendy, right?

Incidentally, that "bouquet" there? That was a stretch, for sure. The room was kind of bare looking, but it's not as if I have access to any fresh flowers. It's too early for anything much to be growing outside, either. Literally my only options were that feathery green weed that was growing near our fence and some branches from the apricot tree that is alllllmost about to bud out.

Can you see the teeny tiny pink buds?

It's not exactly a room at the Ritz, but it's a far sight better than some of my previous options for housing guests. And more importantly, I feed guests really well. I figure if I fill them up on homemade pizza and carnitas tacos, they'll be in too much of a food coma to stay awake to notice their rather basic quarters.

In any case, we're very excited to have SuperAunt come for another visit. And I am NOT going to have her help me plant the 49 Arizona Cypress trees that just arrived yesterday. No, I am not.

The most gracious of hostesses; that's me.