It has been a hotbed of activity around here today; we finished a plaster repair job that we started last week, which was one of those really dirty, yucky jobs that makes you wish you had a landlord to do.  We had a leak in the fall, that was repair, but the leak caused a lot of plaster damage and water stains, in the landing area going into Freyja's bedroom.  I peeled and peeled and in the end it required pulling out all the original plaster all the way down to the lathe, then filling it in (in this case with newspaper, then covering it up with this handy sticky metal plate thing, and finally with even handier gauzy tape stuff, then finishing the whole thing off with a nice layer of new plaster.  Some people (like my husband) find this type of job intimidating, but they, unlike me, have not lived in a lot of crappy old falling down, OLD houses that are made of plaster and lathe, rather than wallboard and drywall!  I have done this repair a million times and am pretty darn good, if I do say do myself.  Today we sanded it down, and sanded down an ugly old repair job, someone less talented than I did, before we moved in.  I also primed the wall, so next week I can paint! Woo hoo.
Since we were vacuuming and sanding and dusting stuff, I ask Mark to vacuum our room, which is one of those slanty roof jobs, that are pretty easy to vacuum, if you are just a little bit taller than I happen to be. Somehow in the course of all that cleaning he broke the floor lamp that lights my sewing area, and the chair where he reads to Freyja at night, so I was required to make an emergency trip to Ikea, to purchase a lampshade, to fit onto an Ikea hanging lamp/cord combo deal I got out of their "as is" section about five years ago, and had stashed in the closet. So pictured above is my sewing area with a nice new lamp, which looks a lot better in person that it does in that photo.  And feel free to admire the custom made slipcover on that old Naugahyde chair, that I made without the benefit of a pattern, when Maxwell was a baby.  The photo is rotten and doesn't show that those windows are floor to ceiling and about five feet tall, and there is a little triangle above them where I have a very silly collection of vintage Steiff animals.

While all of the home improving was going on Freyja and her friend were having a gay old time with Rosie, pushing her all around the neighborhood in a doll stroller.
Freyja wants me to add that Rolf's girlfriend made her the lovely mouse shadow box pictured above.