Almost finished...

getting all of this stuff weeded out, hung up and put away!  Ariela and Marco stopped by tonight to put up these two wall ledges for me.  We figured it was a project best left to a guy - and Marco was the just the guy for the job, even though he has tried to tell us on several occasions that he leaves his handyman skills on Longboat Key when he leaves his job every afternoon.  Nice try, buddy.  Anyhow, Marco measured and asked the group of female onlookers if the bracket looked straight.  After a brief discussion, we all said yes - after a tweak here and there.  The first shelf went up.  On to the second bracket - "Is this straight?" he asked.  Another conference - "Yes," came the chorus.  "Looks good."  Up to that point, Baby had been in the living room alternately playing tug-of-war with Aggie and being licked within an inch of his life.  Suddenly, Baby is standing next to the desk, waving his hands at his father and proclaiming

"Looks good, Papi!"

I tell you, he's too cute for words sometimes.

Meanwhile, Ariela finished hanging up my porcelain advertising signs.  She had put most of them up the other day and we ran out of tacks!  Since Lowe's is the only place in town that carries these uber-cute tacks that look like daisies - gotta be cute in this house - Richard stopped and got more tacks for me yesterday while he was out and about to save me a special trip.  I've never had a kitchen that didn't have a tile backsplash and it turns out that my sign collection was just the thing.  I haved pared it down a bit, but I kept my favorites.  Like this one:

My husband and I collected these signs over the years on trips to the Plant City Strawberry Festival, Washington DC (the Smithsonian gift shop is a great source of these cool signs!) and other places.  We also used to frequent a shop in Sarasota called Last Flight Out which had scads of them.  But I digress...

I am just so thrilled that my home is finally coming together - and it is just the way I want it.  All I can say is:

"Looks good, Papi!"