When Pigs Fly Over Your Kitchen Table

**Edited to update. I ordered mine from Plow and Hearth, but you can Google flying pig chandelier and several other stores carry it.

My chandelier was damaged. (Um, no box? Hello?) So I can't bring myself to show you a photo of it. The pigs have gone to the slaughter...

So, here is the catalog pic. I hope to have it replaced. . 

(It is actually not iron, but cast metal.)

Go ahead and laugh.  That's why I love it.

Boxes

You never think you have a lot of stuff until it is all put into boxes. 

You have yard sales to declutter and simplify before you pack up and when all of it is packed you are so happy and pleased with your efforts.  But, then you get to the new place and start to unpack.  No matter how many yard sales you had before you moved, you wish you'd had another one. 

By day nine of unpacking you are past the yard sale phase and have decided what you really should have done is donate it all to a charity promoting world peace and preventing world hunger and just live in the back of your new house in a small pup tent that you bought from a boy scout.

Every day I get up and walk through a box maze to the Keurig coffee maker.  (See, moving has driven me to drink.) I sip from the one cup I could find and watch a little Regis and Kelly.  As the days progress the maze gets smaller and the coffee mug choices get larger, as I unpack more and more boxes.

Boxes have personalities.  Ugly, smug, sneaky, and calculating.  They smile with their packing-tape grins and tease, "Nah nah nah nah nah!!!"

There are the clueless, forgetful ones with missing parts. ("Electronics and chords" (always misspelled.)

There are the friendly, but cumbersome ones ("Clothes")

But, the nastiest and rudest of all are labeled, "China."

Each tea cup is wrapped in at least one hundred pieces of paper and each dinner plate is stacked in an origami designed, multi-layered paper girdle. 

My china packer on this move was so thorough in his china wrapping skills that he stuck one great big strip of packing tape around the layers and layers of paper just to be sure that the china didn't come unwrapped as it traveled across the country in the huge moving truck.  (You never know. Those Lenox china sets have been known to try and sneak out in the night while the driver gets twenty minutes of sleep at the Super 8 in Dallas.)

But my iron flying pig chandelier didn't even make it into a box.

Go figure.

I am happy to say that yesterday I unpacked my very last box of china and glassware. (I think.)  Unless one is lurking in the garage giggling with glee that he has managed to hide away in the dark without my knowledge, I can now move on to the less tedious, but equally challenging items.

"Decor."

Who knows what could be in there!?

The Reader's Digest Version

Newsflash.

We moved.

My third grade English teacher would be so proud of my introductory paragraph.

Hubs' job has taken us back to the Florida panhandle.  Back to the beach, the waves, and most importantly, Target. 

As an added bonus (not that Target and Starbucks were not enough for me, my friends) we get to move back into our house. We've had tenants in our home for the last three years, good tenants.  Thank the good Lord for that.  However, their color choices are not my color choices. 

I like color.  They like brown.

I have friends with beautiful homes filled with browns and tans and camels and khakis. Their homes are lovely.  If I try to decorate mine with the exact same colors, it doesn't look good at all.  They say you choose the colors that look good on you. This may be true. I tend to decorate with what I wear- greens, blues, pale yellows and greens.  Brown is not my color. The last time I owned a brown coat I looked like I had the flu for the entire winter.

So.  Anywho.

We've been painting.  And here's the other thing.  The air conditioner is out.  Yes, m'am. I move back to 95 degrees with 200% humidity and I choose to paint my house while the air conditioning is busted.  Hey, I never claimed to be smart. (We are in a hotel, so at least we don't have to sleep there.)

Our household goods don't arrive until next week so I am trying to use my time wisely, painting and cleaning before they get here.  Hopefully today the air conditioning will be fixed today and the paint won't melt off the all, along with my make-up. 

On another note, I am looking forward to The Help coming out soon.  I loved the book and can't wait to see the movie. 

What about you?  What's your news?