Hooboy. We had a crazy adventure last night that involved being held hostage inside a friend's apartment by the SWAT Team and Long Beach Police Department for nearly 7 hours. No kidding.

Instead of that story though, I'll share pictures of my other big Spring Break project: the dining room. Long ago, our dining room looked like this.

It was nice. However, due to our apartment complex's insane policy about wood furniture in the garage (It's a fire hazard, you know. Unlike other things people put in the garage. Like gasoline, and cars.), our dining room has been doubling as an office for Richard. In addition to his fine conversational skills and charming wit, Richard has books. Lots and lots and lots of books. And it's okay- I was aware of this when I married him. But the book ownership had taken a rather predictable turn, and Homeboy was out of bookshelves. And our dining room was beginning to look a little like something from Hoarders.

(Not an ACTUAL picture of our dining room. And perhaps an ever so slight exaggeration.)

So over Spring Break, I decided I could handle it no more and I went to IKEA (by myself) and purchased and loaded up boxes and boxes of bookshelves. I should also tell you that while there, my cart broke and I had to move the insanely heavy boxes from my original cart to a new cart. I am awesome.

So now our dining room looks like this.

It still looks cluttered, but is a vast improvement over the previous arrangement. Richard even has room to grow with several empty shelves.

And a small, but functional workspace where he is busy daily, creating works of genius.

So there you have it. Our new and improved dining room/office/book storage facility.