So, it’s my birthday today.

And I have some stuff to share, so I’m not completely neglecting my blog today. 😉

Mr. FG couldn’t stay home from work today, so he declared Monday as the day he would devote to doing whatever I wanted. So, I slept in and he brought me breakfast in bed. While I was thinking about what I wanted to spend the day doing, my brother called to see if we wanted him to come over and install some moulding for us.

Mr. FG didn’t think this was maybe what I’d want to schedule for the day, but I totally did. Yay!

My brother is very fabulous at installing crown moulding. In fact, he is quite fabulous at most any sort of building/construction kind of thing.

Crown moulding is obviously not a necessary sort of thing, but we’ve been wanting to put some up in our living room and dining room for a while now. The drywall corners between the wall and ceiling are old and bumpy and it made it very difficult to get a nice clean paint line, and besides, crown moulding is just so beautiful.

I took a few quick before pictures, of course.

And here are some sort-of-done pictures….in these photos the moulding still needs to be caulked and painted and the nail holes aren’t filled (though Mr. FG did that yesterday).

But in spite of that, I can easily see how pretty it’s going to look when it’s all finished off.

Because my brother installed it, our only costs were the materials. So, my beautiful moulding only cost us $50, plus $7 for some hole filler and caulk (we already have the paint we need).

Of course, this kind of frugal plan only works out if you happen to have the same big brother I do. Lucky me. 🙂

I also got to go out to dinner with Mr. FG that night. We had a $25 Groupon to use for a BBQ restaurant and that covered our whole meal except tax and tip.

In other happy news, the oak flowers are beginning to fall off of the trees.

That’s really good news for this little person, because dead oak flowers are much better than pollen-producing oak flowers.

Oh, and my azalea bush is beginning to bloom.

My birthday is always such a beautiful time of year…azaleas are blooming, the dogwoods are covered in flowers, and the trees are decked out in light green new leaves.

Doesn’t it just make you happy just to look at this stuff? Yay for spring!

I got a lovely card and a small present from Mr. FG this morning (he has two more for me too!), there’s a little pile of gifts for me on top of the piano from Mr. FG and the kids, and I get to have my usual birthday ice cream cake tonight too.

I think it’ll be a good day. 😉

Today’s 365 post: You never know when you might need a frying pan in the tub.

Joshua’s 365 post: Joshua got a little behind, so he’s got three new posts up. Click on over to his blog to see them all.