Working on the Big Reveal

I've been working a lot the past few days on the boys' rooms. Now that they're painted, I am trying to get everything hung up and displayed in order to show them here for the "big reveal". Jericho has picked green and black as the main accent colors in his room, so we've been painting a lot of shelves and display cabinets to go in there. Jacob doesn't want shelves, but he does want a few things put into frames, and he wants his frames to match the wall color, so today I'm off for more spray paint...I'm not sure what I did before I realized you could do so much with spray paint.

It's fun, but I have to admit that I'm more than a little tired of paint. In fact, last night at our Wednesday night dinner at church, a friend sat down and casually said to me, "Hey - I have a few rooms that I need painted..." and I nearly choked on my pasta. He thought that was a very funny joke. (And it was, of course.)

So surely tomorrow the rooms will be ready. If not, I will just declare them ready, because I'm ready to move on to something else!

paintcan photo by mjb7q (Creative Commons License: Attribution, Non-Commercial)

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Getting Grayer By the Minute

Well, I'm afraid that my hair is a lot more gray today than it was yesterday. Of course, so is Jericho's and the dog's. Yesterday afternoon we pried open the selected can of paint for Jericho's room and started in on the job. We'll be removing gray paint from Mocha's fur for quite some time, I'm afraid. Or not, actually, because as I told Jericho last night, "It's always a good idea to pick a color that coordinates with the dog."

At this point, I am about75% done with his room, but I ran out of paint, so I'll have to make another trip to Lowe's here in a little bit. Unfortunately, I don't have the camera to show you the progress, because Jason took the camera to the three-day overnight field trip that he and Jacob are on. At first I was thinking that it was too bad that I couldn't show my rendition of the Loch Ness Monster that I created while I was painting with my beloved paint edger. However, it occurred to me that I could recreate the scene with an old picture and my newly-developed Microsoft Paint skills. Here it is:

Yep, as soon as Jason sees this (after he returns home from the trip) he's going to be thinking, "I have got to get her a job."

I also wanted to add in one other "digitally altered" photo today. Here is another picture from my living room.

In this picture I have circled some mysterious markings on the windows. These are actually the two spots where I started cleaning of the mineral deposit film that coats our front windows. I was at a loss as to how to get them clean when my friend Theresa gave me some special cleaner to try, and voila - it works. Unfortunately, I have only done these two spots, so now it looks like someone with super-cleaning feet left their footprints on our window. (Yes, I really do think this way.) I'm not too bothered about it, because it shows the promise of how clean the windows will be once the rest of the job done - they are marks of great clear-window potential, really.

That being said, I also want to make sure the sprinkler heads are adjusted so that we don't need any more "marks of great clear-window potential" on our windows. You have to scrub really hard to get those mineral deposits off.

Off to Lowe's.

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A Few Random Monday Thoughts

Here are a few Random Monday thoughts:


1. Carpet guys came this morning, bright and early, as promised. Yes, we do have a house full of new carpet that we put in when we bought the house. As of late Friday night, part of this new carpet was just a little bit browner after I spilled paint on it. It was just a small blob of paint, about orange-sized, and when it was wet, it was the perfect color to blend right in. Unfortunately, when it was dry, it looked like, well, like the dog was involved somehow. But this morning the carpet guys came and now all is well.


2. Speaking of painting, buying this tool was the best $3 I ever spent. It's not perfect, but it saved me hours of edge trimming. It worked wonderfully on along the top edges of ceilings or anywhere where two walls came together. I had to be a lot more careful with it while going along the baseboards. In fact, I had to basically lie down on the carpet to watch how close the paint pad was to the baseboard. However, who can complain about a job in such a reclining position? Not I.

3. This morning I turned down a chance to interview for a very interesting part time (12/hours a week) job working with literacy intervention with a non-profit organization in order to "stay the path" of subbing with the long term goal of one day teaching here at least half-time. Granted, this path on which I am staying is the one which I have received nary a sub call in the four weeks that I have been in the system. I'm not sure whether I am happy or unhappy about this decision, to tell the truth.


4. We had a group of about 18 people over last night for dinner. There's nothing like a big group of people coming to dinner to spur those home improvement projects (and resulting cleanup jobs) right along. I still had a bottle of 409 cleaner in hand when the first guest arrived, but the evening went pretty well.


5. A few goals for this week: Continue on in the drudgery otherwise known as Jacob's Cave O'Wallpaper. Paint Jericho's room chosen gray color. Begin sanding the china cabinet in order to "PotteryBarn-ize" it. Blog every day. Perhaps (in order to take a break from all the Home Improvement) read a new book so there will finally be a new picture in my "Books Recently Read" column.

I hope everyone has a good Monday!

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