In celebration of a new shower curtain

This is what my life has become. I have been reduced to taking pictures of our bathroom. We have finished painting the guest bathroom (Spice Cake) and bought a new shower curtain and rod. And, it looks pretty snazzy, if I do say so myself ... and you know I do.

Hubby was excited about getting one of those circular shower rods that extends the shower curtain outside of the tub at the top, giving you a lot more elbow room. Once he installed it and we hung the new curtain, we both stepped into the tub, closed the curtain and just giggled. Then our youngest daughter and granddaughter came over, went in to see it and did the same thing. Maybe we should charge admission. It really is great to have the extra room while showering.

We are going to be replacing the white floor tile as well. You can see our sample in the corner by the tub. There's a lot of gold in it. Looks very pretty and we're planning to have everything done before Thanksgiving when company comes to visit from Denver.

The bathroom looks so nice -- all fresh and new and kinda elegant for a bathroom -- that I thought maybe we should call it The Royal Bathroom. Then I read in one of my favorite blogs (http://4badbill.wordpress.com) that they had a bathroom in Scotland they called The Royal Flush ... for entirely different reasons, but still. Is this synchronicity or would that be sink-chronicity?

Sunset and MORE PAINTING!

Walked out into our front yard facing West yesterday evening and had to run for my camera. This sunset was just so beautiful I wanted to share it.



The good news is we are DONE PAINTING THE WALLS! We still have to do some touch up work. Our trim -- door frames and base boards -- is white so we have to even up some lines and fix some color smudges. But we are done with the major painting. Finished the last two rooms today, the laundry room and guest bathroom. I am dying to go get a new shower curtain that will look fabulous with the Spice Cake paint.

We've been doing our "Yay, the painting is done" happy dance around the house. It feels good!

Gold Push Pins

As we have been rehanging pictures and plaques and decorations after painting the walls, I wasn't happy with all of the hangers we were using. I like to hang small, light-weight decorative items on push pins. They pop in and out of the wall very easily (you don't need a hammer), have colors that can blend nicely and are inexpensive. Our home office is painted a very dark green and we have used green push pins that look great.

I decided with our new wall paint colors that I would like gold, but shopping for gold push pins was an exercise in futility so I decided to paint my own. Bought metallic paint at Michaels for $1.39. Found a piece of styrofoam to push them into while painting and drying.



Put on a first coat of gold paint over clear push pins and they were a little patchy looking. Let that dry for half-an-hour, then put on a second coat. It looked much better.



I am very pleased with the way they turned out. Here is a serenity prayer cross that I have over my kitchen desk, hung with a newly-painted gold push pin on our newly-painted Plateau walls. Didn't take much "courage to change the things I can" with this project. Just a little do-it-yourself time.

Painting and Snowflakes

So we made great headway on the family room and kitchen yesterday. The kitchen actually slowed us down because of all the dismantling of curtains and blinds from the windows and taping around all the windows and the cupboards. I am thrilled with the color. It is soft and warm and has a bit of a glow to it. Here's a picture of the big wall in the family room during the painting process. This is the 14-1/2 foot high ceiling.



And I received my package of snowflake charms from China that I intend to embellish our Christmas cards with. They are exactly what I wanted and took less than 2 weeks to arrive.



Now I just have to come up with a clever verse, layout the card, do the printing, assemble the cards with ribbon and charms, do the addressing, buy some cute holiday stamps (I loves me some cute holiday stamps) and I'm ready to go. Once I get all this done, they'll probably be in the mail by Christmas Eve. You know there are ONLY 81 SHOPPING DAYS LEFT 'TIL CHRISTMAS ... let the panic begin!

I thought the customs declaration label was kinda cool ...

Dishcloths and Painting

We are slowly making our way through the house painting. My hubby is the all-time prep it right guy so we spend 3 days taping to every 1 day of painting. And I know he's right. Just do it all correctly from the start and there won't be as much clean up work. But I've always been kind of an eyeball it and get it done gal. When we hang pictures, he'll measure and get out his level. I just stand back and point. There, slam that nail in right there. Looks good enough!

Last weekend we finished the dining room and hallway. This weekend we will move on to the family room and kitchen. Our highest ceilings are in the family room at 14-1/2 feet and hubby climbs up and down that tall ladder like a kid. My balance just plain sucks so I try to stay on the ground and do the low stuff like baseboards. He does accidentally drop the roll of blue painter's tape all the time so we have perfected a circus act where I (the lovely assistant) whip it up in the air and he catches it as it sails past his head and comes back down. I don't know why I find this so amusing, but I guess it's a good thing since we still have many days of taping and painting left to do and it helps break up the monotony.



We are painting the family room and kitchen in a dark caramelly beige called Plateau, which should look very nice and goes well with our whitewashed cupboards. Here is a picture of the paint swatch next to a card I have framed over my kitchen desk. This card always makes me smile. It starts with a quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee." Then it reads, "One morning we ran into a neighbor at the store and she asked brightly, 'What was it as your house?' 'Fourteen below,' we replied. Her face fell. 'We had minus twelve,' she said, and you could see that her day was ruined."  - by Richard Ketchum. I received this card from a friend in the early 90s and thought it was so clever, I framed it and it has hung in my kitchen ever since, everywhere we've moved.



There's just been too much going on to focus on my larger knitting projects right now so I've been amusing myself -- when I'm not too sleepy in the evenings -- by knitting some of the dishcloths in the 2010 Dishcloth Calendar I blogged about last week. Here are photos of two I've completed - the Purly Waffle and the Sweet Heart cloth. I learned something new on the Sweet Heart, which was making bobbles, a kind of 3D knitted bubble that pokes out.



Now back to the circus!

Color Our World

We are painting! Yay, our white walls are going to have some color -- double yay!!!

So we're starting with the living/dining room. We'll also do the kitchen/family room, down the hall and one bathroom. All the bedrooms and office were painted in the past.

The first color we've chosen for the living/dining/entry/hallway is called Spice Cake. Sounds delicious!

And I doubt if I'll be be blogging much until we're done ...