Feb 26, 2013

Here I come, Apple!


In just a few minutes I'm hooking up my old Windows-based Toshiba laptop and migrating my files over to my new MacBook. 

It's kind of like moving to a new house. I spent days organizing and cleaning up my hard drive so everything will be spiffy in its new home. 

I read tons of info. on the Apple website
and feel confident I know what I'm doing, but...

YIKES!

   
Wish me luck!


Feb 21, 2013

Thanks, Homer!






A friend of my husband drew this picture for him the other day and he put it on the refrigerator using my magnets. 

Homer Simpson humor and vintage glass magnets. That's kind of my husband and me in a nutshell. 

 I was glad to have something to laugh about because...


 

Oops, they did it again. 

Two more wrong cabinets arrived yesterday

     
I was starting to get a little crabby about this, I must admit. But OfficeMax is trying very hard to figure out the problem, and at this point it's just getting kind of funny.  Now, if I ever do get the right cabinets, I'll appreciate them even more, and if I don't...

Well, it's just back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, I can't do any new projects (perhaps you've noticed a lack of new projects getting done around here) because the art and craft supplies meant to be unpacked into these cabinets have been stored away in boxes for three months, and I can't get to them. 

I didn't realize how much I need to create, and I can't believe how much I miss my stuff!   

You might be wondering why my supplies are packed away. 

Last fall, while I was recuperating from the bronchitis that kept me from blogging, my husband and I were presented with the opportunity to have a new home built in a great new neighborhood east of Boise. Now, we love our 103 year-old North End cottage, but we were seduced by the idea of living in a brand new home. A home with a three year homeowner's warranty, where the 18 year-old furnace doesn't conk out on the coldest day of the year and the windows all open and close, where there are automatic sprinklers and the landscape is maintained for you, where the kitchen has a gas range and granite counters and a huge walk-in pantry, where there's an open floor plan, a ground floor craft room, a man cave and...

Well, you get the picture. Pure seduction.

So that's what I was doing instead of blogging all fall. I was organizing our twenty-five year-old household, packing-up, and preparing our cottage to go on the market while we would live in an apartment and have a new house built  

Thank heavens the builder was delayed getting the new subdivision platted and recorded. 

Because one day, as I was sitting in my old (non open floor plan) family room daydreaming about my soon to be new (open floor plan) family room, my eye fell on the bottom of the wall in front of me. 

Specifically, on this  moulding:




 The moulding my husband made and installed and I painted twenty-five years ago

And I was transported back to the time, with our baby daughters playing next to us in their play pen, as we tore off the rickety small back rooms of our old house, dug a new foundation by hand, poured the footings, framed the new two story 1,200 square foot addition, worked side by side with the drywallers, electricians, plumbers, carpet layers, cabinet installers, plasterers, and on and on until the last piece of moulding was in place and painted and the plastic tarp was finally torn down between the old and new. Our home was complete. 

We built this house with our own hands.

Our daughters tumbled over the furniture in the loft while watching Sesame Street, painted on their easels in the play room, slammed the doors to their bedrooms, put on prom makeup in the bathroom, sat with boyfriends on the family room sofa and celebrated their college graduations in the dining room. 

We raised our family in this house.  

As I gazed at the moulding, the past flooded over me and I could hear the echo of my babies playing as I wallpapered their new nurseries. 

And as the tears started streaming down my face, I knew I couldn't leave this house. 

The funny thing is, my husband felt the same way. When we talked it all out, we realized that being empty nesters with new needs doesn't mean we have to leave our beloved old house behind to have what we want. We'll just hunker down and rebuild it again, this time for the two of us. It will take longer than before because we're a bit older and a bit slower. 

But there's no hurry.  

So, the first thing I'm working on is moving my studio to the ground floor so I don't have to lug my heavy projects and supplies up and down the stairs anymore. No more paint brushes dripping down the stairs to the sink for cleaning. I've primed and painted my new space, and now I'm ready for decorating. But until I get those huge new storage cabinets in place and see the scale I have to work with, I'm on hold. 

And all my supplies continue to sit packed away in boxes out of reach where I can't get to them.

And I was getting a little crabby. 

So I'm glad for the humor in Homer and my husband today.


 

And glad I get to go through this new adventure with him. 

Thanks for stopping by my blog today, and thanks for hanging in there while I was on hiatus figuring out life and getting it together. 

A special thank you to all my sweet blogging friends who encourage me, make me laugh, and always make me feel welcome here. 




 

Feb 19, 2013

Project Update

Dear OfficeMax,

My entryway is a tad crowded

You see, I ordered two gargantuan six foot tall, three foot wide, eighteen inch deep steel storage cabinets from you a while back

I searched high and low for weeks for just the right ones. I measured and remeasured and then measured again for just the right fit. Then I waited with excitement for the new cabinets that would finish my project. The last piece of the puzzle, the pièce de résistance

But... 

You shipped me the wrong ones. (Oops!)

Let's try it again. (Hint: check the numbers this time.)
 
And please pick these up ASAP. 

My entryway is a tad crowded. 
 


 Thanks, 


 

Feb 11, 2013

Project Update

I think blog time is different than my time. 

I posted this "before" photo of my current project seven days ago. 
 

 Ever since then, it's been kind-of nagging me in the back of my mind that my readers will think I'm slouching if I don't show steady progress, and it was starting to feel like weeks since I started it.  

Pressure!

But this morning, I see I've only been working on it one week! Wait a minute, one week in my time equals weeks in blog time?

 Huh. What's up with that? 

Pressure!

Sometimes, when I see amazing room and furniture reveals on other blogs, I think I get a skewed sense of the time and effort behind it.  Online, it appears like an entire room was redecorated or a piece of furniture was repainted more quickly and with less effort than I know it was. Many bloggers don't show the nitty gritty behind their complex projects, just the beautiful results. Their hard work and beautiful projects get mixed together in the kaleidoscope of my mind with no sense of time passing.

And, actually, that's a wonderful way to think of time, isn't it? As a circular kaleidoscope made up of wonderful moments happening right now, instead of a straight line with some future point causing me to feel pressure until I reach it. I don't want to miss a single second of my life while my attention is on something that hasn't happened yet. So I think that means my projects will find their way to my blog when they're ready, and I'm okay with that now.  

No More Pressure!  

I wonder if my blogger friends, whose blogs I admire so much, ever feel pressure to perform in a fantasy "blogger time." Do you ever lose sight of the reality that's behind your blog, in the rush to get it online? 


Anyway, this is what my project is looking like today, and now that I've spent so much time talking about time, I don't have much time to talk about my project!

Pretty funny.
I'll let this photo do the talking.
 

As you can see, I painted the plywood subfloor(Good job if you guessed that from my previous post!) I also painted the walls. 

  

Today, I'm priming and painting miles of base shoe molding. I didn't even realize I'd need to install any molding until the carpet I ripped out left a Grand Canyon between the floor and wall
  

This project has been full of unexpected twists like that.
I thought I would be finished by now. I started out thinking it would be a cakewalk, and a week later I'm living here in a new and unexpected moment that's not where I expected to be, but just as wonderful

With no more pressure.


Confusing, I know.




Thanks so much for listening today!