The Family

Yesterday was my briday. I have proof! Luke bought me a cake. He said the guy in front of him in line was upset by the spelling on his cake, but Luke was fine with his. Purchased at Walmart, by the way.

Seems to be a painting trend around here…

We’ve been talking about painting the girl’s room something other than ‘default contractor off-white’ and we’ve been putting it off until there could be some input from the gallery.  Now that she’s old enough to get the concept “we’re going to paint your room and you can help” plus “do you like this color?”, we got the project going.  Our colors are blue, green, and pink.  The blue and the pink are for accents.  Right now they are absent from the room.  Our plan is to get some wooden cutouts (letters to start) and have the girl paint them pink/blue, then we’ll hang them on her walls.  For now, the walls….

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These are the color schemes we considered for the house……

lol OK, I used Photoshop (which i have again – YEA!) to try to see what the house would look like. It was so much fun we tried other color schemes.

I think the real one is obvious.. The colors are very true because these photos were actually taken after the house was painted to decide on the color for the doors. Luke replaced the garage door recently with a white door that is paintable but has a baked on enamel finish so he did not want to paint it. We had a choice: make the doors white to match the garage door or paint the garage door. We decided to go with the white doors.

After these were taken Luke changed the vents just under the peak of the roof to match the dark brown. Otherwise it is accurate. Perhaps i will add a 5th picture of the finished house if I think about it tomorrow.

We are not entirely happy with the colors (for different reasons). We are going to give ourselves 6 months to get used to it, then we will decide if we need to repaint.

Pat came in on Wednesday (June 17) and got right to work on the house. Luke and i had thought that the first day we would show him what we wanted done and talk about it. We knew Pat had to get up very early to catch the 5 A.M. flight and figured he would be tired, but he jumped in and started doing what needed to be done.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday was spent on repair and prep on the outside and in the front bathroom which turned out to be a bigger problem than we expected. We thought the wallpaper would come off as clean as it did in the kitchen but in the bathroom it took chunks of sheetrock paper with it. It is fortunate we have Pat here because he knows better what to do to fix that.

Today, Sunday, I had thought i would ask Pat if he would like to take it easy for a day, maybe doing a little in the house, but taking a day off from the heat of working outside. But he woke before we did and was already outside painting when we woke up.

Picking the color for the house was hard. Luke and I had gotten sample of several colors and painted 18″ squares near the brick but we could not agree on which to use. He didn’t like my choices and I didn’t like his. We decided to see what Pat thought. Mostly Pat thought we needed to pick a color so he could get on with it 🙂 but he did give us his opinion and we went with it. The color is perfect… exactly what we wanted.

The only thing undecided was the second trim color. We knew we wanted to paint the main part of trim, the part of the house that is actually siding, one color, and the real trim another color. We discussed it at length, and finally yesterday Luke and i went to the store, bought 6 samples, came home and painted sticks with each.

Today all 3 of us looked at the samples, and (Luke said i should write this on the calendar) we all liked the same one. Make a note: June 24th – agreement the first time.

The way the first paint looks… I think it’s going to be good!

Oh, I need to take a picture…. I did the first day and then forgot till just now.

OK. I’m trying this out.

Here’s an album of our hike (end of May).

Picassa Web Album

You’ll have to let me know if the Picassa thing works for you all.

Luke went mowing yesterday and a bee got him. Fortunately he is not allergic and fortunately the one that landed near his ear canal didn’t sting. We took a couple of pictures and I cropped the daylights out of them but they are still big. I wanted to show you the swelling. You can see the sting right above his eyebrow. Also note the indentation made by his glasses.

I tell him that if he does not behave I am going to hit him again.

And I split it up in a somewhat odd way. Thursday/Friday of last week, plus Tuesday/Wednesday this week. (Monday already being off)

Thursday/Friday were mostly spent cleaning house. Got the carpet cleaned, picked up a lot of stuff, caught up on laundry – all that good stuff. (though, if you walked in the house right now, you already can’t really tell… time to clean again!) Those days where mostly meant for relaxing and getting things done.

Then the weekend – which went to the folks. Good time, relaxed some more, and generally enjoyed watching the kids play with someone else for a few minutes. Socializing exposure, yay!

And then the Monday-Wednesday stretch. Well, I’ve been planning to get away for a while – started this plan a good month out, unknown to Christina. Now, to have a successful ‘away’ trip right now means we need support. Thought about it and decided to see if Christina’s folks would be interested in some time wandering ground far from Victoria.  (they have enough drama going down on Sean’s side of the family that a few days away can’t help but do good, so it wasn’t a hard sell)  Anywho, the other part about a good away trip is that it can’t be too far.  Donavan does not like riding in the car yet.  Did some looking and came across a place called “Zoo Exotics Resort”.

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