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25 December 2006
 12 December 2006
A Bunch of Photos of the House...
02 December 2006
It's "Bluetiful"!
 We spent the late afternoon putting up the Christmas lights and decorations on the porch. It took a bit of time since we had to put the hooks up to hang the lights for the first time. In the future it shouldn't be so troublesome.James got the stars that are hanging at the left of the porch at Ikea. The blue lights, as you may be able to tell, are LEDs. Talk about bright—it is hard to focus upon them.  23 November 2006
 Welcome to the house:  Come up the stairs:  Check out the fireplace:  As you can see, we were watching the dog show:  The table before setting:  Let's get some dishes out and eat!:  03 November 2006
Finishing Touches
At least that's what it's going to have to be for now, since I went to Michael's this morning and pretty much found it stripped of autumn decorations, and what was left was 50 percent off. Wow, what a clearout.Hobby Lobby was better. I only got a few things in each store, and all of them half price or with a 40 percent off coupon. One thing was a metal cornucopia with a surface of "rusty" leaves and wire, leaving openings. The feet for it were rusted sleigh bells. I filled it with part of a fall garland and some small plastic pumpkins and gourds. I put that on the plant stand on the front porch. This is the other thing I put together:  The Pilgrims are sitting on a styrofoam block I got at Hobby Lobby with the 40 off coupon. The Pilgrims, the cart, and the pumpkin on the cart were all half price at Michael's, the leaf garland half price at Hobby Lobby. The "cornstalks" are actually raffia bows stuck in the cart upside down (got those with the 40 off Michael's coupon). 26 October 2006
View From the Deck
21 October 2006
Hallowe'en Foyer
Much better under incandescent light, and still not clear enough. Love that glass pumpkin on the blue table. It practically glows all on its own. You can't see the little cat figure in front of it as well as you should. I found it for a dollar at Family Dollar. It looks like it was produced for decorating in the 30s or 40s. Hard to tell what that is on the top tier in front of the horse, too. It's a little owl in a witch's hat. Cursed Floral Wire
Several years ago I did a project that required floral wire. I bought a reel from Michael's.A couple of years later I needed the floral wire again, but, although I knew it was somewhere in the laundry room, I couldn't find it. So I bought another reel. Of course soon after I bought the second reel the first turned up again. Today, after scrubbing both bathrooms as well as the dog, going to Wally World for staples, and working on a project, I trooped downstairs to get the Hallowe'en items. I planned to hang the three signs, at least, on the porch railings with the floral wire, which I saw just recently. Guess what I couldn't find. Arrrrrgh!!!! I used paperclips instead. @#%%@#!$@#!%!!! floral wire!  Yes, this is a different photo from the one posted a few hours ago. I put some other things up in the foyer, but the light was so contrast-y with the bright sunlight coming through the sidelights and cleristory that the photo looked dreadful. Maybe later on when the sun goes down. 20 October 2006
Collies and Climates
While bopping from store-to-store with coupons, I stopped at Garden Ridge to give their fall village another look. We bought something called "Maple Sugar Shack" at Michael's last year, which was mixed in with the Christmas village stuff. I didn't realize LeMax also made a "harvest village."A structure called Pine Mountain Cabin caught my eye as being "the most fall." They didn't have any more in boxes so I got the "floor model." It's cute: has "quilts" out to "air," cornstalks, even a canoe. I also got the last two fall trees and two sets of figures and a pickup truck loaded with pumpkins. Warning: this is overexposed and blurry, darnit. If you click the photo there's a shot of the entire mantel, with the boys raking near the sugar shack, and our autumn ladies on either side of Mom's clock (and a home-made swag behind). The Pine Mountain building is actually cute: if you look through the window you can see a moose head over the fireplace, a shelf with flowers, a doorway to the kitchen, and a table set with fruit, all in miniature.  Also, I found this freestanding "curio shelf" ("shadowbox") in Cost Plus Warehouse. I've been looking for one for ages to hold my collie statue collection. This fits all of them except the five largest:  Yes, there are a pewter cat, a glass bluebird, and a clay terrier on the bottom shelf. :-) 15 October 2006
The Last Place You Think Of
Do you ever watch any of HGTV's decorating series? Although the designers re-do a remarkably varied assortment of rooms—basements, living rooms, kitchens, dining rooms, children's rooms, baths, even garages—the majority of the rooms fashioned seem to be master bedrooms. And the story seems to always be the same: Matt and Shari, or Joan Steffend, or Candice Olsen, etc, walk into this beautifully decorated home and oooh and ahhh over the living and eating areas while they get an idea of the homeowners' likes and dislikes.Then the homeowners rather embarrassedly escort them into the master bedroom, which is often incredibly bare, with a bed, a couple of bureaus, a full closet, and nothing else. While they appointed the public areas of their homes, and even the kids' bedrooms, with cool stuff, they completely ignored their own room. That was us. On move-in day we put the furniture where we though we might like it and left it there, then erected bookshelves, china cabinets, and all that in the other rooms. I had some vague ideas for the bedroom, including replacing the two short bookcases in the room with taller, 15" wide Billy units from Ikea, but that was about it. Today we went to Ikea because we hadn't been for a while, and because James wanted to see if their Christmas stuff was out yet. (Yes, I said James was looking for Christmas stuff. No, he doesn't have a fever. <g> Ikea has these light kits of dangling stars and he wanted one for the porch.) We had lunch and wandered through the store, and finally decided to look through their "scratch and dent" room. And there were two display Billy bookcases on sale, a 15" unit and a 23. I hadn't thought to get a narrow one and a wide one, but heck...and they were the right color, too, a darkish brown that would go with my old bedroom furniture. They had some slight scratches, mostly in areas that would be hidden by books, or fixed with judicious application of furniture crayons. And they were already assembled, too! So we brought them home, and since it was only three o'clock, proceeded to rearrange the bedroom. Previously as you entered the room, the two small bookcases were on your left, my old dresser and bureau were on the right. The bed was where it was going to stay, between the windows, flanked by the nightstand I had stained and varnished myself years ago on one side and one of my mom's old end-tables on the other which James uses for an nightstand. On the opposite wall between closet and bathroom doors was our chifforobe which holds the bathroom towels, the other sets of sheets, cleaning supplies and cloths, etc. We emptied the bookcases and put one downstairs and I had James put the other into the spare bedroom. I'm thinking about keeping it there or putting it into my craft room. Then there was a lot of vacuuming and carrying and moving and all that. The end result is that now you walk into the room and my dresser is on the immediate left, and then the 15" Billy closer to the window. The books I keep there are my favorites: Madeleine L'Engle, Gladys Taber, the Harry Potter books, Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy, and Kate Seredy's The Open Gate. I dotted the shelves with a couple of stuffed animals and Mom's old radio which gets shortwave. Someday I'm going to rummage through my old Radio Times issues and see if I can find the frequencies for the BBC. I'd love to see if Radio 4 comes in, since they still do radio shows! I have also finally unpacked the mirror that goes with the dresser and polished it up as well. We can hang it on the wall later if we like, but right now I just have it set at the back of the dresser. I'm so short I can still see all of myself in it! On the opposite wall where the chifforobe was is the bureau and the 23" Billy. They fit just fine in that wall between the closet and bathroom doors. James put his favorite books on the bottom shelves and books to be read on the top two shelves, and the shelves are dotted with dragon figures and model airplanes. I used to keep my two pairs of shoes by the bathroom door next to the chifforobe. They are the same style but I alternate them every day to make them last longer. They now fit between my dresser and the bookcase; I can grab them in the morning when I go back for my glasses. The chifforobe is now where my dresser was on the right wall as you enter, with enough space between it and the far wall to fit the hamper in. There is now a big empty space between that piece of furniture and the door. Right now I have one of my grandmother's old kitchen chairs there. When we save up some money I will get one of the little Tullsta armchairs from Ikea, and perhaps a little plant stand or table. It will be a place where you can sit down and put on your shoes or finish getting dressed. James looked around and said, "The room looks bigger." Probably because of that space. But the Tullsta is small and won't take up much more room than a chair. It's not finished, of course. I have the bureau scarves in the washer. (These are actually towels that my mom embroidered when she was a teenager. I like to use them.) Then we can start on "the accessories," as Matt and Shari say. This will be the artwork that was in our room in the old house—my cross-stitch of the 23rd Psalm, etc. and then I am finally going to put some photos of friends or family into the collage frames I bought so long ago from Michael's—there wasn't room for them in the old place. James says he doesn't mind, so I will probably put my old crucifix over the bed, too. Now I'm starting to wonder if it would be too frivolous to buy a new comforter for the bed. The old one is still good, but it shrank a bit a couple of washings ago and got some oil stains on it from the old washer. If I want a fall-themed comforter, now is the time to buy one! But nice ones (not brand names, but ones that don't pill the first time you put them in the washer!) are so expensive. Oh, well, there's time to think. I'd like the pictures and things back up, though, before Thanksgiving, since we're having our first family company then! 04 October 2006
Improvements at the Hollow
I took off early yesterday because the construction company was coming by to fix a few things that had gone wrong or were "off."The simplest problem to fix was the space over the bathroom door that still had a bit of blue tape on it; it had not been "spot painted" before we moved in. We also had a railing on the deck that was curling up. It was fastened down with James's favorites, three-inch deck screws. One of the rollers on the garage door of the bay that I use kept falling off its track because the track had been installed too far out and the roller was extending too far. The track was moved in. There was also an uprooted stump in the back yard which they had promised to remove before we moved in. They took it away. The last repair was the most complicated: the Wednesday before Labor Day was the last time I had used the garbage disposal and it had worked fine. We ate out on Thursday and were not home for meals Friday through Monday inclusive due to DragonCon. On Tuesday when James tried to use the disposal it didn't work. When he clicked the reset button, all it did was hum. The repairman figured we had dropped something down it, but could find absolutely nothing that didn't belong there. It was somehow jammed up so badly that he had to install a new one. The one last thing that needed doing was the installation of the double-keyed deadbolt on the front door that we had paid for. They had not installed it previous to move in because there is a Georgia fire law that forbids the installation of a double-key deadbolt on a front door by a builder before the buyer moves in. They were scheduled to come this morning before James left, but apparently something was wrong with the lock and they had to put the old deadbolt back on for the time being. James was almost late for work and was pretty upset. Anyway, I took the opportunity of being home to vaccuum and sweep and do all those other little monotonous housekeeping tasks, and then framed the prints we had brought home from A Blue Ribbon Affair. The Spitfire went downstairs to be hung at a later time, but I put up the other two. Here's the fall countryside scene with the lighthouse in the distance:  Opposite I have dressed the alcove for fall:  Down in the hall downstairs, just behind James' airplane light, I put up the larger fall painting along with the lovely tin vintage travel sign, next to the laundry room door with its wreath and sign:  08 September 2006
No Lion, No Tin Man...
...but we do have a scarecrow on the landing on the stair: I'd never bought one of these straw bales before and almost regretted it when I took the plastic off. I expected some shedding. But boy, do those puppies shred! I would have had to vacuum today even if I wasn't intending to in the first place. I set up the tableau, then vacuumed around it. This next photo is "stitched together" from two photos and regrettably muddy in the middle.  However, you can see Mom's tier table and lamp surrounded by fall finery (except for the summer seashore things still on the blue table). 20 August 2006
Dining Room Redux
Hopefully this is a litte better pic of the curio cabinet. The mug on top with the little stuffed cow inside it is my Ask the Manager mug. Here on top is the cross-stitch I began when we decided to try to buy the house, my "leap of faith." Below is a framed Susan Branch autumn postcard which says "A Little Season of Love and Laughter" with an autumn verse below.  The "whole magilla" against the dining room wall. That is my mom's original mixer on the old microwave cart. I'm not sure if she got it as a wedding gift or after they moved into the house, but it's vintage late 1940s-early 1950s.  12 August 2006
Two Photos
These came out badly but I'm too sleepy at the moment to retry.This is a little curio cabinet we found last week at Hobby Lobby on discount. So now it holds an assortment of mugs, a Yankee Candle, two sparrows and a few other things. (In the drawers are dog treats. LOL.) I'm planning to finally use the glue gun James gave me last Christmas and glue some autumn leaves to the rattan.  The new "Harvest Blessings" plaque next to our calendar and autumn-themed cookie cutters:  25 July 2006
Finishing Touches
They're coming to repave the street today; looks like the development company is putting the finishing touches on the neighborhood. Last time we heard, only five houses were left and I saw Elizabeth showing one the other day.16 July 2006
James' Project
James has wanted a spray booth for ages. At the other house he used to go out on the front porch and spray models. Of course this led to the problems of what to do when it rained (since it wasn't an enclosed porch) or the matter of little nosy insects who came buzzing by and embedded themselves in the paint (not to mention the dust and the leaves).Awhile back, a friend of ours who works at CDC found out they were getting rid of their downdraft spray tables. Not auctioning them off, just tossing them out. She grabbed one and gave it to James. This is like a little square box (that's it on the bottom, the black thing with the red printing) which has a blower in it that extracts the paint spray and fumes through a series of filters and then out. So when we bought the house, James confused the heck out of the builder by asking for a second dryer vent about four feet off the ground, but they did it. Tonight he finally finished putting it together. He got dryer ductwork from Lowe's and put it together with aluminum tape—this feeds from the blower exit to the dryer vent and outside the house—then built the booth itself with foamboard from Michael's (since it will get messy with spray paint anyway) and put an inexpensive fluorescent light stick at the top. So he can pivot the models around to spray them, he's using a simple Rubbermaid turntable. As Snagglepuss used to say, "Viola!"  04 July 2006
Happy Independence Day!
02 July 2006
Three Cheers...
We finally got a minute and James mounted the holders for both the big flag, which will only go up on national holidays, and the smaller flag which will stay up all the time. I also bought a large red-white-and-blue tinsel star which is now on the front door, and there's a similarly colored pinwheel at one corner of the flower bed nearest the driveway and birdhouse on the brick edge of the porch, also a metal decoration that looks like a lighted firecrackers on the edge of the other bed.25 June 2006
There, That's Done
We have both James' hobby room curtains up and a shade on the window where the sun comes in during the afternoon. The other room faces east and really doesn't need a shade, especially since the curtains are insulated. It's always amazing to see what a difference curtains make; the room looks more cohesive and complete.It also doesn't echo as much. :-) I tried to find aircraft curtains for him, but all I could find were ones made for very small children, with "Jay-Jay the Jet Plane" type cartoon-y planes on them. I would think there would be ones with jets or even commercial aircraft on them for adolescents or adults who like airplanes. One More Pic
Here's the Expedit doing its room-dividing duties, from the dining room side, full of cookbooks and games for a Games' Night.I don't like having the knicknacks lined up on top like that, but I haven't found a good shadow box for them yet.  24 June 2006
Pictures, We Got Pictures
Autumn things on the divider overlooking the foyer; see where we hung the America poster? Here is the seashore summer theme in the foyer. You can also see the Autumn Angel I was raving about last week, with her oak leaf wings.  The plain old fan in the library...  ...has a different perspective when it's dark! (Looks like a UFO, doesn't it, with those reflections on the ceiling?) Dig that purple afterglow!  Here's James' fan. He wants to paint the tips of the blades yellow like a standard propellor warning mark.  Thunderstorm over the complex:  Here's Ivy the lamb holding the flag until we get the flag mount put up. She's named after the song...you know, "Mairzy doats..."  With the foyer light on you can see the glass painted leaves around the door a little better. (Sorry it's grainy; it was dusk out.)  21 June 2006
"Round-round, Get-Around, We Get Around..."
I had forgotten to mention that on Saturday night James installed the two ceiling fans downstairs.The fan in the library is just your plain garden variety ceiling fan with light kit, the least expensive that Lowe's sells (this is the one they don't put on display because they want you to buy the fancier ones <g>), three speed reversible for winter, white-or-woodgrain blades depending on which side faces down, simple dome light. I went downstairs to see what he was doing and ended up helping with the blades; everything else went very well and it works perfectly from the switch on the wall. Ironically he had an easier time installing the more complicated fan, the double-fan airplane-looking arrangement in his room. The standard fan has to be installed in order and the blades assembled after you've done all the wiring. You can put together this fan "on the ground," as it were, and then hang it, and then do the wiring. The fan worked fine but the light didn't come on. James checked the wiring twice and then took a closer look at the little halogen bulb. It was broken out of the box! So that means another trip to Lowe's. Can't keep away from that place. In any case, this means unless we are actively having people downstairs we can keep from turning the A/C on there. Even when it's been as warm as it's been it stays about 75°F down there; it's just that the air doesn't circulate without the fans and it gets stuffy. The two bedrooms are perfectly ventilated via the A/C right now, so I expect we do not need to install the ceiling fans there until we go back on open windows in the fall, unless James just wants to get them out of the way. Speaking of "around," I have rotated the decorations in the foyer to reflect summer. It's a sea theme: a lighthouse centerpiece with a shell encrusted seahorse, a big conch shell full of smaller shells, a little wooden rowboat with "oars" and other accountrements, and a little sailboat on a spring bouncing above painted wooden waves. All we need is the scent of the ocean (and maybe some Del's lemonade and doughboys from Iggy's—alas, the lemon-lime soda from Warwick Club is long gone)... 17 June 2006
Leave Them Be!
O frabjous day! We walked into Hobby Lobby this evening and they had started to put their fall flowers out! I ran directly to a beautiful stem of autumn leaves and gave it a hug. They have some gorgeous tall stems of leaves, and also some tall stems with gourds, autumn berries, etc. About three of the leaves and at least one gourd stem in a tall vase with a substantial bottom so it won't tip over, and it will be perfect for the foyer.As we kept wandering around the store, it became obvious that they had been setting up for upcoming seasons. I passed several rows of Christmas greenery and then...got up to the front of the store where they had more autumn decorations, a couple of display towers with fall ornaments on them including wire and leaf-wrapped cornucopias. I fell in love with some of the wood ornaments and promptly bought one: an angel about eight inches high, painted blue with a painted garland of autumn leaves around her skirt; her wings are made of metal cutouts of oak leaves. She has a portrait stand in the back. There were also smaller angels dressed in red with the same oak leaf wings, a carved "autumn" sign, a basket of apples with painted autumn leaves around it, etc. I'll have to go back with more coupons and get some of these pretty things. I also bought a cute, small rowboat complete with a coil of "rope," two oars and two signal flags and a lobster pot under the seat. When I take down the spring decorations in the foyer I will have a seaside summer theme: the rowboat, a lighthouse, a large shell full of small ones, a seahorse made of shells, and a small wooden sailboat cutout that "bounds" over a cutout wave by means of a spring. 10 June 2006
St. Francis Tends His Menagerie
Our garden statue menagerie. I think this is enough.They mostly have literary names, but there are a couple of media entries:  Nibbles is the hero of Elizabeth Taylor's charming memoir about her pet chipmunk, Nibbles and Me. Maeterlinck...what else would you name a bluebird? Cinnabar is from Marguerite Henry's Cinnabar: the One O'Clock Fox. Samantha is from Friendly Persuasion. Pipkin is from Watership Down.  Yes, of course the sea monster is Cecil, as in Beany and.... Lindesfarne is from the comic strip Kevin and Kell. Fiver also from Watership Down. You can't see O'Dell too well. It's a cute resin statue of a Jack Russell terrier burrowing. Since he's a digging dog, I named him after the character on The Life of Riley radio series, "Digger" O'Dell. 19 May 2006
Now You Don't See It, Now You Still Don't
Upgrades R Us
I was beginning to get concerned about the Dish Network guy until he called about eleven a.m. looking for directions. He showed up a bit later and set to work.The invisible screens tech showed up after the Dish guy and did two doors and was gone before the Dish man was finished. I looked at him in surprise, because they'd told me the doors take about 40 minutes each to install. He said it is easiest on new homes (probably because the door frames haven't had a chance to deteriorate) and also that he'd installed about 4000 doors! I guess he has it down pat. :-) Anyway, I've had the doors open all day. It is absolutely grand to be living somewhere that seems to have been designed to circulate air through the house! The old house was all compartments and the only way to force air through the house was to put on the attic fan. With any type of a breeze outside, this happens naturally. The screens puzzle the heck out of Willow. There's a barrier there—she pushed at it and I gently reprimanded her a couple of times until I think she's figured out it's a door and she can't go through it. This afternoon when there was a nice breeze she sacked out in front of the door to the deck. Ahhhh... While they were working I was doing my own chores. I [yes, again] was doing a load of laundry. I also had tidied up the craft room so I could work: I finished doing the glass paints on the top half of the upper window sash. As always with glass paints, you can't really tell how it looks right after you get done. This evening, however, the window looked quite nice with its autumn color highlights. I also took a plaque I bought at JoAnn and converted it into an autumn picture. They have these resin plaques done in primitive style of colonial buildings, farms, schools, etc. Mine has a motto of "America the Beautiful" over a scene of a schoolhouse with a tree and flagpole next to it; in the foreground is a round barn with some sheep in front of it. The background is a hill with little pine trees on it. I added yellow, orange, and reddish paint to the tree to make it an autumn tree and then painted a smaller one in the background, and scattered the same color dots under the trees and around the school to represent fallen leaves. I then applied a weak brown wash to the grass to make it look as if it were going dormant for the fall and brightened the blue of the sky because a fall sky is always more vivid. Didn't come too bad. Some of the leaves look more like what they are, autumn-colored blobs, but it will look better from the street. I used the Scotch outdoor tape to place it on the brick arch on the front porch. I had to run to the grocery and stopped at the Dollar Store. Found another animal for the menagerie out front: a hedgehog. So now we have two rabbits (Fiver and Pipkin), a fox (Cinnabar), a bluebird (Happy), a hedgehog (Lindesfarne, of course), a goose (Samantha), and a Jack Russell terrier (O'Dell—anyone understand the joke?) "digging a hole" under one of our bushes, with St. Francis watching over them all. Still can't find that 3-piece Loch Ness Monster in a smaller size at a reasonble price. Maybe I should get the squirrel; then we'd have a "Perri." Meanwhile, been vacuuming—sigh...again! the new carpet sheds so!—and dusting and the usual housework to tidy up for the party tomorrow. In the meanwhile, the television picture looks stunning. You actually can tell the difference between the regular picture and the hi-def feed. It took me about a half hour to figure out the new remote. It's very cool. For instance, there is a picture-in-picture feature on the channel guide, so while you are searching for something new to watch, you can continue to watch the program that's already on. When you click over a program, even if you haven't selected it to watch, it will give you a full description of it at the top of the guide screen, without having to click the info button. The HD channels are just...brilliant. The color is vivid and everything has razor-sharp edges. The funniest thing is that some of the HD channels are showing old television shows that weren't filmed in HD, but were created on film rather than videotape. You should have seen how good 40+ year old reruns of Hogan's Heroes and Flipper looked in HD. I thought I was watching it on a movie screen—and the illusion was reinforced since both programs were letterboxed! I don't know how they got letterboxed versions of a show originally filmed in a 4:3 ratio...probably the picture has been masked at top and bottom. (I wish these people showed Lassie! These shows are shown uncut (commercials at the end) and look like they are from the original masters. Even the Lassie DVDs are from syndicated prints and have bits missing.) Needless to say Doctor Who looked super tonight... 18 May 2006
Taking Stock
The "basic project" of the house is just about finished. As I said previously, we're down to details. It's a nice place to be. The move was the usual pain-in-the-neck that moving always is, but was helped along mostly by our wonderful friends (and the nice movers recommended by our realtor) with a tip of the hat to the weather staying cold (at least it wasn't 99°F with 99% humidity like the last time!). It was a challenging and tiring first month—but in a way fun in putting a dream together.Friday they're supposed to come put up the screen doors (just in time, of course, for it to get hot again, which as February Callendar notes is typical of life) and the Dish people are scheduled to come put in the new receiver (unless their truck breaks down again...). I think that is the end of the large projects for now unless we decide to go to BrandsMart for the freezer. It's time to do some maintenance work on the car, see about getting myself an eye checkup and new glasses—and put some money away. I'd like to look into at least one CD, but I think I want to go to a different branch of my bank, where the employees aren't so...lethargic. In the late fall we can start acquiring the remaining bookcases. I'd also like to save up a bit on my own and purchase a phonograph that will play 78s so I can play Mother's records. Minor things left to finish:
And I want to get our domain in new web-hosting quarters sometime soon as well... 17 May 2006
"America" Reborn
I worked on the poster tonight. It was in pretty bad shape: frayed at the edges, bent, tears in the middle, and a couple of bits taken out. It had started out at a disadvantage in the first place—it had been folded when it was delivered—and several years taped to my bedroom wall and then more time in the attic sticking to an oil painting made it worse.Well, here's the result (it's dark because if I raise the light levels any the room reflects in the plastic "glass" over the poster). It looks about 500 percent better, although if you get close you can see where my markers didn't actually match most of the colors, some of the tear edges, and the creases. Ah, well...  I didn't realize until I looked at the back where I had gotten this so long ago: it had been folded and mailed to my eleventh-grade history teacher and I had asked him if I could have it. So if you're still out there, Mr. Stone, thanks! 12 May 2006
An Open and Shut Case
The garage door openers are up. The guy programmed all the remotes to open both doors, so now we have six remotes! When he finished he showed me all the safety features and overrides, how to lock the remotes from inside the garage, and then it was done.I had intended to tidy up my craft room today while I was waiting for the installer and ended up doing crafts instead. I repaired some of the worst marks on my Lassie (the 1994 movie) and put that up in my room, and a funny Star Trek: the Next Generation poster ended up downstairs near the laundry room (I was doing laundry as well). I also put the readi-leading up on the top half of the guest room and craft room windows. This took me quite a while to get even and by the time I was finished I couldn't do the actual glass painting because you are not supposed to paint when the sun is striking the windows; the paint dries too quickly. I have done a vertical pattern interrupted by one leaf (on each window) and diamond shapes. At a more appropriate time I'll use the fall colors to highlight the leaves and the interior of the diamonds. I'm trying to give the house a little of the look of the lovely Craftsman-style homes they are building down the road in Smyrna. There are several dozen of them now. They remind me of the triple-deckers at home, the ones that were cared for, with their beautifully paned windows. James is presently downstairs attempting to bring order to chaos. He has many model kits, in progress projects, reference books, and just miscellaneous hobby tools and now has to find places for them. They mentioned on the news tonight that you could see Jupiter shining above the moon, so I slipped out on the deck to see. Sure enough, there it sat glinting like a glowing pencil point. It was cool and lovely out there. I opened up my arms to greet the breeze. This place makes me feel reborn. 07 May 2006
No Travel Needed
We had nowhere to go today.Usually on Sunday there's some sort of errand: milk we didn't buy over the weekend, a coupon or two going a-begging. But nothing today! James did run out to get a double paper deal and some batteries, but that was just a short trip to the Food Depot. So during the afternoon we installed the airplane lamp James's mom, sister and niece got him for Christmas. They had thought he would put it in his room, but he wants a ceiling fan down there eventually, so we put it into the hall. Yes, it will be a bit of a "low bridge." Beware in our downstairs hall, anyone taller than James. This was taken from the foyer, hence the jacket on the right, and that's the laundry room door in the background.  This is the lamp from in front of the laundry room, with the "rocket garden" in the background. This is what James did after he hung the lamp. The door in the background is the coat closet (and, wow, yes there are actually coats in there rather than Christmas decorations!) and the print is of Spitfires coming in for a landing during the Battle of Britain. The other doorframe you see at the right edge is for the door to the garage.  We also permanently hung up the Wizard of Speed and Time poster and a smaller Battle of Britain poster over the coat rack, but I didn't take a photo because I haven't restored the America poster yet to put up there, so it's not complete. 06 May 2006
Wait for It...
...the big news is......THE LAST BOX IS UNPACKED. Woohoo!!!!! James qualifies this by saying there are still things that are in boxes. But they are actually boxes that are being used for storage, not boxes that were packed to move. Open and Shut Cases
We stopped by Bed, Bath & Beyond with a coupon and got another of those collapsible tables for downstairs.God help me, found an autumn cross-stitch kit at JoAnn. This one's a sampler. Lots of detail. At the rate I stitch these days I might have it done in three years...LOL. Anyway, we ended up at Lowe's and purchased the garage door openers. The development people wanted $400 each to put garage door openers in. We got two and will have them installed by Lowe's for a little bit more than half that. Have to wait for them to call to make an appointment. I guess I should make it for May 19; everything else will be installed that day. 04 May 2006
Snapshots
Okay, you wanted more pics.This is in the hallway; paned mirror, the lilacs, and some little decorations on the storage cabinet:  This is on the opposite wall from the mirror, the robin and Susan Branch print:  Facing the guest and craft rooms; the "ethereal rabbit" print directly ahead:  Guest room:  This isn't all that good a picture, but it's the artwork on the stairway going up:  Here's my wonderful washer and dryer:  Here are some of James' aircraft prints on the wall of the downstairs hall leading to the library:  |
