Slow Down, Smell the Flowers

I've been getting a lot of inspiration from my Living Faith daily devotional readings. Today's selection includes the following:

"My life can be very busy, but at times the busyness involves so much skimming of the surface that I end my day having done all I should do, but still unsatisfied, cold and anything but exhilarated. God is in the details, they say. Perhaps I need to slow down and consider those details. God, help me live in an awareness of your constant presence."

I was thinking about this this morning, as I raced around the house getting things ready. I wanted to prepare dinner, so that Mike and Henry could just pop the casserole bowl into the oven around 4:45 this afternoon, before I would arrive home. I needed to pack my lunch. Henry needed to be readied for preschool. Mike has 8 am class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so he was off by 7:30. Busy, busy, busy. Today at work I want to finish a book review that I'm working on, then I have about a dozen other things that need immediate attention. I'm on the reference desk for an hour at noon. I have a student coming to see me at 4:00. I want to take a few hours of comp. time to get some shopping in. I am a person that is very pleased with small things, and I need to not get so consumed with the larger picture that I lose sight of that. Taking the time each morning to read a daily devotional has done me a lot of good.

With regard to the shopping, on a different topic, I'm very excited :) I'm seizing the opportunity to go to the craft store without Henry in tow throwing yarn into the aisles. I would like some yarn to make Christmas gifts and I'm armed with Sunday ad coupons. I'm also making a Home Depot run and to Sherwin Williams for paint. I've been driving my sister crazy with my paint selection process this week. She has a good eye for color, what can I say? The other alternative is my husband, whom I love dearly, but if I ask him to assist in color choices, he says they all look the same. I think it's a man thing :)

Anyway, the last room that I want to paint this year is our guest room and I want to paint it red. You wouldn't think that would be so difficult, but I tell you, there are a *lot* of variations of red, and I got tangled up in each of them. I have a fall bouquet in there, and the colors inspired me to want a red in there with an orange hue to it. No easy feat, I assure you. I've finally decided on a color called Red Cent. I think Sherwin Williams should give me a free gallon of paint for all the product placement I do. We always use their paints - good stuff. So, I'm excited. More paint in my hair tomorrow, oh joy.

Continuing house transformation...

So, I'm back. Yes, these 3 day work weeks are really getting out of hand. But I have dozens of accrued vacation days; I'm in a union, what can I say? I've been enjoying my painting, and I'm going to keep right on going. I am a bulldozing machine of a painting maniac. Old paint fears me.

So, yesterday I tackled our upstairs bath, as well as the trim in Hank's room, readying it for next week's efforts. Our upstairs bath was one of the few rooms in the house that was actually painted a color. And it was pink. A bad pink. Not only the walls, but all the trim and the *window* too. Here's the before, although the trim has already been transformed white, so imagine those pink as well:

And, in the spirit of bold color choices, here's the bathroom after:

Yes, it's brown. Mocha, to be exact. And you know they name those paint colors strategically. Who's going to buy a color called "Dirt"? "Earth worm..." You get the picture. Anyway, it is a nice warm brown, and with the white accents, it looks awesome, if I do say so myself. I managed to get paint not only on my clothes (butt included), but on my face and in my hair. It's all par for the course. Next week, Hank's room will be transformed into a sea green paradise...

And yet more painting...

Coming off of a 4 day weekend, I've been at work yesterday and today, and once again I'm contemplating taking a painting day tomorrow. What can I say? I'm a maniac. Aside from that obvious statement, I work at a college library. The summer is the one time that it's super easy to take vacation days. But I feel reckless, I tell you. I'm just slapping a big 'V' up on the office calendar willy nilly. I'm also off Friday, to care for Henry since my parents aren't available to watch him this week.

In my own defense, I rarely take time off during the main semesters. Really, in recent memory, the only days I've taken off during fall and spring semesters have been Henry-related or surrouding major holidays, like the day after Thanksgiving. I have amassed an unbelievable amount of stored vacation and other compensatory time (don't hate me, I'm in a union). And eventually, you'll lose the days if you don't use them. So there :)

Now that I've justified my painting obsession, we can dwell on the interesting details. I think I'm going to tackle the upstairs bathroom, the pink not-so-paradise, and paint it a warm mocha. It won't take long, since the room isn't that big, and it's tiled halfway up the wall. So, in between those coats I'll be once again schlepping with the white semi-gloss onto the trim in the bedrooms. This is gallon #2 since we moved into the house, and within days I'm going to need to purchase gallon #3. Again, maniac. But, it looks bright and cheerful, and the trim *badly* needs it.

I love these days I've been spending at home. I listen to my podcasts, paint my little heart out, and gradually our house feels more and more like it reflects *us*. It makes me happy :)

The joy of painting...

Well, I'm back, and flush with house transformation success. I took a full day off from work yesterday to paint, and I tell you, I was a maniac. Aside from a lunch break (ok, and a break to randomly scarf down some chocolate chips) I painted for the entire day. When I was finished with a coat, and I needed to wait to re-coat, I painted something else. When I finished my goal for the day, but still had a couple hours left, I painted something else. I so rarely get uninterrupted time for projects like this, that I refused to let even a moment go to waste. If it wasn't moving and looked in need of some brightening, I painted it.

My day started out at Home Depot, because naturally, despite my careful planning, I needed another supply. It's just written in the stars or something, like the DMV. No matter how much prep work you do, you need something else, and have to make another trip. I was already clad in my ratty painting clothes. This is a lesson I learned early on, and all other eternal optimists heed this warning: I don't care how much you assure yourself "I'm going to be SOOOO careful!" do NOT wear your cute new yoga pants and a shirt you paid more than $3 for. You *will* get paint on them. You just *will*. I did this only one time, and after managing to put two full imprints of my butt onto the freshly painted wall and ruining my pants, I succumbed to having ugly "paint clothes" specifically for this butt-imprinting purpose. It's just the way it goes.

So, I got home, and got to work. And I tell you, I was a machine. I put 2 coats on the living room archway, a radiator cover, the downstairs hallway, and trim work on the entire second floor of our house. I suppose I should mention that when we bought our house, it was uglier than sin. The entire house, aside from the 2 bathrooms, were painted the same color. And by "the entire house" I mean:

Walls

Trim

Windows. Yes, the sills, but also...the *windows*. Why would you do this?!

Plugs and covers

Light switches and covers

*Inside* all of the closets

The fireplace hearth

And most unforgivably, the fireplace *brick*.

How long does it take to remove a light switch cover, people? Oh, I don't know, a full 30 seconds? What on earth were they thinking?! And the fireplace...this should just be a crime. I've spent weeks of my life inhaling paint stripper that peels the skin off my hands and is illegal in 20 states to try and rescue the brick, but that's another story altogether.

Anyway, if we were blessed with such a quantity of this paint, what color is it, you ask? I like bright colors. My kitchen is Afternoon, dining room Fine Wine, living room Artichoke, and the newly painted hallway is Lemongrass. The old color on every surface in our house can only be described as Oppressive Gloom - a dingy, ugly ass off-white variant. Oppressive Gloom flat edition on the walls, attracting every fingerprint and bit of filth accumulated for the past 50 years or so. And Oppressive Gloom Semi-Gloss for the trim. It felt *so good* to cover the heavy-handed depressiveness with brighter colors.

Ah, but then there's the bathrooms. I will grant, they were painted something other than OG. However, they have no other redeemable characteristics. The downstairs bath was painted the *exact same* shade (aquamarine) as the wall tile, complete with a matching (and filthy) heavy drapery over the cute old house window. It was like stepping into a rain storm every time you went in there. That's long since been painted white and the adorable window stripped and stained. Upstairs, above the wall tile, the walls are inexplicably pink. I like pink, I do. But not this pink. It's a drabby, crappy-looking pink that lots its bloom sometime in the mid 60's, and it covers the entirety of the walls, trim, and once again, window. Not just the sill, this bears repeating. Yes, they took the time to paint all of the individual woodwork on the window itself.

So, about mid-afternoon, when I had really worked myself into a frenzy, and was poised with my brush, just looking for something to paint, it came to me: The pink. The pink WILL BE ERADICATED. I'm going to paint the walls mocha, but I tackled the trim and the window with white semi-gloss, and I was downright gleeful about it. I actually have a wound on my hand from painting so much yesterday. Yes, I have Painters Palm. Affects mostly crazy people. Like me.

Anyway, here's the hallway, before:

And here it is, after:

Hank included, extra :)

Let me see if I can dig up our living room, and the infamous fireplace...Ah, here it is, the front mostly stripped by your resident crazy person. But note the wall-to-wall gold carpet. They even had *extra pieces* of this thing throughout the house, for use as mats. Welcoming? I think not.

And, thank merciful God, the after:

So, I'm scheduled to take some more time off in a few weeks to finish the hallway, and then tackle Hank's room and the upstairs bathroom. I'm looking forward to it, rubbing my palms together in a devilish fashion...

Painting and other fun projects...

So, I'm taking the day off tomorrow to finally begin my spring painting project. I'm all excited, and have the freshly bought paint out in my trunk and am loaded up with new brushes and pads. What this means is that within 24 hours, I will have paint in my hair and be using some very unladylike language. All of that notwithstanding, I will have a Lemongrass hallway by tomorrow evening, and I couldn't be happier. Well, at least part of the hallway. I'm going to do the downstairs, and then the upstairs trim so that I can paint the walls up there in a few weeks. The downstairs blissfully has gorgeous wood trim and needs no paint. At least, on purpose. The walls are filthy though, so I ended up selecting the semi-gloss finish. Going up and down the stairs lends itself to wall touching, apparently, and this way it'll wipe right off. Yes, go ahead and think it. I wash walls. I'm crazy.

The walls truly look awful right now, but that's because they haven't been painted, like, since the house was built. In 1935. I'm not joking. And it's all in flat finish, and they look dingier than a warehouse. I'm a machine when I paint, too. It's the reason why I have to take time off from work to do it, instead of trying to paint when Henry is around. Well, granted, there are other logistical issues surrounding why it is a bad idea to paint with your 3 year old "helping" you.

"Mommy look! I painted the (solid oak) cupboard! MMMMOOOMMMYYYY! I got paint *all over me*!"

But when I'm armed with painting tools, watch out sister. I'm feverish in my desire to accomplish, and even surpass, my painting goal. I'm a woman on a mission, I tell you. I'll post some before and afters on Wednesday :)

Paint Colors Galore

So, feeling springly motivated, I indeed stopped off at Sherwin Williams on my way home from work yesterday. I happily walked over to the sample area, and started withdrawing strips. Before I knew it, my hand contained at least 10 green strips. Even the colors that on the online color visualizer weren't green, were in fact green. All of those yellows that I thought were "lemongrass?" All green. I swear it, there's something wrong with me. I have an unhealthy obsession with the color green. I tried to mix up my selections a bit, and headed home. Here is where the true difficulty comes in - convincing my husband to agree with my wacky choices. Of my carefully chosen samples, he liked a medium shade blue based green for Hank's room called Nurture Green. That was fine, so we went with it. The tougher part was our room. Much negotiation took place. I'm in love with this lime-y springy, grassy color (yes, green; so kill me) called Gleeful, which he rejected out of hand. I finally got him to agree to two possible choices: a buttery color called White Raisin, and an earthy, clay-like terracotta called Spiced Cider. After much morning conferral with my sister, I think I'm going to go with the Spiced Cider. Our house isn't that big, and although I like dark colors, I worry about them making the smallish rooms feel even smaller. But this isn't overly dark, plus we have huge white trim and mouldings in our house, which balances darker colors nicely. I'm still plotting about my Gleeful. I think I'm going to do the hallways with it, and it's sister lighter color, Springtime. I'm just going to buy the paint for that project and not tell Mike :) Hey, it's the hallway. Why would he care?

Feeling Spring-y...

I'm currently devoting energy that I should be spending working on the Sherwin-Williams Color Visualizer. This thing could assist a willing participant in wiling away an entire afternoon, let me assure you. But anyway, each spring and summer I paint one or two rooms in our house. For anyone who has never seen our house, it's a very cute 1930's brick jobber with a lot of traditional charm. When we bought it, the previous owners had lived in it for decades, and the decor was decidedly 1970's hideous. We've systematically ripped out wall-to-wall carpet (gold; need I say more? Oh, and it was covering *hardwood floors.* Gold carpet had even infected *the kitchen.* I shudder just thinking back on it), steamed down peeling geometric-patterned wallpaper, and painted dirty "white" walls. Given that we have a toddler, and that I work full-time, finding time to paint is no easy feat. So, I reserve it in small increments for the nicer weather and take some time off from work to accomplish my task. The past two years, we've tackled the larger living spaces: living room, dining room and kitchen. This year, my goal is the bedrooms.

I had planned to paint Hank's room blue. Don't all little boys covet blue rooms? Not my son, apparently. He has requested green; truly, he is his mother's son. I would paint every room green if I could. It's such a soothing color. Anyway, he wants green, so I'm thinking of a mossy, dill-like shade for him. For our bedroom, I'm putting far too much thought into paint, I'm thinking. As is unsurprising, I secretly want it green. However, our living room is already Artichoke, Hank's room (right next door) is going to be Dill, and someday I'm going to paint the upstairs bathroom Bonsai Green, to match the accent color in the tile that's in there. That's a lot of green, even for me. Oh, and our comforter set is green. I'm a lunatic. But in my current issue of Women's Day (don't make fun) I saw a picture of a room done in spring-y, botanical green, and it really got my creative juices flowing. Yes I know, I can't do green - the overkill thing. But it got me thinking about maybe a complimenting yellow. Our kitchen is yellow (I know, I know, doesn't she like anything except the same colors, again and again?!) but that's a deep, Tuscan yellow. This spring thing has me thinking happy lemony thoughts.

My Color Visualizer procrastinating led me to the following possibilities for our bedroom:

Lemongrass
Springtime
Lemon Verbena
Lemon Chiffon

Am I being too seasonally affected? These are all very spring-ish colors. I hope that I don't hate them in November. Ah well, we'll see. At any rate, I'm plotting a Sherwin Williams trip on my way home from work.