Elsie

We had the good fortune to see our two grandchildren last night.  Usually, with Hubby at the camera, we get a million photos of Noah.    Tonight we got  some photos of Elsie.

Next Up....The Bedroom!

Now that "couch potato" season seems to be over, it's time to start another house project.   When we moved in, I knew I wanted to do the bedroom over as one of our first projects, mainly because the room apparently belonged to a young girl.    We determinted that  because the walls were this color:

Yea, that's turquoise.  You can see where they painted (badly) over the dark purple too.   And I regret I didn't take a photo of the mint green rug on the floor....yea, the one covered in paint, glitter and some sort of hunk of wax.   yea.

Anyway, our first order of business was checking out what was under the rug and determining whether we wanted to try and renovate the original floor or cover it with new floor.

Last weekend I pulled up the rug and the layer of linoleum underneath and there was a nice wood floor - painted over.

Hubby said the fatal words, "Let's see if we can save the original floor", and thus the backbreaking work began.

We went to the local Lowe's and rented a sander.   Who knew the #%#$%#$ thing would be so heavy?  I'm talking tonnage here.   Just getting it into the car I thought Hubby might have a heart attack.

Getting it up our stairs to the second floor was a whole other story!

We bought a few packages of the recommended sandpaper circles that go with the machine.   They were the easiest part of the project.  They velcroed on.

The sander had a vacuum built right in, so the amount of dust was actually a lot less than I thought it would be. But Hubby and I wore the recommended masks anyway.

Aren't we cute with the smiley faces drawn on?  You can't tell, but we're smiling under those masks.  That might have been the last time we smiled all day.  For the rest of the day and into the evening this was us:

Our biggest problem was that the floor wasn't  flat (surprise!!) and the sander wouldn't get the middle of a board that was slightly concave, or an edge that wasn't perfectly lined up with the next edge.  Also, the floor had a thick layer of paint, and the paint would melt right off the floor from the heat of the sander and stick to the sandpaper.  So after a few minutes of sanding, we had to stop and pull all the hunks of paint off the sandpaper.  It was very tedious.  Thank God Hubby has the patience of a saint.

After 3 trips back to Lowe's for sandpaper (over $100 worth) and about 7 hours of hard work, the floor now looks like this:

We figured we're going to need to use a hand sander for the edges and for all those spots that we couldn't get with the floor sander.    Although, after showing the photo on Facebook, I got a few comments saying we should leave it like that.   

I'm thinking about it!!

Happy Leap Day!

Today is Leap Day.   A special day as it only comes once every four years.   Today is my son-in-law's birthday.   He's 7 years old today!!  

Also, today is Sadie Hawkin's Day.  A day when women are allowed to ask men to marry them.  It's an old tradition.  Women ask men to marry them all the time now.  But it's cool to think that there used to be only one day every four years when a woman had any say in the matter.

I didn't ask my Hubby to marry me on Sadie Hawkin's Day.   Because I wanted him to do the asking.....and he also wanted to do the asking.  But I did "suggest" to him on that day that he should ask me.  And I gave him until the end of the year to make the big proposal.

And we got engaged on December 18 of that year.  I guess it works.

This n That

It's been a week since I put up a post.   That probably makes it seem like I've been incredibly busy, but I have not.  What's been happening this week?

*  We unfortunately had a few deaths in the family.  That old superstition about deaths coming in threes seems to hold true.  Except in our case it was four.  Okay.....a couple of them were pretty far-fetched.  One was my cousin's wife's son (my second step-cousin in-law??)  and another was my niece's husband's grandmother.  (I can't even begin to figure out that relationship).   But two were my husband's aunts.  One aunt died during the week, and we found out her sister died on the day of the first one's wake.   Strange.  That leaves my husband as the patriarch of the family.  Even stranger.

*  I did put my new card-making skills to work making sympathy cards.  Despite the reason for it, it was fun.

* I decided it would be fun to make a couple of cute spring dresses for my two grand-daughters.  After a tough day at work Monday, I decided to go to the fabric store for a bit of "retail therapy".   Now, anyone who knows me knows I hate shopping.  Hate it!!  I don't usually consider shopping therapy.  But in this case I thought it would be fun and relaxing to browse through the patterns and pick out fabric.    After finding two very cute patterns in the new Spring pattern book, I was informed that "those patterns aren't in yet.  They'll be here in a few weeks."  What?????   That's just mean!  Since I couldn't get the patterns, it seemed fruitless to browse through the fabric.   So I went home and did what I usually do.  I found the patterns I liked on-line and ordered them.  They should be here in a couple of days.

* I've been playing Words with Friends through Facebook.  I have about 6 or 7 games going.  It takes up more time than I think it should, it's aggravating when I have either all vowels or all consonants, and even more aggravating when I'm losing......but I'm hooked on it.

* Hubby and I have been pretty stagnant the past couple months.  Even though the weather here has been unbelievable (as in - NO snow......and I mean none!)  we were winter couch potatoes.  We didn't do anything with house renovations, we didn't go out to open mics or music venues.   But I'm starting to feel the spring juices flowing, and it's time to get moving.  We'll be going to an open mic tomorrow night, and hopefully pulling up the carpet in our bedroom to start that renovation project this weekend.  Things are starting to move!

Valentine Day Tradition

Several years ago, Hubby surprised me with a trip to the Aquarium for Valentine's Day.  For most, that wouldn't seem like the most romantic thing to do.  But for me, it was very romantic, because I just love penguins!  And our New England Aquarium in Boston has the largest display of penguins I've ever seen.   Somehow, we've made this our tradition.  Here's this year's trip:

We start the trip by taking the train into Boston.  This is really Hubby's part of the Valentine gift, since he's the one that really loves taking the train.

Our first stop, of course, is the penguin tank.  I wish I could just reach over and grab one of these little guys and tuck him into our backpack.

We saw the harbor seals being trained.  This guy is painting a heart for Valentine's Day.

And we got to see a Valentine's Day seal-smooch.

Notice my penguins in the background.

You can never have too many pictures of fish.

I loved the coloring on this guy, but he was camera shy.   I chased him all over the place trying to get his photo.

Real coral.....and I love this guy's fins.

Hubby's favorite is the dragon fish.  Can you see him?

Jellies are so peaceful and beautiful.

They have a new Manta touch tank.  There's supposed to be sharks in there too that you can touch, but apparently they are "shy"!

We made sure to be there to watch the penguins being fed.  They're pushy little buggers.  And pretty funny when they knock each other off the rocks to get a better chance at the food.

It amazed me that each penguin got four or five fish.....some of the fish looked bigger than the penguins!



This is the giant sea turtle seen from the top of the enormous central tank.

Couldn't resist a photo with the penguin and his baby....even if is it was a statue.

Walking through Quincy Marketplace, they always have an ice sculpture where you can have your romantic photo taken.

And the real reason for Hubby's trip to Boston.   We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory!

Painting a House - the 4 year old way!

We got the call during the week.   Emily had been given a big, wooden dollhouse.   It needed painting.  And Emily insisted that "Pepere has to help me paint it."  She knows that Pepere is a painter, because he has lots of paints in his studio room.

So we agreed to have Emily over with her dollhouse for a painting party.  When Emily assured Pepere she had on her painting clothes, and asked if he had his on, Pepere said, "All my clothes are painting clothes!"

We set up the house on the kitchen table.

And Emily added the first color.

She was very gracious about allowing us to color it "anyway you want".  

A lot of the fun was in the mixing.

We spent two hours painting......and we still have a ways to go.

After a clean-up and a change of clothes, we settled down to read the book we gave her for Valentine's Day.

Then enjoyed some pizza (has to be Papa Gino's!)  while we watched an episode of "Calliou".

Then Pepere decided it would be fun to get her all riled up again playing with his drums!

Enjoy the show!







Instead of this......let's do that

Trying to prioritize projects when you've bought a new old house isn't easy.  Especially when that house is almost 100 years old, and was woefully neglected by the previous owners.   The 1970's orange shag rug in the living room is proof of that.

So Hubby and I tried to decide what should be done first, second, etc.   The most obviously glaring and disgusting things needed to be tended to first.   The ripped and peeling bathroom floor, the rusted medicine cabinet, the leak in the roof at the chimney all came first.

Of course, cost comes into play during the decision-making process.   $6 wallpaper and free floor tiles in the bathroom puts that project ahead of the thousand-dollar remodel we'll need to update the kitchen.

A new bathroom vanity and sink were well down on the list. Even though the vanity was rickety and shaky, it was functional and didn't look too bad.  Until this happened:

Apparently, the staples holding the whole thing together let go.   Now it was neither functional nor aesthetically pleasing.

So off we went to Home Depot to buy a new vanity.  We found one we like that also had a sink top, and figured we'd be on our way.   But of course, nothing is ever as easy as you think it's going to be.
No matter how much we pushed, shoved, turned, rotated, cursed or yelled, the damn box would not fit into our car.  We tried the trunk.  We tried the back seat.  We considered tying it to the roof.  But it wasn't happening.

We called Jamie, the only person we know in Salem with a truck.   She wasn't in town.   We thought of Doug, who has an SUV, but 8:30 on a Friday night didn't seem like a good time to ask someone to come out and save us.

So we coughed up an extra $20 and fulfilled Hubby's dream of driving a Home Depot "rent me by the hour" truck.

We had to hurry, because the store closed at 9, and if we didn't have it back by then, we'd have to brign it back in the morning and pay for the entire night.   Luckily, we live literally less than 2 miles from the store, and we got the vanity home and the truck back just before 9. 

(This included "topping it off" with gas.  Despite the fact that we drove about 3 miles in it, the store employee insisted that unless we had proof that we'd filled it back up, they'd have to charge us an extra fee.)

And the next morning, Hubby got to work.

And it came out looking like this;

One more item checked off on our list of things to do!