Redrum

The room of red....

Don't tell anyone, but I might paint this room soon. The red is so oppressive. I don't have the lamps on the pianie anymore cause of course we don't want the Rafer pulling them down!

Alison, i like your suggestion of a gold color. would coordinate with curtains. or maybe just offwhite. for some reason i also can picture doing a very subtle faux finish in here (for in my next life when i have that sort of time...) maybe two shades of off-white/goldie color, layered, barely noticeable. For red, this is a great one. it's just so dark in this room that it's unpleasant to even be in.

Well, ya know, my dream home is insanely white, white white. White floors, furniture, etc. It would probably be annoyingly sterile, right? It would last a day, then i would start painting colors, im sure. Speaking of white, i need to post a picture of the completed master bathroom. Problem is, it's always messy! Perhaps will just post a messy picture of it.

entryways, again

This door reminds me of another project (purchase!) that I've been putting off...I think that the front door would look great with some of these false strap hinges. Probably not so ornate, though.

Here is a bird lamp I found which is in the entryway. I have a thing for bird lamps, I get all excited about them. Once I saw a Buddhawithchildren sculpture turned into a lamp on ebay...I wish I had gotten that! I was told once it's not too hard to make your own lamps. I would like to learn how to do that some day.

I've always loved these under-the-stairs closets!!!! I wouldn't store anything in there because I would like to have it be my own hiding place.

Here is a really sweet friendly entryway. No ideas from this which I can use, since I don't have room for multiple mirrors and I have stuccoed walls. But isin't this wallpaper sweet?

I tried moving Broder's 5x7 rug to the entryway...it was much better looking than 2 smaller rugs put together. I thought I had found a cheap orange Moroccan-window type rug that I could put in his room as a replacement but it turns out they are not available anymore. So will keep my eye out for an orange area rug for his room. Hmmm, orange rug...should be easy to find one of those, right? ha!

more about paintings

ahhh, out of order pictures! some day i will figure out how to do this layout thing. broder - the real one, and the painted one. i think im almost "done" with this picture, simply because i dont think it's going to massively improved. it's alright for an amateur, anyways. sorta cartoonie!
and then my bob rossian style landscape...chuckle! and levitating oranges. landscape is still in progress, but im sorta bored with it so might need to come back to that another time. i do a little when i have 15 mintues/30 minutes where i can safely neglect the children, heh heh... means less laundry done and less food cooked, but more happy mama.

Stella

Stella, 10/06. Let's see, she would have been 2.5 when this picture was taken? I'm biased, I know, but....she was so damn cute!!!

I used this picture because I can't get the more recent ones to work for some reason.

Today Stella went to Kindergarten Roundup and had this to say about it:

"Kindergarten is the life of eeease. Because it's easy but the teachers think it's hard."

I asked her if she wanted to do half day or full day, and she said she wanted to do half day because she loves to play on the computer SO much. I said, "well, what if the computer blew up? then what would you do?" Stella: "get a new computer." Hmmmm. makes sense.

other painting

praying to the fireplace gods (i think it's looking swell with it's new white facade)











the other day i started doing some actual "painting"...it was so much fun to do again. obviously neither picture is done yet! my sister thinks that this is a sign of me going crazy. i think it's just the opposite! painting makes me happy!

Kapok?

I was looking for pillows for my living room chairs. I found some neat pillows on Etsy, but still needed to find inserts. Decided to look in to a "green" option for pillows. (You thought I had completely given up on that topic, eh? No, still mulling it all over! Not forgotten!)

I came across this fiber called kapok. It is used as stuffing for mattresses, pillows, and, since it is bouyant/water resistant - life jackets! It comes from an amazing tree called the Ceiba, or Kapok tree, which grows in warm places like Central America and Asia. It is a majestic tree, can grow to be so enormous (see picture!) which makes seed pods from which this kapok fiber springs out - sproing! - like milkweed seed! Anyhow, it's a natural happy substance to stuff your pillow with. And I suppose noone will chop down an enormous Kapok tree if it's fuzzy pods are profitable. One spot said it was a good substitute for down stuffing, but then I read that it is much lighter than cotton. Seems to me the nice thing about a feather pillow is it's weight. Anyways, I still haven't even purchased the pillows because I haven't had time yet to shop around. But wanted to share the kapok info with you. In case you are in need of a pillow insert today.

Did I mention that the pillows from Etsy are going to be small monogramed pillows - a "K" and an "M." I will pretend they are Valentine's Day gifts for us. If you guessed that Matt probably will not be all excited about monogramed pillows, you're right! But if you think I am being selfish (by giving a present that I myself want), then you have never tried to give Matt a present. After years of trying to get him something that he will like, and him being consistantly bored and underwhelmed, I've recently started just giving him things that I think he MIGHT like, but that I know I will like. This way, at least someone enjoys the gift!

Master Bathroom Remodel

Here are some "before" pictures...Funny, I can't find my "after" ones right now! You'll have to wait till my next entry! That's okay, 'cause I waited one year to see the final results! ha! We finally completed this project last year and moved from the small upstairs bedroom into the bigger master bedroom (the yellow room you see here).

It's impossible to understand the layout from these pics. On the otherhand, it was hard to understand it in person, too. Very odd. For some reason the closet was on outside wall and vanity/plumbing on the inside...in other words, there could have been a window but they chose not to do it that way. The 70s must have been a strange time. People didn't like sunlight as much, and they loved dark scratchy heavy beams of rough cedar. Wish I had a picture of the original stair rail....YIPES! I think they were trying to impart a Medieval Tavern feel.