Pale Avacado.

Dear Blog,

It's not you, it's me. I've strayed from you for the violin. What free time I had before to take photos and write insipid posts I now spend screeching away at the violin. But I have only three more lessons left, and once I am only practicing for myself and not for the show of my teacher I will neglect this new interest and will come back to you again. This phase will pass, but with time.

In the meantime, let me catch you up on some of the things going on around here. Like our newly stained window. And our newly painted kitchen. And our newly painted hallway.

Because we had to stain the new window in the kitchen, I thought this might be a good opportunity to trade in the strawberry-pink walls for something a little more vegetable. Less sugar, more fat. So goodbye pink kitchen, hello green kicthen (and hello stained window).

Before (or during):


After:


Note the window in those two photos. Let me tell you how dangerous stain is. It gets everywhere. And it stains stuff. It's a horrid product to use - effective, but effective in the way that petroleum is effective to power our cars or heat our houses. My poor mother had window-staining duty, and she was like Flipper flipping about in the water, splashing everything with brown fingerprints. It was not her fault; I did it, too, when I arrogantly thought that I could be neater. Stain is just not your friend, even if the end result looks pretty darn good.

And then there was the hallway. My mother cannot tell the difference in the colors, the before and after, but I can. It's a subtle difference, very subtle, but such an important difference.

Look closely at the before photo. If you focus around the light switch, you may be able to better see the shading on the wall. The brighter color is the before. The calmer color is the after.



When done, the walls looked so creamy. The new look inspired me to switch up our art, so now the harbor scene from my uncle Peter is in the hall, the ocean scene from my parents (by way of Uncle Barry) is in the guest room, and the Guinness girl, who was once in the hall, is sitting on the floor in the guest room (sorry, no photo!). We haven't dealt with her yet. Give us time. We'll figure out a good home for her. I'm thinking the basement. Beer and girls and basements go together somehow.

But, lest you think that the only thing that my industrious family and I did that weekend was prime and paint the kitchen and vestibule, paint the hallway, and stain the kitchen window, let me set you straight. My brother, Brother Bunyan, did me and Doug an enormous favor by cutting down the shrubs that were growing along the side of the house along the driveway. Goodbye shrubs. Hello fresh start and painted house. Soon. We still have to figure out what we are going to plant in place of those shrubs (and the shrubs that we took down last summer in the front of the house), and we also have to still come up with a color to paint the house (or maybe just keep it the same?), but we'll get there. Soon. Things just take time around here. We're like the giant tortoise exhibit at the zoo. We get to where we want to go eventually, but it sure does take us a while.

Until next time, my neglected friend.

Sincerely,
Roadielocks