No Pain No Gain

Today is the day for painting the family room. It's been looking pretty good but today after moving all the furniture away from the walls, emptying bookcases and finding grand toys and books tucked away it looks like a hurricane hit us.

No pain no gain.

Painting Party Tues. and Wed.

One of thee big plans during this vacation was to paint Jody's kitchen, living room, dining room, and halls. Well, I know thee best painter and it's Kathy so we flew her up for painting and fun. Besides, the rest of us don't want to be up on that ladder to paint the 12' walls. Love you Kathy.

A sunny yellow kitchen for the occasional rainy day in Oregon :) This is the after.

The before living room.

The dining room is painted but of course we loaded that room up with the living room furnishings while painting the living room.

Painter Kathy also enjoyed the gorgeous country views.

Kathy's friends from Canby turned out to be Jody and Ed's friends too. Here's Greg and

here's Darcey painting in the kitchen. Much thanks kind and talented friends.

And once again I failed in my photography duties and didn't get pics of Cindy and I painting in the dining room. Painting wasn't even work when I got to work beside my sister and talk the whole first day. Love you Cindy. This was our gift of love to Jody!

Boy Do I Have Color!!!

Yes sireee; and I keep reminding myself of your dear counsel that it will take some getting use to after soooo many "white years". KMS who from now on will be referred to as Kathy - arrived with all her gear and we began moving furniture to the center of the room, taking blue plates, decorations, blue plates, pictures, blue plates etc. off the walls and the heavy job of moving piano and bookshelves. We got it done.

Thankfully we were able to scoot the shelves away from

the wall and not empty all the shelves first.

Kathy is a genius at cutting-in and not taping. That saved us a lot of time. She has thee most steady hand I've ever seen and that's why I did the cutting-in around the base boards where it isn't as noticeable.

Did I mention...I'VE GOT COLOR. And a lot of it.

I'm so glad Kathy didn't mind the ladder work up high.

I really was happy putting around the base boards.

Don't you always paint your name or initials during a paint job?

I'm a tad bit creaky in the neck and back.

Here's an "almost finished" photo. The blue plates in the dining room still need to go up. The photo does not show how much deeper the color is. I guess you'll just have to get on over and see for yourself. It is a big change.

I cannot express enough how grateful and thankful I am to dear Kathy for her great work, time, skill, gear and motivation. She really is one-of-a-kind and I'm so glad to call her

FRIEND.

Saturday Is A Special Day. . .

This week Skippie and I made a trip to Food City. If you don't already know of this grocery chain I'll tell you it caters to Hispanics and has a marvelous assortment of chilies and all the ingredients you'd want for your yummy southwest cooking. Skippie spied these wonderful marshmallows. You know my love of roasting marshmallows with the grands don't you.

And they come in white and pink!!! I opened the "regular" size marshmallow package so you could see the comparison. Ginormous. Last night Tessa couldn't even finish one giant one and for a girl with an incredible sweet tooth that is saying something. We had both Tessa and Jake for a sleep over last night and it was just plain FUN. We celebrated Jake's 2 first place finishes in field day with ice cream cones. Soft serve. Now why doesn't McD's have soft serve chocolate in all their restaurants. It would really make me happy . . . and fatter.

Here are the color samples I'm living with for a tad bit. I still think I'll be getting a sample or two more before committing. And the photos don't show the true colors.

Wishing you a happy Saturday.