Dear Loren:

Okay, let's see.... this isn't the only thing I've been up to, but it's the most recent:

I'm all caught up on The Walking Dead now, and this is from the second-last episode.  It's Me'Shonne, and if she looks grim, she should: Merle is about to hand her over to the Governor, who is PISSED at her.  She poked him in the eye and now he wants to get even.  

Anyway, I was going for a certain effect with the watercolour, but it wasn't as easy as it was when I rehearsed it in my mind.  Turns out you can't just look at someone else's work, decide you want to emulate their technique and then have it turn out as nicely as theirs.  Especially when they're a professional illustrator and you're hacking around with a waterbrush in the garage.  

Okay, what else...

Oh, I organized the pantry!

I can't show you the "before" pictures - they're too shameful.  Not only was it a messy, jammed-together wreck of open packages, expired products and mysterious bags of strange food; but a bag of potatoes had gone bad in the back.  To the point where they leaked on the shelf and ruined the particleboard, plus smelled like Satan's armpit.  Sooooo, I had to replace a shelf, (housekeeper of the year over here) and put everything in proper containers and threatened the rest of the family with bodily harm if they messed up my work.  It took about 8 hours to get it from what it was, to this.  Two Hefty garbage bags to the dump, a trip to Rona and Home Outfitters for plastic bins and organizers, and a ruthless purging state of mind.  

We are also keeping bees now:

Ants attacked our hives so we put them up on tables in cans of used motor oil.  Not really environmentally friendly, but it did the trick; the ants got the message and scrammed.  Today we're extracting our wildflower honey; then in the fall we'll have canola and/or sunflower honey.  YUM.  

And now I'm going to go make something, so I have more to report next time.  Stay tuned.

xo

Shelley!

One finished project! AH ah ah ah ahhh!

For my mom's birthday this year, my sister and I volunteered to, uh, "refresh" her laundry room.  It's undergone a series of changes over the past twenty-five years and it was looking a little rough around the edges:

Note the missing ceiling tiles, the glued-on vinyl remnants, the too-short countertop,
and the crumbling concrete on the floor.  Also the yellow paint... not our favourite.
Is it any wonder she doesn't love doing laundry?

We started by basically gutting the room.  Once upon a time there was some sort of shelf along the back wall there... we couldn't even remember what it looked like, so it was definitely time to polish things up.

Joelle, sweeping.  She's a clean machine, just like her auntie.  Couple of weirdos.

Wonder what Mike Holmes would think of this...

When we took out the washing machine we discovered that one of the taps had rusted completely off, and the other one wasn't in much better shape.  My plumbing skills are non-existent, so we had to call in the professionals.  (Thanks, Dad!)

Anyway, before you start to fret, I'll tell you that this story comes with a happy ending.  This is what it looked like when we wrapped it up this afternoon:

Slightly better, no?

New ceiling tiles, some carpet tiles repurposed from a different job, a big can of paint, and a LOT of elbow grease.  Not to mention some well-timed help from my dad for some of the jobs that had us standing there staring at each other with dumb looks on our faces.

I don't mind telling you that the carpet tile was the very worst part of this whole renovation.  The tiles themselves are great - 2' x 2' thin carpet with a nice vinyl backing on them.  It was the glue that nearly sent me around the bend.  By the time we were done I had glue on my feet, my hands, my shoes, my arms, I had glued the back of my thigh to the back of my calf, and when I came home and took those pants OFF, I discovered later that I had accidentally glued them to the carpet in my bedroom.  If you heard my eye twitching from wherever you are, I wouldn't be surprised.  Luckily the kids are going back to school in a couple of days and I can resume day drinking.

Isn't this the coolest drying rack EVER??  I don't even know where it came from - Kristy donated it from her basement.  I might have to go down there and see what other treasures she has floating around.  Clearly she's been holding out on me.

Obviously some of this stuff is just cosmetic.  My mom has had that washboard forever and really likes it, so we cleaned it up and put it back in the room, only now you can see it.  The three baskets on the shelf are mostly decorative, although when my mom came down for the big reveal and asked what they were for, we told her, "dust, spiders and crickets, respectively."  She seemed satisfied with that answer.

Oh, and that artistic blur in the bottom left is my thumb, I'm pretty sure.

 Same cabinet from before, spray-painted white (OMG I LOVE SPRAY PAINT HOW COME NOBODY TOLD ME HOW MUCH FUN IT WAS) and then we "borrowed" a different chunk of countertop from a bigger piece my dad had out in the garage.  Don't tell him that we spent like an hour wandering around the property scouting out stuff we could use one of the days that we were there unsupervised.

Actually he might not mind.  It would justify his pack-rat tendencies.  HA!

 The final touch - a sign about laundry.  Surprisingly, we didn't need to put it there to cover up a mistake... it just seemed to go well in that spot.

As much fun as this was, I think we're both planning on giving our decorating muscles a rest before we take on another project.  I have to admit though, it's extremely satisfying to finish a job like this and see the dramatic change.

So... what are YOU working on?

Love Shelley!