This Weekend

Did y'all watch the eclipse?  We're just nerdy enough that we did.  I busted out my Karen Foster Clikit (remember those?) because my Crop-A-Dile only reaches an inch into things, cut some cardstock into white squares, and we were in business!

The boy must have instinctively known it was a bad thing to look at the sun, because of course that was ALL he wanted to do.  I must have said "DON'T LOOK AT THE SUN!!!" about fifty times.

Of course, I had trouble making my pinhole camera work, but my husband got a clear shot right away.  This is how things work in my house.

We showed Bubba the crescent shape and explained about the moon covering the sun and making a shadow.  He then pointed out that there were lots of crescents on the wall.  I didn't think anything of it, but after a minute or two my husband says, "You know, I think his observation is legit."  The light was shining through the leaves of the tree behind us and casting the shadows.  As the angle of the crescent on our cards changed, the ones on the wall changed to match.

That kid is an observant little sucker.

In other news, the poop brown kitchen walls are GONE!

There was quite a bit of primer involved - two coats to be exact.

My husband did all the high areas because I have no business being on a ladder at this point in time.  Vaulted  ceilings are evil!  I'm guessing it's about eleven feet high up there.  With the cabinets and counters in the way it made it kind of tricky to get into the corners due to the reach.  I asked my husband how he managed to reach the very top and he said it was best I didn't know and something about "monkey man tactics."

Vaulted ceilings also create awkward angles that are hard to reach.  Evil, I tell you!

I painted the backsplashes.  :)

This is the sort of awesome thing the previous painter left all over.  The poop brown is awful, but that magenta is worse!  Both are on the caulking sealing the counters to the wall, so that has to get scraped off next and redone if I don't want to have an uneven brown stripe at the bottom of all my pale yellow walls.  Otherwise, it's just gonna look like dirt!

Here's the kitchen with everything put back into place:

I decluttered the tops of the cabinets a bit.  The pink Pyrex bowls were pulled down so they could join my other Pyrex in the china hutch.  A few things were added to the Goodwill pile.  A few other things were moved around.

I also redecorated the top of the piano a little bit.  I got rid of the vases that were there and replaced them with a lamp and some books.  Simple.

I repainted the frame of my chalkboard too.  It was black before, and I always thought the black on black was just too much.  I went back and forth between painting it white or aqua, and in the end finally asked my husband's opinion.  He said aqua and I'm really glad because I love the way it looks against the green paint!  While that was drying I even took the time to change the scripture.  The last one had been up there since late last summer!

Next weekend we'll paint the rest of the living room.  We didn't paint anything on Sunday because we were both pretty sore and achy all over.  I know, wimps, right?  In the mean time, I have a few more items I want to spray paint, as well as a couple of things that need homes still due to all the rearranging and LOTS of dusting.  The roofer was out this weekend to start work on our back patio (it's been peeling a bit) and the landlord is also sending out landscapers to trim back some of the huge bushes where I can't reach and also to clean up the the flower beds by the driveway.  He also changed out our faulty sprinkler box with a new one, so I should be able to get the lawn to start looking a bit better too.

I'm so excited to have this stuff getting done!