Happiness...

..is not a warm gun (if you are a Beatles fan) or a warm puppy (if you are a Charles Shulz fan.) Happiness is an orderly broom closet, after spending three-plus years of cursing its disorder.
After I finished this project I kept walking by and opening the door, just to look in and feel happy. This was more exciting to me then getting the bedroom painted.

Bedroom Painting

Here is the before shot of one side of my room, pre-painting. I neglected to take a picture from the other direction, but imagine a bed and white walls and you've got it.

Mid paint. Notice the helpful kitty Sentinel sitting on his perch.

Chris and I worked bits of two days and voila! A freshly painted room. Here is my bed frame. I really like the white on the blue, but the way the mattress stacks up on the bed frame, I would have been better off buying a platform and saving my money.

As you can see here, all bed frame is obliterated. This is also stage I of a three stage paint job. Stage II is to install shelving along the dark blue line so the cats can hang out in the top part of the room. Also to set stuff on. Stage III is to stencil a star I liked that was used in decorative woodworking in Hungary. Those improvements are coming soon to a theater near you. Don't hold your breath waiting.

Here is the view from the other direction. As you can see, I have cleaned off the upper reaches of my desk, so I can better highlight the fabulous bottle brush lamp I got in a white elephant gift exchange. I use it every morning.

A close up of the lamp. Isn't it fun?

It has occurred to me that there remains only one room in the house with white walls. Unfortunately, it is the bathroom, full of difficult painting situations. But when I get that done, all the painting will be finished!

Tomato "Harvest"

It was a horrible tomato season. Our summer was never warm enough to ripen the tomatoes. Before the rains started, I took my two promising plants filled with tons of green tomatoes and ripped them out of the ground, cages and all. I hung them in one of our sheds. They freaked out and ripened, eventually. Today was the final harvest. They aren't full of home grown tomato taste, but they taste similar to tomatoes in the grocery store, so I'm calling it a win. Such as it is.

Harry Potter Party VII

Every time a Harry Potter movie is released, our friends Laurie and Burt host a Harry Potter Party. We go as a group to watch the movie, then return to their house for good food, kibbitzing about the movie, and the famous Harry Potter trivia game.

Memorable movie theater moment: we got in trouble for saving seats. Apparently you can only save seats for people who are in the building. Amazingly, many of our people were suddenly "in the building."

Also, the theater forgot to start the movie. After waiting an hour through a progression of nothing, a slide show with only five slides, the evil and hideous Regal "First Look" and previews we watched this screen for about five minutes before someone left the theater, alerted the proper authorities and the movie began.

Laurie made chocolate cauldrons and Marley and Willow made licorice broomsticks. There was also pumpkin curry soup as well as risotto and fish and chips. It was a delicious meal.

Matt headed up one of the trivia teams and I was on another. One team had to get by with neither Matt nor myself on it. Matt was delighted to beat the reigning trivia champions (Marley's team and Willow's team) which he wasn't expecting. As a member of Marley's team, I must point out that he only beat us by half a point, but I do concede victory.

Auction! (the musical)

Not really. But it would be fun to have a musical themed auction.

I was recruited to make a cake for the beginning of the live auction. I created this checkerboard cake, which I think turned out rather well. It brought in $65.00.

4/5 teachers Jo & Julie make their best 80's musical promotional poster.

You can get the staff together for a picture, but it's hard to get us to stop talking.

Until we do.

One of the parents bought all the teachers three strands of beads each for Heads or Tails. It was great fun.

John and one of the parents face off.

John and Tara face off.

Each classroom made an auction project to be auctioned. Sometimes it helps to increase the price if the teacher herself stands up there and indicates which direction the price should go.

Overall, it was a comfortably elegant evening.

Laundromat Ho!

I thought a project would be good for me on Veteran's Day, so I bundled up the slipcovers for the couch and the chase lounger, as well as all our heavy bedding, and trundled everything to the laundromat where I could use the much larger front loaders. There, I read a good book while things washed and dried.

The slipcovers had to air dry, unfortunately. It was a sunny day, so I hung them outside. The day turned cloudy and I checked the weather report which did not mention rain. "I'll just watch for the first drop of rain" I told the cats, as I put in a movie to watch. Unfortunately, I fell asleep and when I woke up, it was raining. I hurried out to bring in the covers and set them up in various places to dry. I think the rain more than undid whatever drying happened outside.

Three kitties living in harmony

The first week Squeak visits is fraught with kitty negotiations. While Sentinel is a "live and let live" kitty, Antares spends a lot of time following Squeak around and trapping him in corners. I spend a lot of time saying things like, "Antares! What a cute kitty, let me pick you up!" so he will vacate his stalking and Squeak can go about his business. I think Antares has the cat version of short man syndrome.

After the first week, they've usually got everything all figured out. Then they can all find a spot on the bed and hang out together, albeit separately. Such cute kitties!