Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Twenty-One





Our first grandchild, Samuel, turned twenty-one this past Sunday.  His Mom and Dad flew in for the weekend celebration.  How can Samuel possibly be twenty-one?  We are so proud to be his grandparents and to welcome him into our home as he attends college.  He is a hardworking fellow that helps his grandparents when needed and is always pleasant.  We have told his parents that there is no way we could possibly have just any young person living with us.  Yes, he is our grandson that we love very much.  We laugh and tell his parents that he is a much nicer, kinder person than even his parents or uncle is.  It's true and they admit that it's true. 

We all went out to lunch for the celebration and then returned home for cake and ice cream. Samuel wanted to have a beer to celebrate turning twenty-one.






He took one sip and turned up his nose and ordered a orange cream soda in its place.  We all had a good laugh.




 There are many blessings in life, but having wonderful grandsons is right up there on the top.  Do you think you could have or want your grandchild living in your home?



  












Sunday, May 15, 2016

Interior Painted!






The title of my blog begins with Joy.  I can truly say that it is joyful to have our home freshly painted and about as clean as it can be.  The process was quite a lot of work but it is finished in the interior and we are happy with the results.  As you know Grayden cut the half wall between our kitchen and dining room to open up this area.  I'll start by showing you the before and after photos of our kitchen and dining room.






I'm so happy that we were able to get the cabinets painted.  As you could see in the before photo the cabinets needed refreshing.  Having them painted was an easy option instead of having them replaced as it would have been very expensive.  I decided to have the top cabinets painted white and the bottom cabinets painted the same crimson red as the color of our dining room and living room.  Easy..right?  Not really.  The white was no problem, but boy was the crimson!  The painters painted the bottom cabinets and my heart sank.  Do you know that when crimson is a gloss it is PINK?  Yes it was pink!!  I could not have pink cabinets.  Grayden and I went to the Sherwin Williams store and talked to a wonderful man that really knows his paint.  He helped us stay with the same hue but came up with a color that would match the dining room and the half wall in the kitchen below the chair rail.  This was quite a tense time as I really had my heart set on the crimson bottom cabinets.  With his help we chose Wild Current for the bottom cabinets and the painters painted the bottoms again.  Whew--it worked!




We wanted to replace the hardware on the cabinets as part of the new look.  Well, that proved to be a challenge as they no longer make hardware that has the same spacing of holes as our cabinet doors have.  The painters told us they would fill and drill new holes.  We decided against that as we were not sure how they would turn out.  So we ran our old hardware through the dishwasher and then proceeded to prime and paint the old hardware.  I am very happy with their look.  This hardware is by far much heavier than any we were able to find in the marketplace.  Sometimes things happen for a reason.

Having the cabinets white we needed to go with another color instead of white for the walls in the kitchen.  I chose a color that had a slight tint of eggshell.  It turned out a muddy color of mauve that looked terrible.  Oh no!  So back to the paint chips.  When you change paint colors you pay more, but I just could NOT live with this color.  So I chose another shade of white with a small tint of gray for contrast.  It was perfect--Nebulous White.


  

The dining room and living room are the same color that we had before.  I just couldn't change this crimson as I love it so.






We decided it would be a good idea to brighten up some of the rooms.


Office




Guestroom



Our bedroom before and after.






Thank you for sharing my Joy of having our home painted.  The painters will finish our exterior as the weather permits.  This is the first time in 43 years that we have had the inside and outside painted at the same time.  We have had 17 days of rain out of the last 17 days.  Today is a gorgeous sunny, windy day, but frost is expected to the north and west of us tonight.  What strange weather for this late in the spring.   Are you doing any painting or renovations this year?







Friday, May 6, 2016

Finished





I'm so happy that our interior painting is now finished!!!  We are so happy with all of it and now we can enjoy our home.  It has taken a little longer than we expected, but the end result has been well worth the extra time.
We are now in a rainy weather pattern that keeps me from taking very good pictures so I must delay showing you our progress.

During the days of the painters taking over our home I turned to the outside to view who's visiting the feeders.  Much to our surprise, one morning we had a lovely blue bird visit our feeder.




The mountain bluebird is not a regular visitor to our part of the country.  I immediately had to figure out who this little beauty was.  Our eastern bluebird has an orange breast and he clearly does not.  We frequently see the eastern bluebirds on our walks.  I learned that the mountain bluebird's home is out west---far west of Virginia.





I learned also that he migrates in early fall and spring and sometimes wanders as far as the Atlantic coastline.  It's so thrilling that he stopped at our feeder!  I do hope he has made it to safety with his family.  He's a long ways from home!  Have you ever seen a mountain bluebird?




We were so happy to have him linger long enough so I could take his picture!

Our Viburnum has been flowering and brightening up the rainy afternoons.  We need the rain and we are so thankful to have it, but I must admit I would like to see the sunshine soon.




This week I received a lovely stamped spoon that I ordered from Rosinda.  Some of you may know her blog  http://www.withlovefromthekitchen.com/  You can also check out her Etsy shop at LaVieEnRosinda.




I want to wish all of you a Happy Mother's Day on Sunday!


All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.   Abraham Lincoln