Last Saturday, I engaged in a little breaking and decorating.  Okay, I didn't actually break in, I got a key.  But I didn't get the key from the homeowners, rather, from the house sitter.  MJ and Kent were out of town at a wedding and my daughter was watching the house and the dog for them.  She gave me a key on her way to work and I went to the house, moved all the furniture around and painted one wall and the trim around the window. 

I had given them the paint to redo four of the rooms in the house as a wedding gift, but then it was too hot and sticky to paint.  The weather was finally cooperating (sort of. Still sticky but not as hot.  Except in their house.  Especially if you were working on something, like...oh...painting.) but MJ was so busy she wanted to wait until Tuesday to get started.

I didn't have anything else to do on Saturday.  Well, not anything I wanted to do, anyway.

My Mom abetted me.

I wish I could say that we sneaked into the wrong house and painted the livingroom yellow, but it was the right house.  It was the right color, too.

MJ and Kent loved it.

Since then, I've been back over on two other evenings, with both Mom and Mary Jeanne and we've gotten two walls done, along with the window trim and baseboards.  It's looking great!

Today I went to Home Depot and bought three more gallons of paint.  I got the green for the dining room and the blue for the hall and a gallon of white for the trim, as what we already have won't be enough.  I wanted to see the colors on the walls, so I cracked each can and put a little on the walls just to see.  They looked gorgeous! I'm excited to get more done.

Since MJ has gone back to work, a-nannying, we can only paint in the evenings, which is fine.  I have a ton of work to do too.  Today was busy.  Before my trip to Home Depot, our money guy showed up at the house.

That's right.  Jay and I are such important people that we have a money guy, who will bring his computer and all the info to our house so we can peruse it while drinking coffee, still in our pajamas, with paint in our hair from last night.  Well, paint in my hair, anyway.  It helps that our money guy is my brother, who is a mortgage broker, lives less than a mile away and knew that I had made chocolate chip cookies yesterday and if the numbers he showed us were friendly, he may get some cookies.

The numbers weren't just friendly, they were cute, too.

I realized while leaning over his shoulder, peering at his computer and asking questions, that I'd been drinking coffee for over an hour and I hadn't brushed my teeth yet.  I tried to knock him out with my coffee breath, hoping I could get at his computer, move a decimal point here or there and wind up with a new, fixed rate, thirty year mortgage of $12,000.00, but he was impervious to my stinky breath.

Or maybe he just knows me too well.

Anyway, I gave him some cookies for his lunch and we all went about our day.

I was halfway to Home Depot when I realized I never ate any breakfast.  I bought the paint for MJ's house, hit Costco for groceries (blueberries for coffeecake on Monday; it's tradition) and made it home for lunch at about 1:00.  Then I ran the paint over to MJ's house.  She didn't have to work until 3.  Loved all the new colors.  they look prettier on the walls than they did as paint chips.  Can't wait to get at them. 

It's probably a good thing I have to wait, I'd fall apart if we could paint straight through.  Mom, Josie and I were there last night for five hours.  We got a lot done, but today my right arm feels like it was ripped off by a Wookie and put back on wrong.

So, after slapping a sample of color on a few walls, I hammered the cans shut and came home.  Jay and all the kids had gone to the fair for the day, so I knew I could work with no distractions. 

I've been working on a footstool for over a month now, and all the pieces are finally coming together.  I did three different sketches, none of which were really right.  The footstool has a square wood base, stained dark.  It's beautiful.  the cushion is square, 16 inches a side and six inches deep.  I need to do a design for all four sides and the top.  I knew how I wanted the sides to look.  The design involves oak leaves, a leopard skin background and one line of a poem, which will be finished on all four sides.  Designing the oak leaves and the font for the printing took all of Thursday.  After several hours of work, I had the first side painted.

Josie walked by, looked at it and said "That doesn't look very good."

She was right.  It was too busy and the colors were garish.  I knew how I wanted the piece to look, and this wasn't it.  So I mixed up a watery, raw umber wash and laid it over the entire background, leaving the printing alone.

Perfect.  The raw umber toned it down enough to make the lettering pop the way I wanted it to.

That was yesterday.  Today I painted the three other sides.  I didn't think it would take that long, but the font and the printing had to be worked out and counted for all four sides, so it actually was kinda time consuming.

I love it when I have too much work to do.  My motto is "Bite off more than you can chew and you'll never go hungry."

It'll be September in ten minutes.  This has been the best summer ever.