paint and moose and paint

My hands are covered in three different colors of paint. Actually, four. Well, actually, i lie---because i did manage to shower before work this morning and scrub off most of it. There is still some unknown white color on my finger nails. Clearly, the trauma of spending three days straight painting has not washed off.

We spent the weekend painting:

1. bamboo forest bedroom
2. teal dining room
3. dark blue accent living room wall
4. light grey-blue bathroom
5. enough touch-ups to walls to kill anyone

Here's the's the problem. Wait, first, here's the moose mama and her brand new twins from our backyard for you to look at while i bitch. They were super cute--she musta just dropped um.

 So, the problem is this, aside from the fact that i have NO expertise in painting and all our walls are strange heights and shapes, the old owners left the color they painted the walls, but not the ceiling. Should be an easy fix right--get some samples, paint little corners, blah blah. Well, here's what i have to say to all you DIY junkies---pffffffffft. I mean that in the nicest possible way. We went and got a million paper samples of the whites, held each up to the ceiling, eliminating all of the creams, grays, etc. We finally found a potential match and headed off to home depot for what must have been the 5th time in two days. They mixed up one of them three dollar containers and we headed back to the house, where i climbed my little ladder and painted in three different places. There's something about the lighting in the house that makes it so that the same color looks completely different in three places in the same room. Strangely, the pure white color i thought we had picked had a strange pinkish/brownish hue to it. Just enough that it looked like a cross between the old wall color and the ceiling. Mostly out of frustration we decided it was close enough. I hopped back in the car for HD round 6--where i insisted that they give me not only a quart of the offending pink/brown/white, but also pure honest to god white. Low and behold when the offensive color came out, it looked NOTHING like the sample. Seriously. So, that left me with THREE (yes i am using screamy capitals on purpose) different whites and i headed off home. Needless to say, i don't think we did find the "perfect" match, but it is close enough that unless i tell you we are playing spot the cover-up, you probably aren't going to notice.

Here's what i learned about painting this weekend:

1. Buy an edger at the start and don't load it heavily with paint.
2. Don't even try to free hand. Seriously.
3. Don't ever color match to a different store--it will result in the loss of half a day's work and you will have to redo the whole thing because the colors will NOT be the same. 
4. Invariably, you are going to get paint EVERYWHERE, including but not limited to floors, hair, face, and dog. 

Before and after photos as soon as we get all the art/pictures/SEA paraphernalia mounted on the walls. 

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Parental Anniversary Service--HELP WANTED

Nearly 4 decades ago, these two got hitched. They had a tiny wedding, in a living room and fed everyone food they cooked themselves.

This year, for their anniversary, they are participating in Relay for Life in the USVI. It is a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.

As my dad says, "You may be aware that both of Lissa's parents were cancer victims, and I have had an uncle and an an aunt also succumb. Plus, I had my small bout with skin cancer a few years back. During my time with GlaxoSmithKline and its predecessors, I spent years in cancer research. I realize the need for continued research into the causes and cures for the multitude of diseases that we call cancer. 

I hope that you can support the battle by contributing to the relay and our team. Since we are both walking, I encourage you to split a donation so that we each share."

So, my friends and loved ones---so many of whom are adopted kiddos of these two fabulous folks...let's do a little service for them too. Any size contribution is welcome---it is the loving thought that counts. Their pages are: 

http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLFY12National?px=29241339&pg=personal&fr_id=39710

http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLFY12VI?px=29254178&pg=personal&fr_id=39710

oh...and here's to many more of these:

if i won the lottery

Here are photos of things i would buy lots of:

Things i learned while moving...a list.

1. if a zombie apocalypse does in fact come, as adam claims it will, i have enough black beans to feed us for weeks.
2. the heavier the box the more likely Neah will need to escort it to its final destination.
3. break out the power tools to assemble the back of target book cases
4. i continue to have no idea why one bedside light being on causes the other to flicker. don't suggest anything. we are going with "party lights" rather than effed up electrical to keep my sanity.
5. NEVER again will Adam and I move ourselves. I don't know how i didn't blog about this before, but basically...we are both such control freaks that every attempt to place our belongings in a vehicle results in near end of engagement/marriage. 
6. it is truly possible to have your possessions magically expand to three times their previous space filling capacity LITERALLY overnight. 
7. Even in a new place, a dog will be herself

Adam's eating Adventures...part II

Anyone who knows Adam (feel free to be witnesses and testify to the truth of this post, oh Adam friends) knows that there is just about NOTHING that he does with any sense of urgency. This is ESPECIALLY true when it comes to eating. The quote from last night being "Why does everyone have bills and to go boxes?? I'm still eating!!"


Part of this stems from the fact that he likes to compose each bite of food perfectly. It's been a couple years since i explained the Pho creations, but last night's efforts let me raise the specter again. Generally speaking, each bite of food--regardless of what it is--must contain the perfect proportion of ingredients, must be chewed the requisite 25 times, and must, must, must be pretty.




Hopefully you will forgive that i was ignoring this until close to the end, when i turned to notice that each piece of chicken had a little mushroom laid delicately upon it---waiting to be graced by his chopsticks. It's kinda artistic, no?

Please feel free to share your Adam eating stories as a comment!

Obsessions

I've been so fixated on the dog and the house that i haven't managed to talk about artsy things in a long time....today i found this glorious paper store....

which makes me so jealous of cities where there are fancy papers....and letterpress stationary stores. (i got a fabulous handwritten card from my niece on some). Or beautiful fabrics. Or Crate and Barrel.

crazy go i if care don't i 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

did you ever sing that song when you were little? I don't care if i go crazy 1-2-3-4-5-6-switch....
anyways, i feel a little as though that is where we are at. Adam and i are taking this massive leap of faith that the house will be done with repairs this week and we can get in by Friday---seeing as we have less than 2 weeks to get out of the apartment, clean it and reclaim the deposit we already spent on rugs and:

What is that, you ask? Oh!, that's adam on the other side of the tree he decided we needed to have behind the new bed so that we can live in a forest. Seriously. We spent most of Saturday driving around Anchorage theoretically in search of a living room rug, but apparently in search of a "rug that looks like the forest floor" because "we are going to sleep in a forest." Oh boy. You'll understand when the pictures of before and after get posted--assuming there is a before and after. It ended in success after we realized Fred Meyer (my happy place) was having a 50% off area rug sale for Mother's Day---enabling us to get rugs for the whole house for the price we were planning to spend on just two. AH-MAY-ZING.

In the meantime, we had to get the tree back to the apartment--which basically looks like it threw up everything we ever owned into the living room. Neah is not impressed. We have cut down her 500 sq feet of lounge space to about 200 with all the clutter. And, she's afraid of the boxes when they are flattened on the floor and won't walk on them....so either she jumps or she whines because she got stuck somewhere in the box maze.

Dear Housing Goddess, PLEASE.