Saturday, August 29, 2015

What I've been doing

The end of July I went through two weeks of carpenters and painters hanging around the house.  Doing a job that was supposed to take 4 days.  In the end, they did a very good job, but the head contractor really underestimated their time.  There were days that they showed up at 8, days that only 2 showed up because someone worked so hard the day before he was sick.  Other days he couldn't locate his crew in the a.m. so they didn't come till mid-day.  It was very trying.  Yikes, I hate having anything done to the house.

Anyhow, the job got finished just in time for us to leave for Idaho again.  Three weeks there were wonderful, hanging out with family and friends.  While there we had our outside decks painted.  It took 3 days, including the prep work.  The guys showed up at 7 a.m. every morning, which was really nice. They did a wonderful job of removing any traces of the old redwood stain, and transforming my decks to a beautiful grey. The first step in getting rid of beiges, browns and reds.  Next spring we will have them paint the house a nice grey/green with black trim. The interior is already taking on the blue/green/grey theme a bit at a time.  There is still a lot of beige I am going to keep for the time being, such as the carpets. I am choosing color tones that go with it. I thought I might have to get rid of all the beige, if going to grey. But I am seeing a lot of beige/grey together and it looks fine.  I have some rugs that have grey/black and beige in them. I don't want to, nor have the energy to do it all at once. Just a step at a time.

We arrived in Idaho in the midst of another heat wave, and after a few days, and some dry lightning storms, the entire state was burning up with wildfires.  The smoke curtailed a lot of our outdoor activities, but we still had a good time.  Hubby worked in the yard regardless, but I could not have the windows open because the smoke was so strong it made me ill.  The smoke makes for some beautiful sunrises and sunsets, but is terrible on everyone's health.

I had limited internet connection while there.  I could read blogs, but somehow Google decided to mess with me and I could not sign into my own blog, and also could not comment on anyone elses with out being signed in to Google. Very frustrating, so now I am catching up on reading blogs now that I am back home.

I got a wild hare that I must do something arty while there, besides color in my new coloring books, which is just for fun and relaxation.  And another subject entirely!  I have a lot of art supplies there at the house, but I always want to do something different than what I have the supplies for. So off to Michaels and Aaron Bros I went and got some spray paint.  I am always so impatient, so I didn't even change clothes to get started. In this photo you will see that I grabbed a plastic bag to put over my shoes, just in case. The plant material is goldenrod. First I tried pounding some, but it was way too dry.


Below, partly finished, work in progress, using 3 colors, the paper is watercolor paper. A good start, who knows what I will try next. Maybe some shadow sketching of the plants.  Might cut some up for collage backgrounds.  Anyhow, it made me feel good to mess about a little bit.