The Long Weekend

Hey I’m blogging today over at ShoeIQ. Come on by! 

Wow. And it was a nice long weekend, too, wasn’t it?

Thanksgiving was good. I ate way too much, drank several glasses of wine, had too many desserts, and watched Grey’s Anatomy (great episode, by the way!).

I got home late. I think it was after 10ish. The next morning, I got up early. Not as early as some, I’m sure, and I was so not interested in going to the mall or shopping. My Christmas shopping is DONE, thankyouverymuch. Now all I have to do is decorate and wrap.

Anyway… got up early Friday and started prepping the room. Moved out the furniture, took down the curtains. As I was looking at the cheap-ass mini-blinds in the window, I noticed the previous owners had rigged one side with duct tape and two screws – no lie. I couldn’t believe it! The other side was so brittle it broke all to pieces when I took it down. It’s a wonder it was still in the window at all. So I ended up having to buy new blinds – an unexpected but necessary expense for sure.

Off to Lowe’s I went in search of new blinds. I could have gone with the same cheap-ass plastic ones for $20 or gone a little higher and bought the metal ones. But I knew I wouldn’t be happy with that. So I bit the bullet and bought the faux wood ones for $70. They are super nice. I looked at the real wood – but they were $50 more, so I just went with faux wood.

Back home, I started back with the bedroom again. I painted the first wall my color of choice – the copper color. It took nearly the entire gallon to paint that one wall since I had to do two coats. And once I got that one wall done I decided painting it on all four walls would be too dark and would make me feel closed in.

So back to Lowe’s I go. I got the Tomato Bisque for the other three walls. Both are in a flat. It went on very smooth and easy and it looks soooo good! I love the colors! Of course, the paint fumes gave me a headache (or was that because I failed to eat anything until about 2:30?).

The rolling on paint is the easy part. The pain in the ass part is the edging. I finally finished all the painting at 7:30 that night and then had to put the room back together so I could go to sleep. But I managed. I was nearly cripple by the time I finishd.

I grabbed the phone and called my mom and we chatted. I told her about the painting and she said it sounded great. Then I told her about the blinds and since they were so heavy I didn’t think I would be able to get them up by myself.

So on Saturday I kidnapped Mom for the day and she came to help me hang the blinds (the window, you see is 58″ wide so I don’t think I could have lifted them up and got each end into the bracket without quite a bit of cussing and tearing stuff up – it was better to have Mom there…). I was even going to put up the mirror over the dresser but when I saw the brackets for it and how it had to be hung, I was so disgusted I said never mind. Mom is, however, going to fix them for me so I can hang them (they were in four pieces and it would look really cool but I just didn’t have the patience for getting them up there plus I didn’t want to put 6-8 holes in the wall hanging them…anyway…)…

That night, after getting everything done and yet another trip to Lowe’s – I needed pipe insulation, duct tape (NOT for the blinds) and some other miscellaneous stuff – I took Mom to The Man’s restaurant. He was so sweet and reserved us a table and bought us dinner.

And it was yummy dinner too. We have the BEST dessert ever – banana springrolls with this vanilla bean ice cream drizzled with caramel sauce. Oh my stars, it was grand. He sat with us for a bit and chatted. Even though he was working, it was a nice visit.

After dinner we came back to the house, watched a movie and then we both crashed. I took her home Sunday morning (Mom doesn’t drive on freeways) and then came home, did some touch-ups in the bedroom, wrapped my pipes (we’re supposed to have a lovely cold front this week), did the laundry, and just basically hung around.

It was a good weekend, but I certainly was sore after all that painting. Every muscle in my body ached. Oh, and I supposed you’ll be wanting to see some pictures eh? 😉

Here they are. And I even did before/after pictures. The before, of course, being on the left. And that’s it for me. Hope you had a great holiday!