Half Done

Spent the first part of yesterday taping, and taping, and taping......

The top of the newel post made a great holder for the tape!

I started painting and it was going pretty slow. Then Rich helped me by painting one side while I painted the other. We got the first coat done in a hour, and the second coat done in about 45 minutes.

I meant it when I said I was a sloppy painter..

Took the tape off this morning and Rich did most of the clean up, while I went to the show to see Breaking Dawn with Shauna and my SIL Linda.

It still has to grow on me a little but I think the end result will be worth all the work!

What do you think?

This is why they were too busy to pay any attention to me?

Next week I'll start staining!

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day filled with family and good food! I did.

Yesterday I spent practically  the whole day painting! Never left the house until we went out to dinner last night!

But I think the stairs are going to look awesome!

I did one step at a time...taped then painted and then moved to the next one. I find taping and prep work to be such a pain but I can be a sloppy painter! Half way down the staircase I ran out of blue tape and had to use paper tape, which I don't like nearly as much!

I even did a few tentative swipes on one of the spindles! I think they are going to look just fine!

I know a lot of people would never dream of painting over that wood but our house has so much oak trim and all of our doors are oak, so I figured I could spare some!

Today I am going to go out to breakfast with my friend and then start the process of painting the spindles. Should have all of it done before the weekend is over!

I may even get the Christmas trees up!

Slacker

I am such a slacker lately when it comes to posting on this blog!

Remember here when I told you all about taking the carpeting off the stairs? Well they've sat like that for  a year and a half and last weekend I finally started to work on them again.

We are having Christmas Eve at our house this year and I really would like them to not look like stairs that just had the carpet ripped off of them!

I spend several hours last week and this week sanding the steps and today I filled in all the damaged areas of wood and the nail holes with wood putty. The putty is paintable but not stainable so hopefully the dark stain will hide the nail holes on the stairs.

I plan on painting the risers white and staining the stairs the same color as our floor, which is a dark maple.

I also plan on painting these:

Only the small spindles. The two larger ones and the bannister I plan on going over with the darker stain. It's a lot of intricate painting but I'll just take my time. Hopefully it will all come together nicely!


In other news, our microwave bit the dust today. Dumb thing runs but won't heat. I have an appointment to get it fixed on December 5th. Hopefully it's worth fixing because it's an over-the-range one and they are expensive to replace. '

Rich put our Christmas lights up today. It's been in the 50's so he took advantage of it. Next weekend could be 15 degrees and snowing!

All the extension cords plugged into one box with a remote control to turn them off and on from inside the house!

That's it for now. Thanksgiving is at my older brothers house this year. Homemade ravioli! Yum!

And yay for three day work weeks!!

I don't know about this home improvement/Holidays stuff!

Sunday

Sunday was another beautiful weekend day. Sure did enjoy that extra hour of sleep that I actually managed to get!

After I did the dreaded grocery shopping we decided to walk the River Rouge trail a few miles from our house. We walked for about a hour or so! It was a very nice day for a walk!

Idiot litterers everywhere you go!

Happy tree!

I will miss being able to take these walks!

Saturday

This past weekend was really beautiful...sunny and in the high 50's. My SIL Linda and I went to a craft show at St. Marks Lutheran Church..where my brother Tom and SIL Debbie are very invoved.

It was a pretty small craft show but I did manage to get some pizza bread for Rich, a little homemade bookmark and this:

Michigan Honey. This stuff is so good! I love it in tea and also on peanut butter toast! Yum!!

Speaking of yummy...have you tried this?

Just throw it in the blender with a cup or so of skim milk (or whole milk if you have it) and give it a whirl!

Heaven in a glass!

After spending a few hours organizing my files I had a bunch of paperwork to get rid of. We decided to make use of our little outdoor fire container thingy (can't for the life of me remember what it's called!)

Had a whole paper bag full of papers to get rid of..including tax returns from 1999-2002. It was chilly out and it made a nice toasty fire! And it sure beat shredding all that paper!

Hope your week is going good!

Hello...

Jeez, it's been over two weeks since I did a post! Nothing going on to give me anything to post about.

Daylight savings time ends tomorrow morning. One extra hour of sleep if I can manage to spend it sleeping! It's been pretty dark in the morning on my way to work...now it will be dark on my way home! I think I would rather have it dark in the morning!


A lot of the trees still have not dropped their leaves and still look beautiful.

I love our burning bushes in the fall

We have three of them! They used to all be in the front but when we redid our landscaping several years ago we transplanted two of them to the back yard corner. They did wonderfully as you can see; they're just a bit smaller than the one in the front.

OK That's all I got for now. Just wanted to check in with you all!

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy that extra hour tomorrow!!