Painting My House (myself!)

I didn't realize it until today, but when Thomas is tasked with something that takes him away from our little family for longer than a normal working day, I start planning. When he left for Afhanistan for the first time, I painted the nursery for my son. When he left for Afhanistan for the second time, I painted my sons current room. And now that he's made Chief, which starts with six weeks of long hours and overnight tasks, I decided to FINALY finish the outside of the house where we had the windows put in our master bedroom a year and a half ago.

It helps my motivation to live vicariously through my next door neighbors, who are getting their house ready to rent it out so they can move to the desert. I've always loved HGTV type discussions, programs, and seeing the finished project is always worth what ever it took to get there. So watching them paint their cabinets, and renovate other things, it makes me itch to improve my house in some way. It reminds me of a show I used to watch on HGTV where a couple would want to sell their house, but they had to do several (mostly minor) renovations to get it ready to sell. After they fixed up their house every single couple would say, "Wow, I almost don't want to leave anymore!" which is why they probably made the show Love it or List it. I always thought to myself, "If I keep my house nice enough to sell, then I'll always love it" But alas, day to day things get in the way of the greater picture and priorities shift from season to season, day to day. But here I am, with my priorities set to upkeep of the house mode. And I'm ready!

Don't get me wrong, I am all sorts of good at ignoring something that needs to be done. But then one day I'll get super motivated and want to do everything on my to-do list. All of it. So this weekend I decided I wanted to be happy with the way my house looked from the outside, and decided to fix and paint it. I know what you're thinking, wow, Kari must be really handy! Nope. I can't even use an electric screw driver. But I grabbed some ready-mix stucco and checked out youtube for some how-to videos, then went outside to look at the project at hand. If you didn't catch that, I didn't look at the project at hand until after I had bought the supplies and learned what I needed to learn on youtube. Classic Kari mistake. I got out there and saw that the only thing I needed to to was paint! How wonderful is that?! So I loaded up the kids (one still in jammies, none of us looking like we'd done anything except step out of bed and into the car) and returned the laith and stucco mix to HD and bought some paint. Then I psyched the kids up for the job on the way home, and they painted for about five minutes, then I finished the painting while they played. It was fantastic. It was wonderful. I am so happy that I did it! Five years in a house dreading the first time people come over because they'll see how ugly the house is, and all it took was $30 of paint and two hours.

I feel so accomplished. I feel like superwoman!

It was pretty early when we left, I thought I'd give proof!

Like I said, the kids had a blast for the first five minutes, but then they were over it.

No wonder I had random contractors knocking on my front door asking if I wanted my house painted or any work done. They would say, "I see you just had some windows put in, do you have anything else that needs to be done?" My reply would be, "Well, those windows were put in a year ago and we can't afford to have it finished. So no thank you, we can't afford anything right now."

My companion once the kids left. He'd follow me into a lava pit if that's where I happened to be headed.

I had enough paint to paint the spot under Glenn's window. It makes me more happy than a night on the town sans kids to have this looking better! (Do you see the guilty puppy? I wonder what he was up to when he realized I was watching...)

Below is the finished wall outside my bedroom! yay!!!

After a break and shower, we went outside in the sun room to do some fun painting. Well, fun painting if you're a three and five year old. Give me a roller, some paint and a wall and that's fun painting to me!

Below you will see two pictures progressing from Genny showing Glenn her painting, to Glenn getting an unwanted, unboyish streak of pink paint in his hair.

But all is well when you can't see said pink hair, and you have green paint on your finger.

Don't worry, that's my coffee. We don't start caffeine intake around here until you're at least in first grade...

Another project I've started, Aaralynne's quilt. It will be her birthday/Christmas present this year and I can't wait to finish it and give it to her!

Have a good week everyone!