It has been hot, hot, hot here. The kids have been enjoying daily playing in their friends' backyard blow-up pool. Above is Kitty and three of her good friends: Jaycee, Sara and Annabelle.
It was very sad last week to say goodbye to the preschool Jack and Kitty attended. Jack was there for two years and Kitty for three. It was an amazing place with passionate teachers and enthusiasm for whatever the kids were interested in. The parents were wonderful too... I so enjoyed meeting a great deal of like-minded parents (parenting style-wise.) Kitty had the same 4 year old teacher that Jack had. It was so painful to say goodbye... she is just joy personified. She gave me a $50 gift certificate to my very favorite fabric store as a thank you for my participation and support of the class this year. (I drove kids for 9 different field trips and did a quilt project with the class.) It was lovely to buy fabric with the only thought being what I wanted for my project (a new purse) rather than the cost. Below is a picture of Kitty and myself with the completed quilt for her class:
Kitty is home with me for a month before she starts camp. I came up with the idea of us doing a project each day... the first one was cleaning all of the birdhouses that I've collected and live on a shelf above the kitchen counter top and stove. What I found out is that dust+cooking grease=gooey sludge. A project I thought was going to take and hour ended up being 3 hours. They are clean now... but they really don't look and different than when we started... they are above eye level so you can't see dust on their roofs. Below is a picture with some of the in process and already cleaned birdhouses:
The big news around here is that we are getting our house painted. We had had the estimate done in April and they started on Memorial day. What a lot of work it is! I never realized how many angles and quirks our house had until I watched the painters carefully taping things off. One reason I wanted to get the house painted was to try to take all the odd parts of our house and make them look unified. Our original house was built in the 1930's. The couple who owned the house in the 60's, 70's and 80's had 10 children. They added an oddly shaped addition on the back (which we are very thankful for as the addition has a bath and a half... other houses in our neighborhood have only one bathroom) and enclosed the porch to make another room which we refer to as the 'Front Room.' All of the extra space these actions made are much appreciated by us.
We made a bold move and went for red... Crimson Red to be exact. See below the before and inprocess photo:
We love it. Love, love, love love it. The trim is called 'lagoon' and is a darkish blue-green. We've already gotten a compliment from our next door neighbor which is a relief to me. Below is a photo of a more finished part of the house:
I was going for an arts and crafts feel. One of the painters said to Thom, "You have an excellent eye for color!" and Thom said, "Oh, no... not me... it is my wife who knows about such things!" This came from the same painter who worried that the colors would be awful... so I consider his remarks a high compliment.