Mandala Monday ~ Summer Solstice

I was wanting to create a nature mandala last Friday for the summer solstice, but I didn’t want to pick any of the flowers or plants growing in my garden, and there wasn’t much laying around on the ground to collect.  So I got out my paints and grabbed one of the extra ceramic tiles I had and painted one instead…

I usually paint the surface of the tile with a background color before creating a design, but I decided to leave it white this time.  That made for a more slippery surface though, so don’t look too closely because there’s a few smeary blops.  Leaving it white also made some areas of the design a bit less prominent, and I’m not sure yet if I like that or not.  But I do love the bright sunny feeling this has, and I really enjoyed painting it!

 

Thanks for letting me share!  Wishing you a bright and sunny Monday!

☀️

 

 

 

✿~Peace & Love~✿

 

Mandala Monday ~ Christmas Ornaments

I’ve been back in painting mandalas mode over the past couple of weeks making Christmas ornaments as gifts for friends and family.  I’ve had a lot of fun painting them and I really hope they like them.  Here are a few of the designs I created.  They’re all a bit similar, especially color-wise (red, green and white), but each one is different…

The ornaments I used were clear glass, so they pick up whatever is in the background.  It really affects the look of the design and I’m not sure if I like that or not.  I tried using an etching cream on one of them to create a frosted glass look, but omygosh that was a complete fail.

The lighting wasn’t the greatest trying to photograph them indoors, so I brought them outside and snapped a few photos of them hanging from the branches of my arborvitae…

I don’t know if you can tell in the photo, but I put fake snow in the bottom of this next one.  I thought it’d be a whimsical way of providing ‘snow’ for loved ones who don’t get snow where they live…

I also put rhinestones in the center of some of them for those who might like a bit more bling, but at the time of this post, I’ve already wrapped them up for giving and don’t have a good picture to share.  Oh wait, here’s one…

It’s not very sparkly in the photo, a real crystal would look prettier, but I couldn’t find any flat-backed ones in the proper size.

I made them in two different sizes and the details got a bit muddled up trying to paint the tiny dots on the smaller ones, so they don’t look as nice blown up in a photo, but they’re pretty and dainty in person.

Due to the same color scheme, they all started feeling like they looked too much alike, so I tried to create different patterns, at the same time as keeping the person I was making them for in mind.  This one turned out be sort of a star burst design…

A few of the recipients of these ornaments follow my blog and I’m hoping they don’t see this post before they receive their ornaments, but I wanted to share because it’s one of the things I’ve been up to lately.

I know I’ve been a bit absent from my WordPress community this December (posting and reading) and I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to stop by your blogs as much, but please know this… I’ve still thought of a great many of you quite often during this time, truly I have, and I’ve been sending love and good vibes your way as you’ve come to mind.

Please be well my friends.  Sincerely wishing you all that is good and lovely in this world, a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and lots of love to you and yours…

 

 

✿~Peace & Love~✿

 

Mandala Monday – Soul Sisters

A set of heart shaped mandalas I painted in purples to represent myself and a treasured friend of mine…

 

I haven’t had much time for painting this past week because there’s been so much going on in my world.  And this week is sure to bring much of the same, as my “Soul Sister” is coming up to visit me from Arkansas.  But maybe we can do a bit of painting together while she’s here.  💜

 

Wishing you all a wonderful week!  😊

 

 

✿~Peace & Love~✿

Mandala Monday – August

The month of August sort of signals the end of summer, which can be a bit depressing to realize, but there are a lot of wonderful and beautiful things about the month of August…

For one, I love all of the gorgeous late summer flowers that are blooming everywhere – sunflowers, lilies, phlox (whose scent is completely intoxicating here at the moment, by the way), coneflowers, liatris, and black-eyed susan, just to name a few.  And it’s also when my vegetable garden starts kicking out lots of yummy things – for example, my zucchini (as you may have seen in my post the other day), and also beans, jalapeno peppers, and the first of my cucumbers are just about ready to pick.  August is a very rewarding time in the garden.  😊

For two – it’s my birthday month, and I tend to celebrate it all month long, which is always fun, and this year is no exception – I’ve already started before the calendar has even turned to August by going to see the butterfly exhibit at my local zoo and conservatory with my daughter and granddaughter last week.  And I also went to the salon this past weekend to get my hair color freshened up and to get a bit of pampering before my birthday.  My stylist, who is also a good friend of mine, gave me an early birthday present – a gorgeous book about lavender that had belonged to her late mother, such a beautiful and meaningful gift.  I browsed through it while my hair was processing and it was the perfect reading material to enhance my pampering session.  Ah lavender… 💜

For three – August is when the Minnesota Renaissance Festival starts and that is something I love going to each year.  I’m looking forward to going with my new bionic knees this year (even though they are still paining me a bit), hopefully I’ll have an easier time walking around and enjoying all of the festivities there.  I have a new project that I’m working on for my costume this year too – a staff/walking stick that I hope to embellish to make it look more magical.  Yeah, I know that’s totally nerdy, but I don’t care, I chose long ago to embrace my inner nerd.  🙃

Another fun thing that is happening this particular August is a solar eclipse, and I plan on going on a little road trip with a good friend of mine to see it.  We haven’t worked out all the details yet, but we are thinking of making a week of it.  She is bringing her camper, so we plan to camp somewhere that is nearby one of the areas of totality of the eclipse.  I haven’t been camping in ages, so I’m a little apprehensive about that part of it.  But as you all know – I LOVE being out in nature, so that will be the wonderful part of it.  Hopefully we have good weather and clear skies during the eclipse, so we can get the full effect and awe factor.  I love the sky and all things astronomical!  Speaking of astronomical events, August also is the time of the Perseid meteor shower, and who doesn’t love shooting stars?!  🌠

So even though August signals the end of summer and the weather sometimes gets too hot and humid, there are lots of things to look forward to and enjoy about August as well.  Plus, it does mean that fall is just around the corner, and fall is my favorite!  🍁🍂

But I’m rambling and this post is supposed to be about my mandalas haha!  So let me get to sharing a few of the ones I’ve painted recently…

 

This one was partly inspired by my trumpet vine that I have growing up the fence on my patio where I paint.  These colors speak August to me…

So warm and summery!  ☀️

And this one, although not inspired by my phlox, looks lovely pictured with them…

I painted this tile a bit differently.  I wanted the center design to stand out more prominently, but I also didn’t want to leave the corners plain, so rather than continue around the center design, I improvised and painted the corners separately instead.  It’s pretty, but I’m not sure how I feel about it – the corners look a little too separated from the center, what do you think?

 

This one also speaks August to me, although not necessarily for the same reasons as the first one, it reminds me of peridot, which is the birthstone for August…

It also reminds me a bit of clover leaves, so I took a picture of it amidst the clover leaves in my yard…

That’s a whole lot of green!  ☘  This one is a good example of why I don’t always want to continue around the center design, because it takes away from it.  I snapped a few pictures of the progress of this mandala that will show what I mean…

See what I mean?  The finished piece just looks a little too busy or something and the center design gets a bit lost.  That’s why I made the corners like I did on the one pictured with the phlox.  But like I said, I’m not sure how I feel about that either hah!

I guess it’s just a continual learning process, right?  As is all of life…  🙃

 

Happy Monday and happy August 1st tomorrow.  I wish you many blessings in the coming week and in month ahead…

 

 

 

✿~Peace & Love~✿

 

 

Mandala Monday – Peacock Feathers

The outer edges of this one remind me of peacock feathers…

Not to mention, the background color paint that I used was called “peacock” blue.  😊

Once I had painted around the edges like that, I couldn’t figure out a way to fill in the rest of the canvas without taking away from the main mandala design, so I left it plain.

I hope your Monday is off to a great start.  Mine is starting out sleepy, because I went on a midnight drive out of the city last night to try to see the aurora borealis, as it was supposed to be visible here in Minnesota.  But apparently they had downgraded the expected strength of it, and I had no luck.  I did see some gorgeous twinkling stars and the Milky Way though.  😊

 

 

 

✿~Peace & Love~✿

Mandala Monday – Earth Tones

I’ve been experimenting with a new color palette over the past few days…

I LOVE  these colors and how this tile turned out!  😍  I used the same mandala design as my favorite one that I shared in my Mandala Madness post (here), but I painted it in earthy tones instead.

 

I also painted a few rocks with these same colors.  I usually paint a background/base color underneath my mandalas (like the brown on the tile above), but I hate covering up the rocks’ natural color, so I painted a few without a base color.  I’m not sure how I feel about how they turned out though, because the mandala’s colors don’t show up as vibrant without a base color.  I was thinking “Earthy paint colors, natural rock color” but it kinda failed.

In actuality, this rock is less gray as it shows in the photo, it’s more of a brown, and it’s prettier in person, but I still think it would have looked better with a base color underneath.

 

Here’s one I painted in all browns and tans…

It works a little better than the other rock without a base color underneath, but I don’t really like the mandala design as much.

 

I know I probably sounds like I’m being overly critical of them, but I really don’t mean to be, I’m just ‘writing out loud’ as I’m processing/learning/seeing what I feel works and what doesn’t as I’m traveling along in my little mandala journey here.  Thanks for traveling with me.

😊

 

I’m still looking for round rocks…

 

Wishing you a happy Monday and a wonderful week ahead.

 

 

✿~Peace & Love~✿

Mandala Mondays

While I’m in this mode of incessantly painting mandalas, how do you guys feel about having mandala Mondays?  I could just post one mandala that I’ve made over the previous week or several, depending on how many I have and whether or not they’re worth sharing.  And it may or may not have any text depending on how wordy I’m feeling.  To be honest, I haven’t been feeling very wordy lately, which is probably why I haven’t been posting regularly for a while.  Anyway, here are a few I’ve painted recently…

I found some mini canvases at the art store that I can paint on in addition to the tiles, since I’m having such a hard time finding round rocks.  I also picked up some mini easels to display them on.  My brother-in-law had a liver transplant this past week and the morning of his transplant I woke up and felt the urge to paint spirals, so that’s what I’ve been doing a lot since then, this one is my favorite…

I like how each strand of the spiral goes from light to dark and vise versa depending on which direction your eyes follow it, and how the dots go from small to large to small again as the spiral itself continues to grow.  It makes me wish I had a bigger canvas. There’s definitely some symbolism and metaphors going on in there.

Although I’ve had a hard time finding round rocks,  I seem to have no trouble finding ones that I can paint hearts on.  I figure the universe must be trying to tell me something, so I’m just going to go with it.  Here is another heart-shaped one that I made, this time in purple, my favorite color…

I’m really happy with this one.  It’s a fairly small stone, so it was a bit difficult painting all those itty-bitty tiny dots, but it turned out so pretty, and it feels like me.  💜

This is a tile that I painted with the same colors of a rock that I did earlier on where I wanted to try to recreate the design on a tile, it ended up not looking anything like the original, but I really like the way it turned out…

Well that’s all I got for now on this Monday.  Thanks for letting me share.

We have our fourth of July holiday tomorrow here in the States, so I’m wishing all of you here with me in the US, a happy Independence Day.  🇱🇷 And I’m wishing the rest of you… a happy everything else day.

😊

 

 

✿~Peace & Love~✿

Mandala Madness

 

Circular patterns

painted in pretty colors

helps clear the mind

quieting troubled thoughts

bringing order and calm

to the chaos within my heart

 

© Julie Rehnelt 2017

 

I recently experienced a painful heartbreak and have been having a pretty rough time of it here emotionally.  But also during this time, I have found painting mandalas to be quite therapeutic – it’s very focused and takes a lot of concentration, so it doesn’t leave much room in my mind for anything else.  It’s also meditative, so it’s soothing and clearing as well.

At the end of May, I took a Mandala Rock Painting Class at a local art studio and learned how to paint mandalas on beach stones.  I wish I could say I enjoyed the class, but for various reasons (which I won’t make you listen to), I actually found it a bit frustrating.  However, I did learn a few techniques from the two wonderful gals who led the class, and I’ve been painting mandalas nearly everyday since.

The following day after the class, I went out to hunt for suitable stones among the river rock landscaping rock that I have around the perimeter of my house.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any round stones, but I did collect a few that were somewhat round that I figured I could practice on, and off I went to the art supply store to purchase some paints and a few other necessities.

When I got home I painted this little oddball…

Don’t look too closely at it, it’s actually a bit of a mess, but it’s much better than the turd one I painted in class – which is so bad, I’m not even going to show it to you.

Unfortunately, the next day was when my heartbreak occurred and I was so sad and stunned, I could barely function.  But for some strange reason I felt compelled to paint.  I had this strong urge to try and create something that somehow represented my feelings, and I painted this…

And although it may have heartbreak associated with it, it also has beautiful, meaningful things, and profound love associated with it, so I like how it turned out.  Even if my heart is blue…

From there, I’ve continued to be compelled to keep on creating more mandalas.  It’s been a fierce urge, to be honest, a sort of madness.  I neeeed to paint them, like my life (and sanity) depends on it.

But the trouble is, I can’t find any round stones to paint them on.  Ask my sister how badly I’ve been obsessing about finding round rocks.  It’s become a joke between us now.

I worked with the little rocks I had found around the house, but unsatisfied with their lack of circularness, I moved onto tiles.  Even though they’re square haha!   I had a few tiles left over from a remodeling project and got an idea in mind of how I could make them work.  And I painted these…

Don’t look too closely at them, they’re not painted very evenly.  Hey, I’m still learning!  It’s a lot harder than you think to paint dots of the same size and to space them evenly.  Especially when you don’t have a real steady hand.  The tile pictured at the top of this post was the 3rd tile I painted, and I’ve since painted 6 others, each progressively improving.

Would you like to see them all, or just the most recent one?  I guess if you don’t mind scrolling, I’ll just share them all.  More blue…

This one got way out of hand and crooked, but the pattern and colors are still pretty 🙂

I wish I had a better photo of this one, the colors got a bit glossed over by the lighting

This one took me the longest. All those dots around dots, around dots… it took me 4 or 5 hours to make.

This last one is the most recent tile I’ve painted, and it’s my favorite so far.  The photo doesn’t really show the full depth and color.  You can click on it to enlarge…

I really like the look and the idea of the tiles.  I might even use these (and any future ones I make) in some of my remodeling projects around the house – maybe as a back splash on the kitchen or bathroom counter, or around a window or mirror or something.  I was using one of them as a coaster the other day, and I even thought I could attach some type of ribbon or wire and just hang them on a wall as they are, the possibilities are endless.  🙂

But as much as I like the tiles, I still really wanted to find some round rocks to paint on.  Remembering the rocky shoreline of Lake Superior, I took a day trip up there with my sister in hopes of finding some.  And in hopes of providing a bit of self care too – the North Shore of Lake Superior is one of my favorite places, being near the water is always very restorative and soothing to me.  ❤

These rocks aren’t exactly round either, but they all spoke to me and said they wanted to come home with me…

I love rocks, and I don’t really even want to paint on these.  They’re lovely just the way they are…

But I have painted on a several of them, and I have to say, I enjoy the feel of painting on rocks better than on the tiles.  If only I could find some round ones.

 This one reminds me of the sun…

And this one reminds me of an Easter egg…

This one I made into the shape of a heart after writing my last post…

And this is the most recent rock I’ve painted.  It was a challenge on this elongated shaped rock…

 

I have no idea where I’m going with this mandala thing, but for now it feels good, so I’m gonna keep at it.  It feels like it’s helping me work something out within myself – while also creating something beautiful outwardly.

That’s all I got for now.  Thanks for letting me share my mandala madness.  Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  I’m off to check on my garden (which is doing splendidly this year) and then I’m heading to Minnehaha Falls for the day for a picnic and a free Bluegrass concert.

 

“I saw that everything, all paths I had been following, all steps I had taken, were leading back to a single point — namely, to the mid-point. It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the centre. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the centre, to individuation.”  

~ Carl Jung

 

 

 

✿~Peace & Love~✿

Relocating, Remodeling & Readjustments ~ The Continuing Saga…

Well, since the mishaps and misadventures with my mom’s floor we’ve gotten her all moved into her new room.  It’s not decorated or completely situated yet, but at least it’s in good enough order for her to have a nice nap with her cat…She’s probably gonna kill me when she sees that I posted a photo of her napping, so if you never hear from me again, you’ll know why.  😉

~

I’m actually writing this post from my room, which I’ve just recently finished painting for the second time.  Here let me share my current view with you…Hmm, weird, it’s not really that dark in here.  I guess this isn’t really much to look at is it?  Can’t even see my paint job.  Oh well, I’ll try and take a better photo of it later.

~

I’m sitting at a little make-shift “desk” that my mom brought in so that I could see what it feels like to sit and write in here, but now she and my daughter are hounding me to come watch a movie with them, so I probably won’t be in here very long and will have to finish writing this post later.  I just want to be in my room for a little while and enjoy the calm before the storm.  The storm being… finding out tomorrow what lies beneath this carpeting under my feet.

I’ve been up to my eyeballs in paint here for the past week.  This is usually a fun thing for me, but this too has ended up being more work than I had originally thought it would be.  Maybe I’m just getting old or out of shape.  One thing I am sure of is that all the paint fumes are definitely affecting my mental capabilities.  😉

First up was painting my daughter’s room.  But we couldn’t pick out paint colors until she chose some new draperies for the sliding glass door in her room.

These are what were hanging in there…Now although these may be considered somewhat hideous according to today’s home decor trends, they were actually quite fashionable in the 70’s, and I’m going to save some of this fabric.   I have no idea what I’ll ever do with it, but you just never know ~ I could come up with something totally unique and amazing to do with it one day. 😀

~

After shopping until I was dropping, my daughter finally found some lovely draperies.  I don’t have a photo of her new drapes yet, but I’m sure I’ll include one in a future post once they get hung up.

So, it was a bit of a fiasco painting my daughter’s room because she didn’t like the blue color that she picked out for her contrasting wall (the rest of the walls are a green tone).  So we went back and got a different shade of blue, but she’s not sure she likes that color either.  After her carpet and drapes get in there she’s going to see how she likes it, but I have a feeling we (I) may end up just painting that wall the same color as the rest of the room.The color looks worse in this photo than it really is.  And yes, yes I do paint in my bare feet.  😀  Just don’t look too closely at them, they’re in terrible need of a pedicure, and I banged my left foot so it’s all puffy and swollen ~ guess I shouldn’t do things in my bare feet huh?  😉

~

The painting of my room went even worse and I was all up in tears over it.  Literally.  😦  My sis came to the rescue, talked me in off the ledge, and helped me re-paint it.  Sometimes I wonder what I would ever do without her.  ♥   I think I just had a bit of an emotional meltdown because I’ve been working soo hard and I’m exhausted.  I’ve put so much work into making my mom’s and my daughter’s rooms nice for them that then when I finally get to my own room only to have it not turn out right, just made me overly emotional.  But hey, you might have been overly emotional too if the restful, peaceful, ocean color you picked out ended up being a putrid mint colored version of Pepto Bismol!

The color on my walls now is still not what I was going for ~ it’s more of a gray shade than what I had wanted, but it’s a restful enough color and it’ll do for now.  All I know is that I’m not painting this room a 3rd time!  I’ll have a better idea of how it’s going to look after this golden carpet gets out of here tomorrow.

Won’t be sad to see this go.But like I said, I am nervous about what’s underneath it…

~

Oh hey, it’s tomorrow!  I knew I wasn’t going to be able to finish writing this last night.  Well… My daughter’s new carpet is in and it looks great!

This isn’t the greatest shot of it, but her dog Teddy sure looks cute enjoying the view out the window…~

The carpet installers got to my mom’s at the crack of dawn this morning and I didn’t make it over there until they had nearly finished with my daughter’s room, but my mom snapped this photo of the hardwood floors that are under her carpeting.  Sure am glad my daughter wasn’t wanting to try and have wood floors in her room because this looks absolutely horrible … ~

Unfortunately, remember that storm I mentioned earlier when expressing my fears about my own wood floors?  Well…

On the bright side… at least there isn’t a bunch of old linoleum and black tar to scrape up.

But on the dark side… a large portion on one half of the room is plywood, not hardwood.  😦

And there are a few black stain splatters of I don’t know what.

There are also some terrible cut marks about 4 feet long in the entryway.  This photo doesn’t show it, but these cuts are actually pretty deep.  😦 

And I don’t even know what to do about this total hack job someone did around the vents.~

Yep, it’s gonna take quite a bit of continued elbow grease to get all this cleaned and fixed up.  And on that I’m in short supply.  Makes me tired even contemplating it.  Well, it is after midnight as I wrap this up.

Wish me luck…

Relocating, Redecorating & Readjustments ~ Mom’s Room

In our game of musical rooms, we’ve realized that it’s actually my mom’s room that needs to be attended to first.  Because in order for us to move into our rooms, she needs to move out of them first.  Yes, “them” ~ she has her things in both of them.  She has some things in the master bedroom that she originally shared with my dad (where my daughter is going), and she also has things in my old room that she’s been sleeping in (where I am going).  In actuality my mom is going from having three bedrooms to having just one.  Talk about a huge adjustment.

Initially, she was just going to go into this room “as is” since this room needs the least amount of updating and the plan has been that majority of the improvements will be done after my daughter and I are living there when more finances are freed up.  But as we’ve slowly got it emptied out to just the bare minimums, I started thinking we should at least paint it.  I’ve painted many a room in my day and really enjoy doing that.  It’s not terribly expensive or time consuming, and it’s much easier to do it while a room is empty rather than full of furniture.  Plus, how nice would it be for my mom move into her new room and feel a little more settled.  And there’s nothing quite like freshly painted walls to make things feel like new.  🙂

~

The first thing we did was temporarily put up some new shades for her.  The ones she had in there were old and worn out, and also liked to pop out of the brackets whenever you tried to open or close them.  Eventually we’ll probably put some blinds up and then additional window treatments (a valance, drapes or curtains), but since the brackets for shades were already there and we have a bit of a time crunch, we just replaced the shades for now.  We picked out some pretty ones though ~ you can’t see real well from this photo, but these have a scalloped lacy bottom edge.  They are also a little bit heavier weight so hopefully they won’t curl in too much on the sides as some shades tend to do.~

After that, before we could paint, we needed to patch up any holes in the walls from previously hung pictures and various decor.  That was my daughter’s job, and her first time using spackle.  She wasn’t entirely confident that she knew what she was doing, but she did a splendid job.   Nifty stuff, spackle is.  ~

And it was my job to do the taping around all the trim work.  You can see that the person who previously painted the room got some paint on the outlet plug ~ that won’t be happening with my expert paint job.  😉~

While I was doing that taping (along the floor trim especially) I really started noticing how yucky the carpet in this room is.  It’s “newer” ~ not 36 years old like in the rest of the house, but still needing to be replaced just the same.  Originally the only bedroom we were planning on re-carpeting before we move in is my daughter’s, but after seeing a more close up view of the condition of this carpet I mentioned to my mom that it’s too bad we have to wait to re-carpet it because with the room nearly empty right now it sure would be nice to just get it done now.

Well, I shouldn’t have said that out loud because of course she jumped at that suggestion, and replacing the carpet now would be a big expense that we weren’t planning on.  Buying a can of paint is one thing, but the expense of purchasing new floor coverings is a whole other matter.  I’m not only the “foreman” as I mentioned in an earlier post, but sort of the accountant of this operation as well.  My mom would try to buy the moon if it was for sale, and I’m the one who has to make sure the earth’s gravity stays in balance.  😉

~

 Then out of nowhere I  suddenly got the urge to pull back an area of the carpet and take a peek underneath it.   By golly there be hardwood floors under there!My mom had said that when she was a little girl, she remembers there being hardwood floors in the house, but when she and my dad had it remodeled in the 70’s she didn’t take note of the floors because they were just carpeting it all.

~

When they come to install the new carpet in my daughter’s room, I had planned to have them tear out the carpeting in my room at the same time.  Because all I know is that I’m not moving back into my old room with that same carpet in it, so although I was hoping for hardwood floors, I would even take plywood temporarily over that old carpet and just throw down a rug if I had to until we could afford different flooring in there.  But… with finding hardwood under my mom’s carpet… that means it’s likely in my room too!  Sooo excited about that possibility!  Of course we don’t know what condition any of it is in and it will very likely need to be refinished, but for my room I had just planned on scrubbing it down real good and then refinishing it later when finances allowed.

However, in regard to my mom’s room… I have now opened the proverbial can of worms.  We have three choices here ~ put the carpet back in place and forget about doing anything with it until finances allow, tear it out and see about the condition of the wood floor, and then just live with it the way it is (like I am going to do with my room), or go ahead and bear the expense and re-carpet the room.

Well, it turns out my mom also prefers to have hardwood floors rather than carpeting for her room too, so we’ve decided to go with the middle option and rip out the carpet and then just live with the condition of it until we can manage to refinish it.  Except that we will have to do a little more than just scrub it up real good.  If you look closely at the photo above you can see that there are 2 strips of wood with writing on them and pokey things sticking up out of them.  My sis called them furring strips (she’s knows stuff about stuff ;)).  Anyway, those will have to be pried/pulled up somehow and I don’t know about my girly hands having the strength to do it.  Also there is quite a large gap right under the baseboard molding that goes along the floor of the outside wall of the room (don’t know yet about the interior walls), so that will have to be filled in with something temporarily (like a strip of wood maybe).  Can’t be having any creepy crawlies venturing about from within those cracks and crevasses.  Eek!

So much for our time crunch ~ this floor is gonna take some time.  Why oh why did I have to peek under that carpet?  I have plans within the next few days to try and get in there and rip it out, but that is for a different post.

Next up here: painting.  I maybe should have held off until the floor got figured out, but I had already done all the prep work and hey with tearing out the carpet, I didn’t have to be as careful about getting any paint on the floor.  😉

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As I said, I enjoy painting a room, but this room gave me a bit of trouble.  I didn’t think the old color and the new color were really that similar (a pale pink was what was currently on the walls and an “off white” was what I was applying), but with the lighting in the room it was sooo hard to tell where I was at while looking straight on at it.  I think it probably had to do with the pink carpeting in there reflecting off the walls.  Maybe I should have torn out the carpet first and saved myself this mild color-induced frustration.

From the side it was a little easier to tell between the two colors, but not by much.  See how you can barely tell the difference…?  It was a little frustrating.The name of the color of paint my mom chose was called “Washed Up” and that is exactly how I felt trying to paint this room.   😉

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It was fairly easy helping my mom to choose a paint color for her room because she just wanted a neutral off white tone (although you may be surprised at how many variations of off-white there actually are).  But in browsing briefly at the paint samples while we were at the store and in considering my own room ~ I think that’s going to be a bit tougher to decide on because I want color!

And there’s sooo many to choose from…~