It's all been good!
Update on my sister's art show at the Minneapolis Women's Club: nearly all the originals have been sold. If you want to get your hands on an original Katie McCollow water color at a very reasonable price, you best get down there ASAP. Soon they'll all be gone and next time, they'll be more expensive. An established, successful artist can ask more than an artist mounting her first exhibition. She's also selling prints of her work (in all sizes) through her website.
On my own professional front, things have never been better. Our theme this Christmas season is "Blue Christmas" and so far, it's been a smash. I'm taking orders faster than I can fill them. If I ever find out the entire world lockdown was engineered by Big Needlepoint, I won't be surprised. Locking every stitcher in the world into their homes for months on end has been a marketing BOOM for needlepoint. Also, youngsters who though needlepoint was for old ladies have discovered that it's for anyone who likes to use their hands. It's lovely, therapeutic and you can create anything you can think up. Yes, we still do lots of cabbage roses but we hardly ever do them on black or brown backgrounds anymore.
I'm also having some success with oils. I feel like I've made several breakthroughs in the last few months. I still need to work on getting my darks darker but I'm getting better. Let me tell you, when you're outside painting and a random car screeches to a halt so the driver can ask to buy what you're working on, that puts you on cloud 9 for weeks.
I haven't made a rosary in months, as I've been so busy with other things. I plan to get back at it after Christmas, contacting parishes and producing rosaries to give away. There are a couple more ladies who are interested in helping, so I expect we'll be able to give to more parishes this year. That'll be fun!
Thanksgiving was last week. We had an old fashioned Pivec blow out, partying like it was 2019! All told, there were 40 of us over the course of the afternoon and evening, although not everyone came for dinner. About 15 were 10 and under and Pam had a whole area of the lower level set up with crayons, markers, play doh and projects. Much creativity took place while football was being watched. Zach and Sara brought #6, so most of the family has now met her. Katie was able to attend but Adam stayed home with BoopityBoop, as the girls had been home with fevers most of the week. It's hard to remember in this age of Wuhysteria that colds and flus are still a thing. Everyone was fine by Thursday but the girls hadn't been fever free for 24 hours yet and there's no excuse for making everyone in the family sick.
We missed the twins but not for long: they came over to my house on Saturday. Their parents had a no-kids party so Katie dropped the girls off mid afternoon. Ty and Megan were invited to the party so they dropped off Xena, Babalouie and Kitten shortly afterwards. The 5 kids and I had a blast all afternoon and evening. All the kids love spaghetti, so dinner was easy and Coach dished up ice cream for all later in the evening. I don't remember the particulars (I know we watched Elf at one point but the rest is a blur) but the whole day was filled with running, hiding, laughing and talking. Ty and Megan picked theirs up at 10 and BoopityBoop spent the night. Jay and I took them to church with us in the morning, had brunch when we got home and I took the girls to the park for awhile before Katie picked them up.
I've slept for 10 hours a night since then.
Yesterday, we had our first bona fide blizzard of the year. It snowed all day, was nearly a white out and by the time it ended had dropped 6 to 8" of fresh snow on the metro. I love it!! There's just something exciting and romantic about a blizzard! As we watched it snow, sitting in the TV room with our morning coffee, Jay said that he was having even more fun being married now than it was back when we were newly weds. He's right! We know each other better now and we get along extremely well. And as much fun as it was raising our kids, we both love being empty nesters. To every season, there is a time and we've loved them all.
I had some free time yesterday afternoon because of the blizzard so I got started on the new curtains for the TV room. As with most of my home decorating projects, it was spur of the moment. In one of our many, many home improvement schemes, we put sliding doors to the back yard in our family room back at the turn of the century. In those days, we never had much money (home equity paid for everything) so we did it on the cheap. Some no-name company put in their sliders for half the price of the established brands. The result was a transformed room, tons of natural light and access to the enormous deck we built the same year. We loved it! The problem was that it wasn't very well insulated and by 'very well' I mean 'at all'. No problem in summer but in winter, it was like having a large hole in the house. We tried shrink wrapping it, which was difficult because the door was over sized. The last time I did that, it took me two hours of back breaking work and while I was unplugging the hair drying with which I'd shrunk the plastic, the cat sauntered up next to me and with one swipe of her claws rendered the entire project moot. After that, it was yards of air conditioner foam duct taped over all the spots through which the drafts poured. Looked terrible but the room was noticeably warmer. We kept the gas fireplace going whenever we were in there. About 10 years ago, I bought a set of heavy, thermal drapes for the windows which I think helped keep the room warm. They were thick, gold brocade and hideous but not too in your face. Yeah, they were ugly but they did the job.
So just before Thanksgiving, we replaced the sliding doors. This time we had money so we went with a national brand with a sterling reputation and sure enough, we noticed immediately that the room was no longer drafty! Not only the room but the entire house! Turns out, when you plug a 8X10 foot hole in your house, it becomes far more energy efficient. Who knew? If we have a cold enough winter, those doors will pay for themselves by my birthday.
Naturally, I had to take down the old curtains so the workman could put in the new door. I decided to wash them, as they hadn't been washed in...ten years? Gross. I took down the matching set on the windows across the room, too.
The room looks bigger, brighter and younger without them. The old rods they'd hung on were bent with the use of ten years. I got new rods.
Even at that point, I had no intention of replacing the curtains. I like the look of no drapes but Jay works in there and watches TV, including when the sun is up and we simply must have a way to block the glare on all the screens that modern life employs. Then I was in Hobby Lobby for something completely unrelated and happened to wander though their fabric section and a length of something 40% off caught my eye. Love at first sight! I went straight home and measured the openings. I needed 10 yds of fabric to cover both sets. Back to Hobby Lobby, where the gal cutting fabric wasn't sure there was still 10 yds on the roll; it was a very exciting few minutes as she unrolled, measuring it out yard by yard...
I bought the 11 yards left on the roll. Took it home, washed it and waited for an opportunity to make a huge mess in the TV room. One panel is now hanging. I love it.
The fabric is half the weight of the old stuff, so they don't take up as much room. They're completely different and add a much needed dash of color to the room, which is all browns and greens.
I'm trying to talk Jay into a nice, handsome, contemporary recliner but he seems addicted to his fugly, fat, cheap one. Yes, I agree that if you much choose, comfort is more important than style but who says you have to choose one or the other? You can have both! I empathize with Frasier Crane.
We've lived in this house for 30 years and have redone something in every room, including total gut jobs of both bathrooms and the kitchen and adding a new 3/4 bath downstairs. The TV room has had all new windows, sliding doors replacing one set, the wood burning stove replaced with a gas insert, new carpet, a new counter on the built ins, new ceiling, new fan and paint...the last thing to do is replace the white brick fireplace wall. 28 years ago, I built the mantel, which you can see above. It spans the wall and at least gives some function to what was probably a state of the art 'feature wall' back in the late 70s, early 80s. It's awful. The bricks are uneven dust catchers, painted white so they always look filthy. Of course, they are always filthy, which doesn't help. I want to get rid of all the brick and build a nice, stone or tile fireplace surround with floor to ceiling book shelves on either side. Oddly enough, I plan to fill said shelves with books. Sure, a few of them will hold some of my massive DVD collection (I refuse to be held prisoner by whatever streaming apps will allow me to watch...and it's none of Amazon's bidness what I'm watching, either) and one or two shelves may hold photos but I'm constantly amazed by decorating shows and magazine spreads where shelves are filled with nothing but stupid knick knacks. Where do people keep their books if not in the book case?? The day I realized that most people don't own books is the day I realized I don't identify with the vast majority of the human race at all. I grew up in a house with 2 libraries, 6 bedrooms which all had bookcases packed with books and even so, every room in the house had books stacked in corners. Every one of those books had been read by someone who lived there. And don't even ask about the magazines.
I'd rather live in a house without furniture than a house without books.
Fortunately, I don't have to choose.