I wanna go home

Why is there a picture of my foot covered in Calamine? It is to demonstrate that after 2 months of non stop bites and poison ivy, and no sleeping because I want to scratch my leg off, I have a good reason why I want to stop pretending that I live in Massachusetts and I want to come home to California. For some reason every bug and deadly plant in this state wants me to leave as well.

I am done for a while...

Since this house is way too big for us (what was *I* thinking when we bought it????) I decided on dedicating the empty rooms to visitors. So, I went to an antique shop and I found room numbers from an old hotel (although the guy couldn't give me any good stories behind the numbers). We put them up last night:



Behind room 1848 is Guest room 2 (Guest room 1 is bigger and has its own bath. We charge more). I just painted this room a really pretty color that doesn't really show up in these pictures so you will all have to just come and visit. I give my blog readers a BIG discount.



Here you can see the color a little better





Room 1849 is the command station from which I am working out of to get all the other rooms done. It will be my art room when I drag my yarn up here from the basement.






Room 1850 is our room. We haven't done much with it but I like it anyhow.



We still have to get a flat screen TV and get rid of the clunker. If you are observant you can see that I have a trial swatch of color over by the balcony (that looks down into the den). Still trying to figure out the color for the den.



Room 1851 is the Guest room 1. My personal favorite.



Here is Guest Room 1's bathroom. I just painted it a mind numbing blue. I may have gone overboard.



And there you have the second floor of this house. I will do the kitchen pictures in a few days. It is all done and really came out perfect (at least perfect for me).

I am pooped.

My god son Larry

This is Larry my god son. I made myself his god mother because I love him so much. He belongs to my pal Karo. She doesn't mind if I say he is my god son because she knows that beside her I love him the most in the whole world. Mr Yarn wouldn't let me have my own Lemur so I have to get all my fun by looking at pictures that Karo sends me.

Larry was hot so he had a popsicle. He has good taste because he chose an orange popsicle and not something stupid like cherry.



Larry rocks!

The indignity

Esther went to the groomer for the first time today. When she came out she had two purple bows in her hair. I don't know if they noticed but she is a SAINT BERNARD not a poodle. I was expecting a bandanna or something. Poor girl. She muttered all the way home about how she didn't want to get out of the car because the neighbors might see her.

I think MY day is worse than hers though. It is about 90 degrees today and it is so humid it feels like you have to swim through the air just to move. I popped in my ipod and got to work on painting doors. I was so happy. Just as I got to the middle of the guest bathroom door I turned around and made a critical error. I bumped into the ladder that had the paint sitting on it. One gallon of white paint went flying around a bathroom that is no bigger than a closet. It got on everything including me. I cleaned up most of it but still have a nasty reminder.



So, this weekend we are pulling out the vanity and putting in a new one (we were going to do that anyhow). My sister and her husband are staying here next weekend and I want it done before they get here. Being me sucks right now.

Paint me stupid...

I am on a huge painting spree. Everything in this house needs to be painted because the people that lived here before didn't really like to see anything around them. They painted everything so dark that I swear they must have been moles. So I am on a kick to lighten it up with some color and with some warmth. This is a terrible picture of the true color but if you saw it in person I swear you would love it (or maybe not but *I* do).



So since I am on a roll I decided to paint all the closet doors which were in dire need of some paint. As I moved on I thought "Well, if I am doing the closet doors I may as well do the doors too" This is not to mention that there are about 30 doors upstairs. So I paint my first door in the guest bedroom and I am feeling all smug. "Why should I hire a painter, I am doing a great job myself". I get off the ladder to admire my handywork and it hits me in the face.



The damn door jams aren't white. They are a nondescript dirty something or other. Now I have to paint all the door jams and windowsills too.

Just how *I* wanted to spend my first sweltering summer in Massachusetts.

Took a break

We took a break Sunday and stopped working on the house. Had to get out of here for a while. So, we decided to go see if we could go find ourselves some fried clams. After all we are near the fried clam mecca. We headed to Ipswich to see for ourselves. It was between the Clam Shack and Woodman's. We got to the Clam Shack first so that is where we ended up eating. The line was out the door as we expected but it was well worth the wait. I have to say that I am now a fan of whole belly clams. We will hit up Woodman's next time. As a matter of fact I am sure sooner or later we will hit up all the clams shacks we can. Then again, if I could find some steamed clams I would be happy too. I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of all that is fried.

Summer

Had nothing to do yesterday so I decided to go pick blueberries at a local farm. Tougas Farm was really cool and it was the first day of blueberry picking. So I grabbed my neighbor Cathy and off we went. Between the two of us we picked 15lbs. Plenty to make jam and maybe more. So I got up early and started on the task of making a Blueberry Buckle (never heard of a buckle till I moved here. Then again, I never was in the habit of going to a farm for the heck of it in the middle of the week because there was nothing better to do).

After an all day project of making buckle



Sorta scary when I noticed that the buckle blends into our new counters. Oh well, less to clean...

Then came the jam. Argh. I tripled the recipe which made it an hour of stirring. I was glad to be done.



Voila



For those of you that notice (waving to mom) the walls are getting tiled on Monday. I can't wait for this damn kitchen to be done.

I am starting to feel like "Little Home on the Prairie or is that Green Acres? Scooped a big ole frog out of the pool last night (realllly big frog) and saw my first dragonfly this morning. So there is diversity here.... wish I could get basil on a consistent basis.

Knitting sighting!

I finished the Drops Alpaca baby sweater for a Laurel's niece Hannah. This sweater was pretty fun to knit until I had to join the tiny sleeve into the body. I would make this sweater again.

Firefly

It was the most amazing thing I have seen in a long time. Just when I was getting so homesick I could hardly stand it, Rich called me outside to see something. There in the backyard were blinking lights that looked like magical little fairies. My first firefly sighting. I felt like I was 5 years old again. It was beautiful. I had to stop myself from running into the house to get a jar to catch them.