Thursday, February 12, 2009

Been a busy week..

As a family, we got all three sets of blinds up, and man do they make a HUGE difference. I love being able to have real light in the house without a ton of effort! And the amount that these darken and insulate the room with such large windows is really amazing. Worth every penny spent and more!

Anyway... my daughter has been in a very "pre-teen" stage this week... and school has been a bit like trying to pull teeth from a very angry, and alive, crocodile. Between that and home improvement, I simply haven't had the energy to stay up miniaturing. I did get a little bit more painting done, but I haven't gotten pictures of it yet, will post them as soon as I get a chance.

The good news, though, is that I have already scheduled my little one for an overnight with grandma and grandpa this weekend, so I will have all saturday and half of sunday to happily work on my miniatures, and I simply can't wait! Aparently this new hobby of mine is addictive....

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Finally... back to work on the house!

I finally managed to steal some time to work on the house again. After spending most of the afternoon putting up my daughter's new blinds, I basically locked myself in my bedroom, and spread crafting stuff all over the floor... and gaurded the door from my daughter fiercely. My hubby helped on the door guarding duty, and the house and it's build is still a suprise. I didn't take the pictures until after the evening's crafting, so it isn't an as-I-go thing, but they still show pretty much what was done.

First, I finished sanding the other piece I needed for the first framework build, and put a coat of white acrylic on it as a primer. Then, while that was drying, I got out the polycrylic I bought, and put two coats of it on the hardwood flooring. You can see in this first picture by the flash glare that it made it a lovely color, and made it nice and shiny and sealed. I also put two coats on one side of the inside window trim to give it a slight shine. I figured there was no good reason to gloss the other side, as it will need to adhere with the glue to the wall. I also painted the outside of the two walls (now that the second one's primer was dry) the light pink color I had planned. It took 2-3 coats until I was satisfied with color and coverage. The ground floor room of both inside walls was painted the darker pink accent color I picked. I also painted the ground floor room walls of the room divider. The dark pink took 3 coats to get it even slightly the right coverage, but the color definitely works out. I also glued on the inside window trim for one of the downstairs windows, and weighed it down for quite a while to make sure it was secure.

It doesn't appear by the pictures that I did a whole lot, however, all that took a few hours to get just right, so I do feel like I'm finally getting somewhere on the project... or at least the pile of wood in my closet is getting more colorful. *hehe*



As for a picture of my daughter's new blinds, that will have to wait until Monday, because it's too dark to get a good picture of them.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

My miniaturing weekend turns to...

Blind weekend. The vertical blinds we ordered because I was tired of the dusty blind and horrible curtain on the deck doors... and the cat had finally pulled apart the cheap horizontal blinds in the other two big windows ... well, the blinds arrived. Then, we had to wait for my dad to bring the step ladder he had borrowed back.. on his timetable.. which would make a tortoise proud. So, as soon as we were all able on saturday, we began pulling down the curtain and plastic-reed blind, and getting the window ready for the blinds. As simple as the instructions seemed... it didn't quite work out that way. Doing the outside mount with all the bracketing, measuring, and the fact that it was nearly flush with the air duct on the ceiling... made things rather .. interesting. It took us most of the day to put them up, but they make a huge difference on the room.

They look lovely, and it is so nice to be able to save electricity by opening the blinds instead of always turning on the light because the other blinds were such a pain to open and close. The cat thinks she's died and gone to heaven and has spent the rest of the day looking out the big window from every vantage point she can find - every level of the cat tower has been used for observation, as well as the entertainment center, and she even attempted to climb on my piled-up crafting desk. The rest of us were utterly exhausted, so we passed on putting the other two blinds up for the bedrooms. You can also see the cat tower, and the wooden puzzle caddy leaning against the front of it. ... Currently at work is a rare Puzz-3d (by Wrebbit) puzzle of Hobbiton from the Lord of the Rings. Obviously, you can't see it because it's packed up, but what fun to put together!

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Snow!!!

Well, last Wednesday (I posted this the 9th, but dated it wednesday) we got hit with a lovely blizzard-style storm, the likes of which I haven't seen in this area in quite a while. My husband was at work when it hit, so my daughter and I spent a lot of time looking out the window and worrying about him getting home. When it started we already had a good six inches of snow on the ground, which didn't help matters. The pictures are taken out my deck window, and show a neat timeline of the storm, so I figured I would post them.


By this point in the storm, we weren't really worried about my husband coming home, and a snapped a picture of my daughter doing her schoolwork on my atrocious-colored couch (hey it was free!). The cat had decided the sun really was not coming out for her, and the floor by the window, or her cat tower, was too cold, so she retreated to my room... and buried herself in the comforter. She seemed rather happy in her "comforter cave", and VERY unhappy to get bothered, as evidenced by the look on her face.
My daughter then decided she wanted to work in front of the window so she could see the storm better - you can see what's already accumulated on the deck (which is partially protected, and was completely bare at the beginning... that's just what was drifting onto it).
Here's where the storm started getting more interesting.. these pictures were taken less than an hour after the first ones, and as you can see... the landscape and cars are utterly covered.
Half an hour later, you can actually start seeing snowflakes in the pictures... it seems to be awfully hard to take pictures in the snow with a good camera, most the time the flakes are moving too fast to catch, visibility has to be really very low to actually see the snow coming down.

I realise this last picture is horribly dark, but it is a cute silhouette of my daughter and the cat waiting for my husband to get home. By this point in the storm, he'd left work a little early, and we were quite worried about him getting home. Aparently that worry translated to the cat, because if you look closely you can see her lurking on the tower right by the window, waiting for him to arrive home as well.

He got home alright, but was not able to go to work the next day.. so I got no time to work on miniatures then, either.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Mini break and pictures

My wrist got SO sore from all the furniture the other day, that my husband said I wasn't allowed to work on miniatures for a few days. I've had it in a brace, and it's starting to feel better finally, so I should be able to get back to work on it in a day or two.


I did go hunting down some stock photos from some of the things I mentioned in my furniture blog - the car, barn, and the playground furniture so I could at least show what they'll look like.

I've also noticed I actually have acquired a couple of followers, so *wave* hi!