Kitchen yesterday

Kitchen today

I like the new blinds. I'm undecided on the wall color.

Fiery Red

For better of for worse, that is now the color of my kitchen. Let's hope when it dries it will be the actual color I wanted. This seems to be a pattern with me lately. The last 2 rooms I painted, I hated the color until the next day when it was dry, then I loved it. Love may have met her match on this one because it's going to have to improve a lot overnight before I love it. Right now I'm wondering, "what have I done?" This was a lot of work! I had to prime everything gray so the red paint wouldn't look pink. That took 4 hours. Then I had to leave and go play at our band concert tonight. I came home and started painting again. I had to put 2 coats on because you could see the primer underneath. you can still see it in places, but I"m hoping when it dries that will disappear.

The picture is my living room. It was a weird pink color that was supposed to be "cappucino". I painted it last week "Hazelnut cream". I also took down the aluminum blinds and put up a light filtering pleated shade and then bought some sheer curtains to put over (for extra privacy since you can see through the shade). I think it looks tons better than the way the room was before. I love the pleated shade. I was going to get wood blinds, but then decided to go with something more airy and light. Oh and by the way, if you need blinds or any kind of strange window covering, check out Justblinds.com. I got everything from them. Their prices are WAY less than any of the big home stores, they will custom make them to your window size, and their customer service is awesome! If you aren't sure of a color, they will send you samples, and they get mailed pretty quick so you can decide what you want. Just my take. I happened upon their website and liked their stuff so I decided to order from them. (plus free shipping!)

Well I guess that's it. I didn't play very well tonight. I think I let my reed dry out and then didn't have any water to soak it in. There was a two hour time lapse between when I soaked it and when we actually played. I felt like I was blowing into a 2X4 all night! Some other people didn't play well either, but it wasn't because of their reed drying out. I won't even go there.

Have a nice Friday. I'll post my Fiery Red Kitchen just as soon as it's up and runnin'!

Old, dirty, aluminum blinds

New, pretty, wood blinds

Things I learned today

1. Don't buy 7 For All Mankind jeans on ebay. They are probably fake
2. rub soap on a screw before trying to drive it into wood


#1 isn't worthy of elaboration, so I'll just skip to #2. I got a partial order of my wood blinds today, so I thought I would spend an hour or two installing them. WRONG!!! It took me 3 hours just to install one set! Now I understand the big deal about drills. My way was always to hammer a nail into the wall and use that hole for the screw. Well, that doesn't work so well on window sills....there is wood underneath. I finally had to squash all fear I had of The Boyfriend's Drill and use it. It worked much better, but I still couldn't get the screws in all the way. I managed to get the blinds up in my office without having to have the screws in all the way. They may crash down at 3am and scare the bejesus out of me, but right now they are up, as evidenced by the photo. So then, I installed another set on my kitchen door. Those absolutely had to have the screw in all the way. After many, many minutes of frustration, I read on the instructions in small print, "rubbing a bar of soap on the screw will drive it in easier". Oh yeah right. How stupid. Out of desperation, I tried it. IT WORKS!! Holy Cow! This could take HOURS off the time it will take me to install the rest of my blinds! Drill + Soap= the secret to installing blinds. My new found talent will serve me well and save me lots of money, but I think I'll keep my day job (which right now is non-existent!).

I'll still probably wake up tomorrow with an acute case of lateral epidondyllitis