Hair Day

I don't know yet if it's a good hair day, or a bad hair day; I just colored my hair and it's not dry yet. Me dyeing my hair is nothing new; I've colored it a lot. It's had blonde highlights, it's been red, it's been brown. But for several years now it's mostly been red—it would have saved me a lot of trouble if I'd just been born with red hair, because I love it!

I was born a blondie.
(Check out the cool car in the neighbor's driveway!)

This is close to what it looked like until I was probably ten or so. (It's a little reddish-looking because it's an old picture.)

This fabulous picture, apparently taken when I was half-dead first thing in the morning, shows my real hair color by the time I was a teenager. (I bet this was Christmas morning.)

And this is about when I first started coloring my hair—at Wendell's prompting.

Lately I've been thinking that it would save me a lot of trouble if I'd just go back to my own, real hair color—no more dyeing. (Although I am getting a few gray strands, and I'm not ready to go there yet. So I might still keep playing with the color.) Anyway, while I was at the store yesterday with Brandon and Ryan I told them to help me choose a color that was close to my real hair color. Brandon (age 16) says, "I have no idea what your real hair color is." Ryan (age 15) agreed. So I told them to look at the two to three inches of new growth since the last time I colored; that is the real color. My nice teenage boys humored me and we picked "medium rich brown."

And this morning I did it; medium rich brown all over my hair. I even dyed my eyebrows because . . . why not? I just finished showering after doing the whole hair-color process. It looks dark! Which means I may have come fairly close the the truth here. I'll have a pretty good idea when it's dry.

Sadly my camera is still missing! I have this picture in my mind's eye of it being about a foot down, right in the middle of the kitchen trash that went out four weeks ago. Oh man! I really hope not! But this means you'll have to wait and see my "new" hair color in person. So did I have a good hair day or a bad one? We'll see.

Chaos!

I wanted to post pictures with this blog, but I can't because my camera is lost in all the chaos of redecorating. My house already looks like it's been ransacked, so it hasn't helped me much to ransack the house in search of the camera. :-(

But I'll tell you what I'm doing anyway.

First of all I had this wonderful idea that I should paint the railings in my house black instead of white. It was a really good idea, because it looks amazing. Unfortunately I also had the idea that spray-painting them would be cheaper and easier than using a brush. Not only that, but since it would be very difficult to remove the rails, I decided to do it while they were still in place—right smack between my kitchen and living room. I will tell you right now that a person who decides to spray paint anything in the middle of the house is a dork and should probably be shunned. OR maybe they are a dork and should be pitied and helped in any way possible.

Anyway, I draped the living room off with lots of plastic sheeting and began spraying from the kitchen side of the world. And guess what I did? I didn't even think to turn off the fan blowing from the hallway. So one can of paint later I had 90% of one side of the rail painted, and all the paint that dried in the air settled all over my entire kitchen. Clean up took about an hour.

The next day I got marginally smarter—just a little—and bought more plastic and was more careful in my draping, and turned the fan off. Two cans of paint later I still had a lot more to finish. On the third day I did amazing things with that plastic sheeting (I really got to be an expert in draping off the house) and used up another one-and-a-half cans of paint to finish the rails. Finally. Except the next day I found some spots that were missed. Urrrgh!  Was it cheaper? No. $19 for the spray paint and $15 for the plastic; a can of paint would have been about $5, and a sponge brush is only about 50 cents. Was it easier or faster? No! I wouldn't have had to do so much draping, and it probably would have only taken one day if I'd brushed it on. Does it look fantastic? Well, yes. It does.

Once that was all finished, I cut the pieces for the kitchen floor (a full day's work) and put them in. It looks all right—too bad I can't show you a picture. :-(

Then I was ready to start on the kitchen counters. But before I could do that I had to fix some leaks under the sink and in the faucet. It turns out that I'm no good at plumbing; everything I touched broke. So I called my brother Gregory and he fixed the faucet and the shut-off valve that I broke. Unfortunately the next day there was still some leaking, but Greg was at work so I called my father-in-law and he fixed it. Yay! Now I could get to work on the counters.

Day One: The first thing I did was remove the kitchen sink. (Since there's no photo, you will have to imagine a big hole where the sink should be.) This gave me major deja vu, even though I've never removed a sink before. Next I finished sanding and washing the counters, and finally I could put down the black primer.

Day Two: Today was painting day! I sponged and painted on my counter colors and, I have to say, it looked pretty darn good.

Day Three:  Top coat. Twice. And I am done with the Giani products.

Now I had to decide whether to use marine spar varnish over the whole thing. I'd read a few countertop finishing sites and blogs that said this was a good idea. Marine spar is supposed to be fairly heat-proof and, obviously, waterproof, and very tough. After discussing with Bruce, I decided to do it. Now the one blog that really persuaded me to use the marine spar said that the varnish was thick, "like honey," and needed 24 hours of cure time between coats. What it didn't say was that it has a yellowish tint, but I'm OK with the color; instead of whites I have golds. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it still looks good.

It also didn't say that it's impossible to put the varnish on without leaving brush strokes behind. That's not so OK. I did my absolute best to not leave brush strokes, but . . .

After four days of curing (and an entire week with no kitchen sink), yesterday I still had to put on another coat of spar varnish, and I was feeling pretty irritated about the brush strokes. So I got online and started looking up tips on marine spar. And guess what? All the woodworking people (not the cute little moms who paint their counters) say that you need to thin the varnish by 15% with mineral oil if you want to brush it on smoothly. And also that, once cured, it's nearly impossible to sand out the brush strokes—and yes, they need to be sanded out. Well, that would have been nice to know. I sanded and sanded and sanded and got nowhere. So, in irritation, I slapped on a much-too-thick final coat. This means it's going to take longer to cure. Arrrgh! 

Well, besides having no kitchen sink, and not being able to use the dishwasher (and washing dishes in the bathtub for a week—rednecks!), everything that I normally keep on the counters is on the kitchen table. So are the rice-cooker, the electric frying pan and the crockpot—my current cooking devices because the stove is also pulled out of place and sort of out of commission while this project is in force. The dirty dishes are piling up on the table too, hidden amongst everything else. I can't really put anything back on the counters until they are completely cured, and who really knows when that will be? My big plan is to bring a card table into the kitchen and put all the extra stuff on that so we can use the kitchen table again. I'm thinking this will last one or two months, just to be safe. But I will go ahead and re-install the sink, probably tomorrow, because it's getting kind of ridiculous. (By the way, removing the sink was probably the easiest, quickest part of this entire project. I anticipate that replacing it will be equally simple. I hope.)

Oh, and did I say that the ceiling fan/light has been removed? I was taking down the fan blades so I could clean them and Bruce thought that would be a good time to hang the fan correctly. It's been loose since we moved in, and every time the kids run the fan I'm pretty sure it will fall down on someone, chop off their head, and smash their brains in all at the same time. So fixing it is a pretty good idea. Unfortunately, Bruce couldn't finish that project before he had to go out of town this week, so here I am with only a half-lit kitchen and the light fixture/fan sitting on the living room floor. (I'm not a plumber; not an electrician.)

On top of all that, my peaches are ripe and falling all over the ground. Seriously, we've probably lost more than 200 peaches. So this week I've been picking peaches and then going to Melanie's house to do my canning.

So, yeah. We are in utter. complete. chaos. And my camera's lost.

In Busy-ness

I have had lots to write about the last few weeks, but it's not necessarily stuff I'm ready to write about. So instead I'll talk about my latest projects.

You might think I'd have put out a shingle and my new projects would be all about sewing. But if you thought that, you might be wrong. I have been asked to make a wedding dress, four sets of Raggedy Ann & Andy's, and a Santa Claus coat, but those are not the biggest projects around here right now; they are still in negotiation.

No, actually there's a good possibility that we will be moving. Bruce is looking at a job in Vernal, Utah—a 3 1/2 hour drive from here. Commuting is out. of. the question. So he's gone up there frequently on business trips and has done some house-hunting as well. The trouble is that there's a lot of work available in the oil-fields in the Uintah Basin right now; this means that there's an influx of people working and making some good money, and they have made housing scarce and expensive. Plus we are looking for a house that fits eight to ten people and our budget.

Something on the floor is really funny. I wonder what it was?

The other trouble is that we would have to sell our house here in West Valley City. I don't know what the housing market is like here, but school has started and winter is on the way. So I don't know . . .
And I have to get the house looking presentable. So a lot of projects that "can wait until later" suddenly can't really wait until later. And those are the projects I'm talking about.

First of all, I'm re-resurfacing the kitchen counters. The finish has chipped and peeled away again, in places, so I contacted the company; they stand by their product; I'll give them that. They are sending me another free kit to redo the counters.

Oh, look! My new counters arrived today!
I've got to say, this company has amazing customer service.

Last week, while I waited for the kit to arrive I worked on stripping all the old surfacing off.

You can see from the "before" picture that my house was built in the late 80's. Mauve countertops?

the gradual deterioration of my "granite" counters

I'm also finishing the kitchen floor. When we bought the house we left a couple of unfinished places on the kitchen floor—one is under the railing because we were going to do wood-railing and have a nice . . . hm. Not sure what the real name is . . . a pretty board that borders the floor and sits under the railing.

And we left another bare spot where a smaller railing was supposed to be, but then we decided that was a stupid place for a rail and never even put it back up. (This is why we had the top step re-done with all of the remodeling.) After a little thought (several years ago, actually) I figured out how to finish it beautifully. Well, last week I went to Lowe's and saw some flooring on a 75%-off clearance; talk about good timing!

So last Saturday Bruce and I (mostly Bruce) worked on the floor.

See how helpful I am?
(By the way, I really like this man. A lot!)

Bruce cuts the edges of the floor into a smooth, straight line. He's using the level, screwed to the floor, as a rip-fence.

And here he is, prying that front facing off. But why? ;-)

And here is the floor, all cut out (with straight edges) and ready to go. You'd think that that corner was square, but it's not—which makes things a little more difficult. And it's not our fault either. That would be the fault of the people who originally built this house at the speed of light.

And I did some more work on the counters.

I found it was lots easier to sand the counters if I could put my full body-weight into the job.

I have reached the conclusion that the finish really should work as well as they say, because there are spots that I can't even remove with an electric sander and 60-grit sandpaper! The question is, why does it stick in some places, but not others? And how can I prep the counters so that the finish will stick everywhere?

Once the floor and counters are done  I want to paint the living room and kitchen—another project I've been wanting to do for ages. And I'm going to touch-up some of the paint on the black cabinets. When the house is ready to show, it should look just the way I want it to so that I can live here forever. That just figures! If it sells, then I can start over with a new house. If we can find one to live in.

Anyway, that's what I'm up to these days. I'll show pics as I finish each project.

An Afternoon in the Park

We are not much of an outdoor family. Especially in the summer. Then we just stay inside, trying to escape some of the heat. But when it rains . . .

Brandon had been listlessly watching TV. When it started raining hard he said he was going to go out. It didn't take much convincing to get the girls to go out too. We all splashed around in the deep water in the gutters, and walked along in the rain. Then the kids all decided to sit down and block the flow of water in the gutter. (That's when I thought of the camera.) They all sat there for a minute or so, then Brandon opened his floodgate and let the water flow to Jessica.

Jessica let the water out on Rachel.

Rachel let the water go to Kaylie . . .

And I was waiting at the end to take advantage of all that water.
(Ryan took some pictures and then went back to play on the computer. Boooo!)

Then the kids started running along the non-level sidewalk at the neighborhood park.

The girls went to play on the playground.

And when we are all nice and cooled down (actually I was cold!), we went back home again.

I love rainy days!

Editing

I have been working on re-editing my cookbook. I started writing it almost as soon as I got married, and now I have about 300 pages and probably more than 325 recipes collected. The idea was that I'd have a cookbook my kids could use as they grew up and learned to cook. And, of course, I want to give them copies when they get out on their own.

Well, guess what? My kids are going out on their own! So I decided it's time to stop collecting new recipes and bind the old, tried-and-true ones into a real book—instead of the home-printed, loose-leaf-bound thing I've had all this time. At first I started copying it into Blurb, which is where I go to print my very lovely blog-books every year. But by the time I'd entered probably 90% of my recipes into their program—editing as I went—I realized that this was going to be a $120 cookbook. I wouldn't get myself a $120 cookbook unless it was truly fabulous—which mine is! But I certainly can't get nine fabulous, $120 cookbooks so that each of my kids can have one too. So I looked into other programs and printing options.

I think I know how I'm going to publish my tome now (and it will probably only cost around $30 per book), but it means I need to edit it again. Which probably isn't a bad thing. Unfortunately I have to edit it in MS Word, which kind of is a bad thing. This means I'm copying it back from Blurb into MS Word, and scanning for errors again as I go. Not bad. The bad part is that Word keeps saying it can't save my files because of a missing something or other, a corrupt file, or a missing pathway. And then it deletes my work entirely and shuts down the program! When I look around there is no "2014 cookbook" document to be found—not even in the trash! There are no words to say how angry and frustrated this makes me. Even when Word claims to have "rescued" my document, this is all I see:

Wow! Thanks for saving that for me, MS Word!

Not particularly helpful.

So I came up with a system: I started a new cookbook document on one of my thumb-drives, but then saved it on another drive as well. This is how my editing process goes now: I copy the title of a recipe from Blurb to Word, then I immediately save it to both drives. Then I copy the ingredients list for the recipe and immediately save it to both drives. Then I copy the instructions and immediately save it to both drives. If I have a picture to add, I add it and then immediately save it to both drives. Then I re-read the recipe, make sure everything is correct and formatted to look good and immediately save it to both drives. I can get through two to four recipes before my glitch decides to delete the entire file. But even though it has disappeared from one drive, I still have it saved on the backup drive. So as soon as I open it up on one drive I save it to the other drive from which it was deleted. Then I start the process again.

Now, every time Word shuts down it adds another temporary file to my thumb-drive which, for some reason, my computer doesn't want me to delete. So my list of files looks like this:

Every. Single. One of those things listed is a temp file that my computer insists I can't delete. (36 of them in that particular editing session.)

I did finally discover that if I eject the drive and plug it back in, the computer will let me delete the rotten files. So at least my thumb-drives aren't going to end up littered with a gazillion stupid temp files forever and ever.

It's taken me nearly 25 years to collect my recipes, stories and tips. It looks like it may take another 25 to get the book ready for printing. But when it's done it will be awesome! Don't it make you wish you had a copy?