Paint Colors

Clem came home from the animal hospital yesterday after spending 2 nights.

He doesn't seem to be doing too well, but I'm trying to remain optimistic.

To keep my mind off things, I made a paint swatch chart on a piece of wood I had laying around.

It's helpful to see all of our wall colors in one place.

It's also helpful because I was able to get rid of about 70% of my paint swatch collection and choosing a Master Bedroom, Bathroom, Other Bathroom and Hallway color will be a lot easier now.

It's funny that we've seemed to settle in with cool colors over warm colors.

I don't really think of myself as a "cool color" person.

But I can't stand red in our home and orange is a terribly difficult color to get right.

Plus I figure that work and errands and social activities are so full of stimuli that I wouldn't want to come home to a loud color palate after doing all that "life" stuff.

So greys and blues (and soon purples) it is.

Our living room is Canyon Echo by Glidden. It only took me about 7 months to find THE perfect grey. I'd highly recommend it if you don't get a lot of natural light in your room or if your windows catch a lot of greenery reflection (grass, trees) because it has subtle pink undertones and it's perfect. Greys with green undertones irk me like you wouldn't believe.

 Today we also finished painting the trim in the living room.

Okay, that's a lie. But I was able to take a photo of part of the room that was finished.

PS- that pedestal table used to be an ugly red-brown color with lots of scratches and a crack. I had a before picture but I deleted it by mistake. Anyway, I got it for $5 and it's one of my favorite thrift rehab scores.

Okay well that's all for now. How is your weekend going?

Move Along if You Aren't a Cat Person.

So I read a few months ago that if you want to attract more traffic to your blog, there are a few things that you do and don't do.

One of the things that you don't do is write about your cats.

I can see that...a lot of people dislike cats.

If you've read the blog for awhile, you probably know that I was never a fan until I found our 2 cats last fall. So I totally get it.

I figured I'd share that disclaimer before I went on to talk about Clem & Moon today.

Moonshadow's fur started to become matted a little while back. We didn't know it was matted at the time since we've never owned cats. A part of her fur was sticking up near her tail, I thought she was cut or wounded due to a dispute she had with Clementine.

Well it turns out she had gotten matted and long story short, Joe took her in for what he kept calling "spa treatment". 

All week he had been joking that she would look like a lion when she was done.

Or at least I thought he was joking...

Although she loves it and is so much spunkier since her new 'do, it was really causing quite a bit of tension between the cats.

Clementine hissed and growled at her. Puked from stress (on that nice white flokati rug). Fought her. He wouldn't rest.

This is how she looked before:

I took the photo a few days ago. That's her new friend, Shedder. They sit and admire each other for a few minutes each day. Clementine hates that, too.

Needless to say, Clem has been hating life lately.

And now he is at the Emergency Vet, hating life even more.


He has a urinary blockage and had to get a catheter.

They asked if he's been stressed at all lately.

Between Shedder, house guests, traveling and being followed around by a lion, yeah- he has been.

I hope my handsome boy is okay. He's only 11 months old and we were told by the first vet that we took him to that his weight is a "little extreme". That's also what may have contributed to this whole problem.


We've been trying to get him to lose weight but it hasn't been going so well, despite feeding him less food.


Anyway, we were supposed to go on a camping trip today. We probably won't go. That makes it vacation cancellation number 3 for me this summer.


Lame.

For now I will play with Moonshadow because she keeps looking for Clementine. I always wondered if they'd notice when the other was away...

Lamp

I picked up this Jonathan Adler-esque lamp last fall at Home Goods.
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$20 for the base and shade.

Thankfully I don't live anywhere near a Home Goods store, otherwise I'd be there like once a week.
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Anyway, I never really liked the shade because it didn't go well anywhere in the house, but I haven't been able to find the right shade for it so it's just been  sitting in a corner.

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Then I decided to use it in the office, but first I wanted to do something with the shade.
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So I painted it.

It didn't come out exactly as I'd envisioned, but that's fine because it's rare that something does.
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I wanted to go to the ReStore today but it's 40 miles away and I'm tired of driving, especially since I work right by the place. I had yesterday and today off and I ended up driving right by my work yesterday so today I'm taking a break from wasting so much time in the car.
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The other day I realized that I spend about 30,000 minutes in my car in a year which comes out to just under 3 full weeks. No wonder Joe and I can't find time to take vacations together!
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I haven't quite figured out how to feel okay about this, but I think what it comes down to is that we'll probably move closer to Madison in a couple of years.
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But that's far away, so for now I'll keep making our house our home and call it a day and pretend it doesn't bother me.

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I should have the room ready for a blog reveal by next week, hopefully! It's funny- we've lived here for just over a year and I still haven't shown any before & afters! Mostly because all of the rooms we've worked on are at 85% finished and are waiting on a few more details.

*Edit: I decided the lamp wasn't finished so I added another coat about 8 hours after I posted this...

.Okay, that's all. See you!

Painting

Sneak Peak:

We made the spontaneous decision to paint the 3rd bedroom the other day.

I wish I knew the color, but I don't and never will.
 

More on that soon.

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Edit: I had to come back to this post once I read it on the blog to say that no, I'm not pregnant. Nice try.

Notta Lotta

Hey! What's going on? Not a lot here. We have hardly stepped foot outside over the past 3 or 4 weeks. The backyard is a jumbled mess and I don't really care to look at it. Have I already mentioned this? I don't remember. I do remember thinking it on a daily (hourly?) basis, though. Anyway, reason being is that the mosquitoes are worse than one can imagine. Even with 3 layers of Natrapel draped over my skin, I still get bombarded with those hungry blood sippers. So I stay inside and let my garden grow into a weedy knotted pile of ugly. 

Most of my time off has been spent traveling to Illinois or entertaining a house guest and when I'm not doing that I'm usually at home resting my brain. Sometimes I feel bad about doing this, but I feel like I'm in transition right now so it's okay. 

I've been playing my bass guitar a little more lately. The "beginner" part of it all is kind of a bore, but I'm slowly getting to the point where it's fun.

Anyway, I just wanted to check in and say that I'm still here. A post with photos is to come. And we have been working (slowly) on a couple of projects, so those will show up soon too.