Peeling Away the Layers

     It has been a long time since I posted. Many things have happened since then. I got over Sickness Crud 2011, and came out basically unscathed with a minor sinus infection that was easily ousted by Senor Zithromax, compliments of the dear Dr. B.

     My husband made a 10 hour round trip journey to Rumford, Maine, to pick up my sister's old furniture to deck out our little nest. This thus, created a cleaning frenzy and a intense desire a perfect opportunity to shed ourselves of non-functional decor..a.k.a clutter.  When our children were young, we saved every stitch of artwork that they brought home, and it went on the wall with tacks, tape and whatever else we could find.
There it remained collecting dust, dirt and age. To be perfectly honest, it was OK in the beginning, but as time wore on it drove me bananas.

     Once the furniture was in place, it just magnified the need to paint the walls. Years of tobacco smoke had yellowed the walls, and dusting up there was never really high on my list of things to do. As I sat on the nice furniture surveying my chaotic walls, I made the decision to stencil.

     I was under the impression that stenciling was a rather simple task. Tape it up there, paint it and then take it down. So I had this brilliant idea that I would stencil "Live, Laugh, Love" on the beams. Ya right!!! I went to YouTube, for my online instructions to just about anything, watched the videos on stenciling, and the very next day, returned the letter stencil and the tiny jar of "stencil" paint, and exchanged it for a repeating pattern or rather a beginner's stencil and a bigger jar of paint.

     When we started we were under the impression that this would be a fairly easy job, nope!!, it took us four days to do two beams. You just can't blindly go stenciling. But it looked fantastic, and then inspired us to paint the walls. That is partly why, I haven't been around, because for the first time, in a really long time I am enjoying a clean living room.

     The weather is getting better here in Vermont, in fact I can see the ground and the annoying spring birds have returned to tweet noisily outside my window, far earlier than I would like. My son just turned 15 and now is eligible for a driver's permit. I am actually going to let my husband field that entire experience. I still look at my teenager and see that precious chubby cheeked toddler, and I am having a hard time grasping him operating a huge metal box with wheels. Perhaps I should sedate myself through the whole process.

     The youngest has his first small fry game tonight~so the being over scheduled season is upon us. Amazing, in the winter you can't wait for the warm weather, so you can rush out and overbook yourself for every activity there is, only to complain that you miss the quiet solitude of having nothing to do but watch the snow accumulate. I must admit at times I enjoy nothing to do, and at the same time enjoy the freedom of the nice weather and longer days.

     With Mother's Day on the horizon, I thought this would be a perfect time to remind my boys that it is merely one week away, and I do enjoy sparkly jewelry and  perfume step out of my Blogging hibernation, and come back to share more of my adventures in chefdom, motherhood and life.

Incidentally, this is my new super fantastically clean living room, devoid of any remaining hoarding type paraphernalia that I so lovingly threw out. :)