I fucking hate painting.

Sigh.  I forgot how much I hate to paint a room.  It fucking sucks.  From the tedious prep work through to the clean up.
If you know anything about me, you know that I am a weird combo of a perfectionist and a lazy ass.  So I am looking for reasons that I can't do a job and normally it's because of abnormally high standards.  I am also ALWAYS looking for a good short cut....
First of all, the room I was painting had issues.  It was previously a minty light green and was last painted before our daughter was born - so over 6 years ago.  The previous owners had EVERY surface in this house covered in wall paper.  To top it off, when we removed the wall paper, some of the walls were smooth and some were textured.  So skim coating was a must. 
So this was the second time around for skim coating - which if you don't know what skim coating  is, be thankful and just know it means DUST.  The kind of dust that is so tiny it will break your fucking vacuum, the kind of dust that gets into your ears and mouth and under your fingernails.

Here's a taste of that dust I was talkng about - and this is after I ruined a vacuum with it.  (Ok, in all honesty, I ruined this vacuum with that kind of dust a while ago... and the white streaks are not dust it's like chalk marks from the dust...)



 My husband was nice enough to keep the kids out of my hair.  I spent ALL damn day doing this. Normally the weekends for me mean actually sitting on my ass and enjoying it - so actually doing something for the house was a bit of a stretch.  The mess was kind of overwhelming - I stopped and decided to take a photo after all the painting was done, especially because the job wasn't done.

 It was at this point that I just wanted to fucking stop - but had to put the room back together...
Keep in mind that my laziness created more work for me, because I spent the entire day stepping over this pile of crap.

One would think that when I realized this at the start of the job, that I would have picked the shit up off the floor - but no. 

I'm actually surprised that it wasn't a bigger disaster because I didn't do any kind of taping.  What a waste of time.  I hate taping and then the paint seeps under it anyways because I always have a false sense of security with tape and go apeshit painting.

Sooo I had drips that needed to be washed up - and the number of times I did this meant that the rag became saturated and ended up leaving a white paint haze on the floor.  I don't fuck around with the wood floors, so I ended up washing and scrubbing them with a brush ala Cindrella to make sure all of the film was off.  (I even sang "Sing sweet nightingale!  Ahhhhhhl around you" while scrubbing.)

Phew.  All done.  Like I said.  I fucking hate painting.  I didn't even go into all the weird blobs, drips etc. that I was left with - not to mention what a crap job the trim ended up being.  Whatever.  It's done.  The room is fucking blue and not green.

It's Soup!

Well, I don't know about you, but every time I walk past the bags of dried beans in the veggie aisle, I get all kinds of homesteader fantasies about it.  I love especially the bags that have a huge assortment of beans and then a packet of seasonings for you to make soup out of.

In years past, I have bought these packets of soup mix and then had to throw them out because of how long they sat in the pantry.  Well, I bought a soup mix recently and it was beautiful.  All different colors and sizes of beans and lentils with a tiny packet of spice.  All I had to add was some Italian sausage...  It sounded easy enough.   I was having some friends over for a playdate and lunch - and I thought this hearty soup would be perfect! Working on my inspired momentum I decided to make this for our lunch.
I pictured that the soup would retain this look and have a clear broth  when made - that you could actually see the wholesomeness and my homesteader resourcefulness in the bowl.

Well, this is what it looks like when prepared according to package directions.

Seriously - I cleaned up some vomit in my car in December and it looked just like that.  The same color, the same ratio of liquid to solid.  I could make some and sell it to Hollywood as a vomit prop!
And guess what?  You get to soak those fucking beans overnight for this loveliness.  and rinse them.  and soak them, and rinse and soak and rinse and soak.  Alright, I am exaggerating, but still this was a jobby soup.
So it turned out looking exactly like vomit.  EXACTLY.  And one of those friends who was coming over for lunch - well, her family has had the stomach flu no less than 3 times in the past 3 weeks...  She was really ready to chow down on my bowl of vomit soup.
Ok.  So it looks terrible and is a lot of work - but what about the taste?  It tastes like eating a can of refried beans that have been sitting in the sun all day - and it actually is a lot of work to chew and more work to swallow.

Soooo.  Bean soup.  At least I'm fucking over it.

I'm back!

Like a bad dream about missing all of your classes and it's the final, I am back.  I've been busy motherfuckers!  I've been on Pinterest -enough said.

Anyways, I wanted to go ahead and share my latest project.  This is a VERY VERY special project.  I started it before my first child was born, before I was even pregnant, which means this thing has been in the works for over 7 years!!! I think we even moved this project from the city house in all of its pieces and parts.  I hope that you are ready to be impressed with beauty, perfection, intricacy....

 What?  You are underwhelmed?   We had a huge amount of corks for over 7 years with the excuse that it was for the tray.  Let this be a lesson to all of you Pinterest fantasizers, sometimes the cork art is best left at a glass urn that you throw a used cork into.

Yes, when I saw the kit in the catalog, there were no stupid gaps between corks, let alone half inch ones, but as we all know, the promise of crafts is in the seeming perfection, and the disappointment is in the reality that to get it to look perfect you would have to spend a long ass time sanding fucking corks.  I chose gaps. 
I am so glad that we paid to move this and that I had this project hanging over my head for over 7 years.  It's so totally worth it!