Painting & Memories

This kitchen may look slightly messy, but it is greatly improved from just a few hours before!

I needed something mindless to do.

Something that required enough concentration to do a good job, but nothing that would require a great amount of creativity.

Something that could be interrupted by wanders out to the front porch, or taking a break to arrange and rearrange some area of the house, every addition getting it closer to being habitable. 

The kitchen is a big job – and one that really needs to be DONE so that I can get the boxes of kitchen “stuff” out of the den and start getting that room ready for quilters, too.

Everything needs to SHIFT – because the kitchen stuff is in the den, which means den stuff is in the dining room, etc.  Bags, boxes, totes and piles.

I love this kitchen, commercial range and all.

On a whim I brought a take & bake pizza over for my lunch and actually USED the oven for the first time.  Of course, it involved finding the manual and actually READING how to turn it on and heat it up.

(Will have to have this manual blown up and laminated for guests!)

My kitchen objective?

Re-paint to cover these pine knot stains.

These cabinets were originally from IKEA, and this is the “shabby chic, instantly vintage” style – to let the pine knots be visible to age the look of the cabinets.  I just think they look dirty.

And there was some wear around drawer and cabinet knobs from fingernails grabbing – and so I set in.

And as I painted, my mind wandered back to a much earlier time -

One of my first memories of my brother Mark was living in a little brown house on The Strand in Minnetonka, Minnesota. With a 5 year old and a 2 year old keeping her busy, my mom invented the summer "game" of Paint the House: giving us each a colorful plastic sand box pail full of water and a paint brush.


"Let's play Paint the House!" she said, our wet paint brushes making the old brown paint dark with soggy, dripping brush strokes. "Look, mama! We're doing it!" we exclaimed, so proud of our hard work.


It didn't occur to us that the water was evaporating just as quickly on the siding behind us, and the next day we would start the game of Paint the House all over again.


Yes. There were many tears that fell as I added another brush stroke over the kitchen cabinets, but this new fresh coat of paint covered the old pine knot stains on drawers and doors and made everything fresh… a new start.

Dad, me & Mark, Scott in front.

Flight arrangements have been made.  I leave for Arizona on Thursday the 13th.  I’ll stay until Wednesday the 19th.

Bedroom Switch.

To keep Jerry and Jean’s bedroom set together, I had to switch things to the largest bedroom.  I’m so happy seeing these pieces in bedroom number 2, the big bay window and side windows add so much light to this room.

Tall dresser on the wall at the right – Mona’s wash basin and pitcher on top.

Finally I feel this is the arrangement i need for this room with plenty of floor space to walk around.  And there are plenty of dresser drawers for occupants to unpack and make themselves at home rather than living out of a suitcase.

Back hallway vignette.

This is the perfect place for the “UNIQUE" treadle that was brought to Hershey, and for the sewing cabinet gifted in the parking lot at Costco!  On the machine are a couple of pottery vases – a housewarming gift brought to Pennsylvania last week.  Ladies, you don’t even know each other, but look what you are doing together!

Cute patchwork runner looks perfect on the machine bed!

The doily?  That’s one I crocheted myself back in the early 2000’s while we lived in Texas.  I made a few of them, gifted them – kept this one for myself and then never picked up my crochet hook again.  Thread-work is too tiny for these eyes.

Deby’s Victorian marble-topped hall table has found a home.

As has another Debbie’s framed quilt piece, also brought to Pennsylvania.

Seek to have eyes that see the best in people.

I told Debbie that there was a nail already in the chimney just waiting for the right thing – and this couldn’t be any better.

I’m heading home this morning – I will start order filling today, things will begin to ship tomorrow.  And in between I’ve got my last round of book PDF corrections to make – it can’t be put off.  It needs to be done before I go to Arizona.  This is it - this is the FINAL book edit.

In talking to my dad last night, he said “Be happy you are busy.  It’s good to be busy…..”  At 78 he is finding it hard to keep his mind occupied with other things, he lives alone and his house is too quiet.  And he’s right.  Staying busy, just busy enough is a good thing.

And then some thought or memory comes and I succumb to tears once again.  Text messages from Mark are still on my phone.  I can’t delete them.  I wish I had kept the voicemails as well – because I’ll never hear his voice again.  Why did I delete them?

Breathe in, breathe out, cry it out, breathe some more – and just do the next thing.

Quiltville Quote of the Day.

I am determined to find joy every day in spite of grief, starting now.

I love talking to random strangers. Grocery store, airport, in line at the pharmacy. It makes my day, that bit of connection.

Which one of these things will you do today?