For the birds

Today was a dull chilly icky rainy day.  A good day for ducks.  Or in our case....for the birds.  I was amazed at the crowds at our bird feeder this morning.  First, I sat down in the living room to give Charlie bird a little company and eat my breakfast.....which he happily climbed down to share.  :-)

Maisy is of course watching very closely as he eats his square of Chex.

Charlie climbed down even closer.

What's he after?

Tags!  They're shiny....and if you yank them around they rattle!

Maisy sat perfectly still.  Just her nose was quivering.  She only backed off after Charlie started tugging on her collar.  :-)

Knowing I needed to get going with a paint brush in the kitchen, it was very easy to get distracted by the rainy but feather-filled view out the front window.  I just snapped away, hoping for the best.  :-)

Mr. Bluebird

Mrs. Bluebird

White-breasted nuthatch

Bluebird

Mourning doves

House finches and mourning doves

White-breasted nuthatch

Junco

Brown-headed nuthatch and goldfinch

Cardinal

Yellow-rumped warbler

Can't get enough of those bluebirds.  :-)

A large red-bellied woodpecker with a gorgeous red head.  It kept flitting away so quickly!

It's a party!

As I painted the trim around the doors and windows I shivered and shivered since they had to be kept partly open.  I was somewhat compensated by being able to hear the birds all day long.  I was surprised because it was such an ugh day.  Tadaaaa!  First coat mostly done on the trim.  Bright and sunny.  I almost hate the thought of bringing furniture back in here.  You know what I mean?

The Tramp began to replace all the old outlets and switches with nice new white ones.  Yay!  We have so many switches (10) and outlets (6) in this one room it's a tangle remembering what goes with what.  And why in the world didn't they line them up?  Function over form I guess.

And The Tramp determined none of the outlets were GFCI!  Yikes!  So he's working on fixing that too, bless him.  :-)

It's a grand mess isn't it.  I can say with certainty, it's getting old.  Really old. 

Sigh.  Don't cha just love a man who polishes the stove top?  The rest of the place may be a train wreck, but the stove top shines like a mirror!  Hmmmmm.  I wonder how he feels about floors????  :-)

".....all around the town....."

I did not work in the kitchen today.  My back needed a rest.  It still does, but what can you do?  Sigh. 

Not exactly the "wheels on the bus" but my car's wheels went round and round today.  The Tramp would like you to know we did not sing along.  Tee hee.  The sewing machine cabinet was delivered to Mom, the library, supermarket and Julianne were visited, and we got lucky at Home Depot and picked up some clearance light fixtures that I (possibly we) actually like (!).  In between I managed work on My Town and finished up seven more houses.  I've kind of got a system going now so I can plow through them pretty quickly.  Good thing, because I'm still behind.

#23  Love my little Stardust!  :-)

#24  Middle Daughter and Poyla have a wonderful house.  I took this picture when they were showing us around for the first time.  And they have a fish pond!  Though it's outside, not inside.  Heh.

#25  I love this pic of Grand #2 on a swing, he's enjoying it so much.  :-)  The roof and door fabrics are scraps from his tractor quilt.

#26  Luv my Sailor Son.

#27  Grand #1 dancing in his daddy's shirt.  I'm still trying to locate the scraps from his caterpillar quilt.  Hmmmmm.

#28  This house features a fab photo of our friend M with Trace Adkins!  Hard to see here but she's got a million megawatt smile.  Who wouldn't!

#29  K is for Katie.  :-)

Ok.  Taking my back to bed now.  Tomorrow will be a full day in the kitchen with a paintbrush.  We're really happy with how the room is turning out.  *happy dance*  And I can't wait to get the kitchen back into working order!

The housing market is booming again!

Well not really.  I wish.

Anyway, I've had some catching up to do with the Building Houses from Scraps project.  Five more houses are done for a total of 22.  I'm only about 10 behind!

#18  The mother-in-law?  Noooo.  The Tramp would never say his MIL is witchy.  Quite the opposite I think.  :-)   In this photo Mom was modeling my purple witch's hat she was going to wear to the senior housing complex they visit all the time.  The fabulous news is, this week they were given a move-in date!  Hooray!  They've waited for so long.  The apartment is being totally refurbished to their specifications and they move in next month.  We are all very excited.

#19  Charlie needs a house too!  Today as I listened to iTunes and painted (and painted and painted and painted)  in the kitchen, I noted he was particularly animated during the Bach Passacaglia (and Fugue) in C minor.   Hmmmmmm.

#20  Yet another house for The Tramp.  Note that he is wearing a bright pink tie!  LOL  You can see that photo on the side bar.  This was back in New Jersey.  We had just arrived home from an engagement party and first job was to take the chihuahuas out for a "walk."  I love it.  It looks like I sent my bodyguard out to walk my frou-frou dogs.  :-)

#21  Some how swirls and bubbles and starfish seem to be just right for Eldest Daughter.

#22  Grand #3.  Snips and snails and puppy dog tails!

Stiff!

As a board.  Me.  Myself and I.  Moi.  All over.  Everywhere.  Pillar to post.  Stem to stern.  From climbing and crawling all day.  I'm sitting here seizing up.  I may have to get The Tramp to carry me to bed!  Not a bad thought really.

Monday and Tuesday were spent in the Sandbox.  I power-sewed my way through two t-shirt quilts.  I have Charlie and the dogs for company, crank up iTunes, and go at it.  I'm wondering if there is a pattern to the music Charlie seems to like.  As it is, he plays and squawks, eats and squawks, talks and squawks.  Yesterday he got particularly loud and animated when Aerosmith was on, today he was rocking to Emerson, Lake & Palmer.  Hmmmmm.  Also today, he was clucking like a chicken....at least it sounded like it from my seat on the kitchen floor.  "Cheep!   Bawk, bawk, bawk!"  Where on earth did he hear chickens???  Oh dear.  Maybe the fumes are getting to me.  And we paid a bundle for the lowest VOC paint.  Heh.

This was a quiet(er) moment yesterday.  Part of the time he was zoned out, munching with his eyes closed.  I shoulda taken note of what music was playing!

Parrots are messy messy.  Ivy patiently waited for the fallen bits.  What she didn't realized was how many of them were on her back!

Fun quilt to work on with it's pink and polka-dot borders.

This one was just plain huge.  Fun bright colors too.

Five more houses in the works.  :-)

Today was breezy, warm and sunny.  I dragged out the sewing machine cabinet I promised to clean up for mom.  The top is in pretty bad shape.  And you can see where someone taped the cabinet closed and compromised the finish.  Sigh.  What is it about sewing machine cases and cabinets?  They get kept in hot or damp basements, sheds and garages.  There are always coffee cup and houseplant rings on them.  They almost never get covered up when a room is painted.  I don't get it!

You can see the tape marks on the drawers too.  Not much I can do about that at the moment, but I washed it down, got the spiders out of it *shudder*, went over it with a furniture restorer product, and gave it a good waxing.

Pretty wood.

It still has the inkwell!  I couldn't remember where the tricky catch was to get the drawers out so I just washed them out as best I could.

The underside was of course in the best condition.

But look at that.  The working surface looks pretty nice too!

The dogs "helped" by barking at all and sundry.

Things are growing!

And some never stopped growing.

Then I went back inside and threw open the kitchen windows and doors and got serious with the paint.  It took forever, but I got most of the textured wallpaper painted.  This included figuring out how to paint the 1/4" wide slivers on either side of the window.  Sheesh!  There are strips of the old wallpaper in there we couldn't have possibly gotten out.

*patting self on the back*  But I got in there!   :-)

The kitchen has lots of cute little spaces like that......which I will attack tomorrow.

Hellooooo?  Anyone going to help me hobble down the hallway to my bed?