Painting phase # 2

When we first moved in, I went on a painting spree painting our living room, office/piano area, kitchen and all three girls room. Then I fizzled out on the whole painting of the house thing. So now two years later, I am re-energized to paint the remainder of the house. We started with the entry way and up the stairs. We had to get our extension ladder to reach up to the high parts, but even with that, we still had to use an extension rod on the roller to reach some spots.

I painted the entryway, and my husband did most of the stairway because he could reach most of the tricky spots.

We let the girls take pictures, and my husband was having fun making faces while they were taking photos.

I would usually load up the roller and hand it to my husband on the ladder, so he wouldn't have to climb up and down every time. I didn't complain- he was doing most of the work.

I learned something the first time I painted- I hated using tape for the edges of things. It seemed like the paint would always bleed through and the edges would look horrible. So now I just use a angled brush around the trim and it works so much better.

I wanted to paint our upstairs loft area a different shade then the stairwell. But that posed the problem of how to transition into the other color. I thought about just making a really clean looking line between the two colors. I knew I couldn't just make a good looking line with using the roller or the paintbrush-especially on textured walls. The DYI channel came to the rescue on how to make a perfect paint line. You paint one color and let it dry, then you place your painters tape over it. You paint the edge of it with the same color as beneath the tape so when it bleeds, then the color will be the same as the underneath color.

Then you paint your other color over it, and the paint won't bleed through because the other paint has already filled in all the trouble spots.

Don't worry- I didn't paint the walls three different shades of green. The first one was too dark, the next was too light, reminding me of celery green, and the third was just right. Thank goodness for paint samples helping me out.

Here it is- a nice clean looking paint line. Thank you DYI channel.
Now our loft area is painted. Next up- the Master bedroom and bathrooms. Will I get it done before school starts? Hmmm, maybe.

Wanna be a Rock Star?

Don't you wish they could stay this age forever? I guess they play dress up when they are older too, but it just becomes more expensive!

Planetarium

We went to the Holcomb Observatory & Planetarium (at Butler University) last Saturday night. I remember going to the Denver, CO Planetarium and enjoying it, so I thought the kids might enjoy going to this one. My expectations were set a little high because of Denver, so I made a pros and cons list of the night.

Here are the pros and cons:

Cons:

1. They didn't take credit cards and between me and my husband we came up with $6 cash- Charge for a family of five was $7. Sooo, I had to write a check.
2. It was smaller then I realized -maybe I set my expectations too high with remembering how big Denver's was
3. They had uncomfortable wooden benches- how can you lean back and look up at the ceiling if your neck and back are so uncomfortable
4. They showed a SLIDE SHOW (really?!) of Saturn on only two parts of the whole ceiling area- we were not in the part where we could look ahead and see it in front of us- we had to look to the side to see it
5. They finally turned out the lights and showed us what the night sky would look like. Then proceeded to shine the red laser pointer up at the ceiling to point out different constellations that I could never envision.

Pros:
1. At least they accepted checks so we didn't have to get there and then turn around and go home.
2. The student giving the slide show presentation was good for a laugh (not because he was funny) Is that mean?
3. We did get to look through the big telescope and ACTUALLY see Saturn in space, which was a miracle because that night we had a clear night sky to see and not all stormy like the weather had been.
4. The girls had a good time because they had never gone to a Planetarium before, and it at least kept their interest enough that they didn't fall asleep.

Free Friday Fun

Trying to convince my girls that there were more fun things to do other then swimming this summer, I took them to the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

They had fun playing around in the sculptures.

They were excited to take a picture by their age.

They also had fun climbing into the other numbers as well.

"C" was getting a little tired at the end.

Taking a break in the shade of the numbers.

Fitting into as many spaces as they could.

Sitting up straight in eight.

The girls had just as much fun riding the escalators as looking at the art in the museum. Okay, maybe they enjoyed them more then looking at the art.

We had free tickets to an art exhibit by Tara Donovan so we went to see it. We wouldn't have gone otherwise because the tickets were $8 each and the girls were probably there about half an hour and I would have been disappointed in paying to go. So free was the perfect price. The girls actually liked this art the best out of the whole museum, because she made art out of regular day objects such as plastic cups, rubber bands, pencils, tar paper, Elmer's glue, etc. On the way home, the girls were commenting on making art out of marbles, paper clips, etc. It was funny to hear them.