CELEBRATION, CLEANING, CHARACATURES AND CLOSETS

The time has finally come for a celebration! Let's pour a glass of champagne and make a toast to change and a job well done!

As some of you know, we have had to have a lot of work done on our home. It all started with spring storms in Texas and water damage from our sprinkler system.
Due to a leak in a pipe in one of our bathrooms, we had to have walls taken out, a new floor put in and cabinets rebuilt to remedy the challenge.







Once that was taken care of, they started in the kitchen and dining room. They had to remove all of our large glass windows in the kitchen and replace all of the wood around them due to water damage. That was a MAJOR job.





Once that was finished, they started tearing out our wooden floors which also had water damage. They were unable to match the wood planks, so they had to replace all of the floors in both the kitchen and the dining room due to the fact that they are adjoining rooms.






This also meant moving all of the furniture out of both rooms and draping everything else in plastic in that part of the house.



No matter how careful you are, there is no way to escape the dust. There's no way to escape the mess either, but the people working here were very careful. As they would tear out sections of the old floor, they would carry the broken pieces out to their truck.





When they were finished we had beautiful new floors in both of the rooms. What a treat. I didn't even want anyone to walk on them, including myself!





Even though the kitchen windows are on the North side of the house, the constant indirect light had caused things to fade over the years, so we decided to have the windows tinted. One of the advantages of our kitchen is that you feel as though you are outside, but you don't have to suffer the consequences of the elements. My favorite time of year to be in there is in the winter when it's cold. We might even have a little skiff of snow on the ground. It's delightful to be nice and toasty inside and watch the blowing snow just on the other side of the window pane.
I watched them put the protective coating on the windows and it was a fascinating process.



They were able to do the job in several hours and now we will have 87% of the damaging light eliminated and the room will also be much cooler and energy efficient. The film is transparent, so we can still see both out and in without any problem, but we will not have the problem of heat and colors fading. We have to have a 3 ton air-conditioner just for that one room because the Texas summers can be do grueling.
We thought we were through with all of the interior challenges, so we thoroughly cleaned the inside of the house to eliminate any construction dust that had occurred. We were wrong.
Three days after the work was completed, I heard water running when I walked down one of the halls. It sounded as if the pool water was on or our drip system outside was working, but it was the wrong time of day for that.
As it turned out, we had a slab leak, so we had to have plumbers out immediately. Fortunately there had been no actual water damage ... YET!
Once they found the leak we had to move all of the furniture out ... AGAIN ... and start making more messes. We also had to take all the crystal down from the bar because the vibration from the jackhammer might cause the shelves to fall and break and we didn't want that to happen.








As it turned out, the leak was under one of the etigere's in the den, so we had to completely dismantle it so they could take out some of the carpet and start digging through the foundation to get to the leak. We also had to drape things with plastic sheets because we knew that this was really going to make a major mess.






I won't use the words here that I thought when I saw the dreaded weapon come into our home. All I could think of was "We just cleaned all of this and got things back in order and here we go again!



After many buckets of dirt, much LOUD noise and even more digging, they finally got to the trouble .... a pipe with a crimp in it.







If you look closely, you can see both the crimp and the water coming out of the hole. Apparently the pipe had a crimp when the built out house over 50 years ago and it finally broke through due to the pressure from the water over all the years. All I can say is that we were truly blessed that this happened while we were in town. It could have been a total disaster if we'd been gone on one of our lengthy trips! After a 3 day nightmare, we were finally back to normal again.




We had to have our carpet cleaned and stretched because it had gotten pretty grubby through all of this and it looked as though we were back in business again.
My good friend and designer, Kay Ashton and her husband dropped by to see how the house was coming along and also to share a little of the Russian Vodka that we had brought back from our trip.




She's always such a dear and she brought these lovely roses for the table to celebrate the completion of the work in the kitchen.



We asked her about a painter for the outside of the house and while I was serving up the plates for dinner, she said that I also needed to have my microwave raised. We had bought a new one a few months ago as the old one had died, and since this one was larger, I had trouble getting large stock pots on the back burners. You can see the difference in these before and after photographs. We eliminated the cabinets about the stove top, raised the microwave and installed shelves for some of my cookbooks. Now I can use my huge stock pots until my heart's content!







You can tell by where the handle is on the tea kettle how little room we had before and how much room we have now. It's glorious!
Kay gave us the name of a painter and we decided to wait to have him start until after they had put the new roof on the house. When we were in New Mexico this summer, we had a dreadful hail storm and all the houses in the neighborhood, including ours, have new roofs.


Santiago and his crew arrived week before last on a Tuesday morning and were here for over a week. They scraped off all of the old paint, replaced any wood that was suspicious looking, sanded everything and then began to paint.



They removed all the windows, screen doors, shutters, etc, and really did a superior job.

If anyone in our area needs to know a good painter, give me a call. We've never had anyone who was more conscientious about their work. They were wonderful and very thorough and I might add .. they were also very reasonable.
Once the outside was finished, I decided that we needed to clean the inside from top to bottom again because of all the drilling from the jackhammers and as always, I got carried away. I also cleaned all of the closets and drawers and donated 17 bags of my clothing plus household items to the Salvation Army and Mission Arlington.



During this cleaning period, I ran across these old paintings. The caricatures of Frank and me were painted in New Orleans
in 1969



and the portrait of me was painted in 1973.



They were all done by street artists. It's always fun to look back at these things. They always evoke a lot of fond memories.
As I said in the beginning of this lengthy blog, it's time for a celebration. We have an almost new 56 year old house (at least it looks like new after the "face lift" that it just received) and closets and drawers are straight AGAIN.
Have a Happy Halloween and you'll be hearing from me again soon.




CHEERS!!!
XOXO, Pcasso

BIRTHDAYS, BALLGAMES AND THE PARTY'S OVER!

We always have a lot going on in our family at the end of September and the first two weeks in October. January is usually a cold month, or at least it can be here in Texas, so people stay at home, snuggle at night, and 9 months later there is a sometimes new addition to the family. That has been the case in our family.

Our youngest grandson, Connor, celebrated his 9th birthday the end of September. We started out the evening at our house where he opened his gifts. He and Ethan, his cousin, are wearing their chef hats that we brought them from our last cruise.

We then left for Ranger Stadium, the home of the Texas Ranger baseball team, where we had our picnic.

After a meal of fried chicken, beans, potato salad and chips (not to overlook a few Chiladas for good measure) we were ready for the cake.

Beth made him a cookie cake for dessert which we devoured and from there we walked over to the stadium.

She had also made arrangements for us to have our party at a place fairly close to the stadium where we would have a table plus shelter for the meal. There was also a sign there to wish him a Happy Birthday when we arrived.

Once we had finished eating, we started toward the stadium where the evening would be full of surprises.

Our seats were in the upper deck, and as we got there, we discovered that we had a glorious view of the new Cowboy Stadium which is nearing the end of construction.

The place is HUGE and you could really see what was going on with the construction from there. Even though our seats were high up, they were behind home plate and we could see everything. We had a great view.

One of the reasons that we selected this night to go to the game was that it was the last night they would be having the fireworks display and the show should be spectacular.

Unbeknownst to Connor, Frank and I had made special arrangements for him to be honored on the big scoreboard at the back of the center field. It is located in the middle of all of the advertisements.

His Dad took him down to the mezzanine level at the end of the 5th inning where they photographed him,

put his picture on the big scoreboard where they show all the plays that are going on,

and then gave him a very large sack of Ranger memorabilia to take home, including this baseball cap that he's wearing.

Even though this was our gift to him, we let his folks take him down there while we enjoyed nachos and beer.

Since I'm not much of a sports fan, I only go to the games for the nachos :-) Staying in our seats also afforded me the opportunity to photograph him as his face appeared on the large board for all to see.

The fireworks display was spectacular and it lasted for nearly an hour. There were many oohs and ahhhs and it was a perfect way to end Connor's birthday celebration.

October is now upon us and that is our extremely busy birthday month. Ian was born on the 6th and is 11 this year, then Nicholas, who turned 30 this year was born on the 7th and Frank was born on the 9th three quarters of a century ago! Our two eldest children, Jim and Courtney were both born on the 14th just 3 years apart. If they were still alive, Jim would be 55 this year and his sister, Courtney would be 52. It's hard to imagine that they could possibly be that old. Where has the time gone? I received a phone call from one of Jim's old friends, Brad Poster, who called to say hello and wish us well. He always remembers Jim and Courtney's birthday and has contacted us each year on Jim and his sister's birthday to let us know that he will never forget them even though Jim died 23 years ago and we lost Sis 14 years ago. That's true friendship and so special for us to know that they are remembered.

We started out early in the afternoon this past Sunday with our joint celebrations. The Cowboys were playing, so we had every TV in the house turned on. The entire family are football fans and when the Cowboys are playing, this always takes precedent over everything else! We opened gifts before the kickoff so they wouldn't miss a single play.

Since we were celebrating 3 birthdays, they took turns opening their gifts, beginning with Ian since he was the youngest, then Nick opened one of his gifts and finally Boompa since he is the Patriarch of the group.

I have spent the past few days cleaning out drawers and closets and ran across a real treasure. When Nicholas was 6 years old, his teacher entered one of his drawings in a city-wide art competition which was held for grades 1-6 (he was in the first grade at the time). He won first place in this competition and I had saved his drawing. It was entitled "Cat in Hat at a Party Eating a Fish".

I photographed it and made a card from this artwork. I've never seen him so surprised about something.

He is an excellent artist now, so his teacher realized his potential way back then and put it to good use. Here is a self portrait he did in pencil when he was in High School.

Ian got what he like the best ... gift cards from the Guitar Center. He's a great little musician and he always wants either gift cards or money he can spend on music equipment.

Ethan enjoyed watching the birthday boys opening their gifts. He will be 13 in February. It's hard for me to realize that our great-grandson is going to be a teenager. Impossible!!!

And of course, Connor spent the day playing with some electronic game which is his favorite thing to do.

We watched along with Dayna, Beth, Matt and Rachel as the gifts were opened and then the game began. It was an exciting game, but unfortunately the Cowboys lost. We found out yesterday that our quarterback, Tony Romo broke a finger, so that's not good news!

The girls are big football fans and even dress in Cowboy shirts to support America's Team.

After the game, we had dinner and then had the family birthday cake to finish off the evening.

With the exception of losing the game, we couldn't have had a more perfect day of celebration. We don't have anymore birthdays until February when Ethan and Rachel celebrate their special days. They were both born on the same day as well. it must be a family thing ... Frank's brother and Mother shared a birthday, Jim and Courtney did as well and now Rachel & Ethan. Do you think there's something in the water???

Even though it was not her birthday, I surprised Rachel with a painting of her favorite things ... cows!

I painted this for her and Matt's new home and she was so excited that she even shed a tear or two. It always makes me very happy to do something for my family that they really like. Nicholas made the frame for her painting and it looks wonderful. These little critters now have a wonderful new home.

XOXO, Pcasso