Merry Christmas from ICE

Give us an M...give us an E...give us an R R...give us a Y

Give us a C...give us a H...give us an R...give us an I...give us an S ...give us a T...give us an M A...give us an S...

What does that spell?????

MERRY CHRISTMAS...

This a wonderful group of artistic cheerleaders from the ICE Group, wishing you a Very MERRY CHRISTMAS.

This picture was composed by Chris Tessener, a member of the International Colabaration Experiments in Altered Book Yahoo Group that was started about a year ago. Chris made this pic digitally by taking the pics of each member and turning them into cheerleaders for a spread that she did in Dawn Gold's School Days Themed AB.

I thought it was so clever of Chris that I would use it for a little Christmas Card here on my blog. Thanks Chris for the smiles and for your artistic and creative skills that you share with all of us...we are truly blessed to have you and all of the other gals involved in this AB RR.

New Living Room

These are the after pictures......

These are the before pictures......

The new furniture arrived 2 days after the final painting of the floor. Georgia (O'Keeffe) one of our Carrin Terriers had to check out the new chairs and our friend Charya liked the black side chairs....

Big change huh?

These are pics of the "new" floor...the old floor was carpet that had foam backing and was glued to the concrete...if you remember this type of carpeting then you are older than 29...lol...any way we had the carpet pulled up and then we (Susan & I) scraped, sanded, scraped some more and then we put muratic acid and then we rented a sander from Lowes...OMG...it was the Big Mac Truck of the sanders...wow...it weighed 250...seriously...the guy at the Lowes loaded it and we "slid" it out of the back of the Envoy...then when we finished our neighbor, two doors down came and loaded it up for us...it was a "duzy", but it got the job done...Then we used a carpet cleaning machine and then we sealed it....I painted the center of the floor cream (the same color as the walls) then I used a sea sponge and "fauxed" on the gold...well it looked so much like a rug I decided to paint tassels on each corner....I just free hand cut a pattern and drew it on the floor and painted it with the cream and the gold and then used a Sharpie marker to draw the detail...then I painted the outside edges (border) with black...it really looks cool. Then another coat of sealer. This is a close up of one of the tassels....

This is "long shot"...not the kind you bet on but a full view of one end of the room...

Getting a new Roof

Well on top of remodeling the old and new living rooms, building an Art Studio....we had a bad hail storm a few months ago and our roof has to be replaced and they started on it yesterday. It is really hard to get in the mood of Christmas with all of this going on...I can't get to my stuff to make my baskets or wrap packages...I am not sure how all of this got pushed so close to Christmas...oh well it will all get done...and one of my favorite "Eastisms" is..."Stop Global Whinning: and it seems that I am whinning...so even though it is frustrating...I am really trying to not whine about it all...after all I am getting a new Art Studio....and can't wait to get it finished and move in. LIFE IS GOOD!!!!!!

Our back yard.......

Our Patio.....can't wait for the AFTER Pics....lol

Insulation Installed...Yippppeee

One of my students from the drawing class at Rose State came and helped do the insulation yesterday...Susan and I are going to finish it up today...the Peg board and sheet rock are going up tomorrow...

The Building of the Art Studio

And so it begins...this is a little after 9 am...on Monda December 1...these guys were so nice and "fast"...the building a from Cedar Built...ok so this is really exciting. They are putting in the floor. As soon as the floor was in they started on the walls...Wow...this is only about 10:15.

This is a view inside...and they have only been here like 2 hours...

This is vew from inside with the window installed....

This is like 4:30 and they are almost finished...just putting the window frame on...Wow I can't believe they built it in one day...it is awesome!!!!