Let There Be Light!

I'm so excited. We finally got an actual electrician to come out to give us a price on adding some of that new-fangled e-lectricity upstairs! Not only did he come out, he showed up 10 minutes early! He said he would call back tonight with a price AND HE JUST DID! He could be the one!

About our electrical situation-here's what we have upstairs now: 4 outlets, all on the same circuit, and 4 overhead lights including the one in the bathroom, all controlled by one wall switch which is by the back door. That's it. We don't have any outlets in the living room which means if we entertain it's strictly by candlelight which has actually worked out pretty well so that's not all that bad. The refrigerator is downstairs which means I have a work triangle of approximately 74 feet. You know, you move in an old building and you just kinda get used to it's little quirks and hardly notice them anymore until, say, a guest asks where the bathroom light switch is and you reply it's down the hall by the back door.

We bought this place on an "as is" basis and didn't realize there was no electricity in the living room, which is about half the upstairs. There were plugs, turned out they been disconnected or something. They are in the ceiling so maybe that didn't work out as well as whoever put them in thought it would. I'm not sure how you would keep a plug in the socket - duct tape?

About the picture- I love these old kitschy plaster lamps and just thought I'd throw this picture in.

Faking It

Our house was originally just two big rooms, one upstairs and one down. When it was divided into rooms later they just used paneling, the kind that is one 4 x 8 sheet with grooves. Nothing could look less like real wood. But here's what we doing with it. We're taking the paneling down and sawing it into 6" strips and putting it back up going across the wall, with the back side out, and painting it. It looks just like old board walls that you see in farmhouses.Any nail holes or imperfections just make it look authentic. Here's a picture of the stairwell - you can not tell that it's not old boards.

I just wanted to share this in case there is anyone else out there faced with a lot of ugly paneled walls they'd like to do something with.

We're doing the same in the bedroom. Every year we say we are going to get the house finished by Christmas but so far the living room and bathroom are the only rooms that come close to being finished. But it's a new year so we're trying again. This time for sure. So in January we moved everything out of our bedroom, thinking it would only take about a week, two at the most, to varnish the floor (they've been stripped for about two years now), fix the walls and paint. So we painted the ceiling (painting beadboard is a project), varnished the floors, took the paneling down - and then we both got whatever bug is going around. The mattress is in the living room, the bed and other furniture is scattered around the house and it looks like it will stay that way for a while. I never get sick, why now?

"As I See It"

JD has just published his first book! JD is a talented photographer who began showing his work at art fairs around the south about a year and a half ago. Most of the images were taken within a ten mile radius of our house here in Blount County. I'm telling you about this not so much to sell the book (although that's always nice) but to say how great is self publishing? I'm sure everyone has heard about the online publishing companies by now and let me tell you the service was great and the finished book quality could not be any better. It's a book of photos and the color was spot on. He used Blurb because he had heard their color was good. If you've got a book in you, I'd highly recommend having it printed so you can hold it in your hands, and share it with friends and family. You can order one, or hundreds; the price per book stays the same. Very reasonable. Think of the possibilities!

The Long Road Home

I'm going to borrow a line from my daughter over at Who Knows What and say let's just pretend I haven't been absent for over a month. I don't know what happened. But here's what happened last week. Remember last weekend? The weekend it was so very very cold, everywhere? We picked that weekend to visit my daughter in North Carolina. We were going to leave her house Sunday morning, before the snow and cold weather came in, but guess what - we got up Sunday morning and there had been freezing rain Saturday night. And then snow on top of that. The road to their house is a narrow one lane road hanging on the side of the mountain which makes a couple of hairpin turns then goes almost straight up. Sunday it looked like a ski jump. So we weren't able to get out until Thursday afternoon when the temperature got above freezing. And we had put down 80 pounds of de-icer.

Once we accepted the fact that we weren't leaving for a few days, we had a wonderful time. We're from Alabama and snow is a big deal to us. We haven't even seen snow since Winter Storm '93 when Birmingham got an unheard of 16 inches. It's one of my fondest memories even though we had no power for seven days.

The woods and frozen streams and waterfalls in the mountains were beautiful and we walked and walked. We had plenty of groceries and satellite TV, what more could you ask for? I also got to spend extra time with my beautiful one year old grandson. So all in all I could not have planned a better winter vacation. Thank you so much Rob and Melanie for having us. I give your B&B five stars.

Catchup

I read the other day that 99% of blog posts are about why the author hasn't posted lately so let's don't even go there. I wanted to post, I meant to post; things kept coming up and time slipped away from me - again. So here's my picture of Fall in the country I meant to write about.

What I'm supposed to be doing right now is writing a short biography for promotional material. An artist's biography is really more like a resume in paragraph form. Since I don't have an art degree and haven't won any serious awards I don't have a lot to say. I have won a couple of merit awards, can I call myself an award winning artist or is that stretching it? You try writing something complimentary about yourself when you know people you know are going to read it and know that you wrote it. I need to send it in tomorrow. I feel like I'm in high school and have waited until the last minute to start my essay.

JD just finished the last of several pieces he was building that had to be finished by Christmas so he's feeling de-stressed. Do you know why people have furniture custom made? Because they can't find pieces big enough for their house. All of the pieces he did for this client were over nine feet tall. I have to get some pictures of his work to show you because he does amazing work. The only picture I could find was of this piece we did about 6 years ago. I say we because I did the finishing. The doors are antique French; the piece was built around them and finished to match.
There was an elaborate base and crown and they (there were TWO of them) were the biggest armoires I had ever seen. They were gorgeous but so big that I would burst out laughing when I looked at them. Now, for several years now, everything he builds is this big. Or bigger.

Before I became an artist full time I painted furniture and sold antiques. I was a master of the distressed finish if I do say so myself. Wonder if I can work that into my biography? I need filler.

Lady Bug Lady Bug Fly Away Home

Or is it Lady Bird, Lady Bird ? Anyway every year at this time we are inundated with Lady Bugs in the house. Yes the curtain is on a shower rod. It's a long story. As I was saying, we have hundreds and hundreds of lady bugs in the house. I should say on the the windows, the ones on the sunny side of the house. How or why they get in I don't know. I mean I can see a few slipping in under the door but you'd think we'd notice if there were hoards of them lining up like ants. They'll crawl around in the window a couple of days then drop lifeless to the windowsill and floor. I used to sweep them up and put them in the trash then my daughter told me that they're hibernating. I didn't believe it but next time I put them in a box and saved them and sure enough next Spring when it started getting warm they started moving. Is that not cool? Unless you think having a box of bugs in your house is creepy.

I'm Back.....Again

I made a point of saying in my last post that I was going to post more often, then I took off to visit my daughter in North Carolina and I just got back so here I am, late again. As I said in an earlier post, she lives in the Smoky Mountains, so close to the park boundary you can see it from her house. So of course when she has a day off what do we do? Go shopping in Asheville of course. This time it was really fun as it turns out Dilliard's (a big department store in the south) has a regional clearance center here. And it's enormous and crammed full of clothes, good clothes not just the dregs no one wanted. Everything is 70% off with specials that change every Wednesday so that some things are an additional 40% off! They owe you money! She bought a beautiful satin evening dress with beading (for a Halloween costume) for $12. I thought you would like to know.

Speaking of Halloween, I have a ghost story to tell. It's not often you get a new audience to tell one of your old stories to, so here it is.

It happened about 30 years ago. My first husband and I were living in Knoxville in a new house in a new subdivision so I can't explain why this happened there, but it did. One night I awoke suddenly out of a deep sleep with the feeling someone was in the room. I sat up in bed. It was a very dark night but I could see a small figure at the foot of the bed. It was wearing a long white gown. At first I thought it was my six year old daugher and I called her name several times. Then the figure slowly disappeared, dissolved before my eyes. My heart was pounding and I couldn't go back to sleep but I didn't talk about it the next day because I didn't want to scare the children.

It wasn't until six years later that my daughter, then 12, overheard me telling someone about what I saw. She said, "I can't believe you never told me about that! One night when I was about six I saw a man and a woman in a red dress dancing down the hall! I thought it was you and dad at first......I didn't say anything because I didn't think anyone would believe me!"

I was stunned. And I so regret that I didn't do more research to find out what the story was about where the house was built. Was it on the site of an old farmhouse? Perhaps even a family cemetary? All I can say is that I was young and had three small children and didn't know how to research things back then. And we were transfered not long after. So I guess it will always be a mystery. I think about contacting the people who live there now and asking them if they've ever seen anything but I guess I'm afraid they would think I'm nuts. I had my chance to find out something about the other side and I missed it.

What would you have done?

I'm Back!

I finished my last art festival this weekend. It was Kentuck down in Northport, Alabama, one of the top festivals in the Southeast. It’s such a fun show to do. The focus is on Outsider art so there’s lots of far out stuff to see but the best thing is that the whole atmosphere is so festive and everyone seems so happy. The October weather was perfect, bright and sunny, but cool, a perfect weekend to be out in the park. The entertainment was above average to outstanding, like blues singer Ruthie Foster who had the crowd on their feet dancing and afterwards they rushed in and bought all her Cds in about five minutes.
At least that’s what I heard as I am stuck in my booth all day except for five minute bathroom breaks and never get to see anything except the view above. Not that I’m complaining because sales were good despite the fact that the economy is apparently going down the toilet.

Don’t you love this car? Doesn’t it make you want to go glue random stuff all over yours? What’s really amazing is this is apparently a 20 year old Vega or Pinto or something like that, that still runs.


We cheaped out this year and camped at a state park six miles away instead of paying a bazillion dollars for a cummy motel room because it’s game weekend. (This is Tuscaloosa area – home of the University of Alabama. You may know football is a big deal around here.) Lake Lurleen is beautiful, one of the best maintained parks I’ve seen anywhere. We took our bikes and did a little riding.


This is JD getting some shots of some horses in the beautiful foggy twilight on a road near the park. Afterwards we spent 30 minutes in the dark looking for his glasses because he has a habit of sticking them in the neck of his shirt and they fall out. I can’t believe we found them.

I always feel a little blue after a fun and exciting show is over but I’m coming out of it now and will be posting more regularly so don’t give up on me.

The Dark Side

We met a new neighbor the other day, who was moving back to the family land after being away a long time. He grew up here, across the road. His father owned the cotton gin that used to stand on the corner. He was telling us about how much things have changed since he moved away many years ago. Then he told us about something that happened when he was a child.

It was in the 1960's and he was five years old. There was a man who lived in "the cove" who still rode his mule to town. He always tied it up at the cotton gin then walked to the store across the tracks. Randy and his brother were playing in the yard when the man came one day, tied up his mule and walked to the store. He appeared to be covered in red paint. They told their father who was waiting for him when he came back. It wasn't paint, it was blood. He had just killed his neighbor with an axe.


Speaking of killer, here's a killer version of The Thrill is Gone. B.B. King with Eric Clapton and Phil Collins on drums. You can turn my music off if you scroll down to the player. Or go to youtube and watch.

Fall at Last

“All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken” - Thomas Wolfe



This isn't a very October looking picture but long shadows in the afternoon is the only indication that the season is changing around here. I find it hard to write anything without some kind of visual aid and this is the best I could do. It's my street, past our house.

It's so wonderful that Fall is finally here. We so look forward the end of the long hot days of Summer and the sharp clear light of autumn.

We've been super busy around here turning over a new leaf. What does that mean anyhow? Do the leaves just keep turning over? Anyway we're trying to stick to more of a schedule, get more work done, exercise more, eat less, lose weight, yadda yadda yadda.

Nothing is going on around here except work work work. Just wanted to check in and say I'm still here.