The Mighty McDougalhopper: painting

When I try to sleep in, I only make it to 7:30am.
I bought a nook as a present for myself. After working all summer, and then getting a job for the fall, I thought I should reward myself with a fancy present. In my life, a nook is an exceedingly fancy gift. While a book person deep down in my heart, the nook is convenient for travelling. I spend a lot of time between Rochester and the Twin Cities, as well as Birchwood, WI, and moving books back and forth is always a pain. Unfortunately, I am mildly annoyed with myself after discovering how much I truly enjoy my new nook.
I went to "Arti Gras" down by the river yesterday and considered buying a ceramic fish to hang on the wall.
After patching the holes in my wall left by the previous tenant, it is now necessary that I repaint. Unfortunately, I am unable to commit to any one particular color. The living room will probably end up being "Orange Toffee".
Last night I made myself a real, honest-to-goodness dinner. There was mashed potatoes, fresh green beans, a bacon wrapped filet, strawberries, and a rather generous glass of Moscato. Because I'm super awesome, I even lit a candle while I ate because it seemed wrong not to. Dinner was really, quite good.
I saved all of my dishes from last night to do today. Ugh. What a mess I made!
One big orange cat is sitting on my right, sleeping, and one fluffy cat is sitting on my left, shooting hate rays at the one on my right.
It is almost 11:00am, and I am still not dressed.

I may have gone a little (extra) crazy this weekend. I have lived in my apartment for almost a year now, and I am tired of looking at the dirty light switch plates and holes in the wall that were supposed to be fixed before I moved in. So, on Sunday, I started taking matters into my own hands.

With the intent of buying Spackle and browsing around for everything else, I packed my mis-matched Sunday-afternoon self into my car, baseball hat and all, and drove over to the hardware store. There I found many wonderful things. It was hard not to look around and imagine really – really – fixing the place up. I saw light fixtures I would love to have hung up, as well as new blinds for the bedroom.

It kind of made me wish I owned my own house. And then for about 1 scary minute in the bathroom fixture aisle, I thought it would be a good idea for me to own a house. Then I realized that was silly. Still, the more I think about it, the more I am starting to believe that if I make it through next year, then plan on staying longer, I should consider buying a little one or two bedroom house. But my crazy is starting to digress from the original topic here.

I ended up buying a metal switch plate for the kitchen and a bunch of blank wooden switch plates and some paint for the other rooms. Then, I bought my spackle, my spackle-spreader-thing that I can’t remember the name of right now, but knew it by name to ask for it in the store, and picked up a bunch of paint samples.

Call me crazy (and some of you have), but I am thinking of repainting the living room kind of an orange color. Right now it is pale blue, and the color swatch taped to my wall that I keep looking at is called “orange toffee”. I really like it. As for the bedroom, I don’t really care for the shade of yellow in there right now, and after I patch the holes, I won’t care for the white blobs either, I am guessing. Perhaps the bedroom needs to be done in kind of that pale purple-blue color called “spa” or the brighter “green grapes”. The next step will obviously be buying small samples of the paints and painting them on the wall to stare at them for a while.

That’s the way adults do it, right? They decide to pick one small household project, then it snowballs into more and more complicated and large-scale endeavors. When painting, the first tape papers to the wall and stare at it for a week, then paint little patches and stare at that for a week.

Below are pictures of the light switch plates I painted on Sunday. It took me all afternoon and most of the evening. I just finished the one for the office last night and haven’t had a chance to take a picture, so it is not in the mini gallery below. Just so you know, though, it is bright green with connected white, purple, blue, and yellow swirly and squiggly lines. It turned out alright, and considering it is my least favorite, it is fine by me that it is in the room least visited. The light switch outside the back door is orange and says "Welcome" as well as my last name in cursive. The switch plate for the kitchen is not pictured because I did not in any way artify it. It is a shiny metal switch plate that looks like it has tire treads, so that's cool.