Living Room gets a new look

I can't believe it has been 7 years since I painted my living room a beautiful chocolate brown.  I fell in love with that color and it went so well  with my cream furniture.   Then my DH got the brilliant idea to buy new furniture 4 years ago....it was beautiful CHOCOLATE leather furniture.  He wanted that color over all the others.....well...it made my living room very depressing with the  blackout curtains drawn during the day.

Here are the windows in my living room...as you can see the suns shines very brightly in this room and it gets to be like a furnace in the summer time.  It is horrible!  That is why I have blackout curtains, to keep the heat out and the coolness inside.  Don't you just LOVE the Tour de France that is on the TV right now???

Chocolate walls around the fireplace.  

Chocolate walls with Chocolate furniture.....very depressing......

My goal was to pain the living room a new bright color.  I looked at several shades of greens, but my eyes kept going to the lavenders....so I painted my living room lavender!!! LOVE IT!!!  MY DH came in and went...dang, we are going to need sunglasses to sit in here now!!!    I bought Valspar Signature paint with primer at Lowes and it took 1//2 a gallon of paint with only one coat!!!!!  It took me a total of 2 hours to paint my room.   I repeat...I LOVE my new living room!!!!

Since I painted it so bright, you can see I have to paint the fireplace mantle.  The smoke stains really stand out next to the lavender.   I went to Walmart to buy white paint....do you know how many shades of white there are out there????  I had to bring home 10 different sample cards and I finally found the one!  My next two projects are to paint the fireplace mantle along with putting new shades on the windows.  

When I finished, the tour was over but the Scottish Open was on.  Gotta love men and their sports!!!!

Disney Stitching and Framed Summer Ball

While I on vacation this year, I took my Disney ornaments with me to stitch while we were in the car.  I took 8 ornaments with me since we were going to be gone 8 days.  My goal was to stitch one ornament a day.  I almost made it! However, when we were driving from Minneapolis, MN to Sheboygan, WI, the road was so bumpy that I couldn't stitch!!!   So I read a trashy novel instead!  When I got home, I had to order black and red seed beads for the eyes and buttons.  I can't make a french knot so I use beads instead.

Summer Ball is framed!!!  I took it to Hobby Lobby with me to look at the framing section.  I decided to look in the pre-framed area and found the perfect frame!!!  It was on sale for 50% off  so the frame cost me $25 and I chose to get a blue mat for it.  LOVE IT!!! hanging in my hallway now!!!!!

Brigen brought in a new friend Sunday night.  He found a turtle in the yard.  Not sure how it got in because we closed in all the holes after Berts incident (see below).  He was chewing on it trying to get it open.  Poor turtle!!  I rescued it and placed it in the yard.  Doesn't he look proud of his find????

Doesn't Bert look so sweet and innocent here???  He has been trying to give me a heart attack this past week!!!!

Last Sunday, I was getting ready to leave for my cross stitching group and did a fur baby count to make sure all were ok before I left.  Bert wasn't in the house, so I went and looked in the yard.  He wasn't there!!  I had a heart attack!!  I keep calling and looking for him and found nothing.  I called my husband 7 times since he was on the golf course and couldn't reach him.  I just wanted to know if he had seen him that morning.  Bert likes to get up early and go outside to lay under the shed.  DH didn't answer his phone, so I called the club to have him call me.  He hadn't seen him.  I was panicked!!!  I walked up all the streets calling his name and still didn't find him.  Finally around 5:00 pm, I went outside and called his name again.  I heard this faint meow in the woods behind our house.  I ran outside and there he was, crawling out of the woods looking scared.  He didn't come to me at first and finally when he realized who I was, he came running.  I brought him in the house.  He went straight to his food and water.  Once he was full, he went to find Gibbs for a nap.  

Mark and I had to walk the fence line to see where he was getting out.  There was a small gap in the gate and concrete that he could fit so we covered it with rocks and fire logs.  After we plugged that up, went to lowes to buy some plywood so he couldn't jump OVER the fence near the lower part of our deck.  We let him out of the house again.  He went straight to that gate and was looking at me when he realized he couldn't get out.   

So for the past week, when he goes out and is our for more than an hour, I go look for him.  Yes, I am crazy!!!!

Summer Ball is finished!!!!

It is 2:50 am and I put the final stitches in Summerball tonight!

Here is it, Hot off the q-snaps!!!!  LOVE how it turned out!!!!!  I feel like I have been working on this forever!!!  I am off to bed now.  Just wanted to share my excitement!!!!!!