Love it, love it, love it!

It's really hard for me to turn off my brain sometimes at night. And since I've been up painting on Vicky's coffee table because she's having a CAbi party on Thursday and MUST have it and I PROMISED, I can't dive into creative brain buzz and then shut it right off like someone else I know in this house.

With that in mind, I decided I'd blog for a bit. We've all been a bit blogless lately and I've nothing to read. Since I don't really have anything profound to profess at the moment, I decided to show y'all a house I really like. It's on Lake McQueeney, on Treasure Island. I had noticed it for its special, not-the-same-old-Sherwin-Williams-neutral color. However my very cool friend Stephanie one day said "have you seen the cool house with the pink shutters?"

Pink shutters? And I had not seen this and taken note of it? The very next day I was out on "the island" (as we like to say in a Thurston Powell voice) so I decided to track it down. I still love the house, but with the pink shutters installed, now I want to marry it.

If I was to put shutters on my house and be as avant garde, I suppose they would need to be lime green, or a boring black. I can't seem to find a picture of it on this computer, so I'll have to show you next time.

Here's a peak at the house I love from the water.


For a lake house, I just love it.

Are you a picker? Or a grinner?

For the last two weeks, I have been transforming kitchens, both previously hidden by hideous wallpaper, circa 1992-ish. I think I mentioned the first job. The baby blue flowers on white with dusty pink hearts was an exhilarating joy to pull off. It came off in sheets, so it was fast and easy. Just like I like it.

I've since moved on to my next victim. This particular wallpaper was put on a bit more professionally, in a truly custom home, so my guess is they used the right glue and wanted it to stay on. And then subsequent homeowners tired of the dusty pink with southwesty green brush strokes. People are so fickle, aren't they? They first painted over the wallpaper with a Pepto Bismoly pink. And then something we're calling "custom-mix mauve." Oh, the horror of it all. Painted Groove to the rescue.

Here's a picture of how the wallpaper started lifting off. This is why the husband agreed to let me come in to do my magic.

Let's just say that this removal job is more like cleaning teeth than it is creating a beautiful custom finish with all my incredible talents. I told Lavenderchick I feel like a dental hygienist. She was kind of jealous, being a picker and all.

I'm actually working up a sweat getting off some of the paper, along with two or six coats of paint. It's really tedious but for some reason I totally dig this kind of thing. The transformation is going to be spectacular. This is how the walls are going to look when they're finished. This photo is from the powder room nearby. The basecoat will be the same, SW Nomadic Desert, but I plan to skip the metallic glaze in the kitchen.

Reflections on my night out with really old friends

OK, let me rephrase that. It's not that the friends are really old. They've just been two of my favorite people for a really long time. So long that they could probably write a book about every low-down, dirty rotten thing I've ever done in my life. And for so long that they were right there with me during many a created adventure.

Saturday night we were fortunate enough to be invited guests at a sold-out Bonnie Bishop/Robert Earl Keen show at Gruene Hall. Robert Earl is my absolute favorite singer-songwriter in the world. Gruene Hall is my all-time favorite place to see a band, and to be able to get together beforehand with two really old friends (I mean, longtime friends who remain fresh and supple hotties in the prime of their life), along with my husband for such a huge event: Well it was just a really great night.

Anyway, we were talking about blogs: Lavenderchick and "the ubiquitous Lisa P." It was Lisa's turn to talk and she first said she had a message for me from her father, Daddy Frank.

"Oh God," I lamented. "I can hardly wait to hear." Apparently Daddy Frank wanted to remind me what a lazy, no good whiner I had been all those years ago when all he wanted to do was instill a little work ethic into us by forcing us to work as child labor picking black-eyed peas and zucchini in his oh-so fertile West Texas garden. Flash-forward to Saturday night and I cringed remembering I had had the nerve to whine when I'd probably been camping out at his house eating his food for days.

Then Lisa got to the point: "Out of all of us, after all these years, you're the one that has changed the most."

"Me?" I asked. "Yes," she continued. "Reading your blog, with all your artistic talents and the spiritual things you write about, listening to the television preacher..."

I have been thinking about Lisa's comments for the past few days: the person I was, things I thought, stupid stuff I did. I know everyone thinks their life was the wildest and their painful past is the worst, but I just have so much to be thankful for that I am not that person anymore. Somehow, I still have those amazingly talented friends. Lavenderchick has rocked the corporate world for the past 20 years and now she's the most creative creator of the world's most luxurious lavender lotion and body wash. Lisa is like a household name in Austin and though we knew she could pound out a glorious "Send in the Clowns" on the piano in her parents' courtin' room, who knew she'd become a fundraiser extraordinaire before setting sail on her current photographic endeavor that will only add to her fame and glory. I really am blessed. And these are only two of my incredibly talented friends.

So when I thankfully think that the person I was is no longer with us, I like to think that I retained whatever was good, buried once and for all a lot of the bad, and I'm continuing to work on shucking other stuff because there is still room for improvement. I don't think Lisa thought she was being profound when she told me "you're the one that has changed the most." But I've thought about it six thousand different ways and the main thing I come up with is, "well thank God for that."

Seriously.