What happens between coffee and Triskits and cheese

The New Year is official here and it has been a while since I've blogged about anything, what with my pre-Christmas freakout and post-Christmas recovery time in West Texas. Since http://www.paintedgroove.blogspot.com/ is supposed to be about decorative painting, from time to time I realize it's been a while since I blogged about anything creative. Doesn't Christmas just suck the life out of you?

I'm working on getting my creative groove back in groove mode and it helps that everyone is back in school and back at work. But here's what I got to work on leading up to the holidays. I sure have a lot to be thankful for. Imagine all the people telemarketing and making bosses look good out there. If that's your thing, God love ya. I prefer to make my clients' stuff look good, drink coffee, a little water, eat some Triskits and cheese, and then have a glass of wine.


The walls in this powder bath I am nominating as my Number 1 best job of 2008. Please disregard the annoying photo stamp on the picture. How annoying. I made an effort to eliminate that annoying thing from the camera during my vacation.

Here's another shot. Now these photos in no way do justice to the yumminess of these walls. (Figuring out how to capture faux painting in pictures is my goal for 2009.) So these walls are a warm terra cotta color, Venetian plaster, all buffed out and waxed. When you walk into the room you are compelled to reach out and touch them. The color of the walls works perfectly with the orangy color in the Talavera sink.

OK, this was really fun. Do you see the pretty gold and red tones in this slate? Well, originally, they were not there! Selecting slate is so risky because you never know what you're going to get, what the installer will pull from, etc. My client felt the too-gray slate was killing the gorgeous granite below! I originally thought, "oh please, how can you be so picky?" But when I saw it installed in the job, I agreed and fixed it. Don't I have the coolest job in the world?

I actually get to paint slate for a living!

When I was working on this job and had on clean clothes, it was really hard to pry myself out of this chair below. I love, love, love this big old fabulous chair. It's a little too westerny for my house but it's perfect in this ranch house setting. The fabric on the arms and back is some sort of delicious velvet that is really soft and casual (if velvet can be casual). You can see subtle antiquing on the walls in the background. (Soon to be obscured by deer heads).


I could probably sit on this comfy sofa for about a week if someone would just keep bringing me wine and coffee, and maybe some Triskits and cheese in between.

This home is new construction, on a deer ranch. So right now it's looking a little fresh from the furniture store but that's all going to work itself out as the totally cool family that lives here makes their mark and keeps on putting their personal stamp on the place. And I was also thinking if it was my house, I would turn my kids loose in here to warm it up and wear it out and make it look a bit more lived in. After the holidays and deer season, this family has probably already accomplished all that.

So here's to 2009. Informal polling among Smart People Who Sami Knows and Saw Over the Holidays forecasts a much better year than 2008. To a person, all my smart friends were glad 2008 was over and are looking forward to rerides in 2009.