He Leadeth Me

David and I have birthdays with just one day in between so we usually celebrate our birthdays together. It all started this morning with this card. "I wanted to give you a Bear Hug for your Birthday? Big Bear birthday hugs coming your way as soon as I find a corporative bear."   We had breakfast at Over Easy , a breakfast spot that everyone is raving about. David had biscuits, gravy and hash browns and I had Quinioa and fruit.  I was trying to be healthy and it was good, but next time I'll have the French Toast. Our next spot was the Will Rogers Sun Shrine . We had heard that there was beautiful scenery at the shrine. Penrose built the shrine.  He is one of the important early founders of Colorado Springs.   Murals inside the shrine. A view of the ceiling. These were all painted in the 30's and are still vibrant. The almost birthday boy. Part of the mural depicted the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo  where we...

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare My rating: 5 of 5 stars I have read this book once about every two years since high school because I love it so much.  Just re-read it.  It's as good as ever. View all my reviews

I promise I won't show you every project that I work on but this is the first set of projects that I completed on my own so I thought I'd show them off. This was the rocking chair that my mom rocked me in when I was born, so it is 62 years old. It has had many, many coats of paint through the years and I wanted to give it a Shabby Chic look. I painted 2 coats of red chalk paint over the blue without doing any prep. That's the part I like the most--NO PREP.   It was pretty solidly red so I took my sandpaper block to it and started distressing it.  If you look very carefully, you can see some of the green paint that was on the chair even before the blue paint. I think it might have been green in my dorm room with a coat of purple under that when I had a purple room as a teenager.   The more you sand, the more old paint you see. My other piece was this whatnot shelf that I have had for many years. I remember it hanging in my room when I was a...

I have wanted to learn to Chalk Paint for a long time, but was just a little scared to dive in. My daughter-in-love, Mandy, is never afraid of a project. She has done several pieces with chalk paint and offered to teach me how.  Since David and Jeremy were going on a weekend road trip, we thought Saturday would be a great day to have the tutorial. Excuse the fact that this BEFORE picture is off-center. Kelly and I picked up this little dresser years ago on the way home from a trip to Canton, Texas-- oh how I miss that place. I like the wood finish, but thought this might be the perfect piece to get a make-over. My family, Jenny, Stacie, and Gail had picked up this wonderful "G" for me at Canton and it just didn't look right on any of my walls.  It needed to POP! Caleb was our photographer as we got ready to start our projects.  Mandy had picked up this little table on the side of the road--FREE- and she brought it along to show me ...