Orphans and a Storm....

First, the storm part. Mookie is in love with the new vacuum....Widget runs and hides whenever he hears the noise, and Mookie usually ignores it. Not the new one. When I took the photo he was sitting beside it and licking it!

I put it together this morning.....It comes in pieces, with a simple 3 step pictograph of the parts and the only captions on the diagram is the word "snap". Interesting build with lots of pushing here and pulling there. I made a three step process into about ten by the time I finished. If all else fails, look at the rest of the book and on the last page there are written directions.

After I managed to stick the pieces together without too much duck tape or too many rubber bands, I tried it. I am not one to write thank you notes to people like Mr. Dyson.....I am tempted. That thing is really great! It gets into tight corners and sucks up everything but the cat!

It did get some of the cat though. I think that I told you that the old Hoover bit the dust, so the house hasn't had a really good vacuuming since the problems started. This thing sucked up a huge amount of cat hair from just our bedroom. Maybe I shouldn't be telling you this. You will think that I am a lousy housekeeper.(OK so I'm not perfect.) That gray ball that you see in the canister is all from the bedroom! I don't think that the old vacuum was working at all!!! Scary! I think that about three more passes over the whole house and we will have all new rugs at this rate.

OK. Now that I have bored you stiff with the vac, on to other things, the orphans. I worked on two of them today.

I put a couple of coats of glaze on the Sweetheart.(I have to think of something else to call this one. I can't stand the name.) Then I hacked at the timbers and since I couldn't stain them because of the icky purple paint, I painted them brown and did some distressing.

I am still not crazy about how it looks so far, but I am going to have to think on it a bit. Then go at it from another angle. We will get there sooner or later.

I gave up on it and then decided to go on to the porch for a while.

I gave it two coats of Ceramcoat Light Ivory and then decided on Trail Tan and Black for the trim work.

Did I mention that I found two windows and a door that fit it in my stash? I did.

Back when these kits were on the market, a lot of people did them up for holiday decorations. My six year old self likes change, as you know. I am going to do this one in very neutral colors. Then I can change the decorations for whatever season or holiday suits my fancy. I think that I will try to finish it for Halloween. I am having the Wednesday Witches mini group Halloween party on the 28Th.

Tessie is all for me getting it done. She seems to think that it would be a good place for her to be. She said that the gazebo that I did in the birdcage is tiresome and boring.

I have seen her eying the wicker in the greenhouse for the past day or two. I caught her flipping through the pages of a Southern Cookbook that I have....I looked later. She marked the page with Mint Juleps, Pecan Pie, and Crawdads. I am not sure, but I think that the latter is to go in some spell she is working on.

I looked in the kitchen and she was stirring a big pot and mumbling something about "a pretty porch swing". Is there a spell for conjuring up porch swings or is she just hinting that I should make her one? Hmmmmm.....Sometimes her ideas aren't all bad. I need to go think about this.

See you tomorrow.