upstairs bedroom painting- DONE!

Hi everyone. Brit here, reporting on the remodeling progress of 2011. I have to say, Mom's pretty bad about blogging these days, but I think it's partially due to her needing to pay more attention to-- ahem-- her feline children. Anyhow, once the housemate moved out, the room she'd stayed in was cleared of furniture, so Mom finally decided to redo that room. Here's a picture of me supervising from the futon mattress, which she'd moved out so she could paint:

Mom always said she hated the pink walls and wanted to paint over them. Here's what they looked like before she painted. (The crud at the top of the wall is wallpaper glue that she spent FOREVER peeling off a little at a time. She said it really shredded her fingertips.)

Why did she feel the need to get rid of the wallpaper border? I think she'd say, "Is that a rhetorical question?" Think "pseudo-Southwestern meets attempted floral". Here's the final version, the room all decked out in "Soft Jade":

Now, crazy Mom that she is, she's going to paint the OTHER upstairs bedroom, and then the hallway. Then she promises she's done painting for a while. Until she tackles the dining room wallpaper (two layers), that is . . .

Trip to Ireland

Ireland West Virginia, that is. Yesterday I went to the Irish Spring Festival, about an hour and a half south of my house. During most of the year, the population of Ireland, West Virginia is 60 (seriously). The week of St. Patrick's Day, though, they host a big festival that includes kite flying, road bowling, rubber duck races (not sure what's Irish about rubber duckies), and the reason I came:

Collette and I took a road trip to participate in the harp workshop, put on by Harping for Humanity. I tried to get a picture of the whole group, but I couldn't. The harps in the middle were built by the man standing near them, and behind him is a Venezuelan harp (not sure how he got that on the plane from Venezuela). Most people had lap harps or small Irish harps. My harp was the giant of the group (it's in the back at the left in the photo). Fourteen of us played at the workshop, including a woman who has lost almost all movement in her left hand but still manages to play. Pretty impressive. After the workshop, we had a potluck lunch and then put on a brief concert.

Before the concert, though, there was a parade! Most of the leprechauns were pretty young:

Toddlers should not be handed candy and told to throw it at people. Just sayin'.