LIFE'S CANVAS

Painting is something I know about. I love color, watercolors in particular, and my hobbies throughout my life have tended to drift to those activities that use lots of color: sewing, cake decorating, cooking, card making and stamping, gardening, and the needle arts of knitting, crocheting, embroidery. So you can imagine my mind going bananas trying to come up with a "color" for painting the basement here at the WI condo. My eyes rolled around in my head @@ and as I looked at all the choices, I was reminded again that it takes me a while to make decisions about color. I have a similar problem when I am creating a card. I usually start with a stamp I want to use. Sometimes they are back ground stamps and take up the whole card and I only need to come up with a sentiment or greeting on the front. If I have chosen a smaller stamp, then I have "room" to do other techniques to fill in some of the card front. But no matter, it seems I can spend hours finding just the right paper, colors, inks, embellishments of brads, ribbon, punches, etc, etc, etc! And I am happy when I am creating. : )

All this to say, the decision for the color (s) used on the walls and floor of the basement was difficult. I was going to go with a gray-blue, darker on the floor and lighter above, but I came to the conclusion (after several days of agonizing thinking) that it wouldn't look much different than the natural cement color it is now. I wanted to brighten the area and reflect as much light as possible. We only have one window and need all the light we can get. We don't have anything but a few bare bulbs at the moment. I decided to make the basement be a "light canvas" and picked "alabaster white" for the walls, and after much flipping of samples, decided that "natural tan" would be darker than the walls but still give a clean look to the floor. The painter said it was a good choice because they don't have to mix that color and it would be easy to "touch up" when scuffed or scratch. After the choices were made. we asked if there would be a problem with the odor and he said "NO". We could have let him do the painting while we were in MN if there was a problem with odor...

WELL, I wish I had that conversation on tape because for three days it was awful in here with the paint fumes. The second day, when they did the epoxy on the floor, we had to leave the house because the smell was giving us both a headache. I felt for the cats wondering if they were smelling it or if it was affecting them in anyway. The third day there was a little smell and it was tolerable. We told the painter of course, but NO discount for the inconvenience. Bummer! His excuse was "I must be used to it" and "I didn't think it would be a problem." The operative words here are "...didn't think"! And we took his word for it!
Here Mari is taking her first tentative steps onto the newly painted floor(R) and she and Jack make their first exploration of the basement (L). They are a bit scared of all the open space but will be bugging us to come down the stairs again I am sure.

So now the basement is all painted. It is bright, clean, and will blend with just about any decor a person would want to put down there. Since we are still camping out here, we haven't brought over much from MN except the ping pong table and a futon couch. There is no bathroom down there yet, so the basement won't be a common destination. But when we get ready, it is ready for a few walls and a bathroom and maybe my own craft craft room where I can leave things I'm working on out and I can explore the wonderful world of color as my interests lead me.

So enjoy the blessing of color in your life. It is all around us and one of the simple gifts we have every day that give us joy. A "thankful heart" is the beginning of having happiness and joy and we all need that on the canvas of our life.