More spring improvements.

My Mother-in-law comes to visit us every spring. She came the first time for Ella's baby blessing and has continued to come each year. This year will be her 5th visit with us. Each year right before she comes, Jon gets a home improvement bug and we start getting things done. Part of this is due to the warmer weather and the spring cleaning type feeling many people get. And part is due to the fact that he wants to impress his Mommy with our home and the work we have done on it (hi Laura!) This year so far we have done some little finishing touches in the dining and living room that have been sitting around waiting to be done forever. We also moved the kids beds around as I mentioned in a previous post. I am also in the process of doing the down stairs bathroom. I have always thought this room looked blah, but haven't gotten the fire to do anything about it until now. So I picked out paint colors and got to it. I painted the dirty white walls a pretty blue, the ugly dark wood stain cabinet is now a pretty cream color along with the trim. Now I just have to clean up my mess and put the finishing touches on the place and I will be done. I am much happier with the room now than before. Unfortunately I forgot to take before pictures so you will just have to use your imagination. I am not sure what else Jon has in mind to do before Laura gets here, but I hope he can get it done fast as she will be her a week from Saturday!


Today I also got the things to finish a photo mosaic I have been working on. I have been looking for just the right pictures to put in my dining room on the walls above the table nook. I wanted something "arty" so it wouldn't need to be updated so often like portraits. I also wanted to make it by myself. I thought some nice floral pictures would work but didn't have what I wanted in my files. Well, I really liked some of the pear tree pictures I posted a week or two ago, and I played around with my favorites in photoshop until I had a look I was happy with. I did a "watercolor" effect on the pictures. Then I cropped them into 16 5x7's each and had them printed. Today I mounted the pictures on black foam core and with Jon's help, got one of the mosaics hung on the wall. I LOVE the way it looks and I can't wait to get the other one hung tomorrow. I will definitely post a picture of that one as I like it slightly better than the one that has already been hung. I am especially happy that this art is 100% made by me.