a little of this and that

I spent more hours than I had imagined were needed last week painting HALF our room. Thankfully we really do like the paint colors in our house overall and most of the rooms seem to have been painted rather recently. However, several of the rooms are different colors above and below the chair rail going around the room...while both colors in each of the rooms are nice it has had me wanting to paint them all for the sake of symmetry and continuity I guess. Therefore I decided to tackle our room first last week since it seemed to present the smallest challenge. With help [or earlier start times in the mornings:)] I could have probably finished in one day but took my time and spread the task over two days-or was it three? It was three-day one I taped, day two I applied the first coat, and day three saw the second and last coat! Sad to say but it was actually a bit of a workout for me-at least for my pathetic arms:) Here's a before and after:







It's perhaps hard to tell whether it's blue or gray in these pictures but in person it's definitely blue. I love it all the same color-but as I told Claude all that work has kind of quelled my interest in painting our den/dining room for now:) Which happens to be just fine with him. If we do end up painting them I'm going to beg to paint the bottom half which I think would make the job much easier!

Since all that painting wore me out I was thrilled to get a call from Claude around lunch on Friday. Due to the holiday he actually had what amounted to a 1/2 day on Friday and so we went to a nearby Mexican restaurant for lunch. He also found out earlier that day that he had both Saturday and Sunday off and subsequently suggested a day trip to Savannah and Tybee Island. So Saturday morning we packed a beach bag and headed off to celebrate the 4th! Savannah ended up being a little more crowded in some areas and slower in others than we imagine is usual and so we hope to get a chance to visit again soon for a little longer than an hour or two , but we did enjoy our time there. Ironically enough one of the places we passed by was Paula Deen's restaurant, The Lady and Sons. We didn't eat there this time...there was actually a bit of a line it seemed even at 2 in the afternoon...but I did get a shot of Claude with the restaurant in the background:



After walking around several of the more populated blocks we got back on the road and headed for the beach. After a little searching we found a place to park our car and then to park ourselves on the beach! Claude read a good bit of the hour or so we were there and I guess I must have taken a nap...I left my sunglasses in Philly so it was too bright for me to even attempt reading:)





For supper we planned on going to a restaurant recommended by an uncle of Claude's called The Crab Shack. It was an ideal place to go post-beach and we hit it a little early (5ish) so as to hopefully beat what we imagined would be fairly long lines. This was the view out the door right beside our table...



we could also faintly see the water through the small cracks in the boards beneath our feet and joked about hoping the floor wouldn't cave in before we finished eating!

We finished supper fairly quickly and started on the road back...there was a fireworks show on the river that we thought we might make it back for and in a way we did. The fireworks started while we were still driving and so we saw most of the show from the car. At one point as we were driving over the bridge we began to laugh at the mass of people sitting on the right side of the bridge until we looked to the left and saw the view they had obviously come for...fireworks going off over the river with lots of lights below from the boats on the river to boot. My camera is not a professional one so this is the best picture I could get of our view from the bridge, but I assure you it was much better in person!




So that brings this recap up to today. We visited another church this morning and really enjoyed both Sunday School and worship there. After lunch at our house we just worked on different projects around the house. Late afternoon I started on a baking project I've been so anxious to try-petit fours which were featured on one of my favorite blogs. They didn't quite look like perfection and for a number of reasons I decided to only really ice about half of the squares this time but overall I enjoyed trying them and will probably give them another shot once I get a better cooling rack. Most of the ones I ended up with this time were kind of uneven in shape but I tasted one already tonight and while they are SUPER sweet they didn't taste all that bad even though they looked lopsided. With a practice round under my belt I'll do better on presentation next time. I just wish I had some of my sweet tooth friends here to help me eat the few I did ice because I don't think Claude will be eating them since they've got a bit too much sugar for his taste:)






Well I've got several other tasks for this week-some of which include finishing up some of the rooms here-and so I'll post some more of those pictures this week hopefully. Hope you all had a great weekend!

Rachel