Rock And Roll!

Ryan. Rock star.

Share your Halloween Decorating!

Hey everyone! Let's post how you decorate for holidays! Here it is for Halloween at the Gillman household:

Dude.

This little thing would be a hell of a lot cuter if it wasn't a) living under my shed; and b) mating with another one just like it.

And of course c) carrying a plethora of disease.

I'd get a cat, but I'm pretty sure these things are bigger than your average cat.

Get away from my flower pots, you mangy rodent!!

Check it out, yo!

I totally framed and insulated that area below the windows myself! Hee hee! Okay, so I had a little help cutting the 2x4s, but I did the calculations, and toe-nailed the middle studs in, and all that stuff. This weekend, I'll screw in the drywall panels, and maybe do a little finishing, and I'll have one upstairs room that is fully insulated. Yay!

The plan is to keep the original recessed look. The new drywall panels will be recessed from the wall about an inch. And then, after I sand and paint the trim, I'm going to wallpaper the new drywall panels. Something white-on-white, maybe with a little silver mixed in.

My office is going to rock.

Fun in St. George

Here's our trip to St. George.
At Steph's house:

At Steph's house fixing snacks:

At Sky Mountain Golf Course:




Saying goodbye at the convenience store:

Always leaving

This has become our life. Pictures of people leaving.

Delays, delays

Why does everything take longer than you think it will?

Over the weekend, my project was to finish painting the downstairs guest suite, and sew the tablecloth for the kitchen down there. Every simple facet of that turned into a convoluted mess. For example, I unscrewed the little clamps that secure the frameless bathroom mirror to the wall, and *wham!* The bathroom mirror slid with a thud onto the counter because no one had glued it to the wall. I think I speak for everyone when I say, "What the?!" Luckily, it didn't break, but I had to remove all the light bulbs on the side lights to lift the mirror out.

Then, in the hallway, another strange full-length mirror was attached to the wall. I could tell this one wasn't glued, which was a good thing in this case. I unscrewed it, wondering why anyone would put a mirror in such a weird location, and as I lifted it away from the wall, I realized why: it was covering a huge hole in the drywall. So painting the hall got put on hold in order to patch the drywall. I'll be sanding the joint compound down and texturing it tonight. Paint on Tuesday, maybe.

Now let's talk tablecloths. Flat, rectangular swaths of fabric that require little construction. Right? Wrong. Oh so very wrong. After two weeks of trial and error (don't ask — my brain just could not figure anything out), two weeks of sewing the wrong sides together, unpicking, mis-cutting, going back to the fabric store for more supplies, running out of thread, et cetera, I finally — finally! — finished the damn thing yesterday. And you know what? It looks as mundane and pointless as any tablecloth ever does. All that work, so people can spill mac & cheese on it. Why do I do it to myself?

Sometimes I feel like I'm making major strides of progress. Other times I feel like an ant, running frantically around in directionless circles.