The perfect green.

For the past two weeks, we've been going back and forth to Home Depot to buy little containers of paint color samples, trying to find the right color for our living room. When we bought this house, the living room was painted a very dark green.... not exactly my color in the first place, and it was the one room that I wanted most to change. But we lived with it for a good long while... until I started my painting frenzy the week after New Year's.

Picking the ivory beige for the upstairs rooms was easy..... a soft beige has always been my favorite neutral for walls. But finding a nice happy green for that living room has been a lesson in patience. Time after time, we thought we had the color..... the sample card seemed to be the perfect shade..... the small jar of paint looked just fine.... but once we put it on the wall in the living room, "Sweet Spiceberry" turned into "Sour Bloodberry" as soon as the sun went down. We went through greens, mauves, burgundy shades.... nothing seemed to work. We even tried a taupe/beige in that room, which was awful. Paint that looked so promising in the sunlight turned horrible when we turned on the overhead lights after dark.

Finally, one day last week, I took one of the throw pillows to Home Depot with us..... in that pillow were shades of green and burgundy and gold.... surely we could find the correct shade of one of those colors? The paint guy at Home Depot knew us by that time.... he had mixed up about ten sample containers of paint for us. Each time we went in there, we told him "this is the one." It was never the one.

So in we walked the other day with our pillow and a computer photo of our living room.... my husband goes to the wall of paint samples... the paint guy says hello to us, takes one look at the pillow and the picture, and then he takes some paint color cards out of his pocket, picks one and says "This here's your color." He pointed to a shade of green called "Promenade." It was a soft shade of green... rich without being too dark, vibrant without looking like a leprechaun tossed a zillion shamrocks against the wall.

Could that possibly be our color? Could the paint guy at Home Depot have picked out a color for us in less than 20 seconds while we've been ankle-deep in sample cards for the past two weeks? We bought a sample container of "Promenade." When we got home I put it on the living room wall, next to the patchwork quilt of the other eight colors.... "Promenade" was indeed the perfect color. Give me a blessed break.

My husband went back to Home Depot last night for two gallons of this perfectly soft shade of green. I painted the first wall this morning, covering up all the sample squares of burgundy and mauves, and the assorted putrid shades of green that we tried. The new Promenade paint has dried..... I have put back the furniture and pictures on that first wall.... everything looks beautiful..... the paint guy was right-- This here is your color.

I'll be painting the living room for the rest of the week...... one wall at a time..... taking down pictures and moving furniture away from one wall each day. That dark unhappy shade of green that was here will soon be a memory.

Lilacs.

The very first time I saw this house, I knew it was where we were supposed to be. The structure itself on the outside reminded me of the house I grew up in.... that quiet little street in Woodhaven where most of the homes there in the 1950s had front porches and green lawns.

When I was a kid in that house up north, our backyard had lilac bushes. They would be bursting with purple blooms in the Spring and my dad would trim the branches and wrap up the flowers and their green oval leaves in tin foil so I could take them to school. The nuns would use the lilacs to decorate the altar in the church. We had so many lilac bushes that the church altar, as well as the small side altars near the saints' statues, were covered in lilacs for weeks on end.

At the last house my husband and I lived in, one of the neighbors had white lilac bushes growing... their aroma was carried on warm Spring breezes and when I was walking with Gracie I could smell the lilacs as soon as we got to our corner. But those flowers were white, not purple... lilacs still, but just not the same.

This is our third Spring in this big old hundred-year-old house. We have walked around every inch of the property surrounding the house, the cottage, the garage, the barn. My husband has walked every inch of our fields, checking the bluebird boxes, the creek at the back of the woods, and he knows every inch of the pond, inside and out.

We have pecan trees, plum trees, palms, and live oaks... rose bushes and red-tip bushes, mesquite trees and crape myrtles. There are day lilies that pop out in the Spring, along with a few hyacinth and snow drops. And wildflowers.... 38 different varieties of wildflowers on our property, at my last count. But today... on this windy day with a temperature that dropped from 80 to 60 overnight and will soon be back up near 80 again... out in the backyard behind the cottage and near the fence going out into the pasture..... there is a lilac bush. A lilac bush! That little bush has been growing a little bit each year we've been here, but it was always filled with green leaves... no blooms.... and I didn't even know it was a lilac bush. It was just always there.... during the drought, my husband watered that bush when he was watering the pecan trees.

This afternoon, I went out back to check on the chickens and look for eggs in the coop. PittyPat laid one of her pale blue eggs and I went into the yard to say Thank you for the pretty egg! and as I did that, the explosion of purple lilacs couldn't be missed. I walked towards that bush and I was saying out loud "Those can't be lilacs....." But they were. I was out in the yard yesterday... and the day before... and every other day before that..... either I didn't look in that direction or the blooms popped out all at once this morning, which I seriously doubt.

This past Wednesday, the 22nd, was my dad's birthday.... he passed away in 2008.... he would have been 93 this year. I'm letting myself believe that the lilacs started to bloom on Wednesday... then yesterday they were a little more pronounced... and today, they were just bursting and exploding and begging to be seen.

Part of me thought it would be nice to cut some of the lilacs and bring them to a church, and ask them to put the flowers on the altar. But then another part of me didn't want these lilacs going too far away from here. I cut some of the branches and put them in a vase. I have them here on my desk where I can see them. Tomorrow, I will go outside and cut more branches, and put the blooms into vases around the house. Without a doubt, whenever I go into the yard, my eyes will be drawn now to that particular spot, to see how the lilac bush is doing in whatever kind of weather we're having.

If there ever was a doubt that this house was 'meant to be,' that doubt was dispelled when I saw those lilacs blooming this afternoon. What a wonderful surprise... a beautiful gift. Happy birthday, Daddy.

Pink and green and mauve, oh my....

I've been buried in paint colors..... those little cards of paint colors that are on display at Home Depot and Lowe's....... are there that many colors in the rainbow? And who makes up the names for those colors, anyway? I can see a whole room of people looking at paint cards, trying to come up with names other than Light Pink, Medium Pink, and Dark Pink. Personally, I think they should give numbers instead of names to all of the paint colors. I had my mind set on one particular color but then I looked at the name on the card and it was "Tangerine something-or-other." I don't much care for tangerine anything, so I put that card back on the rack.

We've picked out a color for the main bathroom on the second floor.... the top half is wall-papered with a pretty Victorian print, but the bottom half of the walls are just white. Plain old white-bread white. Hard. Color-less. Character-less. And we all know I've been on a war against white walls.... so I thought a very pale green would be perfect for in there. I found a color called "Whitened Sage." I nearly put that color card back just because of the "Whitened" in the name of it... but I got a sample of the paint and it looks very nice in there. When I first painted a small part of a wall with that color, I thought it was too white, but it dried into a silvery-jade pale green. Perfect, because that's the exact color of the leaves in the floral wallpaper in there. They should have named that color "Silver Sage."

The living room walls have been a trial..... I now have three colors on a wall down there... all samples that we thought we would try. The light green one is too minty, the darker green is too circus-y, the green that was there to begin with is too depressing, but the mauve-rose color that we picked seems to be just perfect. The name on that card is "Rhubarb," and I almost didn't want to try that color because, like tangerine, I don't really like rhubarb. But it seemed like the perfect color... vibrant and rich, which is what that room needs. We're hoping that when the sun goes down and we turn on the lights in the living room, the "Rhubarb" will remain deep and rich, rather than maroon and muddy.

I spent part of the day yesterday taking down the Valentine decorations.... and then I debated whether or not to put out the St. Patty's Day things. All my little glass shamrocks and porcelain leprechauns..... they're packed away in the boxes and ready to come out and play for the month of March. I'm also thinking of doing a "March Cookie Madness" party for the ladies around here... a cookie exchange, like you would do at Christmas time, but somehow no matter how much of a head-start you get before the holidays, there just is never enough time for cookie-baking. So just because December is over doesn't mean that no one wants to be making cookies, does it?

Tonight is the first episode of this season's "The Amazing Race." And pretty soon, the new season of "Dancing With the Stars" will begin. Two shows that I just enjoy watching.... and my husband is into The Amazing Race also, so we watch that one together every week.... he records it and then we watch it later so he can zip thru the commercials. Which I may start doing with "Dancing With the Stars." Those two-hour shows are chock-full of commercials, and I know that by zipping thru all of the ads, it would take up so much less of my time. I'll see...... I think it's the lure of watching it live as it's happening is what's stopping me from recording it.

We're thinking that we're out of the winter-weather season here. Aside from just one or two cold snaps that brought just-freezing temperatures, our 'winter' has been very mild and Texas-like. Next week starts Mardi Gras in Galveston.... or was that this weekend when it began? I've lost touch with the goings-on in Galveston since we moved up here to the Hill Country. We used to like going to the afternoon Mardi Gras parades on The Island when we lived in Clear Lake... but we haven't been to Galveston since we came up here.

Maybe I should be planning a Mardi Gras party........

Valentines and rainy days...

We had our Valentine party on Saturday night..... friends from here, and V & S drove up from Clear Lake. The pot-luck dinners always turn out so perfectly, with different foods and surprises..... we never know what anyone is going to bring and somehow, it just always works out well and there's always a dish that you've never seen or tasted before. Our friend H made an Indian recipe with cabbage and Indian spices and by the end of the night there was precious little of that left in the bowl.

Our across-the-road neighbor S couldn't come on Saturday, and she's the one who usually bakes over-the-top desserts for our parties. S can bake as well as (or better than) most bakeries, and her desserts are always outstanding. Knowing that she wouldn't be here, I tried a cupcake recipe-- it started out as a cake, but at the last minute I put the batter into paper cupcake liners that had a Valentine design on them. Chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate-cheesecake-mousse frosting. (I've been watching too many episodes of "Cupcake Wars.") The cupcakes were delicious, and with an apple pie from J&J, and Dove chocolates in all the candy dishes, we had more than enough to satisfy everyone's Valentine sweet tooth.

We played a trivia game after dinner...... we thought that might be better than Charades..... but afterwards, I got to thinking that maybe the neighbors just enjoy spending the party-time visiting with neighbors that they don't get to see every day (and sometimes not even every week). Maybe we don't need games at our parties? But everyone seemed to have a good time, though, and that's the important part. We originally thought our neighbors here weren't up for big parties at all, but that doesn't seem to be the case..... everyone seems happy to get the invitations and more than happy to celebrate and get together with friends and neighbors here.

We can't have a party without surprises........ I had a Valentine-print tote bag for the lady who had the most Valentine-y outfit on (and that was definitely L, with her Snoopy sweater just covered front and back in hearts--- Texas stores have more holiday-themed clothing than any place I've ever seen). And V got the big red-silk heart candy box, for wearing the most red (a bright red dress-- she looked like a stunning Valentine). I also filled up a pretty goblet with Dove chocolates and asked everyone to guess the number of candies........ G won easily, with his guess being just one number off the actual total. G's wife said he spent too much time studying that goblet, as if he were counting each candy-- well, if that's what he did, it worked.

We had a cold weekend.... and the party night was colder than it's been for the last couple of weeks. Our 'winter' has been milder than the last two winters, and everyone seems to be very happy about that-- especially us. We've had our share of frozen pipes, thank you very much, and my husband has taken every precaution so that doesn't happen again. It's raining today... but it should clear up tomorrow for the 'real' Valentine's Day.

Rainy days.... we're getting rain on a regular basis these past couple of months. The bluebonnets should be out in full force by mid-April, if not sooner with all the rain and warm weather we've had. Everyone is looking forward to the wildflowers this season, especially after not having very many at all last year.

Our neighbor B came over last week with three dozen eggs from her chickens. She had a huge shopping bag filled with egg cartons-- her chickens are giving her at least nine eggs every day and she was "spreading the wealth" among the neighbors. After B left that day, I took two of the eggs out to my own hens and I held those eggs in my hands and said "Look! See these eggs? This is what you're supposed to be leaving in that coop for me!" Both Scarlett and PittyPat have been laying eggs again..... PittyPat gives me an egg every other day, and Scarlett has been laying an egg almost every day. Coincidence or not?

Teeny tiny visitors.....

Give me a blessed break...... there's a mouse in the house, and it's a smart one. You would think that with cats in the house, this would be the last refuge for a tiny mouse. But I guess this little creature knows that the cats aren't allowed on the second floor, so that's where the mouse has taken up residence. Not only does the mouse know he's safe from the cats, but somehow he found out that we have the birds on the second floor..... two parakeets who toss seeds out of their cage if they come across some that they don't much care for.

The mouse has been hiding the seeds under the sofa in my dressing room..... I discovered that when I moved the sofa out from the wall when I was painting in there. Two little piles of seeds, nice and neat. Two little piles of mouse-poop, not so neat. I vacuumed all of that up, painted the wall behind the sofa, and then put two sticky traps in the spots where the mouse stashed the birdseed. For two days, not a seed was taken and hidden away. Not a sign of the mouse. On the third day, there were three seeds behind the sofa, and one of the sticky-traps had been moved.... not just moved over an inch or so, but moved about three feet. Had the mouse moved it any further, it would have been just about in the middle of the room--- and guess who would have probably stepped on it.....

The mouse is still up here somewhere.... I keep checking behind the sofa, at least two or three times a day. The parakeets are still spitting out the seeds that they don't like.... and the dust-buster seems to be constantly in use. Every time I go in there, the dust-buster is in my hand and I'm making sure to scoop up every bit of seed that gets on the floor in there.

As if a mouse isn't enough...... we had an electrician here late this afternoon to start installing outlets and light switches up on the third floor.... the soon-to-be-a-library third floor. The electrician was working away for nearly two hours and then he called down the stairs to me: "Do y'all know that y'all have a bat up here?" Give me a blessed break......

We had a bat flying around in this house last year... we don't know how it got in here, but it took us two hours to get him out. We also caught two or three bats on sticky traps.. they were walking through the walls and ended up in the closet with the furnace, where I have an obstacle course of sticky-traps for all things crawling and creeping and wandering around after midnight. (Country living.... they don't tell you this part when they advertise the bucolic and serene rural settings.)

I gave the electrician a crab net and a broom.... he asked for a baseball bat, but the closest thing I had to that was a wooden oar for a sailboat. He tried to catch the bat in the crab net (I wouldn't recommend that method)..... then he tried swatting it with the broom (that worked better, but he nearly fell down the stairs). Finally, the bat got tired of that game and flew into a crack near the end of the wall up there. That's all a bat needs-- a tiny slit, a slim crack, half-an-inch of open space and he's either inside or outside in seconds. We're hoping he went outside. I'm also hoping that we can get the sheet rock done as soon as the electrician is done..... and then the third floor will be sealed up tight. One would think.

So here I sit.... typing..... and there could be a mouse across the hallway, hiding parakeet seed underneath the sofa in my dressing room. And there could be a bat flying around upstairs on the third floor. And I sit. And type. I must be getting used to all of this because I'm not pacing the floor and telling my husband that a hundred-year-old house in the hills is not where we should be.

We should be here... it's the bat and the mouse that need to go.

Go Giants! and Go Scarlett!

We watched the Giants win the SuperBowl last night, along with friends J&J on their mega-sized television.... they invited some of the other neighbors as well, and it turned into a potluck football party-dinner. I didn't much pay attention to the game, and I only saw a few of the commercials.... I was busy talking to the ladies the whole night long. Mostly, the guys watched the game, and the ladies 'visited.'

J arranged a guessing game, with everyone giving their best guess which team would be ahead by how many points at half-time..... the prize was a brand new football. Then as everyone was leaving at the end of the night, we all got to pick a pet-sized football as we said good-night. I picked a color that I thought the cats would like, and Sweet Pea and Mickey have been batting that little football around our TV room since last night.

This morning after our usual walk, I went to clean the coop and there was an egg in one of the nesting boxes.... a pretty brown egg, so I know it's from Scarlett. She's been laying eggs again, and so has PittyPat. Not every day, but every other day..... maybe the hens were on Christmas Break with their egg-laying, and now they're coming back slowly to their regular schedule. Sure is nice to find those eggs again....... the store-bought eggs with their pale yellow yolks and runny whites are just no match for fresh-laid eggs.

I decided to paint the laundry room this morning, and I was determined to get it done. I figured that wouldn't be so hard to do, given the small size of the room. That was one of the compromises when we found this house...... I had visions of a huge laundry room with an ironing board that would fold up into the wall. Not in this house. The previous owners took the original pantry of this hundred-yr-old house and turned it into a small laundry room off the kitchen. Very convenient location, but a very small room. Oh well.

It was easy to paint because it went quickly, but it was also a royal pain to paint because of its small size. No place to turn, no place to move......... but my husband put a long thick board on top of the washer and dryer so I was able to stand on that to get up to the top of the walls. I had no intention of moving the washer/dryer out of the room.... I painted around them, as far as I could reach. When it comes time to replace those machines, then I will just paint the walls back there. I know it was the easy way out, but I just couldn't see moving those machines out of the way for the bottom half of that wall.

But... the room is done, and looks great..... now I'll be on the look-out for laundry room pictures to hang up in there. Shouldn't be hard to find.... I've already found a vintage advertising sign, with two cats wearing turn-of-the-century hats. When the paint is all dry later on this afternoon, I will hang that up so I'll have something cute to look at when I'm folding clothes in there.

We're getting ready for our Valentine party this weekend..... the house has been decorated since the beginning of January... red hearts all over the living room and dining room, with a few tossed into the kitchen and breakfast room. Tossed? How about artistically placed? Valentine's Day is a fun holiday, as long as you don't get stuck in a crowded restaurant with a so-so menu and way too many people waiting to be seated for dinner. (Which is why we like to have our Valentine celebrations right here at home.)