It was BLACK METALLIC WITH DARK PURPLE… SWISHES. Some sort of horrible impressionistic thing gone terribly, terribly wrong.

It sucked every ounce of light out of those two tiny little rooms. I think we expanded the space by several thousand square feet. (My rough estimate.)

Here we are looking into the part where the tub is. That’s Henry on the wall. Why did they name the lizard a boy’s name for a girls bathroom?

I suppose the better question would be why is there a lizard in their bathroom?

What can I say? I felt a connection.

Henry’s closeup. I don’t want to freak you out by getting too close… he’s sticking his tongue out. He has a bit of the sass.

And, of course we have to have a shot of the pot. Note the Pretty Potty Picture!

This is a shelf adjacent to the wall Henry is on. The clock is an old one I hauled out of the closet and replaced a truly horrid large blue fish with a clock in it’s belly. Yes, just as tacky and juvenile as it sounds.

Here’s their new curtain for the shower. Actually it’s two curtain panels instead of a shower curtain. The old plastic liner is behind them and still hanging by the fish shower curtain rings… need to replace those.

That is as far away as I could get to take the picture. We either need larger bathrooms or I need a better camera.

Well, there you go! You have been witness to another HalfAsstic makeover.

Next? I paint the utility room.

How many? Oh.

Uuuuh, lets say 30. Yeah, that sounds good.

Are you having a hard time swallowing this?

What I need here is a touch of evidence. Here are some bathroom pics!

Behold, BEFORE! Go ahead, click on it and make it BIG!

Master bathroom 80's wallpaper BEFORE the paint job. NOW you see why The Peace Corps was needed.

Now stop that! I know you can control your gag reflex better than that! You’re being a sissy! Only a few of those Peace Corps folks tossed their cookies. And there were 45 of them staying here, remember!

Allrightythen, moving right along. I’m guessing you are  now wanting some eye relief. Let’s try showing some improvement, but not quite done.

This is the loverly Kessa. She was a tad upset with me cause she didn't have any make up on. I know... I can be decked out to the nines and sporting a tiara and not come close to looking like that.

SEE! Isn’t it a beautiful shade of blue/teal or whatever it is? Talk about “lighten and brighten”! That’s what we did!

Here's the mess aaaaall over the counter. There is so much mess you probably can't even see the Peace Corps workers in there doing their thing.

Here's Mither bent over painting the wall behind the counter. I realize you can't see that much of her, (go with me, here), but she's peeking out between that bucket of joint compound and blue plastic cup of paint.

Here's a close up of my new shower curtain. I got it for six bucks at a garage sale and so the bathroom color was picked around it. SCORE!

This is a really great shot except that the paint is so totally NOT that color. I really did have a hard time getting pics that represent the shade of blue/aqua/turquoise/greenishblue...

See what I mean? The paint in the potty room is the exact same as the paint in the rest of the bathroom. However, I can point out here that the far wall in the potty room does look more like the actual color. I don't know why it makes it such a baby blue in the foreground.

Don’t expect any of this to make sense.  (HA! Like I had to warn you about THAT!) It was just whatever moved me to take a picture of whatever at the time.

Me at chiropractor right before she stretches me ON THE RACK. John took this.

Inside of purse while bored in waiting room... somewhere...

I need a dress to attend an afternoon wedding. OUTSIDE. IN JUNE.

Top two contenders. The one on the right won.

Wedding reception we were attending.

Our tiki bar at the wedding reception of our neighbor across the street.

Ladies from the neighborhood.

The happy couple, Rich and Pat.

And that’s enough about the wedding.

Next we have Henrietta after the SIL showed up early enough to get her out of bed and dressed and hauled into the chair and into the living room and I looked at her and damned if she didn’t dress her in a pink and white striped top and bright red pants.  It’s kinda hard to tell in the picture, cause I didn’t use a flash, but her pants are RED.  When I said, “Couldn’t you have found her something that matched?”  She said, “Oh! That’s good enough for Mom!”

So sweet.

While going to Kohl's the other day. Heh!

So is it going to rain or is this the apocalypse? This is while leaving Kohl's.

Keelan's snake, making himself comfortable.

Look! He's smiling for the camera!

Our new tiki bar. Isn't it cute? OK, but it was free. That's what I thought.

…and besides that, I went outside in the heat of the day and painted it with water sealant. It’s been getting around 95 and 96 degrees here every day and the humidity is hovering around 126%.

Yes I agree.  it is absolutely beautiful.

The cicadas are out and making a horrible racket and leaving these shells around all over the place.

There.  That wasn’t too terribly painful, was it?  OK! OK!  The good news is that my camera is clean and therefore my mind is too.
Yeah!  RIGHT!!!

I am being threatened again, by family and… “loved” ones.  I am being told that if I don’t post again immediately, well, there will be consequences.

You don’t want to know.

So here’s what’s going on at chez Lopez now and for the past six months few days.

As you probably remember, there was another auspicious occasion to go along with Mother’s Day.  My birthday was the day before.  I promised pictures when I wasn’t feeling too lazy to work on it and since I am now properly motivated, here they are.

Here’s John and I at Olive Garden.  I gained 50 pounds that night, and it’s all in my neck… and boobs.  I SWEAR my neck doesn’t look that wide in real life.  My boobs, however… Yeah, that’s about it.

We had a wonderful time and I got all kinds of gifts and whatnots.  The whatnots were especially great, but what would you expect?  I know everyone has had tons of fun with their whatnot’s before and you know of what I speak.

Here I am with my adoring fans.  I know you thought I really didn’t have any so I am attempting to provide proof.  John took this and I have to admit that every night there is a fight to see who can get in my lap first when I sit down in the living room with John to watch TV and talk.  Please click on the picture and notice that there are three (3) animals ergonomically packed into the chair with me.  There is the one small dog slid in over there on the right trying not to be noticed, cause if I get feeling claustrophobic after a bit, or just plain HOT (and who wouldn’t), they all have to be dumped out.

Going   back a ways, the last time I was at World Market I found the neatest little pair of earrings.  They are freshwater pearl on a sterling silver wire.  And, they were ten bucks.  I LOVE them.  They are comfortable to sleep in and came with little, tiny, clear acrylic backs that keeps them from wriggling out of my ear.  Cause if something can wriggle off of me, it will.  Except the pets… I think we all can agree that I am doomed to be smothered by the pets.

Moving right along…

This tree, planted between my house and the neighbors is in bloom and it is the neatest thing!  The blooms, that are ALL OVER IT smell like lavender.  And I guess they look a tad like it too.

The leaves, however, look like marijuana.

Well, they DO.

I have named it the “Lavender Marijuana Tree”.  It sounds like a kind that should be very expensive.

And finally we come to my new Haan steam mop!  Ignore the little old lady in the background.  She continually throws food onto the floor for the dogs, (and they DO NOT clean it up well), and she’s the reason I need the steam mop in the first place….  Yeah.  That’s what I’m going to run with.

Anyway, Mither gave it to me because I had told her how badly I wanted one and there is genuinely a NEED for it.  She’s wonderful like that!

This bad boy does it all and with only a cup of water.  Of course it needs someone to run it around and before that happens the floors need all the pet hair and food scraps swept up off of it.  My chiropractor specifically told me not to sweep or mop for a couple of days.

What?  Chiropractor?  Krissa, you must lead an exciting life doing all kinds of adventurous things to have to go and see a chiropractor.

Yeah, well… OK, sure.

John went with me and I was glad he did so he could see and verify that I wasn’t just making up big fat fibs about how archaic the machinery looks in there.  Plus I felt like it wouldn’t hurt for him to hear all the cracking that happened when she “adjusted” me.

I feel  better now and go back again on Friday.  Henrietta, on the other hand is going on a diet.  She laughed when I told her that…  I don’t know why she thought I was joking…

It’s late now and I am tired and am about to go to bed.  John is snoring lightly in the chair beside me and he’s off work tomorrow.  So we will get all kinds of things done.  Maybe.

Free toes, everybody!

The other night we went to Pizza Hut for, you guessed it, PIZZA.  So I am sitting in the car because I looked like hell and was in a white tee shirt with no bra and shoeless.  The homeless look is alive and well at chez Lopez.  Anyway, John went in to get the pizza after a quick glance at me determined there was no way I was going to do it, and I noticed this poster in the window.  Click it and notice it says that they have “Restaurant Quality Pasta”.

As opposed to…what?  I mean I know Pizza Hut is not a 5 star establishment, but it’s not a hot dog cart either.

Just wondering…?

Next, we have a close up of John’s shirt with the little guy on the horse attempting to whack the invisible ball with a mallet.  Only John managed to get a little something Chinese food wise on it at lunch and the horse in his particular version has, obviously, left a pile of poo behind.

What can I say… this amused me.

Remember this?  Lisa’s kitchen and living room, ages ago when the remodel began?  Well, here we have some update photos.  Everything is just about done completely.  She doesn’t have her art and pictures up on the walls yet in these shots, but I’m thinking maybe tomorrow or the next day I’ll get over there and we’ll do it.  She also has some wooden shutters ordered to go up on the windows.

There is a beautiful oil painting that we found at a frame shop the other day to go over her fireplace.  It will look totally different.

There’s not much else to say.  John is off work again tomorrow.  AGAIN.  TWO TIMES THIS WEEK.  Those people at his work who can’t seem to do without him may start to think he is having an affair… with his wife.

Oh well.

Have you seen this phone, except with “Handset 1″ on the screen?  I will pay you to tell me where it is.  No, that’s not like a ransom… that would be desperate, and hey, I’m not desperate.  Not at all.  NOW WHERE IS IT!

The last time it was missing I found it in the window sill in the bathroom.  Yeah.  In answer to your question, oh obvious one, I don’t know.  Since I refuse to take it in with me to potty I am assuming it was hanging on my waistband when I went to empty H’s pee can, but who can really be sure?  Not me.

This is where it was before and now it’s not and yes I looked inside that candle thing.  It’s not there.  I have also looked all the other places.

Oh, by now you realize how serious this is to me and are thinking, “Gee, Krissa, why not just page it from the base?”  Well aren’t you brilliant?  (Ooo.  Did that sound snarky?  I’m a touch irritable today, bare with me.)  I will tell you why.  The ringer is turned off.  This is a gift(?) from my husband who hates the phones ringing and turns off the ringers when he comes home from work because the kids are the only ones getting calls on them by that time anyway.  They answer them upstairs.  This is the second day it’s been missing, so it will be dead soon anyway.

So I am awaiting that info on the phone location and will take anonymous tips if you are too scared to tell me you took it.

You should be.

Moving right along.

Remember this?  Well, it turns out that the $10.00 wine cooler/chiller (whatever!) was missing a little pin in the top of the door to hold it on the hinge.  No biggie, right?  So John and I hunted around at the local hardware store for something that would work and we picked up a little 49 cent deal that looked like it would work and, indeed, it fit fine.  However it would shimmy up, out of the hole a bit every time the door was opened and closed.  So I went online to Emersonradio.com, got the phone number and called.  The guy made no promises but told me that they had some replacement parts in the warehouse to send out, but the things are made in China and he kind of doubted that the door hinge pin was one of the things that were kept over here.  In the good ol’ US.  So he was going to put in a request and if they had it they would send it to me.

I never expected to hear from them again.

Well, yesterday Fedex dropped this on my doorstep.

I mean, can you see why I had no idea what it could be?  It is, quite literally, the size of my toaster oven.

Filled to the top with the huge-bubble bubble wrap.  (The kind that is REALLY fun to pop and scare the dogs with!)  And nothing else.

At least that’s what I thought at first.  And then on closer inspection, MUCH closer, I finally found a teeny-tiny pin for the door hinge.

Here it is.  In place and holding the door perfectly.

$10.00 for wine cooler.

Free shipping on the free pin for the door.

About $12.00 for the two bottles of cheapish wine we got on sale inside it.

This is where I’m supposed to say something is “Priceless”, but, really?  Who am I kidding?

There are these nagging pics on my camera that I took and want to keep, but am not really sure why and they are a bit…leftoverish.

DISCLAIMER:

You will now be subjected to them.

John, New Year’s Eve at our friend’s house with a blanket wrapped around him cause he was freezing to death as he didn’t wear a jacket like his smart, intelligent, always right wife told him to.  It looks a bit grainy, I guess cause I took it on ISO with and he is illuminated by distant fireworks/streetlamp.  Oh hell, I dunno.  This new camera is still a bit of a mystery to me.

My guilty secret, hidden in my freezer.  No, not the bottle of vodka.  Next to it.  The bag of minty good Three Musketeers bite size wonders.   My reason for living through Christmas.

John is such a BIG boy!  He concentrates carefully on getting two cups of coffee back to us at, yet another date at La Madeleine’s.  Maybe next time we could dress up a little for our date?

More evidence of our lunch date while playing with my new camera and trying to see how clear I could get a close up shot.   Well, we can clearly see that the table needs re-varnishing and a cup of coffee is $2.00! Ridiculous.

This just makes me laugh.  Tell me the truth.  If this didn’t have “Media Mail” stamped all over it, wouldn’t it look just like one of those packages of cocaine, or weed you see on TV that the cops are always finding in door panels of cars coming over the border?  I left it sitting in the car seat while we were eating breakfast at afore mentioned restaurant and half expected to see a cop peering in at it when we came out.

Just to prove what a good, kind, loving, adequate pet owner I am I have given our ancient cat her own heat lamp.  It shines on nothing but her 13 year old body.  She loves me best.

Gratuitous cat pic.  Again, I love that ISO setting!  She looks as if she’s deciding between a nap and a long hot bath with one of those books… Oh, wait a minute, that was me.

Her other favorite place to hang out.  As long as there’s a jacket or something to curl up in…

I’ve been trying to get a good shot of the wall treatment I recently finished in my bathroom.  The wall paper was HORRIBLE, straight out of the mid ’80′s.  I took some drywall compound and textured right over it with a wide putty knife and then, when it dried, (just a few hours), I held up a stencil of a fleur di lis and swiped more compound over it.  Then, just lifting the stencil off leaves a raised fleur di lis.

After that Mither came to visit and we painted it light lavender and finished it off with a dark purple glaze for that aged look I don’t want on my face but, for some reason, think is good on the walls.  Oh and then I silver leafed the fleur di lis.  AND if all that fleur di lis stuff wasn’t enough pretentious French talk, I then said, “VOILA!”

Here’s a close up of a…fleur.  heh

And here is my guilty secret.  The strip of wall paper that I didn’t get done, below the mirrored cabinet and above the backsplash.  I didn’t notice it until I sat down on the… well, you know… where you sit when you go into a bathroom…  I don’t go in there much as it’s the guest bath.  Anyway, the wallpaper looks like someone got drunk and threw up many, many different colors of paint all over the walls.  It was BAD.  I sat down on that same, er, receptacle to take the pic and you can se the top of my head in the mirror.

OK, where I was just sitting to take that last shot.

HEY, MY PANTS WERE UP!