Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart!

So I might have mentioned to a few, or 15, of you that I had some foundation work done this spring. It was not the fun way I had anticipated spending that money, but keeping the house from falling apart ended up trumping any other plans. The southeast corner was where they had to do the majority of the work. It left some lovely cracks in the bedroom at that corner of the house. These are the 2 biggest cracks. And yes, that one ran up into the ceiling.

My house has the lovely popcorn & glitter ceiling that I hate. Since the crack was into the ceiling, I decided to finally tackle removing the popcorn. Afterall it's only a 10x10-ish sq foot room. It's not hard, it's just labor-intensive and MESSY!! That was not a fun day. (BTW, if you ever decide to take down a popcorn ceiling, always have it tested for asbestos first. Though I highly recommend hiring the job out if you are considering removing your popcorn ceilings. It's not fun.) I removed it and did the oh-so-fun cleanup then waited about a month to have any motivation to be in the room again. After sanding down the ceiling and creating another giant mess to clean up, I started in on the patching work. Due to the size of the cracks, I used mesh tape to first cover them.
Then I glopped on, I mean, expertly applied drywall compound.

Then came sanding, another big cleanup, priming, and painting. I primed & painted the ceiling too. I was pretty happy I had just enough primer & white paint in the paint can stash in the basement to finish the job without buying any more. I also had left over paint for the wall color from when I painted the room about a year & a half ago. And here is the finished product. The patch jobs may not be the most professional, but it's done. I was quite proud of my home-owner skills. I may have watched too much HGTV in my time, but it's come in handy.

Voila!

Labor Day in Colorado

I was invited to join friends for a few days on their vacation in Colorado. It took me about 2 minutes to decide I could figure out a way to make it work. So I joined Christy & Michael for Labor Day weekend in Avon, CO. My flight arrived several hours before theirs on Saturday, so I got my rental car and headed out to Dillon for some shopping. Then I went to Vail. Gourmet on Gore was in full swing - a food & wine festival, so I walked around and had some fun people watching. We got settled into the condo in Avon that evening.

Sunday was a scenic drive on Highway 24 to Colorado Springs with many stops for picture taking. Some of the aspen trees were just beginning to turn their brillian yellow color. We started a hike at The Crags, but it began to thunder & rain so we had to turn back.

Monday we took a local's recommendation for a hike. We drove into Glenwood Canyon. That is an amazing spot if you ever have the opportunity to experience it. We hiked up Hanging Lake Trail. It was steep & rocky with a beautiful mountain stream flowing beside the trail most of the way up. There were gorgeous moss-covered waterfalls near the top of the trail. Hanging Lake is a jewel of a spot - a crystal clear mountain lake near the top of the canyon. It was an awesome hike!