Moo on a mission

I have been on a mission (or two) these last few weeks! Actually my Dad and I were obsessed with framing and hanging separate projects in our separate spaces. Mom followed along and gave advice and did repair/cleaning as needed. My Grandmother Nina painted a cool horse painting in 1974 that I bullied out of my parents garage. It cleaned up nice (thanks Mom!) and framed up inexpensively but WOW! I really love it and hung it on the big wall by Wil's desk. I also got some things done for inexpensive and really like it. Family photos in the hall and my room, flowers and ballerinas in the "Girls" bathroom and a lot of switching of frames that were cheap to nicer ones. All in all I finally got things more where/how I wanted them hung.

One of the coolest things happened in all of this framing frenzy. I was walking in my neighborhood doing some errands when I stopped in a thrift store for the heck of it. It was my day off with no place to be. Anyway, they are trying to make the shop look nicer (and fussier) being in the trendy neighborhood so I poked around. I found two different small oil paintings of San Francisco! (where I left my heart and born there) They were by different artist. I got the two for $10 bucks! I felt like I hit the jackpot. I took my finds home and called my parents. Pops was jealous. A couple of days later we were out doing some searching for things. First we got Rose (my guardian angel) which I will get back to. Then we went into a funky store my parents had not been in before. There in the junk I found another San Francisco painting! The frame was not good but I could fix that. They wanted $20 but we settled on $15. I also found a little framed pair of Asian folks handmade for five bucks. Pops needs to shop ahead of me cause he was jealous again at what I found!

I had found what sounded like a great frame store on Craigs List but they were not open on the weekend. We wanted to do our framing frenzy on Saturday but it would have to wait. We went there Monday before my massage torture and work. I had all my "wish to frame things" with me. We scored big time! Pre cut mats for $2-4, frames for $3 to $50 but real quality for art or photos. Pops and I each spent around $50 and got lots of cool framing done. Mom supported us and helped steer us to awesome choices. Turns out Mom knows the guy that runs it. He was everyone's favorite frame master at the Carriage House where she used to take art class. She took Horses and last San Francisco home and cleaned up the canvases. They both really needed cleaned up! They are so striking all cleaned up, framed and hung. My parents came over Thursday before I went to work and we hung a bunch of stuff in my place. I finished up some other framing and hung stuff over the weekend.

My other mission is my garden. I want one that thrives and is year round not flowers in the summer then gone. On payday Friday (23rd) when I got off work I went to a place called Little Baja. I wanted to find some interesting thing for "my garden". I was told it was a great place to find stone and terra cotta yard items inexpensive. Boy were they wrong. A tiny cement budda (and by tiny I mean 6 inches tall) was $25 bucks! I stooged around for a bit since it was a warm day 62 and sunny! There was a sale table of mostly broken items. I looked at it and found a big angel but she was kinda scary. She is made of cement, has wings and lots of detail but the black paint on her details made her scary looking. I did not buy her but she was not forgotten. The next day is when we headed out for adventure. I asked the folks to come look at her and see what they thought. They said she was creepy but I saw past the creepy and thought how I could paint her and have a really cool Guardian Angel. She has a tiara of roses and a few in her long hair. Her wings have great detail as does her robe. Last week I went over to my parents and washed her up good. Today I sprayed on a terra cotta primer then wafted bronze colored spray paint on then a smidge of copper. It gives her the look of very old metal. My Mom is going to get out her acrylic paints tomorrow to add the finishing touches on Rose. We talked about touching on the robe details and adding color to the roses. I'm excited to see what she does.

Now that the framing is done I am getting serious about "my garden". I have got a lot of suggestions that would work in my situation. That being mostly shady, windy and exposed. I've done internet searches and found the type of plants I like from those suggestions. I need to arrange my pots on the deck with Rose and then see what I want to do. I'm enjoying my research. I need to narrow down my likes and see what will go well together. Stay tuned.