Yes, I have started back to work but haven’t blogged about it yet.  I have a large order for awards for this show in the works:

ACBA Specialty 2011 “Cavies in Bloom”

I’ve been painting that logo on every single piece- slow going but I do enjoy it!  That will keep me busy for a few weeks, but I did take today off to whip up a bunch of heart shaped goodies for  The Fifth Monday stocking on January 31 and Universal Mama’s “Love is in the Air” stocking on February 7.

After that, there is a squishy cup preorder going on at Wool Hoarders, followed by a batter bowl and ? preorder going on… I’m not sure where, LOL!

However:  I must let everyone know that my daughter Katie is due for a pretty serious knee surgery on February 10- the bone with the tendon holding her kneecap must be cut and reattached to the bone elsewhere using bone screws- so I am working extra hours to complete the bulk of the ACBA awards order before that date, just in case I am needed in mommy mode afterwards.

Thanks for your understanding!

Well, the technical term is “we.”  What WE did.  We painted and put a new floor in the basement!

First incarnation of the basement was institutional green asbestos floor tile and baby poo brown painted paneling.

The winter DH spent 3 months in Italy (2002 maybe?), I built in cabinets and did this:

The footprints were made by our dear Irish Wolfhound, Maggie who passed away in 2004.  The kids were 7 and I wanted it to be a bright, cheery playroom.

This is just before we started painting- the cabinets on the left had doors on them and the purple shelves were open.

A few years later the asbestos tiles started popping up (I’d only painted them to avoid the hazard of removing them), so we replaced with laminate flooring.  Then last spring during the Big Floods around here, we got 1/2 inch of water in the basement- just enough to ruin the floor.  So, that came up, and we lived with sticky black tar adhesive on the basement floor for 8 months.  It was really bad and left black goo on the bottoms of all the furniture.

Here we’ve primed the walls and I’ve started with the window trim and bookcases and cabinets.

Doors and trim.

A better shot of the awful floor.  Walls have been painted.

New floor going in!  It’s a commercial grade vinyl plank faux wood floor- waterproof.  I insisted on doing it myself because I’m picky that way, but it’s pretty easy to install! However,  I walked like a crab for days afterwards.

Almost finished!

And the finished basement!  I really need to replace that cabinet under the TV though…

The yucky plants in plastic bags are pond plants that spend every winter in the basement window.  Ugly.  But in the summer they make up for it by beautifying my pond!

Looking  back, I wish I hadn’t decided to do this over the holidays.  It made for a pretty draining “vacation.”  I still have to put baseboards in but will wait for a weekend further down the road.