It is now Sunday and about time I took a look at what I had intended to accomplish to see how I stayed on track. Or didn’t. To be honest, I did not look back at the list I’d made at the beginning of the week, so I am sure there are things that I didn’t bother to get to. But I think there will be other things which I managed to get done over and above what I’d listed.

My list from the beginning of the week:

1. Don’t work on off hours. (Mostly achieved, though there were times I did need to work in the evenings. It was unavoidable in those cases. There weren’t many of them.)
2. Bake 2 loaves of banana bread to freeze and one loaf of regular bread. (I baked one banana bread loaf. The other loaf was off the table as Miss Butterfly ate the overripe bananas. I did not get a proper bread loaf done.)
3. Go to the hardware store, get paint for interior.
4. Start painting! (I took Tuesday off to get a solid head start on the project.)
5. Make more dog treats.
6. Find yarn and a pattern for a new knitting project.
7. Finish spinning singles on current handspun project. Begin plying. (I finished the singles but did not ply, and there’s good reason for that which I will get to below.)

So, I purchased interior paint and supplies. I decided that I would get paint for 5 rooms all at once, as we are supposed to be limiting our store visits. I took Tuesday off and on Monday evening after work, Miss Butterfly and I began our large project. We painted all day on Tuesday. On Wednesday I painted during my lunch break and after work. Miss Butterfly painted in the afternoon by herself. At that point, she completely crapped out, and the painting has been all up to me ever since.

I finished the living room, all except for a section of wall behind Mr. Ink’s fish tank. He plans to rehome the fish, and then remove the tank. Once he has removed the tank, we will fully finish that room. The hallway has one coat of paint and needs a second coat, which I will finish tonight. The dining room is going to be finished tonight. The kitchen is close to being done, but the fridge needs to be moved.

Here’s a little story to go along with the dining room and kitchen painting. I ended up choosing a very cheery peachy color for the dining room and kitchen. In the end, it needed 3 coats to fully cover the blue that was the previous color. At once point, I came around a corner to a LAN line phone jack in the house. We’ve never had one, so I decided to remove it and then fill in the holes. When I removed the fitting completely, much to my surprise, the previous owners had chosen the same color at some point! Take a look!

This ended up putting the painting in the kitchen on pause a bit, as I needed to patch this hole and another as well. So, I had to wait to get back to a hardware store to purchase some patching materials.

On Thursday evening we ended up getting about 8 inches of snow in quite a short amount of time. It was so pretty. It started in the afternoon while I was still working from home. I could see it coming down and accumulating from where I was sitting. The backyard just filled and filled with snow. But, it was one of those spring snows where it never really accumulated on the pavement and no shoveling was required. On Friday, it melted just as fast as it had accumulated, which I also got to watch with delight from my work from home spot.

Knowing this, I figured on Saturday the dog park would be very muddy and I’d rather like to stay out of it. We talked to a friend who allowed us to use his fenced back yard to bring the dogs to. We had a lovely time sitting in the sun and fresh air allowing the dogs to play in the back yard. I wish we had that opportunity in our own yard. On the other hand, Fury proved why that won’t be possible, as she tried to dig around the base of each mature tree to sniff whatever she could find!

I chose and knit a scarf. I figured the best thing would be a project with thick yarn. I found a ruffled pattern, paired it with yarn from Miss Marja, and soon had a cool little scarf.

This project was so delightful that I cast on another one right away out of my own handspun yarn.

I ended up skipping the plying of my handspun this week because I realized that after such an intense push to get the interior of the house painted, I’d been struggling with sore hands, hands that were falling asleep at night. That’s fairly typical for me, but my goal is to take care of them, rather than make them worse.

So, now on to this week’s list.

1. Don’t work during off hours
2. Make dog treats
3. Bake bread
4. Start prepping craft room for painting. Get started if possible.
5. Move fridge to paint behind, finishing the kitchen.
6. Clean fridge.
7. Bring spring clothing upstairs, move winter clothes to basement

That seems like a more than fair list. To be honest, I was supposed to have a good portion of this week off for a trip to Lake Tahoe, obviously that’s not happening. I canceled my work vacation time, but Mr. Ink did not. I might take a day or two off to make sure I get a little extra done. It wasn’t just the painting this last week and weekend, Mr. Ink has also been madly productive. If we can keep that up, it’ll be very nice! I still have hopes and dreams of getting so far into the interior painting project that I even *gasp* paint the bedroom!