Thursday, April 15, 2010

Painting Projects over Spring Break

When we moved in here in August, 1989, we painted everything Country White, even the baseboards. If you have been a recent reader, you know that during Christmas Break, we started painting parts of our house that had been Country White for 20 years. After taking a "break" from painting, we again painted during Spring Break, March 29 through April 1. Rowen's and my bedroom was the first project, then the entryway and stairways/landings down to the basement. In our bedroom, we decided on a raspberry accent wall, with 3 walls a light pink. Here Emily and Beth are helping with the pink rolling. Rowen also gave the ceiling fresh paint.

Rowen rolling pink.

The finished pink walls and white ceiling.

Doing the baseboard in white next to the raspberry accent wall.

Rowen cutting in up high in the entry way. We primed everything before putting the color on.

Cutting in on the low parts with Nevada Tan, which is also the underneath color on the upstairs hallway under the scone fauxing.

Rowen painting white ceiling paint in the tight triangle. It is shaped this way because it is below the stairs going up to the upper level.

Rowen cutting in the Nevada Tan base color in the entry to the family room.

While I was gone, some people did some experimentation with different colors and fauxing techniques. My advice: don't try this at home! Thankfully, it was painted over before I saw it!

Plain wall before fauxing.

We decided to use the double paint/double and textured rollers for the fauxing. We used a butterscotch type color and a scone color for the fauxing colors.

Entry way above the front door after the fauxing was completed.

Going down to front door from the main level. In this picture, you can see the adjoining wall of the upstairs hallway with the sea sponge fauxing using just the scone colored paint, and compare it to the double roller fauxing using two colors that goes down the stairs. The wall texturing is totally different for this part of the house compared to the upstairs, so we think it was a good choice to do the double roller technique here.

Entry way going downstairs. The small plaque on the wall says: When you are here you are family.

Finished pictures of our bedroom: We changed our bed back to the direction we had it our first 17 years in this house. Rowen really enjoys it in this position and I am sleeping better too!


Our Raspberry accent wall.

Next project is the living room. We're accepting suggestions for what color to do. We also want to repaint the pink upstairs bathroom.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Easter Weekend in Colorado Springs

Our family went to Colorado Springs the weekend of April 2-4. The main thing we went for was the Arms Around the World Missions Conference. We really enjoyed the services and benefited from getting together with some of "God's wonderful people." It was refreshing to our souls.
There were times of eating together in the parsonage/fellowship hall. This shows some of the crowd.


Pastor Philemon Wachara was the special speaker for the evening services. Here we were visiting with him after Saturday evening service. He is from Kenya, but is in the US attending God's Bible School at present. He was telling us that our nephew, Aaron Profitt, is his statistics teacher!

We stayed with Rowen's cousin, Katie, and Uncle Alvin Gafford.

They are so kind to let us come and stay with them, and we enjoyed meals and visiting with them. Friday night we went to The Mason Jar for the evening meal.

Jason played the piano for the enjoyment of Uncle Alvin and Katie.

On Saturday afternoon, our kids went with the young people from the Immanuel Missionary Church to a mini-golf place. They had a great time; here are some pictures from that.

This is everybody who was in the group, except for the photographer, Steve.
We do have a picture of Steve, shown here with Tonya, whose birthday was being celebrated with this group activity.

This outhouse seemed to be one of the harder stations. I heard that Steve had to climb in there several times to rescue balls!

We call these guys "the two Jeffs". They and their families spent last summer in Ukraine helping the missionaries do VBSs! Wonderful folks!

We had a family picture taken before church on Easter.

Kassie Reynolds caught in a cute pose!

Emily and two of the girls she is friends with in Colorado Springs

Picture we took while driving through Garden of the Gods on the way home on Sunday afternoon

A picture we received as an Easter email gift when we got home! Our "adopted" son, Seth Stevenson and his special friend, Alesia Pruitt.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Date Night!

Rowen and I planned to have a date night on Friday. For a while, it looked like the weather was going to keep us from it. Thankfully, though it snowed all day long, the roads only stayed wet, but entirely passable. So we went to Denver to the White Fence Farm. It is a beautiful place, full of interesting things to look at and enjoy. It is almost like a museum in parts of it. We could've taken a lot more pictures, but here are a few.

I thought these tractor seats were pretty cute made into chairs!

There were horses on the lights fixtures in many places.

The General Store display.

The grain elevator had a buffalo head on it. Click on the picture to enlarge.
We ate some very yummy food in the restaurant part of the place. Then we listened for 45 minutes to the Mountain Holler Bluegrass Band that our friend Greg Blake plays in. They are a very talented group and we enjoyed listening to them.

The stage was made like a front porch. It was neat. See the brown round thing on the right side of the stage. It was the end of a "Pig Shute" slide for children that started up on the second floor. It was only open for "business" when the band took the 15 minute break between shows.

While we listened, the snow kept coming down and so the roads going home were a tad bit scarier than they had been earlier. But thank the Lord, we had a safe trip home. We enjoyed our time to be alone together! We are glad to have such responsible and grown up children who can prepare a meal and get along together without us for an evening!

More of Emily's birthday


We usually let birthday people choose who they want to have over for the birthday meal, and what they want to have for food for the meal. Emily chose to have the family of her favorite friend, Amy M. So we had Paul and Renee, Daniel, and Amy over for supper on Emily's birthday.


The very fortunate thing is that Daniel is great friends with Jason and Jeffrey! They live in Cheyenne, so we don't see them as often as anyone would like. However, Amy and Emily do keep the phone lines busy almost every day!
Emily chose to have potato soup and salad, with Dirt Cake for dessert. So that is what we ate.

After supper, the kids played Capture the Flag in our yard. Jeffrey had to work until 7 pm so he didn't get to play as long as the others. In this picture, it appears that all the girls are "in jail" in the front yard.

Amy tried to escape. Even though Jason and Daniel had only two on their team, they have very long legs, so catching the girls was easy for them.

At least they were getting exercise. In this picture, Amy is standing guard in the back by our garden and the rock waterfall that is not started yet this year.

Emily had a fun birthday with these friends to play with, and Rowen and I enjoyed visiting with Paul and Renee.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Emily's 12th birthday!

Happy Birthday to Emily who is twelve years old today!
I can't resist putting on a few more pictures of Emily as a baby. See last year's post for more:
http://johnstownalbertsons.blogspot.com/2009/03/emilys-11th-birthday.html
Taken on May 10, 1998

Janet and her girls taken in fall 1998

Emily in her rocking chair June 27, 1999

Emily chillin' out on the piano bench October 1, 1999

We took a few pictures last night as she opened her gifts and will be taking more today. Emily is growing up more and more and becoming a sweet young lady. She is within an inch of her mother's height and daily checking to see if she is the tallest!
Her favorite candy is Skittles, which Beth obligingly bought for her!

Emily looking mischievous--a common sight...

Emily's hair is very long, and usually braided, but it was loose for going to bed.

Stay tuned! There will be more about Emily's birthday within a day or two!