While in California, Diane and I were strolling through the Shops at Mission Viejo when I stumbled upon this art exhibit in the middle of the mall. Since having a home, I have been more interested in purchasing artwork. However, I am one who shies away from poster-style prints that are put into frames. Rather, I am interested in purchasing canvas–or something that can be put in a really awesome frame. Well, Copia sells stretched canvas triptych artwork. It didn’t take long for me to find a piece or two that I wanted. The first piece is entitled “Game of Chess.” It so happens that I love chess as well as the rich, dark colors. The only problem was that it was a little too masculine and we don’t have a separate game room for it. So, Diane and I agreed upon something a little more suiting for our family room. It happens to go well with our color scheme.

Well, the hardest part for somebody as unskilled as me was the hanging of the 3 frames. Getting them to be perfectly level and spaced out did not seem like an easy task. In addition, perfectly lining up all the holes was a major pain — I was off by 1/8″ on some, which prevented the pictures from hanging properly. It wasn’t until my friend (who happens to be an interior designer) told me to lay out the pictures on the ground and take a long piece of wax paper to use as a template. I poked holes in the paper and then used a laser level and was finally able to get them installed.

Game of Chess – Maybe for a game room or the office?

Gondolas of Venice

It’s been a long time since we’ve updated our blog. Frankly, we’ve been pretty bad about it this year. Suffice it to say, we moved in the latter half of April and didn’t have Internet access at home until this morning.

The move process went well. Since we were only moving one mile away, Di and I shuttled fragile items like our kitchenware over to the house before the EQ men showed up. It took us about 100 minutes to load up the truck and just 45 minutes to unload. That was the easy part.

It has since taken us days (more like 2 weeks) to unpack all of our boxes. Once everything is unpacked, organized, and decorated (waiting on plantation shutters), we’ll post some pics of the new place. Anyway, I’m just writing to let you guys know that we’re alive and well, enjoying a fabulous new home.

It’s been a somewhat eventful week. Rather than spending our time on HAR, we now have been looking at washers, dryers, shutters, blinds, etc. I made a brief plea on Facebook regarding appliances and got some helpful tips.

After about a week of looking, we went ahead and purchased a front loading washer and dryer. We tried using Consumer Reports to help us make an educated decision. It was a little challenging because many machines had both terrific reviews and awful ones. I guess no one machine can please everybody. :-)

Yesterday morning, we had a design consultant from 3-Day Blinds come to our new home and help us pick out some shutters and blinds. It was a little difficult to visualize how they would look, but I’m hoping they look good!

We also had a small “General Conference” BBQ yesterday in between the two sessions. We were hoping for warm, 80-degree weather, but the clouds kinda put an end to that. It was warm, but not warm enough to relax in our freezing cold pool. We still managed to have a good time relaxing poolside and grilling steaks.