prettying up the ugliest

My least favorite space in the house was the stairway, so I've been trying to figure out creative ways to make it into one of my favorite spaces of the house. I now love the stairs, but the walls are still very tall and cavernous, so phase two was to add paintings. Brian removed 3 old wooden windows from the basement, so that I could reuse them to create these... windows into our lives. This is the window with a Texas motif for Brian's growing up and our life in Texas.

I had to paint it with two pictures in mind. What it would look like with the light off and what it would look like with backlighting.





I've never painted on glass before and it has it's own challenges. One of the ways I found of controlling the amount of light coming through was to paint the back. Dominique was quite excited to help with that part.







I think my technique already improved some by painting #2. Here is a scenery of Saskatchewan and a road showing the travel to Texas (and back again) as well as lending to the theme of the journey.

I totally loved how the field took on a mind of it's own with the light. When I saw what it did and how much I loved the wheat, I downplayed the light coming through in the ditch and road so that the focus would be on the wheat field.

My original plan was to do something different with the last window of Fort Qu'Appelle. I'm going to paint my favorite spot at the lake with the hills in the background, but I think I'm going to use the same technique as with these and just paint it on the window. Originally I was going to paint it on the wall for the most part, but we are not sure how it would look and it was going to be super complicated to hang. They are going to be difficult to hang as it is, so I think we're going to go with simple instead.

I have about 20 things I'd love to do before the carpet guys arrive Monday, but know that is not realistic. Meanwhile, the thaw is in full swing. We had a pool forming in the back yard and making a quick attempt to crest our brand new window and then into the basement. You would think a sump pump was drastic measures enough against flooding! But we were in the yard, shoveling snow away from the back porch, pushing water, wet vacuuming water and getting a pretty good workout with our kids, plus a neighbor kid to prevent water damage. I'm told the city will give sand bags if we go get them, but I don't think it will come to that. We had and still have a ton of snow in the back yard though! Emora fell in it yesterday and discovered it was way too cold for a swim though!