No Unfinished Projects

I have two projects that mi chica and I had planned and I intend to finish them. The first one is to finish the wall in the den. As you remember when the kids moved out we started re-decorating the house to suit our needs and likes. The entertainment center was pushed back to the den and the wall to the back yard was pretty bare. We wanted a table and a big picture to make a big impact.

So, my daughter's boss printed the image of our family portrait from last year's Thanksgiving on canvas and it was huge. I had pretty good contacts at Hobby Lobby from buying so much from them last year that my framer did most of the labor for free while all I had to do was purchase the custom frame where it would be mounted. It took a while to get done but when I finally got the phone call letting me know it was ready the anticipation was just too much.

I could not believe how big it looked when they carried it off the store for me. To say I was satisfied with it is an understatement. The portrait which has every member in my little family including the three cooking on those crock pots also happens to be the last family picture Sylvia would appear in. As a matter of fact she is the one that pretty much directed the whole photo shoot on that day and as you can see the results were totally awesome.

In honor of her is that this beautiful portrait now regally hangs in our den.

The image doesn't do it justice but notice how it takes pretty much the whole wall.
The second part of this project will consit of finishing the area under the portrait. Maybe a table with some cool looking stuff on it. Yeah, I have some good ideas and soon it will be finished.

The second projec was to make her home office as confortable as possible. Well it's now my office and I still intend to make it as confortable as possible. We had an empty wall in front of the desk and as we spend so much time in this office we wanted a TV in it. So I planned this whole shelf that would house all my DVD collection and my die cast car collection. She enthusiastically gave me the thumbs up on the project.

Again thanks to my brother in law who is very handy with wood, he built the custome shelf exactly as I wanted it.

The empty wall. Notice we had a cable jack mounted on the wall.
And here it is again with the shelf already anchered to it.
And here it is almost fully loaded. The center hole will soon house a 32" plasma or LCD mounted on the wall. That will finish the project.

I will post another picuture once the TV goes in.

Pretty cool isnt' it?

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"F" Is For Family

FAMILY

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. ~Desmond Tutu

Sorry for missing last week's letter "E" I totally spaced it and no one reminded me. lol

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My Mom's Portrait

If you are getting bored with the current theme on my posts just let me know, I don't know that I'll change it but at least I'll know what's on your mind.

My family knows it all too well but some of you my readers already found out that after nine years of living in this house I had no frames and no art hanging on my walls. There is one frame in my room that has my first three grand kids and a big nice frame mi chica bought when we first moved in, but other than that I had nothing so I am pretty excited these days as I am finally hanging stuff that means something to me and that is not mass produced and store bought.

Mi chica pretty much has left it all to me and she is pretty much in tune with what I am putting up so even though this is only the beginning I think I have enough to give you guys a virtual expo of what my walls are looking like thus far.

First is my mom's portrait. This portrait is not painted but burned in a piece of leather. It was done by a Mexican artist but unfortunately I don't have her name, she happened to be a customer of a dry cleaners business where my mom worked for a while. My mom had it folded and put away in an old suitcase and had had it for many years before I pleaded and begged for her to let me have it.

When I used to live in L.A. I worked for seven years for a lighting store at the Pacific Design Center in Beverly Hills and walking through all those showrooms with state of the art furniture and stuff always gave me ideas of what I would like. A salesman at the store and dear friend of ours was an art connoisseur and avid collector and when I showed him the portrait of my mom he knew exactly where to take it for me and how to have it framed. I knew nothing so I totally agreed with his advice and expertise.

The piece of leather then was mounted into a white backing without being cut or altered in any way, shape, or form and a lucite box was custom built to house it. The box is made of a very strong acrylic material and there's a space between the piece of leather and the acrylic. I remember asking him if it would get scratched over time, he said probably but it will have to be a very long time. It has now been over 25 years since the portrait was framed and three weeks ago I cleaned the frame before I hung it on the wall and it looked as if I had just picked it up from the framer. I now know he knew what he was talking about.

The custom work was very pricey for a then 22-year old warehouse employee even considering that it was specially priced for my friend but it was totally worth it. This frame is still going to be with us for a long, long time and I don't have to fear it is going to fall appart anytime soon.


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My Dad, My Hero

I have posted this before but for those of you that had not seen this image of my dad, here it is, this is the picture that Tara used to paint my dad's portrait.

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