9 weeks minus 2 days...

and worth the wait. I passed! 6 more to go!

I finally found a use for my high school senior t-shirt

This is me working on my 1890s mantel that I picked up for free from one of our renovation projects at work. I decided to try and strip the 10+ coats of lead paint off of it and refinish it. It didn't go so well. I think there were many, many more coats of paint than I even realize and some parts are on there for life. I spent Saturday putting on this super duper paint removal paste and three straight hours on Sunday stripping it off. This is the second weekend I've been doing this. And I'm done. All of the paint isn't off, in fact, the mantel looks more like a topographic map, but I can't do any more.

So, I sanded what was left and am in the process of slapping some white paint on it. The funny thing is that I stripped off some layers of paint, to put more on. Ridiculous. Although, it was lead paint. Anyway, I have one more layer of paint to put on and it actually looks older than it did before I started this process. I don't mind it though, because you can see the old layers of paint through the new, and I like that. It tells a story of it's life...or that's what I'm going with.

Once I cut part of the bottom out to fit around our baseboard, I'll attach it to the living room wall and I'll make sure to take a picture of the finished product. For as jacked up as it looks I think I'll actually really like it.

Morgan on the other hand is convinced that I'm crazy and has no idea why I brought home two mantels when we don't even have one fireplace. But, at least I know when and when not to flush the toilet!

huh.

Saturday
1:41 pm - power goes out at house
2:05 pm - Morgan: "So, Can I still flush the toilet?"
2:10 pm - Allison finally gets off of ground after laughing too hard
2:11 pm - Morgan claims that when his access to Wikapedia is cut off his IQ goes down a few points

Sunday
11:30 pm - Morgan says "you know I was just kidding about the toilet right?" after Allison tells him she's posting that on her blog.

Way to try and back track. No one is fooled.

Important vote - not for the Presidential Primaries

My mom wants to paint the shutters on her house (see pictures below). They are currently a beige and her siding is pale yellow. I took her two suggestions of paint colors (dark navy blue - probably darker than shown in the picture, and maroon) and used my handy Photoshop skills to superimpose the colors onto a picture of her house.

Here's where you come in. Which color do you like better?p.s. This is also another great way to procrastinate studying for my next exam (see post below).

Still waiting...

On Monday it will be 8 weeks since I took my last ARE exam and I still haven't received my results. With each passing day I grow a little more skeptical and doubtful that I passed. They say that the graphics exams (which this was one) take longer to get the results, but seriously! The other two (multiple choice exams) took three weeks. I'm revving up to take another graphics test on the 21st of March. I hope I don't get a failing grade on the last test right before I take my next one. That would be a crap-tastic way to go in to my next test. Ugh.

Is it over yet?

Anyway, I wanted to take a test in February and another in March (after taking my last one in January). This plan has not happened. What have I been doing instead of studying? Anything, really.

I installed a light fixture in our kitchen (I can post a picture if anyone really cares to see it) and I'm in the middle of stripping two fireplace mantels and refinishing them. The bitch of it is, is that one is from the 1890s and the other from the 1950s so they both most likely have lead paint on them. This requires me to dress up like a chemical worker and be careful to not breath in any lead dust (or eat the paint chips - we all know I like doing that) or else I could get permanent brain damage and also make it much harder to get pregnant. Good thing I'm not pregnant or else my baby could be born with three heads. Apparently this is a very serious undertaking, but don't worry, I don't have lead poisoning yet...that I know of. I'm pretty brain dead after a day's work as it is so I don't know if I would notice a difference.

And of course, instead of studying, I'm blogging. Bad Allison! All of you reading this should be ashamed of yourselves. You are such enablers! Especially you, Jayna, ragging on me for not updating my blog regularly. We all can't be blog queens like yourself!

Amazing!

Morgan and I were driving down the highway, when we spotted the oddest thing! Take a look for yourself...