Oh dear. I am a shame to the Brug-Loving community! I love shaping my plants. I even use florist's wire to shape my Nandinas and my Christmas Tree for gosh sakes! So you can imagine my shock at reading this post. All those years of pruning my Precious Brug, whacking off long branches that I felt didn't 'belong', branches that didn't shoot off in the right direction. Pulled down branches and set them with wire so that they would shade my Kalanchoe plants. If one of the thinner branches were touching the Kalanchoe, it got whacked off. Hard, wood branches! And what have I been doing with a total of a ton of branches all these years? The Recycle Bin and out on the curb on Thursday night for pick-up on Friday morning! ACK ACK ACK! Now that I think back, I've probably put thousands of dollars worth of brug cuttings on the curb...ACK ACK ACK! ::sigh::

Well, this morning I decided to not paint the inset part and while I was painting the back wall and half of the left wall the unpainted white edges seemed to make sense. The sunlight bounced off the white sides more than it would if they were taupe plus you hardly noticed the white edges with the blinds open or closed. But after working all day at job #2 and coming home tonight, the white sides are not looking as good as they did this morning. The mistakes are showing up more too. So tomorrow morning I think I will paint the sides EK Taupe. This pic of the Taupe is much lighter than it appears in person especially at night. I have to say this has been one of my favorite paint colors ever. Plus that ICI Dulux Ultra Eggshell is awesome paint. A good angle brush and super paint quality and color have made this project so enjoyable. Thanks all!!

I only need to get the pictures uploaded to snapfish... it's possible the bowl of the boy's is going to be not grouted...we don't know yet, cuz court is in an hour and a half..it'd be a fine bowl, as is..... I need to leave in a few minutes, to the juvenile court house...if his mom gets custody, they will be leaving for Oregon this afternoon. this girl/lady is the same age as my oldest daughter..eleven days apart and is the daughter of a friend of mine, that I've known for 40 years... my friend lives in Corpus Cristie and advised her to call me, when she was at the CPS office, here in town and needed a safe place, right then...man, expedited background checks and a visit from the case worker and CPS case worker, here at the house and my place was approved, right there on the spot... ( I swear, they must have had blinders on...lol cuz my place is filled to the rafters with art supplies and not a lot of space to do any square dancing, in my front room!!) that was last Monday..and here we are, 11 days later and the future is unknown for them but it's a new beginning, either way... Zach went through trama and I watched a transformation, while he worked on his glass piece.. here, on this forum, we all talk about how doing mosaics is a healing process.. Zach got a broken finger, when he blocked a blow to the head, when his dad was beating him up... the dad had also taken everything important to Zach, including little clay pieces he had made, from first grade on...the kind made in the classroom, with clay, glaze and firings...all of his favorite games, his laptop (I think I mentioned he's 14 and is a very sensitive boy)and made Zach ride with him to the landfill...then threw all of his belongings in the dump and said he would have to work to pay for the trip to throw it all away... it was a cruel and needless assault on Zach, both physically and emotionally.... This week's journey helped him take something broken, both from himself and other things and make something beautiful from it.... he first walked in the house with a rather empty look in his eyes.. this morning he's full of hope... I only wish and pray the judge sees the same thing.... I have his bowl and some of my projects, in a display case right now, with an overhead light and it's so pretty... it's a 6 hour drive to where she lives and we've already been talking about her coming up to visit friends and an aunt, or me driving there for a couple days..but not in winter...I would take grout with me...lol the lexel is in a tube just like the GE11 and is 5 oz...it was under $5...I think it was like $4.85 or so.... it's a lot cheaper if it can be found in a 12 pack but then again, I'm not going to do that...lol it's gone a very long way, with just the 5 oz... the number on the tube is 13013, evidently to be sure which one it is, between clear or white or something... at least that's what I noticed, ....it's on the bar code and this one says 31525 13013 super elastic sealant it also says it sticks to wet surfaces...guess that would be in an emergency, to maybe fix an aquarium...?? I'd better be going now, to get to the court house...

I'm tending to agree, pal....right now everything looks somewhat 'washed out' and while this is a basement with almost exclusively artificial lighting...i lean toward doing something with more colour saturation it is EXTREMELY DARK down there without all the lights on, even during the day, so I don't think any high rated light value rating (thank you funcolors for that VERY informative piece) would do much to increase the 'lightness' of the room the other interesting tidbit here is the HUGE difference between LED and Halogen....i used an LED (2700 i believe) in the hallway leading to the finished basement and i think it brings out the 'pink' even though in photographs it's the exact opposite! the halogen tends to bring out the 'sandy' colors in the tile... i was hoping to switch out all of the lighting to LED but i'm not sure that would enhance the tile i've included a close up of the tile and the wall unit but i don't think it is much better than the original pic of the tile i posted...that pic is the closest rendering of the tile as it appears in 3D