This weekend

I mentioned before that I want to get my house on the market in early March. That leaves me with 2 weekends to make every room in the house look like a hotel room per the instructions of my agent. I also have this magic stuff that I can apply to all the scratches on the oak woodwork in the house to restore it to look like new(or better than it does with the scratches). I have A LOT of golden oak woodwork. Like A LOT. My original plan was to do the woodwork on Saturday morning and then put a fresh coat of paint on the doors and baseboards upstairs. Basically it is all golden oak downstairs and all painted upstairs. Actually there's oak built-ins up there too. Darn. This stuff is like magic, truly it works wonders on those little scratches. You apply it with fine steel wool and then wipe it off with a cloth. The problem is there are a lot of little scratches and faded areas so there is a lot of steel-wooling and wiping. And steel wool wears out after a while - I always thought those Brillo things lasted forever! By lunchtime I had only finished the kitchen and bathroom. So much for my plans.

I was going to finish up today but I woke up not feeling well at all and I made no further progress on the oak or any progress on the paint. I started to feel better around lunchtime, but did not have the energy to brillo or paint so I started clearing out my closet to give it a minimalist look. My closet is enormous and the master bedroom has a whole other walk-in closet that is currently full of suitcases. Back to my closet - there are shelves, a built in dresser, a sewing table, many racks at different heights and 99 cubbies for shoes! Ladies - think about that!! The closet is what will sell this house so I might as well concentrate all my efforts on that room. I filled 5 storage totes with clothes I may want in the future and several bags for the thrift shop. There is still more to do.

So there was some fun this weekend too. Last night we saw the Austin Lounge Lizards at the Cactus Cafe on the UT campus. We picked the 7 p.m.show because we were both too tired to imagine going to the 9:30 show. The Lounge Lizards are so much fun and their songs are clean so there are often kids in the audience. They all wear really awful Hawaiian shirts (not all Hawaiian shirts are awful, but theirs are). Last night was no exception. One of the band members thought the first show was at 7:30 so he showed up late and our show ran until right around 9:30. They are a popular group and the 7:00 show was absolutely packed. We didn't think we would get seats, but the Cactus people had removed the tables and put out as many chairs as they could. We lucked out and got seats in the second row.

This woman is new to the band. She replaced the fiddle player we saw the last time. And that's a wig she has on. Her normal hair is short and blonde. It turned out to be the bass player's last night with the band. He was also replaced by a woman, but I didn't get a picture of her. He played the first set. They played a funny song "When Bass Players Take Over the World" together and then she played the second set. I like her a lot. The band is really different with 2 women in in, but still really good.
This afternoon Mike and I went shopping for a wedding dress for me. He is a good shopping helper and we decided to do this together. Once we have selected my dress we will find something for him that coordinates. After several stores I started to think we would never find anything right. Most of the stores still have their fall and winter stuff out. All dark colors, and nothing appropriate for a beach. Hardly anyone had any spring colors. In the last store we went in I found 3 or 4 possibilities - yay! Didn't make any purchases but I believe now that I will be able to find something that is just right for our wedding. Whew.