color obsession

It's true. I have a color obsession. Specifically when it comes to walls. Just look at my house for instance.

The dining room is a nice, neutral bamboo color...

With a red accent wall.

My living room is a vibrant green...

With the crazy wall.

My bedroom and bathroom are a nice peaceful periwinkle. The main bathroom boasts warm earth tones. Roommate Sarah made her room a beachy teal green and a former roommate painted his room a deep sky blue.

Basically, the ONLY rooms that have the original contract paint are the main entry way, the laundry room, and closets. That's it. Oh wait, I lied. The garage is white, too.

So you can only imagine what happened when I started spending more time in Dow's house.

EVERYTHING is white. (Please ignore the mess; Dow was going through resumes.)

And there are high ceilings, so it's tons of white. The place needs to be repainted. If you look closely in the top corner, you'll see some brownish streaks; the previous tenant was a smoker. Bleck. If I had left it up to Dow, he would just paint it white again and call it good.

But of course, this will just not fly.

Dow thought, that if he HAD to have color, he would like to have a sage green. But then he realized he'd have to change his curtains.

So, I tried to pull off of some of the paintings he already had that would still go with his curtains. (Do I sound like a HGTV show, yet? There might be a reason...)

Fortunately, we bought a couple of the sample colors, because I was hoping for something a little more...muddy gold...wheat-colored (bold, yet...neutral!)?

And really? Do you want that much "Squash" all over these huge, high walls?

Hmmm...maybe not. Rainbows and smiley faces are what you get when you leave a color fiend without adult supervision and a way too small paint brush for a way too big area.

So the color obsession has continued. I'm not sure which Dow dreaded more, being stuck with "Squash" or having to listen to me point to every. single. lovin'. color that I find in pictures, in paintings, on TV...in nature.

Here are the results of a walk we took. I think the intent was exercise, but who knew there were so many color possibilities out there!

And just to make matters worse, I've been looking through decoration magazines. (Cut me some slack! Grocery stores get really boring while you're waiting for someone to walk by so you can spritz them!) Not to mention a slew of design TV shows.

This boils down to the fact that I am back at square one and here are my newest choices.

Unfortunately, the picture is not showing true colors, but you get the gist.

The Disney center color is showing that I'm still leaning toward a squash like color, but it ain't happenin'.

I think I'm leaning to the bottom left - Cornbread.

Or the top left - Yellow Magnolia - but it doesn't go as well with the sage green curtains.

Ugh! So if you have any ideas - dark ceiling/light walls, light walls/white ceiling - let me know.

And heck! Feel free to vote on a color! I added a little voting button on the side. You have a week!

a week in the life

I was asked how often I thought I'd be blogging again. My answer? I'd like to say every day, but based on past experience, that probably won't happen. Apparently, once a WEEK is more likely!

Let me give you a little glimpse into how my life runs right now, so you'll understand why I have TOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNS of time and then notime.

My last blog was on Monday. Don't ask me what I did on Tuesday, because I don't honestly know. I think I was a bum. It was snowing. I couldn't be bothered to blog, for goodness sake! Ok, so maybe the reason I couldn't blog was this: I had been looking forward to a FREE Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone for about two weeks. And then! on the FREE cone day...IT SNOWS!!!! How can a person blog after such disappointment?!?!

But at least I thought about blogging. See?

I took pictures of our yard horses (and by "our," I mean, Dow's) in the snow.

And Bella* after romping in the snow.

But alas, I did not blog.

Now, Wednesday was the beginning of the mayhem. It started out in a nice, peaceful way. Wednesday is my grocery list/shopping day because Sunflower Farmers Market's weekly specials overlap on that day. It's a pretty sweet deal.

I started making Sweet Challah, pictured here.

And if you knew how AWFUL I was at making bread, you would understand why I took a picture of it. Anyhow, while it rose, I made my shopping list (the menu was already set, fortunately).

But I got called into town to do some extra work early and when you're in my position, you can't turn it down. What extra work was this, you ask? You'll probably never guess.

I did a voice-over for a REMAX answering service. Crazy what you can find on the ole Craigslist, huh? The beauty of this, though, is that if I go get a headset and download Audacity, I can do this from home going forward.

After finishing up there, I raced through Sunflower, met Mad Monster to hit the Bud Light scene, and had patrons fill out their Sweet 16 brackets. From there, I shopped the regular supermarket to pick up non-produce items and finally arrived home around 11 pm.

Thursday was then spent cooking a few meals for Food Guy, which will hopefully start to become a part of this blog. Dow returned home that evening from a 3 day meeting, so I spent some quality time with him before heading out to play some late night Bud Light Quarters. Yes, I get paid to play Quarters. Ok, so maybe not to play it, but to get other people to play it.

Friday, I made a few more meals for Food Guy before heading in to tell people how absolutely wonderful New Amsterdam Gin is. And I tell you what, I actually had this gin before I was asked to promote it...it is REALLY good! I'm just saying.

Here are a couple of my favorite faces of New Amsterdam Gin.

Pretty diverse crew, huh?

Now, if I have learned anything about promotions, it's that they are generally last minute and disorganized (Bud Light being the exception, for the most part). Due to the truth in this generality, my Saturday was booked! I had received the Axe packet for a girl who was doing a promotion in Greeley, so on the way to my promotion, I had to drop it off to her...and drop off my food to the Food Guy. And don't forget, I still had one more meal to finish on Saturday morning! Oh yeah, did I mention that my promotion was an hour and a half away? That's the beauty of living in the middle of nowhere!

Needless to say, cooking one more meal, driving, meeting the other Axe girl, dropping off food, spending 6 hours hawking Axe, and then driving home an hour and a half, there was, again, no time to blog.

This brings us to today! As of 9:30 this morning, I am tutoring an orthopedic massage therapist, J, in College Algebra. I'm pretty excited about the prospect of doing a little trade! From there, back to spritz Dove body spray on all the women of the Firestone King Soopers. And, *sigh*, finally home. Phew!

I do hope, after reading all of this, you understand why I haven't kept up. But I do have a few things in mind and I don't have much going on in the next week, so keep checking in and thanks for stopping by!!!

*Bella's real name has been used. Please do not exploit her on the internet.

Making a Comeback: WHAT am I doing?

As mentioned in the last post, at the end of November, I was left without a job. I still wanted to come back to the ranch for Summer 2010 and the chances of getting a job in December, during Christmas? Not looking good.

Have you guys met Craigslist? This has been my life blood! It started in San Francisco and I learned about it when I had an internship out there and needed a place to live. Since then, I have used it to find roommates for my house, getting jobs, selling stuff (anyone need a washer and dryer in Colorado?), etc. It's pretty much amazing. (Ok, so there was the Craigslist killer, but you have to assume most people are good...and then do a background check.)

So, I started scanning Craigslist. And had applied for all these tax jobs (perfect, right? January through April, go back to the ranch in May!), except not one single company responded to me. I guess Actuaries must really fly below the radar! I continued to scour Craigslist, which led to the Gigs/Events section, which led two weeks of hawking Yoplait yogurt, which introduced me to the 'underworld' of promotional marketing, which led me to give away more yogurt, beauty product coupons, and LOTS of Bud Light stuff.

But the problem with this type of work is that it's not consistent (although Bud Light continues to serve me very well). So I had to find other supplemental income.

The big thing about being laid off and not looking for an actuarial job was that I wanted to do stuff I really enjoyed. And that's exactly what I did.

Again using Craigslist, I offered healthy home-cooking, as well as tutoring. I now have one guy I tutor in Macroeconomics and another guy who I cook 5 meals for once a week.

It's pretty crazy because I'll cook for 3 hours then tell Dow that I feel guilty for not working! It's pretty amazing to get paid to do something you love. This is not to say that I'd like to become a chef; I think the fast pace of a restaurant kitchen would take all the fun out of it.

I find that I really enjoy doing promotions and realized my freshman year of college that I was good at selling. I did the Drake Phone-a-thon asking alumni for money and was one of the top 'sellers'. So, I'm trying to think about what I can do in this realm.

As for tutoring, I've always liked to do that and still toy with going back to school to become a teacher or possibly professor.

But what I think I would REALLY like is to work for a start-up company using my financial, sales, and HR-type (I LOVE interviewing people for jobs!) skills. So if you know of any start-up companies....pass my name along! I'll be ready to start in October or November!

Making a Comeback: WHERE am I?

Alright, I've had a few requests to continue blogging. And it really is much easier to talk to people when they have a little more clue about what's going on. Sooooo.....I'm going to try this again.

Coming out of retirement (this may be Garth Brooks style - in retirement, out of retirement, in retirement, out of retirement...), I have quite a lot to catch you up on.

First question I usually get is: Where the HECK are you?

Answer: Colorado

"WHAAAAAAAAAATTTTTT???" you might be exclaiming, "I thought you were moving to south Florida to become a horse trainer!"

Yep, so did I.

Basically, I emailed them right after Thanksgiving asking for an 'official' start date, so I could let Dan & Ellen know what my last day was going to be. Their response?

And I quote:

Hi LeAndra,

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. We definately ate too much here. The position for training is no longer available.

Have a nice Christmas and New Year!

For those of you who know me, this left me in quite a panic! Less than a month to find a job! What was I going to do? I needed a job! I needed to go back to Florida! Or did I? (Well, I mean, I did need a job!)

This leads us to a little more specific answer of "Where am I?". Waaaaaaaaayyyyy back when, I had made mention of Dow. You remember? I'm not sure I exactly said much about Dow or where he came from, but here's the quick rundown. Amy, ever the matchmaker, brought Dow over to the ranch "to meet the girls," except that he's 32 (in dude ranch speak that's "old"), which means she really brought him to meet Cookie or me. And considering he's totally country and Cookie's totally L.A., I'm guessing Amy had something in mind. Anyhow, we agreed to be friends, which of course, lasted about a week. *sigh* Men.

So by the time that email rolled around, I actually, well, you know, kinda, um, liked him. Which made me decide that maybe I could/should stay here. Except I got "kicked out" out of the ranch. Ok, so maybe it IS really expensive to heat an external building via space heater...details, details. Anyhow, Dow was kind enough to let me live with him.

And there you have it. I am living in Colorado with Dow.

Next edition: WHAT am I doing?