A Rose is a Rose is a Rose

This was a really good week.  I went up to St. Cloud (a couple hours north of Belle Plaine) on Saturday, to paint a kitchen for friends who recently moved.  We quickly settled on a nice golden tan leather effect, and I finished the job in a day...whew!  A very long day!  Funny enough, the paint colors were "peanut butter" and "honey butter", so quite fitting for the kitchen.  It's one of those finishes that only shows well in good photos, and between my (lack of) skills and the quality that shows on blogspot, well, suffice it to say the pictures don't do it justice.  However, if you have white walls and beautiful 1920's woodwork, do consider adding color, as the wood deserves to be paired with walls that show it off.

Another great thing that happened this week was a call from a favorite aunt and uncle, saying they were 300 miles away, and planning to stop in to visit.  These people live half way across the country, so a call saying they are in the neighborhood is not exactly expected...but very welcome, even if it did mean emergency housecleaning measures.  You have to meet my Aunt Rose!

Top:  Mom, Dad, me, sister Robin (bride), b-i-l Dave, Aunt Rose, Uncle Dwayne, cousin Debi on Maui

Center:  Aunt Rose

Bottom Left: Mom and Dad, in love as always. 

Bottom Right:  I look a bit like all of them, but mostly Dad.

click to enlarge, click again to show detail.

I have very creative parents.  My mom is a chef, and my dad, a retired forester, is the kind of guy who goes to fix a corner of the foundation and ends up building an addition on the house, complete with passive solar wall water feature and mosaic tile floor (this is where my hikes through the brambles come from, no doubt!).  However, in my childhood, they were seriously busy, and it was visits to Aunt Rose and Uncle Dwayne that reassured me that the stork had not accidentally dropped me into the wrong nest.

Aunt Rose sewed designer clothes, though in quadruplicate for all us girls, so being the youngest, of course I wore the very same wardrobe for my entire childhood.  Maybe her sewing skills weren't always my favorite thing.  I just loved that she got me.  She didn't bat an eye when I painstakingly colored my face with crayon, (no easy feat to get that wax warm enough to cover!), and she cooed appreciatively over every pom-pom owl and painted strawberry I presented her.

When I spent a summer in Baker City in my early thirties, I got to know her as an adult, and see her gorgeous watercolors: exploded views of sunflowers, Oregon grape, and trout that showed the unexpected iridescence and complexity of their colors.  You might have expected that on fish scales, but a black sunflower seed in the sun has a full pallet in it's velvety surface, and Rose Fisher shows this beautifully.  She gave me a benchmark for my own work.

Having her tour my home, Belle Ami, this week was admittedly a huge ego stroke, and of course a good dose of family love.  She and Uncle Dwayne, the straight man to her fabulous sense of silly (Yes, my sense of humor comes from that side of the family), only stayed two nights, but we packed a ton of catching up into those few hours. Most of it was descriptions of who had painted which color where, and things like whether Mom had rearranged what Rose and I did on the sly one day in her living room.  Uncle Dwayne was a very good sport, letting us chatter while he chauffeured us about.  He also kicked in a little of his own creative advice, expressing dismay that I hadn't continued the kitchen paint job to the inside of the cabinets...good thing he gives such great hugs, or I might have had to smack him!

Hopefully I convinced Aunt Rose to finish her website, so I can show you photos of her work one day soon.  No photos of mine this week.  I've touched up the porch floor paint, sprayed the rest of the wicker furniture black, and plan to do some detail work and staging on Saturday.  I've also been working on a proper website of my own, so look for that to launch by next week, if I can figure out how to get the domain name loose from the original host...very complicated directions in lingo I do not speak...yikes.

Oh, which side of the family?  Both!  Mom and Rose are sisters, and Dad and Dwayne are step brothers.