Sunday Salon - May 20

Books? What are books? Last week was almost entirely about getting the house ready for Miss H's graduation party and this week will be mostly the same. I did finally finish So Much For That for this week's meeting with the Omaha Bookworms and my Bleak House reading but I'm going to have to race through State of Wonder for a review this week. Thank heavens for my lunch time reading!

I didn't even manage to get my Friday post done for the Bleak House readalong so I'll do a quick recap here:

What I Liked:
Mr. Bucket - I'm not really sure what this officer's territory is, he seems to be able to go all over London and well out into the surrounding countryside to pursue his case. He was relentless in trying to locate the missing Lady Dedlock. I'm still a little iffy about the way he treated our poor little Jo since he sent him off on his own, in theory to protect himself, but gave him very little help in doing that. Still, he took no time at all to figure the weasely Mr. Skimpole out.

 What I Didn't Like:
I'm sorry to say, but I was more than a little annoyed with Lady Dedlock. Granted, she was willing to sacrifice her happiness with her daughter to protect her husband and she left, in theory, to protect him. But was she really being that thoughtful? The fact that she left was bound to stir up gossip (which it did and which Dickens wrote about masterfully) and it was bound to cause Esther great pain. Apparently she was not even aware of the pain it would cause her husband (shame on her for not realizing the depth of his feeling and causing him to have a stroke). It felt more like she couldn't bear the thought of falling from her own high perch.

We'll be finishing the book this week, only about fifty more pages to go and I must say that I really have enjoyed these last two hundred pages. All of that slogging through seemingly unrelated characters has come together marvelously.

Miss H's graduation has gotten me moving on some projects around the house that I've been meaning to get to but just haven't. When we moved into this house 16 years ago, we put in the usual shiny brass for most of the light fixtures and hardware. I have been wanting to get rid of all of it for a long time but where to start? It would cost hundreds to switch everything out and if you started one room, you'd have to do the whole room. Thanks to Pinterest, I discovered how easy it is to spray paint light fixtures and I had two in mind that were just the place to start.

The Big Guy wasn't too thrilled about having to play with electricity but it turns out that it's really not that difficult, you just have to pay attention to what the wiring looked like before you take the fixture down. Unfortunately, the cord to connect my camera to my computer has disappeared  so I don't have pictures of my finished projects. But I'm absolutely delighted with my "new" black metal kitchen light fixture and "new" nickel fixture in the powder room. Both blend so much better with their surroundings and really do look like new fixtures.  I had thought I would get new glass for both of the fixture but even those look so much nicer with the new finish.  I highly recommend this if you have fixtures you're tired of the finish on but you still like the shape. This summer is bound to mean the rest of the fixtures will get the same treatment. And all of those shiny brass door knobs? Turns out you can do the same thing with those! Rust-o-leum and Krylon are now my new best friends!