Friday Night Photos #101

I actually have kind of a lot of photos this week, so I'll get right to it...

I'll start with this picture of Jerry, because he is SO EXCITED about this. As you may know, he's ridiculously into Ghostbusters. And a couple of years ago, he ordered this proton pack from a crowdfunding thing. I've heard about it at least once a day for the last two years. It finally arrived, and he is beyond thrilled.

This is what it looks like up close... (he sent me this photo today and told me I could use it on my blog if I want. Hahaha! It was cute that he was so excited):

I've been doing a ton of work on the "cat wall" over the past couple of weeks to finally finish up our bedroom. I'd put the shelves up (the holes are there for the cats to climb through up to the top--then they can enter the hexagon, which leads to the top of the closet in our bathroom) but I didn't like how plain the wall looked. With a black wall and black shelves, it just looked very bare.

So, I had the idea to add some cat silhouettes on the wall. I was thinking I wanted it to look like our shower curtain (which I'll post a picture of also) only it would be white silhouettes on black instead of the black on white.

Here is the shower curtain. Can you spot which cat is a little different than the others? ;) 

I looked for some stencils on Amazon, but they were all very small. So, I printed out some silhouettes that I found from a google search and then I used an X-Acto knife to cut them out.

 I had hoped to use the paper as a stencil, but it was just too thin and I didn't want to spray adhesive all over the wall. Instead, I resorted to the painstaking process of tracing the silhouette with pencil, then using a tiny little paint brush to trace that with primer, then fill in the middle with a slightly larger brush. When the primer dried, I had to do it all again with a coat of paint.

I really like how it turned out, though!

It looks less boring. I think I already posted a photo of that contraption on the top left, but I'd taken one of the cat beds and mounted it to a board (sideways, so that the opening was facing upward). Now the cats can climb into it from that top shelf. Chick can always be found sleeping there!

(It's so hard to spot the "kittens" when they are on the shelves because they blend in with the wall perfectly. If their eyes are closed, I can easily miss them!

I was so happy when I saw that even Phoebe wanted in on the action:

She likes to climb up through the hexagon and sleep in a bed on top of the bathroom closet. I felt bad because she gets bullied by the kittens (not necessarily "bullied", but they think it's fun to try to play with her and she definitely does NOT want them near her). I felt like she needed another exit, so I made a few more shelves for the other side of the wall, hahaha.

So now, there is a path over the bathroom door, leading to shelves that are like steps for them to get down.

I know this whole thing probably seems ridiculous to non-cat people, but we are a bit obsessed with our cats if you can't tell. They are spoiled, for sure. But it's so fun to watch them play and enjoy it! I have more ideas to add to it over time.

Speaking of painting, I had some store credit at Lowe's and when I saw this, I picked up a couple of them. I always wrap my brushes in plastic wrap, hoping to be able to use them the next day (or, if I'm really lucky, two days later). I hate cleaning brushes when I know I'm going to be using them again soon! Well, I wish I'd known about this thing five years ago when I was painting like crazy. It works SO WELL. I actually kept my brushes in there for over 10 days and they were still wet. One was oil-based and one was water-based and they both worked just fine. I think they were only about $5, and totally worth it.

As I've mentioned way too many times over the past couple of weeks, I'm pretty upset about our insurance. Jerry and I made a big mistake in the fall when we changed our plan. We didn't understand it very well and we thought we were making a good decision... and it definitely wasn't. My psychiatrist visit? I've always paid a $25 co-pay. Well, this month my visit was $260! My bipolar medication? It would be about $400 a month, and after some coupons/discounts, $320--so I ended up switching meds to get one that is $30 a month. So far, I really miss my previous medication. I hope this one will work better after I give it some more time. 

We definitely learned a big lesson about health insurance (the hard way), and now we can at least teach our kids what NOT to do, haha. Anyway, I had a really bad day and it started at 6:30 in the morning when I did the Wordle. Seriously?! My first guess was pretty promising to at least get it in three tries. By the fifth guess, I thought I may not get it at all.

And then I looked up some memes to send Shawn, because he's going through a problem with his insurance right now, too. Memes always make me feel better! Shawn sends me a lot of them, too.

I was excited to get a phone call from Nathan (my younger brother) asking if I might want to run a 10K race with him. Even though I'm not really interested in racing anymore, I was happy that he asked me and I said yes. So, we registered for the Rad Rabbit 10K! (Here is the post I wrote about it)

I started 10K training right away. During my run last night, I was trying to get home before dark. About a mile in, the lake was so still and it blended in with the sky--it was really cool looking. About 10 minutes after I got home, we had the loudest thunder I'd ever heard--literally. It cracked about five times and I thought our house was going to fall into pieces. Oddly, it barely rained!

I swear it was nearly dark when I took this picture, but my phone makes it look like I was totally lying!

And lastly, I decided to start my February craft project a little early. I'd finished my cross stitch cat, and I just wasn't that into knitting my hat yet, so I decided to work on latch hook. (I swear, I can NEVER remember if it's "latch hook" or "hook latch". I have to google it every time.) I looked through a ton of different patterns and I wasn't thrilled about any of them (there were a few cool ones, but they were like $70 and enormous)--I ended up settling on this cow. I've only done a couple of rows and it's not as much fun as I remember from when I was a kid, hahaha. But I'm going to finish it!

Well, I'm going to go put on my pajamas, make some dinner, then probably work on my latch hook while watching... a show. I'm not sure what to watch! I binged Monk embarrassingly fast, and now I need something new to watch while I keep my hands busy at night.

Have a great weekend! xo