Plainview Statuary Photo-Ops

Before we left Bloomington, brain statues had been installed around town at various locations.  I didn't get my act together before moving to take the pictures that I wanted.  I envisioned turning my children into zombies and letting them attack the brains.  In my mind, it was a great photo-op idea and a way to remember the Brains of Bloomington.  Unfortunately, I missed my opportunity.
However, my photo-op ideas are not dead because Plainview has cattle statues all around town.  They are each decorated in a different manner and celebrate/advertise different things.  It's taken me almost a year to actually remember to take my camera out with me as we take care of errands, but I finally did it.  Actually, everybody can thank my mother-in-law for the opportunity to get to see these pictures.  We were running around town together with the kiddos while Chris and his dad worked/waited on the tub for our bathroom remodel. Enjoy the views of Plainview.

#1.  Dairy Queen.

They were disappointed that we didn't get ice cream that day.

This place is all about location, location, location.  It is across the road from one of the prettier parks in town.  I've spotted green grass, trees, and a ditch/creek with water in it at this park. (See picture below.  It also has a merry-go-round not pictured.) 

This was after a rainstorm.  It is a rare and large spot of green in our town.  We were all excited about it.  In fact, it was the topic for every conversation in every store and place we visited that day.

Anyway back to DQ. This has been an occasional treat spot just because of the park.

#2.  Prosperity Bank (formerly known as American State Bank or vice-versa).

It was very sunny and bright.

This is our bank.  You would think I would know which is the current name. This longhorn is decorated with farmer boys and a horse-drawn wagon.  It's one of those historical depictions, which is good considering the bank just changed names and cow with the wrong name on it would just be confusing.  I'm confused about the name of the bank enough as it is.

#3.  Walmart. 

Sunglasses for everybody!!

This is considered the cultural center of the town.  Needless to say, this is not one of my favorite stores, but it is convenient sometimes.

#4.  College Hill Elementary. 

Eowyn attended kindergarten here.  A friend of mine noted it as the "golden calf" on one of my pictures of it on  FB.  Other cows in town might qualify more than this one that is in front of a school.

#5.  The "Mooey Decimal Cow."

This library cow is at Unger Memorial library.  Daniel loves to pet the cow when we visit the library.  We get to do a lot of practice of how to shout, "COOOOOWWWW" with our indoor voices as well as the phrase, "COOOOWWS say MOOOOOOO." 



There are about 43 more cows around town and in the course of our time living here, I intend to get pictures of my kids near these statues.  The ones on the roofs will be a challenge.  However, there is always Photoshop.

Kitchen Update

Let's try this blogging thing again. : )

Our kitchen and dining room are basically remodeled except for the flooring and the yellow built-in bookshelf.  However, the yellow bookshelf should be repainted and retrimmed by the end of this month.  The flooring may have to wait until next summer because the bathroom remodel takes precedence this year.  (I've been documenting our demolition and such of the bathroom so far. You'll see more of that later.)  Anyway, back to the kitchen.

I really like the cabinets and countertops in the kitchen.  



I'm not a fan of wall-paper at all so our first priority was to take it down and figure out a color for the kitchen.

Difficult wallpaper removal project

 We experimented with different blues and greens before deciding on the green.  Plainview has had a drought the past two and now moving into three summers, and there is no lake nearby.  It's a very brown place so my first choices are blue and green for everything.

  

Removing the border wallpaper was not that difficult.  The flowered wall paper that surrounded the yellow shelf was extremely difficult.  I removed the difficult paper while watching/listening to home improvement shows.  I find them very motivational.  

The yellow built-in was a surprise for us because the previous owners had a china cabinet/hutch/or something in front of it.  It was a nice surprise (as opposed the scary wall that we discovered in our previous house).

The sort-of-finished project.  You can see the trim around the top and bottom and you can see the walls are completely painted at this point in the pictures below.  The big empty spot is going to be filled after we pick up our painting that we commissioned from one of our friends in Bloomington.

 Ta-da!

The Living Room Fix-up.

Poor little pink toys they always get left behind....

  Chris and I didn't want to wait for three (or five) years before we started painting and changing things this time around. (We were slow in painting and decorating the Indiana house.)  


We also didn't really want to keep the fleeing refugee look.











We "experimented" with different paint tones and our first pick was the one we liked best.  We did discuss the options of just leaving the random, rectanglish shapes up on the white wall, but we decided we weren't artsy/cool enough to pull that off.

Modern art on the wall.

   






We added trim...or rather Chris added trim while being assisted by Daniel.

 This part of the room actually does still look like this except that the table in the next picture is in the place of that little brown chair.   

Actually, the room only looks like this late at night (or early in the morning and maaaaaaybeeee during naptime) otherwise just insert those lost pink toys and other random kid paraphernalia all around and then you have what it looks like.  You could also just look at my facebook pictures and see the chaos that erupts sometimes.

We now have a piano back by the bookshelf instead of that table.  It looks very nice, but I've lost the little thingamagig that lets me transfer my pictures from my camera to the computer so you just have to use your imagination.

This room wasn't too difficult to put together.  I'd like to have more blue color in here so I'm looking for something blue to put on that wall above the table(piano) spot. Please share any ideas or pictures.  (I'm on pinterest so you could just pin it there if anyone wanted to help a girl out.)