The Inn is open: our new guest room

I redecorated the guest room.  Or maybe I should say decorated the guest room, since when I moved in in 2005 the room was a cross between "1960s-old-lady" and "bachelor".

Nice border. Made me feel like I was staying at Grandma's.

white on white - not my choice of cheerful. The Navy memorabilia was not making the room "pop".

As this was the larger of the two bedrooms in this house, it was our master bedroom, so we wanted to make it nice.  The first step was to rip out the teal green carpet.

Then we remodeled the adjacent bathroom, so we moved the closet from one wall to another and closed in the second doorway into this tiny bedroom.

And painted a lovely shade of blue. At least it looked lovely in the magazine ad for Benjamin Moore paint.  When we got it on the walls, though, it was like sleeping inside a bottle of Febreeze.

Then there was the interim weird ugly furniture phase.

Before simply getting rid of the headboard all together and buying some bedding I liked.

But the room was pretty bad.

TV trays made very functional bedside tables for 4 years.

And that was our newlywed bedroom for the first 4 years of marriage.  We just turned off the lights.

Then a couple of years ago we put the giant addition on the house and moved out of this room to our new master suite.  Since then, it has been an unwelcoming guest room.  I must say I am sorry to those of you who stayed with us and had to sleep in this room.  You must have felt like you were in a construction zone.

So this summer I got some gumption to fix it.

The trim was in very bad shape.  There was talk of stripping it all down to wood and refinishing it, but I needed to see an end to this project.  I decided to paint the trim white., but it took a ton of scraping, Bondo, and caulking to get it paint ready.

 First step in the makeover was a headboard I made out of an old door.

raw materials

I cut it to queen-sized width and made a cleat for the top and braces for the side.

There was some piecing to do.

But it looked better once I added re-purposed trim as a top ledge, Bondo-ed the knob holes, and primed it.

I found some miss matched furniture that I liked at a second hand store and gave them all a fresh coat of white.

 Time for some hard core painting.

But what color?

Upon closer inspection of the floor, I could see that long ago it had been painted faux oak.  That was common in the early days here in Utah.

Now I was doing my own artistic painting.

We settled on a beautiful shade of blue that makes the room calming and cool.

After paint, some lush carpet.

Cream Berber with a faint yellow tint.

We had the heater vent stripped of paint and Drew shined it up.

And the doors would be refinished by Drew.

 So the only thing left was to decorate!

Fresh bedding.

Re-purposed windows for wall art.  The center one is the screen from our front windows I found in the attic.

Heavy purple velvet drapes to shut out the sun for mid-day napping.

And the headboard turned out great.

 So the guest room is open for visitors.  In fact, our first house guest, my cousin Ruth the Artist from Oregon, has come and gone and she reportedly slept comfortably and well.  She loved our guest room so much she gave me an original painting of hers.

So if you ever find yourself in Salt Lake City, you have a place to lay your head.

Update January 2014: Finishing art

One winter day I finally filled in the re-purposed wall art, i.e. the old screen and window pictured above.  When I was helping mom pack to move out of the farmhouse years ago, I found a box of postcards.  Most of them were not written on, but a few were, and all were vintage. I strung them up and hung them in the vintage frames. How vintage of me.

Vintage family postcards in window and window screen "frames".

Most of the postcards were circa 1930-40, purchased when my grandparents when on a trip to California to send back home to my great grandparents.  One that went through the mail is dated 1932.

Some of the pictures on the fronts are cool.

The caption on this one says Arrow Rock Dam, Boise, Idaho. Highest in the world, Height 351 ft., length 1,060 ft.  The postmark on the back is dated July 1932 and was sent for a penny.  The Bureau of Reclamation website says this dam was built in 1915 and it is still operating today.

The caption for this one says "Lowering loaded box car, Boulder Dam", which shows the date of the postcard as between 1933 and 1935 when it was being built and before it was renamed Hoover Dam, as we know it today. This dam is 726 feet tall, much taller than its earlier cousin.

 As cool as the fronts are, the back is where the good nuggets are. Sadly, only a few are written on.

I smudged the addressee, but I will tell you that they were addressed to my great grandmother with my hometown and state only; no PO Box or street address and no zip. Fantastic.

Two were sent from my grandma and grandpa to my great grandma and grandpa in February 1944 while they were on vacation to California.

See below for translation 

The one in the photo above reads

Dear Folks - Everything is beautiful out here. We are at Lea's ????? swing the town. Were at the ?Txocoder? - that's where you were - but we only saw one movie star & he needed a haircut. Love #####

How precious is that!  Another is great because it was sent in 1944 when they passed through Salt Lake City.  It reads:

Dear Folks, We are in Salt Lake tonight - winter here. First waves struck - no trouble - lots of traffic. Hard to get rooms. Love a ?tor???? cabin tonight. Having FUN

Apparently, neither the traffic nor the weather has changed in Salt Lake City in 70 years!

What I really wonder is why were my grandparents on a vacation in the winter of 1944 while WWII was going on? 

Anyway, if you come to visit, you will get to sleep with some pieces of history here.

Her Beautiful Wedding: my niece gets hitched

How often does a normal mortal have the honor of marrying a young couple in love?  Drew had that chance in late July and I was especially proud to be the minister's wife.

We flew to Denver on Friday morning and promptly started the vacation at the Inverness Hotel pool 

Friday evening was the rehearsal dinner at my sister's house.  All my siblings were in attendance from far away.

Brother B and fiance

Brother T and wifey

Q: We had both been at the pool, but which of us used sunscreen? (A: Drew. That fetching shade of pink is his normal color, while my glowing red chest should be a less painful color.)

Niece J and Sister M

Lovely ladies: niece  and sisters

Sister M and hubby

Bro in law and his fam

Which is my sister?

The younger gen.

The other side - they were so nice!

The groom and buddies play pool

At the end of the evening we had a quick shower for my niece, organized by my super-planner sister.

WEDDING DAY

Saturday, after the good food and drink from Friday night, I needed some exercise so two of my nieces and I walked around the hotel neighborhood.  On the walk we encountered a gopher colony.

I'd never seen so many gophers in one small place.  The golf course next door must have some elaborate anti-gopher devices to keep out this herd. Carl the groundskeeper had to be on the staff.

Soon it was time for the big event. 
 

 Drew got all mic'ed up so he could be heard celebrating the marriage.

The wedding was held at a beautiful venue near Denver.  The only problem with staging this beautiful outdoor wedding is that the rain had begun an hour prior to the wedding.

But right at show time the rain mostly stopped so the processional started...

 with the strapping men...

and then the darling ladies.

And lastly the beautiful bride and her father. I could not believe how beautiful and mature my cute little niece who used to play fashion dress up with her cousins looked.

But as soon as the wedding party was in their places, the rain started again

and we thankfully moved inside.

Since the wedding was quite short, standing in this lovely stairway was not a problem.

The bride and groom are not of the religious sort, so they asked Drew to say words about love, commitment, and marriage.   They and their guests clearly have good senses of humor because the Sporcle joke went over well (Sporcle is an online quiz game that the bride and groom may spend a bit of time playing).

Minister Drew incorporates humor into the ceremony.

Enough fun and games, they're married already! The first kiss.

All smiles after the wedding.




In the few minutes after the wedding but before the reception, we snagged the photographer to capture the uncommon moment of Drew in a suit and me in heels. 

One of my favorite moments was the announcement of the bride and groom at the fun dinner reception.

The best man (groom's brother) and maid of honor (sister of the bride, niece Laura) gave excellent, funny, and sincere speeches.

And there was dancing

First dance

Father daughter dance

Let's just say that if my dad had been present at my wedding, we wouldn't have been nearly as cool as this.

The night went on, and so did the open bar, and before you knew it Drew and I were closing down the hotel bar after holding the shuffle board table for four games and elbowing our way onto the dance floor amongst another wedding party.

THE MORNING AFTER

All that merry making made us hungry; the Inverness' award-winning bunch fixed that!  Oh my, what a spread! 

The newlyweds at brunch; what a cute couple!

 My sister and her newly-extended family

Drew had to work early the next morning so he hopped a flight to Vegas after brunch.  The plane had to put on extra fuel to carry him because he ate so much.

POST WEDDING VACATION
It isn't often my immediate family all gets together so we planned a few extra days to enjoy some of Colorado. Finding activities that all of us like to do, however, can be challenging.  Our first activity was antique store browsing in Castle Rock.

Our second activity was relaxing back at my sister's and gobbling leftover wedding desserts and Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory goodies.

Enough for one day.  We made some plans for Monday and called it a day.

GETTING HIGH IN COLORADO
No, not that kind. This kind!

This is the best family picture I've seen in a long time.  Gosh, I love this picture.

We wanted to take the cog train to the top of Pike's Peak but tickets were sold out so my brave brother and brother-in-law drove the lot of us in large American vehicles up a seriously steep and winding road so that we could stand atop a 14er.  

At first I was grossed out by the gift shop on the tippy-top of a mountain, with its fudge stand and racks and racks of souvenirs.  But then I ate a fresh doughnut from the snack bar.   It was my first doughnut since the VooDoo doughnuts back in Oregon when I swore off any impostors. This doughnut, although a cake doughnut as compared to my favorite raised maple glazed, was authentic and made me glad to be a car-drivin' American tourist.

Enough doughnuts.  Get a look around the top of the world.

But don't fall off!

Large crystals of microcline feldspar (pink) in the Pike's Peak Formation, a ~1 billion year old granite.

Brother T

Brother T points to the switchbacks of the end of the 13-mile hiking trail to the peak, like "yeah, we did that." Ha.

Once the doughnuts and souvenirs were consumed, we drove back down the curvy, busy, two-lane.

Please, Bro, make that turn.

A video of the hairpin turns road. 

 Luckily we had fudge to keep us calm. 

Pike's Peak granite might be 1 billion years old and the mountain uplift may have taken place 60 million years ago (Laramide Orogeny), but the really crazy stuff has all happened since humans came along. 

Those signs were at a break test station. We had to stop and let ours cool down.

Of course there is another souvenir shop and snack bar at the break test station. America.

The next activity was Garden of the God.  I had personally been really looking forward to this. A few of us went on a short hike.

The younger generation bouncing on top of hoodoos. 

Our destination was the Siamese Twins.

I didn't realize it until we were there, but the Siamese Twins is one of the pictures on the vintage family postcards I used to decorate our guest room a couple of years ago, as I detailed in this post.

 Siamese Twins, upper right, on the front of a 1930s postcard in my guest room.

Here we all are in the belly of the Siamese Twins.  I wonder if this formation will be renamed to Conjoined Twins to be more PC.

Horseback tours were in progress while we were enjoying the park.  Somehow, being eight feet up on a shod horse on slickrock going down a steep incline with no helmet, as are some of the riders in this video, does not seem like a particularly safe tourist activity.

  Crazy horse-ridin' tourists!

More of the rock formations in Garden of the Gods.

I very much enjoyed Garden of the Gods.  I would love to go back again and hike all the trails and have a picnic.

LET'S EAT!

After all the tourist stuff (and no actual lunch stop), we were looking for some chow.  We found this place - Rudy's Country Store and BBQ. 

It was perfect for us because we could each order our own thing at the counter and sit family style.  It was very tasty too.

Lots o' ribs went down.

After that we headed back to the campsite in Colorado Springs where a couple of the parties were staying.  Brother B lead the way on his three-wheeled motorcycle.

A long but fun day!

MORE COLORADO

Tuesday we said good bye to some of the family and the rest of us enjoyed another day of being together.  Rain was threatening so we didn't dare hike Castlewood Canyon. Instead, we wandered through the Denver Botanical Garden at Chatfield.

The place contained lovely gardens and a restored ranch, complete with animals.

We toured inside a greenhouse made especially for butterflies.

Video of butterfly in the butterfly house.

A very lovely morning!

While we us old folk were strolling the botanical gardens, the younger set was exploring downtown Denver.  Here are four of the five musketeer cousins.

______

After lunch at Cheesecake Factory minus the cheesecake, we headed back to sister's house for more relaxing.

The next day I was supposed to leave at 6 PM on a paid ticket (Drew advised that afternoon and evening flights have been jam packed with no non-revenue passengers getting on.) but somehow my reservation got cancelled so I had to quickly buy one of the last two seats for sale on the 2 PM flight.  At the airport I ran into someone I know.

He just happened to be passing through on his way to San Antonio.  How funny.

That wrapped up the wedding/family reunion for me.  Right now, the newlyweds are safely on their honeymoon, my traveling siblings are safely back at their home bases, and my host sister finally has some relaxing peace and quiet.  Until next time, Hooray!