---

August 28, 2001

Quinn's bedroom is almost ready to party. It's a festival of stripes, flowers, and Trix. It's going to be a dream. I kind of want to move in there myself.

It began as a spare bedroom. Here's a picture of my nephew Danny lounging on the bed last summer, his possessions strewn about carelessly:

This summer we began to clean out the room. We gave the bed to my brother Kevin, moved Andy's clothes into our bedroom (humph), and began to find new homes for the other items we had previously stashed in there. Finally, it was mostly emptied out and boy! was it ugly.

After we primed the early-'80s dark, gross, hateful brown trim and doors, we turned the whole thing over to Ericka, our decorator. She masterminded the rest of the room with her sister Katie, and we take no credit for what happened next.

First, Ericka painted the ceiling.

I took pictures of her daughter, Keegan.

Then she painted the walls.

Baxter and I studied Keegan intently.

Then she did math, and figured out how many stripes of a certain size would fit on each wall. Then she marked off every stripe. Then she drew the stripes in with pencil, using my dad's level. I don't know why I didn't take any pictures of this, as it was quite entertaining to behold what with all the swearing she did, but I was busy watching Keegan eat Katie's face.

After she painted the trim, Katie (who is also pregnant, and due on Phil Collins' birthday) was finally allowed in to draw flowers all over the walls. While she drew, Ericka painted them festive colors. I got in the way and took pictures.

Finally, all the flowers were drawn in and painted real pretty-like. Everyone was secretly scared that the flowers looked a little garish without anything else on the walls to mute them, but the girls pressed forward: Katie drew the mural on the closet, and Ericka sponge-painted the stripes.

I made Keegan cry.

Look at this picture and tell me. Tell me you wouldn't want to be the one to sponge paint every single one of those stripes! I know you would. Oh, I do. But you can't. Because Ericka did. I got to sponge paint, I think, 5 stripes. But I couldn't work around the flowers. Or up too high. I have my limitations, you know.

After many days spent trapped in that bedroom, Ericka retreated back to Madison and we recruited Cinda and Henri to paint the mural wall. They are architecturally delicious. They did an awesome job filling in Katie's little mural.

Go to the page 2 to see the (pretty much almost) finished product...