Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for June 15, 2010

What?

When I was about 7 my dad came up with the idea to panel my brother and my bedroom. Considering the state of the wallpaper not a bad idea. A no nonsense kind of guy for the most part but before he started he brought us into the cleared out room with a brand new box of 64 color crayons. He gave them to us and said go nuts. We stared at him for a moment not quite processing the fact he was telling us to do something that we told never to do…(several times) Grabbing a couple of colors he said come and proceeded to draw two big arcs across the wall. The bleeep broke we grabbed the colors and proceeded to color every inch we could reach. good times and as far as I know the mural is all still there behind that paneling just waiting for someone in the future to see.

At least they’re using the bathtub for this project.

Wenthral what good memories your dad created. That was a great idea and I would never have thought of it. I and my sister never done anything anyone including SS girls did with sheets and room. Never ever thought of it. And my dad when he was going strong took out a wall in the living room and extended the living room to the garage that cut the garage way back to a very small room. We where adults then. When our dad was laid off for long periods of time he decided to change the kitchen, very small 2 bedroom house built back in 1947, took out old existing cabinets and built sturdy new one huge. Only value to the place.

Improvements by others may be ghastly mistakes by all other standards. We had a beautiful small cabin type house in the woods we rented out that we are now retired to. Among the many improvements by the renter was enclosing the loft, lining the fireplace with linoleum, and painting a 5’ long, 2” thick rough sawn mahogany mantel white enamel. Those were all the little things. We have run out of money, and even with the money may never be able to save the house Part of the cheap rent we gave them was to take care of maintenance on the house. A little splashed tie-dyeing can be fixed easy.

When we finished the basement in our house, my brother and I each got to paint a scene on one of the walls, whatever we wanted. He painted a Star Wars outerspace scene. I went with an ocean bottom with fish and such. Mom is still finding fish at garage sales to pin up on the wall with the painted fish. On the 3rd wall, my Mom and I did a map of the world for Geography class in my (I believe) freshman year. The things you can do for homeschooling… Good times.

OMG! I actually did just what the girls are doing about 40 years ago. It was the first time my folks went out of town and left me by myself. I tie-dyed all of my mom’s sheets and staple gunned them to the ceiling of my room to make flowy ‘walls’. Boy did I catch hell when they came home!

@somebodyshort, when I was in high school we did a much milder version of your kids’ renovations. I and my three sisters each had her own separate bedroom. I wanted my walls and ceiling a sunny yellow (not the kind of yellow that has any orange in it). And - I don’t know the word for this, the panelling at the bottom of the wall - that was to be light green, the colour of new leaves in the spring.

Well, the painter objected. He clearly thought we were all crazy. And my mother had promised us we could have whatever we wanted. But what he really objected to was the yellow ceiling. According to him, it would make the room look too small. Ceilings had to be white.

I started to cry and told him to do whatever he wanted. Fortunately my mother saw what was going on, and made it clear that he had to do whatever I asked. I lived in that room happily for many years, thru high school and college and afterwards.

So when another sister wanted shocking neon orange and deep turquoise (I don’t remember which walls and/or ceiling was/were which), he just did it. I often couldn’t go into that room - if I was tired it hurt my eyes.

She was half a generation younger than me, twelve years, so I guess that partly explained it.

My parents’ bedroom was painted dark blue. They found it restful and conducive to sleep. I wouldn’t have.

We all made our own choices, and we were very happy with them for years. I know I’m still not tired of mine, though the house was sold long ago. I can see that room in my mind’s eye - happy sunshine, the new leaves of spring.

Why shouldn’t they tie-dye their sheets? Are they their own sheets? Is the dye going to come out in the wash and dye something else? etc. If they give the correct answers, the worst that can happen is that they might change their minds and wish they hadn’t done it after all. And that would be an excellent life lesson.

They look like they’re having a lot more fun than they usually do!

BOY……there’s some long winded comments today!!

We did tie-dye when I was in High School - it was the early 70’s in Art Class. We also did batik, macrame, God’s Eyes, etc. I think my teacher was a frustrated hippie! LOL

And I thought my younger daughter and her father were nuts when they decided to paint her room bright green. This is great stuff!

She’s also the one who colored her hair purple one year and the hairdressers at the place where I get my hair cut each one had to have a look…it had to grow out, nothing could be done to cover or change it, but she was happy. that was nine years ago and they still talk about it at my hairdressers. Her hair is back to its original color now….

@somebodyshort

I love how you gave your kids room to just…be. What an enterprising young man you have! Learned the value of a dollar early.

Great stories guys!!

Love the comments and the strip both! Great stories.

I have made many odd (to other people) decor choices in the many houses where I’ve lived. I only wish I had good cameras and abundant media to record all that as now all the early ones are only in my mind. I know that I did decor in my 4 kids rooms that at the ttime were a delight to them (and in general attractive to others- except for the bullfighter one for my boys). My bedroom has always been lovely. Living rooms have gone from realistic landscapes to huge surreal paintings… All SUCH FUN! My fav for the kids has to be one I recently put on facebook (when they were very young) of popular TV characters combined with classics and Grimm for a wraparound panorama ;-) My old photos are faded though :-(

we painted the younger girl’s room blue bottom, white top with a wallpaper stripe with The cow who jumped over the moon dividing, a really sweet one, we thought. It wasn’t until years later she told us she had always been afraid of that dmn cow…