If you had one week left to cram your entire summer in before heading back to school... would you decide to move half your house?... or go to the Beach?

Yep - I did both.

A little over a week ago, I woke up with an absolutely INSANE idea.

We'd all been going kind of nuts trying to make the best of the house being in chaos since my mom moved in. No one really had their own space anymore. We were all cranky and disoriented and my mom was miserable too.

At the same time, I have been searching for a new home in Vermont and realizing that one of the most terrifying things I could contemplate - was having to pack up and move my dream studio.

So - I woke up and thought - "Hey! I should move my dream studio!" I thought, if I were to switch spaces with my mom - she'd have a much larger, beautiful, more private and self-contained space for her own. And maybe she'd be happy. And I would have the smaller space, but it would be in my house (actually my original studio), more accessible for me and Lilah, and I'd have my house back too.

I didn't think to take pictures of the two spaces before we started shifting stuff, but here is what my Mom's space looked like after we'd moved for a day...

(left side)

(right side)

...and here's what that stuff looks like transferred up to my dream studio...

I don't have a picture of it all moved in, you can picture all the stuff from the previous pictures... crammed into this picture (below)...

I moved a lot of my stuff into my old glass studio. Now known as "The Storage Room". I have had so many businesses - murals, stained glass, furniture painting, rubber stamp company, art supply store... 90% of the stuff in that dream studio was stuff I no longer need! (Note: if you need stuff - make me a list and an offer. I'm sure I have it somewhere.)

And THIS...

... is what the right half of my NEW (old) Studio looked like at the end of the week!

Kind of crazy to think I was able to do that, but I still have a lot of boxes to sort out and get rid of... maybe next summer. I have a serviceable studio with only stuff I actually WANT, and my mom now has a gorgeous studio-apartment with big windows for her plant-friends. YEH!

BEACH TIME!

You can only imagine how insanely CRANKY I was by the time this was done. Even my friend Laurie, who had been helping move stuff, had abandoned me and escaped to Maine!

My friend Debbee sent me this text message (yes, she's an artist too)...

That's her lying on the beach at Lake Sunapee, with my Demons sunbathing and splashing in the water! Even my Inner Demons knew when to take a break! OK! I'm in, let's go!

It's getting cooler now - and when the sun starts going down.... brrrrr!

But it was still beautiful and relaxing and we floated around until we were turning into prunes. Back at Debbee's, I watched as she took random items selected from her fridge...

Did something involving tin foil and flames... (cooking?)

And turned it into THIS!!
YUMMY!

When I got back home that night... the Fireman had left THESE in my new studio!?

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