Best-Laid Plans

...would be accomplished if I could just stay home and carry them out!  But I'm easily distracted. So things get done when they get done.  I'm such a damn hippie.

Anyway, so today I finally got around to putting the mosaic top on my table.  I was leery of the thinset hardening while I dinked around with the pieces, so I thought I'd be smart and lay them all out on a piece of paper the size of my table top.  Which worked ok until I actually go to putting them in place, at which point nothing lined up the way it was on the paper.  But I did get them all on there, so now all I have to do is wait 24 hours and I can grout them.  That's the fun part, I like playing with grout. 

The thing I learned about putting mosaic pieces in place is that they differ from actual tile in one important aspect; they have not much depth, so it's a fine line between using enough thinset to hold them in place, and using too much thinset and having it squeeze up between the pieces and not leaving enough room for grout.  So after I got them all on there, I had to go in with what we at our house call "the multipurpose tool" (a nut pick.  Seriously, everyone should have at least one of these hanging around within easy reach), and pick out the globs of thinset in between the pieces so the grout will have someplace to go.

I also decided I don't trust the paint on top of the "crackle medium" I used, so I'm going to give it a coat of satin polyurethane just to make sure it won't scrape off easily.

Lily and Melanie, my grandnieces!

 In other news, there was a huge family campout at our house this weekend, cousins and family from Preston's side who all live here in RI but don't get to see each other all the time.  So that was a lot of fun, and the weather was absolutely stunningly perfect. PJ and I even took a canoe ride, and I can't even remember the last time I did that, but the water is so low some parts of the river are pretty much impassable so we didn't get very far.  Plans were made to do it again one more time before it gets too cold, so I'm really looking forward to that. 

I actually remembered how to drive one of these things!