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She is Decorating again

© April Lee Schmidt

My dear daughter, Samantha caught the decorating bug again. I blame this on her creative nature, which I like to think she inherited from me. For that reason alone I feel a great need to encourage it.

She got it in her head to re-decorate her bedroom. She was watching “Trading Places” and got the idea to paint her room red and black. Unbeknownst to me she had saved up a little nest egg for this very purpose. The request (if it can be called that) went something like this.

“Mom, I know what I want to do for fall break.” “What is that honey?” I asked. Assuming she would want to go to her Aunt’s and spend the week at the beach or something similar. “I’m going to redecorate my room. Do you want to see the sketches?”

I smiled and said sure with my mouth but my head was screaming “Oh no, not again! ” You see Samantha has these episodes, she gets something in her head and there is no known way of getting it out. Some would call it determination. We in the Schmidt household call it a bug up her rear.

The sketches were pretty good. The verbal description however was scary. She wanted to paint her walls red and the ceiling and trim black. She informed me that she had her own money and only wanted me to take her into town to price the items she would need, and then back in to pick them up. In addition to the paint she wanted a new comforter, bookcase and a bean bag chair.

What could we say she was spending her own money? This in itself was quit an event. I did my best to look at this as a good lesson for her. My husband and I had horrible visions about attempting to repaint the ceiling when she went away to college just under four years from now. We successfully convinced her that a black ceiling would severely shrink her room.

A week before fall break we went to all the hardware and discount stores. She went around with her list of items marking the best prices from each store. She took her list home and wrote up a new one. This list contained the items and stores where she would purchase them. She did a very could job. She went over budget by about seven dollars because the store where she purchased the paint used a more expensive base. She did not realize that she needed to request a specific base prior to them mixing the paint.

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