Painted Stairs and Cheese Balls

Today I spent an hour touching up painted stairs, not these ones in the picture above, but rather two sets of back stairs that were servants stairs at one time in this old house.  Painted stairs are wonderful; you can really get creative and you change them as often as you have the inclination, energy and time.  They are, however, a commitment that requires regular touching up or they can become unsightly and chipped and that's not a good look.  As a matter of fact, chipped paint anywhere drives me nuts; doorways, trim and rooms' outer corners on walls especially.

As long as I'm touching up stairs I may as well walk around the house and paint any flaw I see on trim - this just takes a once yearly commitment (or more often, depending on your OCDs - ahem.)

Some painted spaces will go too long between touch ups and that can make an otherwise nice room or house for that matter look tired and careworn unnecessarily.  And high quality stair/floor paint does not mean scuff proof.  About once or twice a year since I have had painted stairs (16 years), I have to do some touching up.  The doing so is worth it and it crisps everything up again - and it doesn't take very long.  The black/white stairs in the top most picture are the back stairs in the Yellow House.  They used to be just shiny pumpkin pine treads but they looked reality dated.  The edges on the stairs were squared off so they could really gouge into your feet if you slid off one which we all did constantly after I painted them black like you see.  When you looked down the staircase, all you would see was a river of black paint; no beginning or end and so we all fell or slid several times.  One day I decided to paint a runner and that decision, along with the top hanging hand rail, saved our bodies.  It was a weeklong process and then we went out of town for a few days to let them cure for the future heavy duty use.

Taped and ready to paint - can you see how deadly solid black could be without a bright light on?

Finished!  And we hung on to that rail for dear life with or without the painted runner.

I found this picture on a blog called Modern Hepburn - fun pattern idea but lots of taping!

When we moved into our current house, the same stairs I touched up today were badly scuffed and neglected so I painted them immediately and what a difference it made! I'm a believer in regular maintenance before things get out of hand and the job becomes bigger.  Here's how they look today - they just needed a blob of paint here and there, scuff marks mostly from the many guests we've had this year hauling luggage up and down.  They were all worth it. 

Stairs up to the third floor - touched up stairs and white trim - good time to do both

Scotty was over today for a few hours getting in my way - that's okay!  Paint is called All-Floor by California Paints - color is Valley Forge Tan (a Benjamin Moore color)

Back stairs leading up to the second floor - and lots of wall space for future art finds or projects

Okay, now some even more fun stuff - cheese balls!  Earlier this week, my church had it's monthly Enrichment Night for the women and we had a teacher show us how to make gingerbread figures in a jar to look almost like a snow globe.  We had a great turn out and fun food.  I made four kinds of cheese balls with crackers and vegetables.  And cupcakes with ganache.  It's always wonderful to eat and learn at the same time.  And these cheese balls are not your supermarket deli cheese balls!

Corn and Jalapeño (mild) with scallions rolled in pistachio - corn bread crackers

Red Pepper White Cheddar Ball (with boiled apple cider and sweet red bell pepper) rolled in poppy and sesame seeds

My favorite - Apple Chutney cheese ball rolled in dried cranberries - salty sweet - with sage and cranberry Triscuits

Ranch cheese ball rolled in walnuts with pretzel crackers 

The spread

Our lovely instructor Bobbi H setting up 

Some of us headed to our dough rolling areas

Now that's interesting

These are really fun for kids to make - you nestle your gingerbread in sugar and sprinkle powdered sugar on for a snow effect.  The prettiest ones were those that used gingerbread houses and trees. 

I'll bookend this post with another set of painted stairs from the Yellow House, the main, front stairs, black but not deadly and striking against the pale yellow.  Now go do some touching up!