An update on the latest around the house: The first mural is finished and is beeee-yoooo-tifulllll if I do say so.
I've added some extra touches to make it kind of 3-dimensional. F'rinstance, there's a flower urn on a plinth in the foreground of the pic. So, I put a similarly-sized leather jug of small flowers near it on a wooden box about the same size as the pedestal in the mural. And, along the edge where I had painted a fallen-down brick wall, I placed a couple of bricks and some pebbles to carry that idea into the room, as well.

Then, while my helper cleaned up the lumber-pile between the shed and the house, I began unpacking all the fragile chachkas that have waited so patiently to see the light of day again. And EVERY ONE OF THEM survived the move!!! :))))) I'm especially proud of a 4-inch-tall little girl made of terra-cotta sitting with one leg outstretched and her arms around her raised knee. She's not even glazed. Talk about fragile!
And a glass box with a blown egg inside it. A client gave me that in 1988 or so.
And a real butterfly my brother mounted in a plastic box when he was in his teens -- he's 52, now.
And an unglazed pottery wine-jug from Safed, Israel.
And a jar of a tinted glass made in only one town in the world [also in Israel.]

Unwrapping all these started out feeling like Christmas morning but finally became overwhelming as each one has a story behind it: 'Oh, here's the glass Char gave me with a poem inside it one Christmas in the late 1970's!' [I even remember the poem and the incident it memorialized.]
'Here's the soapstone mouse Matt gave me!'
'Here's the ceramic elf Judith gave me!'
'Here's a photo of Sam!' 'And a picture Judy drew in pastels and charcoal.'
Etc. etc. etc. You get the idea.
I finally had to stop and just breathe. I'll get back to it [and to finding places for them all] in the next day or two.

But, after 15 months, the living room is finally coming together.
Now, if I can just get past the bout of home-sickness-- for Kansas City! --can you believe it???
Excuse me, I've got to go make some phone calls to a few folks up in north country. :)