For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for July 19, 2021

a fine start indeed

Velvet art. I had fun with the kits!

I used to have a macrame’ owl that was the first thing I hung whenever I moved (which was a lot). It finally rotted after 40+ years.

About 3 years ago, when my mom moved into her new digs at a very nice assisted living place, we agreed that the apartment’s neutral color scheme needed a “pop” of brightness. She already had 2 lovely paintings of classic California oak grassland, and a couple of pen drawings of local landmarks, but their colors were as bland as the apartment. Then I remembered a couple of largish (18×24 in) prints of peonies by a Chinese artist that I had picked up at the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts and had professionally framed. 40 years ago she took me on my first trip to the festival, and about 10 years ago I started going annually by myself, buying artworks and tchotchkes, until I finally ran out of wall space to display them in my own house. I was still trying to decide where to hang the peonies when Mom moved … so I gave them to her! She says that she still get compliments on them, so I’m glad they’ve found such a good home.

Isn’t that ON the wall?

It still needs to “smell” like home. And I don’t mean anything rude. Your home smells like all your stuff/coffee/potpourri etc.

Our first Christmas after we got married, my mother gave my husband a gawdawful 2’ tall papier mache owl. It was a deep chocolate brown with neon orange and green around the eyes & feather details. Every time we moved we’d try to leave it, but inevitably someone would pack it (neither my husband nor me…nor my mother). We’ve finally given up. Mr. Ugly sits on top of a shelf in the kitchen & our girls love him. Yeah, we figured that if he wanted to stay with us that badly we might as well name him!

“Velvet owl”?? …..LOL

Velvet owlvis.

When I move I want the new place to look and feel like a new place. Unfortunately, once I bring in all my old stuff, it’s just my old place in a new place with a clean face. For a while.

You lost me at “velvet”.

I’ll bet there is someone here to can claim to have HAD a Velvet Elvis, or know someone who did.

Too bad it didn’t fall off the moving truck

Some cat pee stains on the carpet and you know you are home.

THAT was supposed to get lost in the move.

I wonder our future when we decided to reduce down.

Find the dumpster, quick.

Velvet Elvis!

Having resolved the one point of tension regarding the move, the story seems to have skipped past the boring bits.

I think art on velvet is perfectly fine.

All of my life, I’ve collected art from all over the world. I’d rather have an original piece of art, that I really like, in our home, than some copy of a classic. As far as velvet art, we have two: one of flowers, and one a landscape.

BTW, velvet art is valuable nowadays. I’m talking about one of a kind pieces, not the mass produced copies of each other. Still, even those are one of a kind because velvet art can’t be re-printed, it still has to be touched by the hands of an art painter.

After living in the same house for 54 years, my parents moved into an assisted living apartments. Somehow my mom managed to bring the essence of their old home. I recognized their new place at once.

There’s already a nail on the wall?

When we finally convinced my GM hat her house was too big for her, we got her moved into a home for the elderly. After her husband (my GF) died, she didn’t know the first thing about physically taking care of the house. Too many steps too.

Next is the one with dogs playing poker.

I like this strip. It doesn’t really have a joke as such, just a sort of ending line to cap it off. It’s better that way, somehow. More poetic.

Parents with two grown up kids in the new house seems kinda cute. The grandchildrens could have added more zing in the new house.

Well dad. That means you either get the velvet Elvis or the dogs playing poker! ;o)

Get ready for outbreaks for the real students