Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

It is in my nature to be very cynical - mostly learned behaviour due to the nature of my work though!!  So the "old guy" and I took a little trip to "disneyland" or rather we lived in the land of dreams for four days during the Thanksgiving holidays.  I remained hopeful during this time, I kept my negativity at bay and kept it pushed down but secretly I just knew...

Reality set in when my hubby spoke to the lawyer and he then spoke to the city planner for the area.  It seems that this property has an unusual designation:  EU.  I have heard of the European Union and I have even heard of EP for environmentally protected but EU is a new one.  It stands for EXISTING USE.  Right now it is a bush lot and it has been designated so since the 1970's.  We guess that they two adjoining property owners banded together and got the designation so that they can continue to enjoy their privacy and the property in the middle remains pristine.  We could buy especially since the owner has dropped the price by $20,000 but taking the issue to the OMB is a crap shoot so at this stage of the game it is best not to throw away our money.  Sometimes old adages bug me but in this case it does apply;nothing ventured, nothing gained.  We had fun trying!

Here is a picture from my sketchbook; it is a page that I did earlier this month.  The jumping off point for it is the tiny square on the bottom right-hand corner.  I cut it out from a free house design magazine that arrived that week.  I pasted it on after I had put the paint on the page and thought that it would be a nice addition.  The crab-apple leaf fell out of the phone book so I added it as well.  Okay so this is not "fine" a ret but those additions made this sketchbook picture fun!

The picture didn't scan as well as I thought it might and it really is not this "yellow"; it is more of a burnt orange.