"It looks great, honey"

by Sue
(Bloomington, IN, USA)

I love to decorate and always have. I remember when I was just a little girl I would help my mom paint walls and such. I was always "mommy's little helper" in that way. This continued even after I got married.

A few years ago my husband and I purchased a vacation home in Miami, FL. It was a beautiful house that rested on the coastline.

It was unfurnished which means I had the opportunity to do a nice decorating project of my own. I was very excited!

When my husband was gone one morning - to visit his family that lived in the area - I decided I would get to work. I painted the walls, put down rugs, and went out and purchased lots of cool knick-knacks.

The room of the house I was most looking forward to decorating was the kitchen. Oh, it was such a beautiful kitchen but very dark - there were no windows in the kitchen. The cabinets and counters were lined with a rich dark cherry wood finish. I was in love with it!

To make the kitchen of my vacation home interesting I decided to put up a wall wine rack. Now, I had always thought that wall wine racks added a bit of sophistication to a room and I wanted this beautiful kitchen to have that look.

Instead of buying a brand new wine rack that was pre-built I decided to build my own with instructions I had gotten out of a do-it-yourself book.

I worked for hours building my perfect wine rack. When it was completed I felt a large sense of accomplishment welling up in me. I was very happy with the results. I hurried and placed the wine rack on the wall and inserted the bottles of wine I had picked out.

Later that night when my husband got home I hurried and took him to the kitchen where my wine rack was mounted. He looked at it and nodded. But then something terrible happened. At that very moment by some unknown means the wine rack came tumbling down!

The glass wine bottled shattered and the liquid from them spilled out from beneath the giant mess the spill had created. It was horrible! I had spent so much time working on it but I was so excited that I didn't even mount it to the wall properly and it just so happened to collapse as my husband was looking at it!

I nearly fainted. But my husband was encouraging.

"It looks great, honey."

That was all he could say. He walked off afterwards and I was just standing there in shock. I'll never forget that day. My husband still teases me about it even now.