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The weekend is [almost] here!
I’ve had it about up to here* with the house still needing quite a bit of unpacking and organizing, so I’m making some specific goals for this weekend.
- Find a place for everything in the kitchen. There are about 7 smallish items for which I haven’t yet found homes.
- Mop the kitchen/dining area floors. Somehow, the house has the gall to get dirty before I’ve even managed to get everything unpacked.
- Unpack & find places for the two still-packed bins of toys.
- Hang Nicolas’s desk.
- Create a mud-room like area in the garage. There’s not enough room by the front door for all the rain boots & such.
- Play with my family!
It’s not a particularly ambitious list, but if I manage to knock it all off, I’ll be content. I’d like to spend about as much time on #6 as the rest combined, if possible. I think it’s possible.
*Hand held at about chin level. Maybe nose level. Depends on when you ask me.
The mint walls are driving me crazy.
We’re renting, and our landlord has given us permission to paint if we’d like to. We’ll definitely be painting the master bedroom (we already bought the paint), but we don’t want to invest too much time and money in repainting the house.
Still, the mint walls in the living room aren’t really up my alley. Solution? See what we can do to work with the mint walls. I pulled up Photoshop yesterday evening to create a decor board and see if I could make the mint walls work with the other elements we have in that room. I think I got it. Here’s what I came up with:
There are four elements in the room that won’t be changed:
1. The mint green paint.
2. The gold silk drapes (which belong to the homeowner).
3. The piano.
4. The brown upholstered furniture. I’ve been designing around these two pieces for years. Yes, I know we could slip cover them, but we’re working on a tight budget.
The remaining furniture can be painted:
5. The small media cabinet and the side table will be done over in French White. This will give the room a much more modern and fresh feel.
6. This is the part I’m not sold on. Our TV cabinet is a solid oak piece that’s a little dated. I think a greyish tone on the body and a dark stain on the top like this would bring it more up to date. Jason prefers the idea of looking for a free piece on Craigslist to customize. I think I might agree with him on that.
7. This is my vision for The Four Pound Wonder, a piece my Dad found at the local tip when we lived in England. He paid £4 for the old wardrobe, which has been outfitted with shelves for linens and silver and the like. I’d like to do it over in a subtle metallic finish like this, and replace the [again, dated] stained glass with hammered metalwork. The metal finish would coordinate with the gold curtains and with the frame around our Bayeux piece (seen here).
8. This guitar photo is by my friend Melissa; she took it on a trip to Mexico last year. I gave it to Jason last Christmas, and we haven’t put it up yet. It is printed on metallic photo paper, and that, combined with the colors, ties it in with this room beautifully.
9. The accessories are from ZGallerie (Love!) and will be supplemented with thrift store finds in white, green & [subtle] gold. (I’ll probably put the florals together myself, too.)
And that’s about it. The decor board looks crowded, I know, but so does the room; that’s not about to change. We have too much furniture for the space, which I think is another reason it’s driving me nuts. I believe tying it all together with a conscious design and giving it some style will help relieve the feeling of clutter and too-tightness, since moving pieces out isn’t an option just now.
So what do you think? Have you ever had to work around something that just didn’t sit right with you & make it work?
One of my very favorite blogs, Young House Love, linked to this quick little style quiz at Ethan Allen today.
How surprised was I when I clicked through the series of photos that appealed to me and was presented with my results?
Very.
Metro? I’m metro? Uh, no, I’m a suburban girl, through and through. Right? But then, I started exploring their sample rooms for this style, and I quite liked three of them.
Yeah, I can do Metro.
1. Look at those white vases. I know the whole “white grouping” thing is so popular as to be almost overdone these days, but I really am drawn to it.
2. The woven bench.
3. Lots of neutrals with splashes of color.
4. Geometric patterns.
The only thing missing is a certain measure of softness…something cozy. I’m reminded of homes where I babysat as a teenager, when I was chilled after the kids had gone to bed and couldn’t for the life of me find an afghan or a quilt to cuddle under on the sofa. Add a little coziness (and a personal touch or two) to these rooms, and I think they’d be close to perfect.
So, each week, I see this graphic on a couple/few of the blogs I frequent, and today I think, “Hey, that’s just what I need to eek out a blog post today!”
- I now have first-hand proof of the validity of the “wait until your child is free of symptoms for 24 hours before sending him back to school” rule. Nicky’s fever broke at 2:00 this morning, and as much as I wanted to send him to school, so he could participate in his final drum circle group, I did the right thing and kept him home. Several hours later, he looked miserable, and the thermometer registered 101.
- The house is still a wreck, but Jason took down the LCD TV mount the previous tenants left behind (which was likely only making him feel deprived, anyway) and replaced it with framed artwork. Awesome.
- The art (a tea towel from Bayeux, which my mother thoughtfully had framed for us), inspired me to clean off the mantel underneath it and spookify at least a little of the house. (Sorry about the shoddy photo.)
- My toes are cold. (Surprising to no one who knows me, I’ll wager.)
- I think I might just try NaBloPoMo again this year.
- The black light bulb we put in our front porch fixture every year always makes me think of Space Mountain.
- Bench Monday makes me happy.
Slow and steady, right? Isn’t that the fable’s answer to getting ahead?
Oh, good. We’re right on track for winning the Get Your House Unpacked marathon. Woo hoo!
It’s been more challenging than we anticipated, figuring out each room’s use and finding ways to house the odds and ends we have. Our garage sale pile is growing (again, slowly but steadily), but we do want to keep some of our stuff. Garage sales, trips to Ikea, Craigslist purchases…bit by bit, we’re organizing and storing. Stay tuned for some updates in that arena!
As a placeholder, how about one of my favorite Bench Monday shots to date?
I know a lot of you have heard of it: Project 365. I’ve seen blips and blurbs about it, on blogs, on Flickr, and I must admit, it intrigued me. Taking a photograph a day for a whole year? Sounds easy enough! Then I thought about it. It really is quite a commitment. Goodness knows, I’ve nearly forgotten my Bench Monday shots now and again, and that’s only once a week. Not only are we talking about a commitment and follow-through in general…it’s a commitment to be creative - if only a teensy bit – every single day!
Ooh, now there’s a challenge worth pursuing! Daily creativity feeds the mind and soul, right? So, I decided to jump in with our first day in Seattle. It should be an interesting documentation of our first year here, don’t you think? For those of you who read my blog through an RSS reader, please click through just this once, and you’ll see a Flickr widget on the left, streaming my photographs. Just wanted to let you know it’s there. (And if you want to receive my 365 in your reader, here’s the RSS feed.)
As for the rest of life…moving in is going a bit slowly, but as soon as today’s chiropractic visit catches up with my body, I’ll be hitting it hard again. I’m loving our house, and I’m beyond excited about fitting everything into place, decorating, and making it ours.
Happy Bench Monday!
In the midst of writing this post last night, I ran downstairs to see how the veil was looking under Mom’s ministrations. When we found it the day before, she said she’d see what she could do for it. Later that evening, I saw it soaking in a bucket with some Oxy cleaner in it.
Well, the oxy stuff didn’t do a thing. Mom’s next thought was, “Well, it’s ruined anyway, and it’s cotton and nylon*…”
Bleach.
Yep, she soaked it in water with TWO CUPS of bleach.** Two words: Go, Mom!
It’s perfect. Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!!
*I asked her how the hell she knew it was cotton and nylon. Answer: Mom was a home economist and worked in a fine fabric store for years. The woman knows her fabrics. I tend to forget just how well she knows them
**Disclaimer: I’m not going to advise you on whether or not bleach is safe for any of your fine fabrics; it’s most definitely not my area of expertise. Please don’t put bleach or any other cleaner on a beloved veil or fabric item of your own without researching the fabric and potential consequences.
Don’t you just love it when the Bride and Groom pass out miniature bottles of bubbles after the reception? Don’t they look beautiful as they run toward the waiting car in a sea of pearlescent, floating spheres?
It’s especially beautiful if, like on our wedding day, there are snow flurries intermingling with the bubbles.
Of course, it never occurred to us that the soap in the bubbles was perhaps not the best substance to let coat a veil made of expensive French lace hand-pieced by the mother of the bride…and that perhaps we should have sent it to the cleaners with the gown, rather than folding it up in tissue for nearly twelve years without a second thought. Until yesterday, when Mom and I pulled the boxed gown and accessories down out of her closet, so I could pack them up to go to Seattle.
And found this:
I do believe I resembled a guppy for several long seconds after finding the veil in this state. I’m not often speechless, as those who have met me in person can attest, but this did the trick. You see, I loved my wedding gown. It was great. But I loved my veil. I vividly remember going to the fine fabrics store with Mom and picking out the lace, the price of which nearly stopped my heart. We spent quite a long time figuring out the absolute minimum we would need to buy for Mom to hand piece into the correct shape to give me a mantilla-like effect. And it was beautiful. I have always said I didn’t know if I’d hang onto my gown forever, but that the veil would be an heirloom. We made it removable from the headpiece so future brides could wear it with whatever headpiece they wanted. There was thought put into it.
And here it is. Woah. Okay, yes, I know, it’s not that important. Except that it is, to me, just a little bit.
So, to the purpose of this post, a Public Service Announcements for brides everywhere:
When you take your wedding gown to the cleaners, have them clean the veil, too. You never know what might have gotten on it.
Oh, and as for my veil? Surprise! It has a happy ending. Tune in tomorrow…
One bright, beautiful Saturday morning (today), a Mom (me) dropped her wonderful boys off for a weekend of fun with their grandparents. The mom decided to visit some Wondrous Garage Sales and Well-Stocked Thrift Stores on the way home.
Cash in hand, she stopped at the first Garage Sale and fell promptly in love with this beautiful chair and its partner:
The chairs were each marked $2.50, which seemed to be an amazing deal! After chatting with the Garage Saler for a while, however, said chairs were lowered – to $2.00 each. How could the mom pass up such a deal?
She couldn’t.
Several garage sales later, the chairs remained her only purchases. Enter the Well-Stocked Thrift Store, which had this fun chair sitting out front, priced at only $6.00:
A quick chat with the Store Owner quickly resulted in another $1 markdown.
The end.
And that, my friends, is how I ended up at home today, giddy and happily planning the future lives of my three new chairs. (Betcha didn’t know you could fit three chairs in a Civic, eh?) Which I picked up for a total of $9. Total. $9!!
Just wait until I get these guys to Seattle and find new fabric and paint for them!
The tips and tricks have been flying in the Jessica Sprague class I’m taking! Over the past week, I’ve been more and more excited by learning the little things I’ve missed out on by self-teaching.
Kalen helped with this one – titling and colors. (Hint: photo fun, whether with a digital camera or in Photoshop, is a great way to distract a cranky kid! They love seeing photos of themselves!)
Believe it or not, Jason snapped this shot with his camera phone. These were my Mother’s Day flowers from him.
Selective coloring – I’ve done this before, many times, but this technique is much easier. Well, by easier, I mean it allows me to mess up more often, with less frustration. How could I not love that?
And now, my favorite…
This one just may get printed and framed. What do you think? Office? Guest room? Living room? Although we tend to have browns in our living room…I guess I could change the tone. Thoughts?
