Under a Blue Moon

Fresh bedding

I woke up this morning with a need to change all the bedding in the house. I blame Sarah Richardson. We just got a new recordable satellite dish box (like TIVO) so we can record shows. I have been watching Design, Inc. almost obsessively and now I don’t like how any of our bedrooms look.

They feel too fussy. I love Sarah’s clean, elegant design aesthetic. The bedrooms she does always look luxurious, inviting, soothing. Done in muted tones and clean, classic lines. I’m not looking to buy all new furniture or anything like that. But I do think I can put away a lot of the little objects I seem to have littered the house with.

To start with I cleared out most of the little Eiffel towers I had in one of the guest rooms. I know! I just need a break from them. I cleared off almost everything from each nightstand except for the lamp, a candle and a coaster.

I still like the cutwork details in the linens and like layering them for texture. Instead of having a bunch of decorative items I’m trying to stick to a color or finish (in this case mercury glass) so your eye isn’t jumping all over the place when you are in the room.

I am so over the lamps in this room but I can’t justify replacing them. I just loved them when I bought them – the cut glass, crystals and creamy iron. Now they seem too busy and not very substantial. What I want are these.

The room is getting there but not quite. And I wish I had ironed the pillowcases before posting pictures all over the Internet.

I also changed out the bedding in the other guest room. This is the room my Dad always stays in when he comes to visit and each time he remarks on my pale pink, rose strewn sheets. So replaced them with nice crisp white sheets and replaced the pale green and red quilt I had in there with a pale green coverlet and a quilt in more muted tones.

Lovely speaker hanging in the corner, don’t you think? This used to be our television room – now its the office/guest room.

I’m not sure if the cat approves or not.

Vernal Equinox

Happy First Day of Spring!

Remy sitting

Yesterday I got to Remy sit. At the beginning of the week I am at my Dad’s house and we get the pleasure of Remy’s company on Mondays and Tuesdays. I was telling Rick how big Remy is getting and he said he needed photographic proof.

Seriously. It’s like Clifford the dog around here.

Kitchen redo

Tile is up! It only took us two and a half years into the kitchen remodel to finally make a decision and have someone lined up to put it up on the walls for us. While he was at it he fixed a few wonky tiles in the bathrooms.

We are the world’s worst procrastinators. Or should that be the best procrastinators? We are very good at it. Honestly – the tile cost all of $122 so it wasn’t the exorbitant price that hindered the completion of this project. We just operate that way. With our last house we finally painted over the 40’s pistachio green about ten years after we moved in and the only reason we did it then was because we wanted to sell the place.

We still have a teeny bit of work that needs to be completed – like getting the baseboards tacked back on and the crown molding caulked and painted. Then we can sell this place.

I vow that the next place we live in will be fixed up exactly the way we want it within a year of moving in. So we can enjoy the fruits of our labors rather than just making it pretty for someone else.

I won’t be sad to move from here but I will miss this kitchen.

Evening light

There is a certain point in the late afternoon where the light in yard is just magical looking. Long shadows across the lawn and a certain luminosity that makes everything look good.

Last weekend I dragged out all the patio furniture cushions and scrubbed them down and let them dry in the sun. Then we were forcast to have seven days out of ten of rain. So back into the garage they went. Of course we haven’t seen a drop. If it doesn’t rain tomorrow I’m bringing them back out.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. Hopefully the next post will have pretty pictures of our newly tiled kitchen.

Reading

I didn’t mean to take a blogging hiatus – I just don’t know where the days went.

My niece has been asking me to do a book post. We’ve lived here for almost seven years and I just discovered our local library. Now that I have found it I’ve made it my habit to stop in once a week for a new book and I’ve read a couple of interesting ones.

I love books with a mystical food bent – like Joanne Harris’ Chocolat or Laura Esquival’s Like Water for Chocolate. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen has a similar theme, although it is a little fluffier than the first two mentioned. It is the story of two estranged sisters that come from an eccentric family – one of them infuses her food with different herbs and spices that affect the eaters in different ways.

I just finished Mary Modern by Camille DeAngelis – the story of a young woman, living in her family home, that decides to clone her deceased Grandmother when she discovers that she cannot have children of her own. Instead of creating a baby, like she anticipates, her ‘grandmother’ is born a 22 year old with her memories intact. She can’t understand why her house has fallen into such disrepair and who all these people are living in it.

The subject (cloning) may not appeal to everyone and it might seem, on the surface, to be kind of science fiction-y but really it’s a love story.

If you are more of a mystery fan – I highly recommend Deanna Rayburn. I read Silent in the Grave last year and the author has come up with a sequel – Silent in the Sanctuary (which is on my ‘to read’ list). The protagonist is a young widow (widowed in the first novel) that hooks up with a mysterious, Victorian era ‘private eye’ (they probably didn’t call them that back then…). Very engaging characters and the descriptions are so vivid you almost feel like you are there.

I just picked up Stephen King’s latest – Duma Key, this week. 20 years ago I loved Stephen King but my interest kind of waned around the time the Dark Tower series started. I read a review that this latest novel is more in keeping with his The Stand days so I checked it out. Only problem is as soon as I pick it up I start to nod off. I’m going to give it a 100 pages and if it doesn’t totally capture my attention I’m going to send it back to the library.

I really should get my nose out of a book and start posting more. As I write I have two lovely Russian gentlemen installing tile in my kitchen. They are going to finish up tomorrow and I’ll take pictures and do a proper ‘before and after’ post of our kitchen remodel. It only took us two and half years to decide on a backsplash….

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