Under a Blue Moon

Decorating Inspirations

Tablescape in progress

I love a lazy Saturday. One blissfully unencumbered by plans or deadlines. I did have rather a restless night last night. I woke up around 2:00am because it was about 97 degrees in our bedroom. I kicked off all the covers and in doing so woke up Rick who pulled them back up to his chin, shivering. Then as we are laying there we hear the most inhuman sound coming from the field below the house. "What the hell was that?" Rick just shakes his head, no idea at all. Whatever it is it sounds again. "Do we have howler monkeys around here?" Then the phone rings and both of us jump. Seems the howler monkey is calling us at 2:00am. Well whoever it was they didn’t say anything on the other end of the line. Yep. Nice restful night.

So I’m a bit sleepy this morning and so far I’ve just managed to eat some toast and peruse the Amazon decorating book section. As I’m tossing books into my shopping cart (for further inspection – I find it easier to put things in there and then go back and decide which books I really want) I notice a definite trend in my decorating style. I have no trend. I like it all. Our house would be chaotic if I had all the different styles represented.

I like cottage, I like craftsman, romantic, shabby, traditional, Japanese, Tuscan Villa, French countryside, French cityside – you name it I can find something about it I like.

I suppose that if I was pressed I could get it down to two distinct styles; cottage with it’s creamy tones and faded florally charm and Parisian apartment. You know – watery blue silk curtains, old crystal chandeliers, ornate moldings.

I don’t know why I’m surprised by my decorating indecisiveness; back in my early 20’s my dream was to own a ten bedroom bed and breakfast and decorate each room differently. That was until I figured out how back breakingly hard running a B & B is. How always ‘on’ you have to be. I suppose I could change my fantasy to just being the decorator for said B & B.

For now I’ll just be content to pile books into my cart. Here are a few that I found interesting.

The Paris Apartment by Claudia Strasser. Most of the complaints in the reader reviews are that most landlords wouldn’t allow their tenants to put up fancy moldings and painted murals. But since I don’t actually live in a apartment and the only buy in I have to get is from Rick I think this book will actually make it from my shopping cart into my hands.

Romantic Style by Better Homes and Garden. This is out of print but there are used copies available. I actually bought this book from a used book seller. It is FULL of beautiful photographs. This book appeals to me because you can pretty much take any style of decorating and make it romantic and the book shows you that.

Celebrating Home by Seasons of Cannon Falls. I admit to being a bit put off by a book by the purveyors of seasonal decoration and home accents but after reading the reviews this looks like an interesting book. They show the same rooms in a gorgeous home decorated for different seasons.

Now you’ll have to excuse me while I finish up my tablescape. I am so over the Halloween theme I had and wanted something not quite Christmasy but still a little sparkly. So far I’ve got candles, sparkly pears and a pretty faux bird in a gilded cage. It needs greenery me thinks. Maybe a howler monkey.

Comfort Food

Description of comfort food from Wikipedia:

The term comfort food refers to any food or drink to which one habitually turns for temporary respite, security, or special reward. The reasons that something becomes a comfort food are diverse but include the food’s familiarity, simplicity, and/or pleasant associations. Small children often seem to latch on to a specific food or drink (in a way similar to a security blanket) and will repeatedly request it in high stress situations. Adults, however, are certainly not exempt.

A substantial majority of comfort foods are composed largely of simple or complex carbohydrate, such as sugar, rice, refined wheat, and so on. It has been postulated that such foods induce an opiate-like effect in the brain, which may account for their soothing nature.

Hmmm. Refined wheat and sugar. They forgot butter. Cinnamon toast is my comfort food of choice. It will cure just about any foul mood and reduce stressful situations to trivial annoyances.

My mother used to make it for us as a late night treat. I can remember attending my first sleepover at the next door neighbor’s house and feeling a little homesick. My mother passed a plate of cinnamon toast over the fence and all was well. I think there needs to be love associated with the food too, for it to attain comfort status.

I think if you polled 25 random people on what their comfort food is the combined list would be rather short. And I bet macaroni and cheese would top the list. I have found a fabulous recipe on allrecipes.com. It’s called Cafeteria Macaroni and Cheese but I think it is a little more sophisticated than your average cafeteria fare. Well as sophisticated as mac and cheese can be. Teenage boys, in particular, love this version. In fact I recieved one of the highest accolades after serving this to a group of my sons’ friends, "This is slammin’ mac and cheese, Mrs. P." I assume slammin’ is a positive term.

Okay on to tea. The second component to my comfort snack. While it certainly stands on its own it’s not what I would consider in the comfort food category. It’s just comforting to drink it.

Half the comfort is the ritual of preparing it. I like a nice, loose English Breakfast brewed in a pot and then served with a little bit of milk. My favorite is Winey Keemun from Grace Tea but plain old Red Rose makes a decent cup too. I also found a really good decaffeinated black tea by Taylors of Harrogate. Most decaf teas are rather insipid but this one actually has some body to the flavor.

My second favorite comfort food is Bread Pudding but isn’t that just cinnamon toast in a custard base? The cafeteria where I work used to serve it every third full moon or some such indecipherable schedule but you could always tell when they had it – what sounded like thundering elephants was actually hoardes of my coworkers flying down the corridor following the scent. Shoving and pushing to get to the front of the line; man’s inhumanity towards man was painfully evident on bread pudding day. I think that is why they eventually took it off the menu. Or maybe it fell out of favor during that whole low-carb phase.

Today is the perfect day for comfort food here in California. It’s rainy, gloomy and cold. Just right for a cup of tea and a slice of toast.

I wasn’t kidding….

Photo courtesy of Roger’s Gardens in Corona Del Mar, CA

It’s time to put away the 67 lbs. of Halloween candy we thought it necessary to have on hand for the four Trick or Treaters that showed up. Time to toss the pumpkins into the composting bin. Time to rake up the last of the leaves.

It’s time to think about Christmas.

Oh I know Thanksgiving is in there somewhere but to be perfectly honest Thanksgiving has never been a holiday I could get totally enthused about. Yes it’s nice having the fellowship of family and friends at the same food laden table and it’s nice to have a couple of days off in order to prepare for said table and to clean up afterwards. To me it’s just not a decorating holiday. I’m rapidly getting over the Fall decorations I have up and to be honest I’m not interested in bedecking my house with pilgrims and turkeys. I’m ready to move on to more sparkly fare.

I’m not actually going to start putting out glittery snowmen or Christmas wreaths just yet. No, what I want to do is to first come up with a decorating plan and strategy. What will this year’s theme be? What mood am I going for? Does the Container Store have their holiday wrap in yet or what?

I always do two Christmas trees. Since I tend to, ahem, rush things I have a tall, slender faux tree that I set up in my entryway right after Thanksgiving (See? Those couple of days off do come in handy). This is referred to as the auxillary tree and is generally my theme tree. One year it was all silver, white and icy blue. The next it was festooned with bird ornaments. This year I’m thinking either silver, ivory and touches of tarnished gold or going with a more retro red, white and light green.

Then mid-December we put up a real tree. This tree’s look doesn’t vary from year to year. It has colored lights and brightly colored ornaments. Every year I buy a new Radko ornament and similar looking (but less expensive) to add to my collection. I like the traditional (well our tradition anyway) look of this tree. Everything all sparkly and colorful and kind of magical looking. One of my very favorite feelings is the one I have when I have it all decorated and I light a fire in the fireplace and the only light is coming from the tree itself. I cozy up on the couch and just gaze at it. I love that.

I also have mantels to decorate. We are lucky enough to have two fireplaces so I get to have twice the fun there. Last year a local decorating store was blowing out their stock of Mark Roberts Christmas Fairies and I bought six or seven of them. So they will grace my living room mantel where I want a more opulent look. I need to get garlands and sparkly lights to round it out.

For the bedroom fireplace I think I want to do a simple display of Mercury glass candlesticks and ivory colored candles.

Now for the outside. Every year we drive past a house that has every possible tree and shrub covered in white fairy lights. It’s positively breathtaking. Each year I tell Rick that the husband that lives there must love his wife very much. Rick just rolls his eyes and changes the subject. I can’t get him onboard with my Winter Wonderland theme. Two years ago I nearly killed myself trying to put lights on a large oak tree on our property. Then after Christmas I tried to take them down and they got impossibly tangled so they are still hanging there, half on and half off the tree. I’m going to have to rent a cherry picker to get them down.

Well it looks like the Container Store has the holiday wrap available online – I may just have to take a drive over to our local brick and mortar one and see how they are coming along.

Happy Halloween!

Fun font courtesy of the immensely talented Jenny from Allsorts

Halloween is such a funny celebration. One that both children and adults can embrace with equal enthusiasm (as demonstrated by my very own family). There is something about being able to dress up in costume that really appeals to adults. I find it funny how many really sexy costumes there are. Revealing Alice in Wonderland outfits with hemlines that are so short that most would be horrified to see them on any other night of the year. How nice to have an excuse to get all tarted up and not suffer any lingering effects to one’s reputation or image.

It’s only 9:15am and I’ve already had two mini KitKat bars. But I’ve also had three diet Cokes which I believe cancels them out.

Trick or Treating has seemed to lose favor these past few years. At least in the neighborhood where I grew up. When I was a child the streets would be filled with throngs of dressed up kids, criss-crossing the streets. Now we consider ourselves lucky if we get even ten trick or treaters. We are even happy to see the surly teenagers that must not get out much the rest of the year since I never recognize any of them. Even though most of them don’t even wear costumes.

When we went Trick or Treating when I was younger the adults accompanying us would often carry a highball glass and get a treat themselves at certain houses. See? Fun for all ages.

Have a safe evening everyone. Tomorrow we can officially start talking about Christmas.

Monster Mash

It was our 20th Annual Halloween Soiree last night. The rules are simple – You must come in costume. You cannot repeat yourself for five years (meaning you can’t trot out the same costume year after year). You must eat food you wouldn’t normally eat because they are just so totally horrible for you (like Jalapeno Poppers, Buffalo wings and chicken taquitos). Many bottles of wine and beer must be consumed.

I did my part.

There is always a costume competition. The categories this year were Scariest, Funniest, Best Couple/Group, Most Unrecognizable, Most Effort and a Grand Prize to the person that wins most votes overall. The competition is fierce and the costumes get more and more elaborate.

Most Effort went to my sister Kate who was a wedding cake. More specifically she was my nieces’ wedding cake. I give you the evidence:

We had glamorous costumes, The Devil Wears Prada (which took me a good 45 minutes to figure out – I kept telling my niece to put her purse down. Doh!), a pretty pirate, a sexy little umpire. I was a white witch which turned out more glamorous than the scary I was going for. More on that topic in a bit.

There were couple’s costumes; Raggedy Ann and Andy, Tia and Jack from Pirate’s of the Caribbean (Best Couple/Group winner), a Mexicali Pride gang and the border patrol group costume effort (won most overall votes).

Funniest went to my nephew who was dressed as the King of Halloween. He tends to win each year in the Grand Prize category because his costumes are so elaborate and so realistic. So last year when I sent the invites out I challenged everyone to knock him off his throne – so this year he came on his throne).

Most unrecognizable went to another nephew dressed as the border patrol. A costume he threw together in the 11th hour to go with his sisters and dad’s group theme.

I can’t remember who won scariest. Hmmm. Refer to paragraph above regarding the eating and drinking requirement.

We had a fallen angel, a race car driver, Zorro, a wizard or two, African royalty, a Ace of Spades, a goth (oh wait! I think my BIL won scariest for his goth costume). One of the funnier costumes was my cousin who dressed up as a bag of spinach with e-coli. It was the running joke of the night with a certain Ace of Spades stealing his e-coli and infecting other party goers with it.

We had an evil looking clown (is that self explanatory? are all clowns evil looking?), a Minnie Mouse, someone dressed in an absolutely gorgeous 1930’s kimono, a regular witch and like I said, me dressed as a white witch.

I have a white peignoir set I bought about 12 years ago and I’ve managed to use it as a costume four times now. I get past the no repeating yourself rule because each time I’m a different character. I’ve been an angel, The Ice Queen, bride of Frankenstein and now this year – a white witch. I’m running out of white ideas though.

Now it’s time to get geared up for Christmas.

Charming

My sisters and I share a common, fond memory from our childhood. We all loved, almost more than anything, to sit on our parent’s bed and look at my Mother’s charm bracelet. Each charm was so intricate and tiny.

When my parents were courting my Father bought my Mother a new silver charm each week. Can you think of anything more romantic? I can’t. There is a little toaster were the toast actually goes up and down. A little ladder that opens and closes. A teeny book of matches that opens to reveal the matches within. My sisters and I could spend hours laying on their bed looking at each charm.

Each of us covets that charm bracelet. It sits in my Mother’s jewelry drawer, like it always did. And we still pull it out and look at it now and then. We don’t talk about it but at some point we are going to have to go through my Mother’s things and decide what to do with them. There could be a big battle over that bracelet. For now it is in my Father’s safe keeping.

When I was nine and living in Ankara, Turkey my Mother started a charm bracelet for me. A good number of the charms are Turkish; the coffee urn with it’s evil eye, the whirling dervish. Other charms have been collected on trips as souvenirs; a teeny cuckoo clock from the Black Forest, a thimble from the Fingerhut (thimble) Museum in Creglingen (which I have been to twice – once in 1970 and once in 1996). I have tiny grand piano and a castle from Ireland. There is a small medal of Pope Paul VI that was given to me in church and I told everyone the Pope himself had given it to me (the priest that handed it to me had a very official looking hat on, it was an honest mistake).

There are charms from American travels as well. A bicycle from a trip to Cambria, CA (which has nothing to do with bicycles but the wheels moved and I had to have it). A charm from Mount Rushmore and a little Tinkerbell from Disneyland.

I’m out of room but not out of travels. I’m going to have either start a new bracelet or start doubling up on the links. I did start a gold charm bracelet but the charms are all hearts. Plenty of room still left on that bracelet. My plan is to buy heart charms as rewards for accomplishments.

The only non-heart charm on the bracelet is a little guardian angel my two sons gave me.

My own sons liked looking at my charm bracelet but I don’t think they were as fascinated with it as I was my Mother’s. Maybe it’s a girl thing. Perhaps there will be granddaughters some day, that will sit on my bed and spend hours going over each charm and listening to the stories of where they came from.

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