Under a Blue Moon

Carte Postale

I don’t know when I became such a Francophile. Perhaps marrying a man with French heritage (and getting his French last name) was the start.

I just bought a set of antique French postcards. I discovered the seller from a blog that I like to read. I love how that happens – you find someone who’s sensibilities and style you admire so you start checking out their links and so on. You find all kinds of fascinating people and interesting things this way.

The types of blogs I like to read are about food, art, travel and my favorite – the blogs were you get a glimpse into the writer’s life and home. There are so many good ones and I get inspiration from all of them. One that I especially like, and who has a lovely sentiment today on this sad, sad anniversary, is Tongue in Cheek.

It would be easy for me to be envious of her life, home and travels but she so generously shares these things that I’m not. I’m just glad to have found her.

Collecting

There are certain things that I just cannot resist. Embroidered or lace trimmed linens are one of those things. Tablecloths, handtowels, handkerchiefs ~ I’m not picky. I prefer white on white but that isn’t necessarily a hardfast requirement. Old, new, neglected or much loved. I especially like picking them up on travels, as a memento of a place visited.

I had to travel to Costa Rica for work and on my last day there I took the afternoon off to do a little shopping. Across the street from my hotel was a modern shopping center and my goal was shoes. Instead I found a gorgeous silk embroidered tablecloth and spent my entire souvenir budget on it.

I also like to pick up handkerchiefs in antique stores. They are plentiful and generally just a few dollars. I use them as coasters or place them under objects (the rabbit above, athough you can’t quite tell from the picture, is resting on one).

You would be surprised where you can find such treasures; in one of my bathrooms I made a curtain out of a small, cutwork tablecloth that I bought at K-Mart (Thank you Martha Stewart).

I also love sparkly things but that’s another post for another time….

Tagged!

I’ve been tagged by SoInspired (Hmm – I hope I’m the Andrea she is referring to – it would be kind of embarassing if I wasn’t. Kind of like waving back at someone that is waving wildly in your direction only to find out it’s really the person behind you, their ACTUAL friend, who’s attention they want. That happened to me when I was a brand new mid-year student at a Bethesda Chevy Chase HS. I can still feel the angst of not knowing a single soul and wanting very much for someone, ANYONE, to ask me to join them for lunch.)

Okay – enough of that.

Four Jobs I Have Had in My Life:
1. Counter girl at a bakery
2. Ticket seller at a movie theater
3. HP3000 Operator
4. Corporate Trainer

Four Movies I Would Watch Over and Over:
1. Practical Magic
2. Amelie
3. Chocolat
4. Love Actually

Four Places I Have Lived:
1. Palo Alto, CA
2. Bariloche, Argentina
3. Ankara, Turkey
4. Chevy Chase, MD

Four TV Shows I Love To Watch:
1. House
2. Boston Legal
3. Design, Inc.
4. Project Runway

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation:
1. Ireland
2. Maui, HI
3. Puerto Vallarte, Mexico
4. Germany & Austria (counting as one because it was all on the same trip)

Four Favorite Foods:
1. Bread
2. Mexican Food
3. Cobb Salad
4. Artichokes

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:
1. Pacific Grove
2. Disneyland
3. Paris
4. England (because I’ve never been there)

I’m not sure of the etiquette of tagging someone else so I’m going tag someone that I am actually related to: The Wine Maker’s Wife

Edited to add: Oh phew. It was me. I didn’t see the comment on my previous post until after I wrote this up.

Hunting and Gathering

Gah! Must have fabric. I would like to say I am a talented quilter and sewer. What I’m much better at is collecting fabrics with plans for projects that languish in my closet. I really want these red and green fabrics from Piece O Cake.

I would make a Christmas themed quilt with these fabrics. I love the retro feel of the colors together.

In the same vein ~ here are a couple of fat quarters I bought to make Christmas bread basket cloths out of. I just need to find some red crocheted cluny lace for the trim. I also bought vintage looking gift tags.

I just love the red with the lighter green. I was in Carmel a Christmas or two ago and one of the florists there had an entire section of floral arrangements and Christmas decorations in this color scheme and I’ve been smitten ever since.

I do enjoy rushing the seasons, don’t I? I swear I won’t put my Christmas tree up until after Halloween.

Gardening

My dream garden is a half acre English cottage garden, surrounded by a white picket fence. There are bowers of roses and clematis, wide meandering beds of perennials. Big, billowing hydrangeas and spires of delphiniums and foxgloves surround the porch. There is a separate kitchen garden with four raised beds of tomatoes, squash, greenbeans and herbs of all kind and a fountain burbling right in the center. Chickens pecking in the dirt and the cat slumbering on a garden bench. The days would be sunny and the evenings cooled off by coastal breezes.

My reality is that I live on a good sized piece of property (five acres) about 30 miles north/east of Sacramento. The days are hot and the trees are tall and plentiful. Basically hot shade. The property is beautiful in its own right with a year round creek that comes through, four bridges (one covered, two suspension and one regular old bridge). The azaleas, rhododendrons and camelias do fabulously and I do have room for goats. Truly lovely. But not my dream garden. I want to be able to go out in the morning and cut armloads of flowers for vases in the house. I want be able to go out on a Saturday afternoon and weed and hand water. It’s too hot here to do that so my weeding is done either very early in the morning or later in evening (and it’s been known to stay up in the 80’s well into the night here).

So for now I mostly garden in pots on the deck and in smaller flower beds right up against the house. I’ve been able to eke out a little sunshine for my roses but I don’t have nearly as many as I want. I have to water my hydrangeas three times a day.

We do have a plan to get closer to the coast in the next year or two so my garden will have to bloom in my imagination for now.

Workspace

I have the luxury of working from home. Two homes actually ~ I spend part of the week at my Dad’s and the rest at my own home. This is my workspace at my Dad’s. I have a nice little computer armoire that I can close up at night and you would never know what a mess lurks behind the doors.

I had enough today so in between meetings I took everything out (except the electronics) and dusted and depooped the shelves. We have a little mouse that lives at my Dad’s house that for months has eluded us and our attempts to irradicate him. We’re fairly certain it’s just the one little guy but he has run of the entire house. Showing up in various rooms, running across the living room late in the evening (even when it is occupied by all of us) and, as indicated by the poop behind my monitor, it likes my little work area too.

The before and afters don’t look radically different but because the space is small it feels cluttered really quickly. One thing the before shot doesn’t really capture is under normal circumstances I have about six empty Diet Coke cans lined up.

I still can’t get a handle on the snakepit of cords. Not sure how to put that in any sense of order. But, overall, it does look better and like a more inviting place to spend my day.

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