new neighbors

Robins moved into the magnolia tree outside the dining room window, and I love them. 

Pasqueflower

Look what's blooming in the backyard!

shaded

After years of whining about how our old windows are the wrong size and too wide for premade window treatments, and crying about how expensive custom ones are, I decided enough was enough.  With the help of some instructions from 1959, a couple of crappy roller shades from the hardware store, and some cut up old Ikea curtains, I made fabric roller shades for the guest room!

(sorry for the crappy phone photos, I dropped my camera and it's busted.  Luckily, I've got an awesome warranty and it'll be fixed for free.  (I'm covered even if I run over the camera with the car! But only twice.) For a couple days, it'll be crappy phone photos.)

decisions

All that "Hoarders" induced cleaning has given way to post cleaning painting.  Only trouble is I can't make up my mind about color.  (I painted the guest room 4 times over the course of a year before finding a color I liked.  I have a problem.)

So, even though I long ago settled on gray for the living room, I've had swatches painted on the wall for, um, about 4 years.  So embarrassing!  Why do I admit these things?!?

So, my friends, what do you think?  Maybe Lamp Room Gray?

Or Manor House Gray?

Or how about Plummet, which was my favorite until my friend said, "I think that might be what would happen to your mood in a room that color."

first image here, all others Farrow and Ball

wallpaper

should I hang black on black wallpaper in our front vestibule?
yes or no?

paper by Timorous Beasties

Espalier

I have wanted espalier apple trees for the back yard for a long time and we finally got them!  5 of them!

Espalier trees are pruned and trained to grow on a single plane, usually up against a fence or a wall.  It's an ancient technique that makes it possible to grow a lot of fruit in small space, on the inside of a Medieval walled city, or in my back yard for example.  There are many styles of espaliers, but since the kind of apples we wanted need pollinators, we went with the Belgian fence style so we could get 5 trees in our 12 foot by 1 foot space.  (one day, our trees will look like this!)

I am not a terribly patient person and I am a terrible pruner. (Really, it's embarrassing, it's not like it's rocket science, but I'm sure as heck no Edward Scissorhands.)  So instead of trying to espalier some trees on my own, we ordered them already trained and pruned from a nursery.

The only problem was that they had to wait for the trees to go completely dormant before they could ship them, and since we've had such a weird, warm Fall, that meant they arrived this Monday!  (Gus is very helpful when it comes to unpacking.)

The ground was a little bit frozen already (not too bad) so I stuck my seed starting heating pads on the ground for a few hours before planting.  (I think it mostly helped psychologically.) 

Steven dug the holes (or giant trench) and we got them in the ground!

I just hope they are still alive so next fall I can make homegrown apple pie!

produce

After 3 years tending to my (pain in the ass) citrus plant, it has finally produced one tangerine!! 
I kinda want to have it bronzed instead of eating it, but that'd be silly. 

pillow fight

This photo from a fabulous house tour on apartment therapy made me think that we 'need' some velvet pillows for the velvet sofa in the sun room.

The sofa under Gus and Ollie, maybe the velvet pillows here.

fly away

Forgive my absence, I went on a little staycation.

The counters are full and no matter how much I cook, can and freeze I can't keep up.  But the light has changed, nights are getting cool and there's no doubt that fall is coming.  So, no matter how overwhelmed I am, I'm not going to complain.  It'll be over soon enough.  (too soon!)

The one thing I won't miss when there are no more tomatoes, peppers, zucchini or tomatillos on the counter is the fruit flies.  (ok, I won't miss the zucchini either.)  And since I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one with this problem, here's how you make a fruit fly trap.

You will need a cup, a piece of scrap paper, tape, scissors and some vinegar.

Take your paper, make it into a cone and tape the seam.

Cut a small hole in the cone, not too big, but bigger than a fruit fly.

Pour a small amount of vinegar in the cup. 

Put the cone on top of the glass, making sure that the tip is above the vinegar and not getting wet, and tape around it.

Fruit flies go in but they can't get out.

Oh and you know that old saying about attracting more flies with sugar than vinegar?  Total crap.

that sinking feeling

I've been collecting images of bathroom fixtures I like for a long time because I've wanted to redo our bathroom since before we moved in (That's not my bathroom, don't you love that sink!).  Our tub and tile are original, but the tile is in pretty bad shape.  The tub is gorgeous and no matter how extensive the renovation, we're going to keep it.  Everything else was changed by previous owners- and not in a way I like.

But it's hard to start in, mostly because I don't like the idea of having to go downstairs to pee in the middle of the night during the renovation and because I'm having a hard time settling on tile and fixtures.  I think I'm finally getting ready to bite the bullet because at least I've found a sink.  

Besides, how hard can plumbing be?

fancy

Last weekend we went to a cocktail party at our friend Sarah's gorgeous home- a perfect mid century ranch that has been updated in all the right ways and left alone in all the right places.  And there in the middle of her collection of lovely chairs and amazing objects, hanging above the pitcher of mojitos was this crazy (and crazy awesome) Polish paper chandelier.

They are called Pajaki and if I'd seen one before I didn't remember, but after seeing hers I had to have one.

Chiara told me I should make one (like Lena Corwin did) and I figured she was probably right, so I went down to the Polish Arts Center in Hamtramck to get some inspiration.

But while I was there I fell in love and couldn't resist buying one.  Oops!

I'm going to hang it in the guest room (as soon as I FINALLY finish painting it) and go sit under it whenever I get sad. I think I'd have a hard time staying sad sitting under such a jolly object.

images here, here and by me.

windows

You know how good window treatments are hard to find, and super expensive?

Problem solved. 

cups

How much do I love these handmade wooden cups?

a whole lot. 

available here. 

hot stuff

It's a hot enough today to make me wish we had a pool.

although, probably more like this.

images here and here.

a little support

When we put in the new fence last year we took out a chunk of our driveway, replaced it with gravel and made a small flower bed next to the fence where I planted some climbing roses, a "red pygmy"dogwood, some hardy geraniums and some clematis.

Everything is happy and growing but the clematis in particular was not climbing very well. I talked to Lisa at Pot and Box (she and her shop are wonderful) and she said that because the fence is so solid I needed to give the little buggers a support to climb on.

So I got some eye hooks and some galvanized wire (I was going to use fishing line but we had the wire lying around and I figured it would last longer) and made a little lattice.

It was super easy and the plants already look happier. I can't wait until they go crazy and take over!

goal!

Today I achieved a life time goal! (ok, not really a 'life time goal', just a 'since we got a house goal' but that doesn't sound as good.)

I now have so many peonies in my yard that I can pick as many of them as I want to and not even notice! It's like having a flower shop in the back yard.

Have a wonderful long weekend!

birds of a feather

I know I have a problem liking dead bird things but,


how cute are these lamps from the Conran Shop?

hung up

Remember how I tried to publicly shame myself into finally hanging art up on our walls? I finally did it! Well, I finally did just the dining room.

I'm not sure why I find it so stressful (maybe it's our damned, crack prone, difficult to patch, plaster walls) but it took me forever, I changed my mind at least 12 times and I am still not sure I made the right decisions.

I love all the work, especially because almost all of it was made by friends and friends of friends, but I am just not sure I put it in the right places. Maybe I need to get used to it.

I love our dining room though, it might be my favorite room in the house. Probably because it's the only room I feel is "done" after 5 years of living here. (I have almost as much trouble deciding on furniture etc as I do where to put the art.)

The table was a hand me down from my parents. My dad used it as a desk for a few years, but it doesn't have the smoothest writing surface so when I got my first apartment my mom gave it to me. (I used it as a desk/sewing table- I didn't have a dining room!)

We got the chandelier in Italy and shipped it back. We were living in Florence for a few months at the time, but had just bought our house here before we left and I was obsessed. We went to Cortona early in our stay and went into a little flea market/antiques shop. When I saw the chandelier I decided I had to have it.

Steven thought I was crazy- never before had I expressed any interest in a cut crystal chandelier- or a cut crystal anything! He said that we should think about it and look around, "It's not the only chandelier in Italy, you know." So, over the next few months I dragged the poor man to every flea market in all of Italy, and some in France, looking at chandeliers (and other things) never finding one that came close to that one in Cortona.

Steven thought I had built the thing up in my head, that it couldn't have been nearly as nice as I thought it was, but we decided to go back to Cortona to see. And to have lunch, because in Cortona we had the best lunch EVER! I don't even remember what it was, just that truffles were involved and it was amazing. (note to self: plan trip to Cortona.) When we saw the chandelier again Steven admitted that it was the best chandelier in Italy (in our price range) and we bought it.

The cabinets we got in the Netherlands and shipped them back. They are steel wallpapered with Farrow and Ball paper.

The chairs were the first thing we got when, after moving every year for about 10 years, we finally settled down. I don't know why I was so anxious to get dining room chairs, at the time I wasn't sure we'd have a dining room for longer than a year or two. But something about them made me feel like a grown up and I had to have them.

The curtains we got on super duper clearance from Restoration Hardware because the color was discontinued. The walls are painted Farrow and Ball Light Blue #22 which looks blue, green, or gray depending on the time of day.

You all should come and dine with us sometime.