Busy, Busy, Busy

We have been busy here lately. Moisture, mold, and slugs (yes, slugs) in the basement forced an operation of sorts that involved my husband, rotted pine paneling, irredeemable carpet, asbestos-laden tiles, various saws, lots of salt, a breathing apparatus, a shop vac, a drill, lots of pounding, and cans upon cans of black spray paint. I occasionally ventured down when asked for my opinion on the proceedings, to hold something up while he drilled or nailed, or when I heard crashes or choice words at high volume. I also removed the rain barrel and replaced the downspout to direct the water about seven or so feet away from the foundation of the house

After about ten days, this is what we ended up with.

Totally new media shelving, hidden access to the wall and floor to check for any further problems, and a bit more peace of mind about what's living and breeding in our basement.

And during that time we were also preparing for Calvin's superhero birthday party at the park, which went off today without a hitch.

The kids made superhero masks so they would have superpowers for the games.

In retrospect, I should have brought more than one pair of scissors. Der.

Superhero teams tying up villains

Superman cupcakes made by yours truly.

The park we went to has a massive playground and a big tricycle track (complete with about 20 big wheels) for kids to race around. It was a hit.

This week I've also been finishing up my catalog for work, and on Thursday when I was in the office and I was coming back from lunch I happened upon a garage sale at which I found some Merrell hiking shoes.

They had obviously been wore once to a very muddy place, but the insides were pristine, so I have to think that they were worn only once or twice. How much did I pay for them? $5. For shoes that are normally around $100. Some warm water and a scrub brush and they look as good as new. And why am I in the market for hiking boots? Because my big summer adventure is coming up in four weeks. Here are a few hints.

My sister and I will be hiking at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the UP (that's Upper Peninsula to you non-Michiganders) on beautiful Lake Superior. Have I mentioned this already? If not, I can't believe I haven't because it has been on my mind for months. I'm giddy. I haven't been there since a hiking trip in 1999 (eek! 13 years?) and I can't wait to spend some alone time with my sister away from our kids and jobs and homes and concerns. This is to be our First Annual Sisters' Hiking Trip. Keeping my fingers crossed that there might be some solar flares that week that will send some aurora borealis our way!

In the meantime, life goes on in our home. This week Calvin and I walked through almost every room in our house (except the basement rooms, as they were under demolition/construction) and discussed what needed to be done to keep them clean. Next week we will start assigning chores to all three of us and make a chart that will keep us more mindful of our house. This was precipitated partly because I'm finding myself more and more irritated with clutter and laundry and dishes piling up, and also because on a trip to my parents' house last week Calvin said, "I like Grandma and Gramps' house. It's so clean."

?!

That hurts. But it was also a great opportunity to point out that part of the reason our house is so often messy is because we (yes, that includes you, Calvin, if you can possibly believe it) don't put our things away where they belong. So, yeah, we're all going to be working on that.

But it's not all work around here. I'm currently sewing a summer nightgown, Calvin's enjoying his birthday presents, we're writing, Zach's scheming about a new blog, and we're finding time here and there to relax and enjoy one another's company.

But seriously. It's June already?

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Now and Then - Living Room

This is the lovely sight that greeted me when I came home from the office today:

And this is what the room basically looked like (with a few differences, like the rug and the drapes, as this was taken before our son was born) last week:

We've come a long way. And considering we basically stumbled upon the new couch and loveseat when we were about to give up looking for the perfect set and settle for something about which we were feeling a bit blah, and then bought them after seeing a small graphic on a computer screen with the blue color, hoping it would match the rug and other decor, I think we did pretty darn good.

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For Your Sitting Pleasure

On Thursday, these little beauties will be delivered to our house.

And I couldn't be happier with the style, the color, or the price. I can't wait to curl up on the love seat with the sun streaming in that south window and read a book. Happy, happy me!

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Space and Light

You know what this is, people?

This is the south wall of the living room, which, for the last five years was home to a gargantuan piano that I had every intention of playing. Yes, it was in front of the window. Yes it covered about 3/4 of the window. No, there was nowhere else it could go.

The piano is now in a new home and I now have light and space in return.

We will be getting new living room furniture soon to replace the couch I got before we were married (and it was used then). Hopefully a couch and a love seat, which will go on the south wall in front of the window.

More space for guests. More space for us to sit and play. More light for this dark room in all seasons, but especially in winter. Now my husband can stop worrying that he'll come home some cloudy winter day to me painting the room a lighter color.

I can't quite articulate just how happy I am to have the piano out of the house. It's like if you had an extra toe. It was interesting. It was a conversation starter. It was something you occasionally fiddled with. But really it was crowding your foot inside your shoe. It was something you felt you had to apologize for. It was something that, while not life threatening, just needed to be removed.

Maybe. Or maybe that comparison is just crazy talk.

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Bedroom Update

Long ago (August 2011) I finished my Robbing Peter to Pay Paul quilt, which I had started even longer ago (February 2010). Then I painted the green bedroom walls white. Then I got roller blinds and new sheer curtains for the window. Then I found an awesome new mid-century dresser and matching nightstands. Then we moved some pictures upstairs from the basement. Then we somehow managed to find time to hang them on the walls. And now I've finally taken photos.

So here's the bedroom before:

And here's the after:

A vast improvement, if you ask me. It feels so refreshing to be in this room. I love waking up here.

You may have noticed that there are three guitars in this room. Somehow we have seven guitars in a family that, until very recently, had only one guitar player. It reminds me of a point at which my family, when I was growing up, had five cars for three drivers. Only in America.

My guitar is the one in the last photo. We've started keeping a few handy in the bedroom because our son has gotten used to not only being sung to at night, but being serenaded on guitar. And he often requests particular songs on the electric guitar and others on acoustic. This nightly ritual is good because it makes me practice regularly.

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Revising Your Life

It's that time again. That bleak, cloudy moment when you realize that there are people who live in warm sunny places who are picking oranges from trees while you gaze at the lackluster yard standing shamefully naked without a covering of snow (the yard, not you, I hope). The broken remains of the perennials you were too busy to cut back in November hunch weakly as great, fat brown squirrels tear through the garden pursued by spry red squirrels less than half their size. The dog comes in with mud on her feet—MUD!—when you should by rights be slipping down the driveway on packed ice while trying to bring the groceries in the house. You come to acknowledge the insidious fact that this winter has looked more like March, the ugliest month of the year, than it has like the normally enchanting January of memory.

I think we're all fighting a low-grade depression in our house right now.

It is in this soul-crushing grayness that I find myself revising my recently finished novel (which, incidentally, takes place in the summer . . . how cruel). I go through chapter by chapter, line by line, word by word, cutting out the fat, culling the phrases that hold the story back, choosing a more precise or less cliche word here and there. I'm trying not to allow myself indulgences—favorite sentences that don't work very hard—and I begin to see that revising a manuscript is rather like revising the contents of your home or the way you spend your time.

There are things you just don't need that you hold on to for no more reason than a bit of sentimentality or potential usefulness in some far off future that will never really come. There are things you do for no more reason than they seem amusing or you feel you need to fill some time, but in reality you could be doing something much more useful, like keeping up with the laundry or calling your sister just to chat.

So once I'm done savaging my manuscript with red pen, I may turn my attention and my revision skills to my life. I realize that the beginning of January is a more traditional time for such activities, but I've been so fiendishly busy with work and sewing and exercise avoidance that I only now find myself mentally capable of such considerations.

But what should go? What should stay? I'm seriously contemplating making use of that old practice of assigning to each day a chore: laundry on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, grocery shopping on Wednesday, mending on Thursday, tidying the house on Friday, deeper house cleaning on Saturday, resting on Sunday. Until there are serious outdoor chores to work on in the Spring, I believe this could be a workable plan. To kick it off, I may take a few days off work after the catalog is at the printer in order to de-clutter and rid the house of dead weight. I have the sudden urge to find beautiful empty space and then protect it from encroaching hordes of stuff. I am feeling penned in on all sides (especially in my office) by creeping piles of stuff that needs shelving or filing or pitching. Mentally I feel rather the same.

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Putting Off the Inevitable

The weather this fall has been fairly mild most of the time, if rainy. I have had weeks and weeks to move the wood pile closer to the house, to tuck away the outdoor furniture, to tidy up in anticipation of snow.

But I didn't.

I have been busy with other things. Good things. Family, writing, work, sewing, church projects, ESL tutoring, preparing Sunday school lessons. All good, worthy things to do with my time. But my home needs me too.

And to I find myself in a horrendously busy week in which I am trying to finish writing my catalog, paint a backdrop for the children's Christmas play, and finish a teal wool suit I'm making to match a vintage scarf and wear to the company Christmas party on Thursday night. And it is this week in which I read with some alarm that we are due for 6-10 inches of snow tonight, on top of the freezing rain we're getting now and the gale-force winds that are battering my house and blowing detritus all over the neighborhood.

Winter is come at last.

The snow doesn't alarm me in and of itself, but because it is my very real deadline for getting stuff packed into the garage, which I have failed to clean out and therefore resists any further storage, and for moving the wood pile to a more accessible place just outside the back door.

So off I trudged in ripped jeans, a hoodie, and some unlaced boots (no socks) into the wild winds and biting rain to move the wood while it was still fairly accessible to me. The rain lashed my face and with every step beside the garage the ground got muddier and more treacherous. The wood was, as to be expected, serving as tenement housing to a myriad of crawly things like pill bugs and spiders tucked into their silken winter cocoons. (Note to self: Do not bring in wood unless you are ready to put it directly into the fire or your home will be overrun with bugs.)

In just a half hour the job was moslty done and my legs were mostly frozen, so I went inside, took off my filthy clothes, and put on a soft knit skirt and a tank top (because while my legs were the temperature of my ceramic kitchen tiles on a winter morning, the rest of me was quite warm from the effort).

My lesson? Don't put off the inevitable. It still has to get done. May as well do it when conditions are good rather than when you're in a hurry and the weather is out to get you.

That is all.

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Flea Markets, Secondhand Shops, Silent Auctions, Estate Sales, and One Very Generous Mother

This month I have only managed to blog in the single digits. Obviously that indicates a busy life. But what have I been doing? Nothing, really. And everything. Just a combination of lots of work, lots of chores, lots of time spent at church or preparing to teach at church, and lots of time on the phone or on the road in my quest to help my Chin friends avoid eviction.

And now October is drawing to a close. But it's not like I have nothing to show for my efforts. My friends were granted enough emergency relief money to pay their debt, avoid eviction, and buy much-needed groceries. My house is in a fairly clean and manageable state most days and requires but a half hour of tidying to make the first floor presentable. I managed to unearth my long-lost desk. We've been enjoying fires in the fireplace now that the cold weather is upon us.

A couple weeks ago we went to a small flea market in a nearby Catholic church and I scored some awesome deals (like an entire vintage set of Mark Twain's whole fiction catalogue in hardcover for less than $2). This charming 4.5" x 2.5" print of early dirigibles was just 25 cents.

You might think I picked it up for my son, but you'd be wrong. It's mine, all mine. And I have it stuck with sticky tack to the side of my file cabinet in the office, just below a fabulous signed and numbered print of a Hemingway poem that was part of a Hemingway package that my husband won for me at a recent silent auction fundraiser for the Historical Society of Greater Lansing. The fundraiser was held in this fantastic Art Deco building in downtown Lansing.

The package included a year's membership in the Michigan Hemingway Society and a private guided tour of Hemingway's Michigan. I hope to take that tour with my husband next year in the early summer. In case you only associate Hemingway with Chicago, Paris, Spain, and Key West, it's time to brush up on his early short stories which were inspired by the events of his youthful summers spent at the Hemingway family's summer home in the Petoskey, Michigan, area, where I would love to live someday.

Another new addition to our walls it this watercolor landscape by someone named A. Miller. I bought it at the aforementioned flea market, also for just 25 cents. Superb! It now graces a skinny wall in the dining room.

That's not all that's new in the dining department. A few days ago my dear mother told me she was getting rid of her casual dishes and would I like them? This didn't surprise me, as my mother has bought new casual dishes with some regularity for my entire life. I can remember at least four different sets bought during my 18 years in my parents' home, and I'm sure I'm missing one or two. But mom found a great deal at a consignment shop on a full set of very nice dishes and knew that I had been talking about replacing ours at some point.

You see, we've had our very plain white casual dishes since we got married (that's over ten years) and in that span of time we have slowly whittled down the dish inventory through various mishaps (read: we're phenomenally clumsy). So we really did need new dishes. I'm thankful for my mother's propensity to get tired of dishes and her generosity to simply pass them my way. So now I have 12 full place settings (we had previously been down to just 7 dinner plates, 5 salad plates, 6 cereal bowls, and 5 pasta bowls of the white dishes) of lovely, colorful, handpainted stoneware from Pier One, plus many serving pieces.

Not only that, when we were doing a bit of secondhand shopping in Bay City yesterday, I stumbled upon this very lovely teacup, which Mom offered to buy for her dear daughter.

Sheesh. What a wonderful mother.

The real reason I was in Bay City this week was to visit a friend of my mother's who recently had to put her own mother in a nursing home. This old lady was a fabric hound and now her daughters are working to sell off her obscenely extensive collection of fabric as they prepare her house for sale. When I went up to the sewing room I was hit by the immensity of the project. Every wall was lined with cabinets and every cabinet was stuffed to an almost uncomfortable degree by neatly folded fabric. Almost all the fabric was in pieces that were 2 yards or more, plenty to make almost any item of clothing one would wish. When I inquired about pricing, my mother's friend said, "We decided on $1000 for the whole lot." Ummm...one would need a U-Haul for the whole lot. I quietly asked my mother if she had given her friend the impression that I was in the market for an entire room full of fabric, and she assured me that she had not. We settled on a different pricing scheme and I set upon the stacks of fabric with the single-minded purpose of only pulling out the stuff I knew I would use.

Much of it was prints or fabric types I didn't personally care for. But a good chunk of it was solid colored or tastefully pinstriped or patterned. Much of it was suiting. Much of it was wool blends or linen look or cotton. And a big box of it came home with me at the more-than-reasonable price of $5 per piece. For several of the fabrics I brought home that amounts to only a couple dollars per yard. For the deep blue corduroy in the photo below, it's less than $1 a yard. Score.

Which brings me to a pledge I believe I must make and adhere to for the coming year of 2012 . . .

I solemnly promise to sew only from my stash for the entire year of 2012, to avoid going into fabric stores except for necessary notions, and to then take the long way around to the zippers and thread, avoiding the fabric section entirely. I will do my utmost to pair my stash fabrics with my stash patterns, not trolling eBay or Etsy for new patterns. I will not reject gifts of fabric in 2012, but I will not pay for any additional fabric, the one exception being lining fabric that may be necessary for jackets and skirts.

There. I said it. And now you all know. So I have to keep my word. Those of you who may purchase gifts for me for Christmas or my birthday, I will still joyfully accept Jo-Ann gift cards, which will help me get notions to complete my projects. Hint, hint.

An here's one for all you vintage fanatics out there. I have 2 yards of this whimsical bird print. Trying to decide what to do with it. Sell it to defray the cost of all this fabric? Make it into aprons or curtains or pillows to sell on Etsy? Sit on it for 40+ years like it's previous owner did? Hmmm... decisions, decisions.

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My (sort of) New Office Space

I have moved my home office for the remainder of the summer and fall to the sun room. Now that the very hot weather has passed, I will be found typing away in the room that has for the past year and a half been taken over by my very large quilting frame.

As of this past Friday night, that frame is GONE. I finished my last three blocks by midnight that evening while watching three short documentaries from Netflix streaming: National Geographic: Appalachian Trail, The Natural History of the Chicken, and John James Audubon.

I triumphantly unrolled the finished quilt off the lower roller and started taking out the tacks that held it to the frame when I discovered, to my great consternation, that back in February 2010 I had had to skip about a two inch wide strip the entire length of the quilt because of the way it had to be tacked. I was not done after all! And it was midnight.

NOOOOOOO!!!!!

Undaunted, I carried on. Two hours and one full-length documentary (Out of Ireland: Emigration into America) later I was really, actually, completely, wholly finished. For real. I fell asleep that night sometime between 2:30 and 3:00am, but I was done. And that is all that mattered.

Last night I made the bias binding and sewed it on the front with my machine and sat in the basement to another movie (Reindeer Games, Zach's partially-ironic choice) and bound the back by hand. A couple more movies and I will be done.

So now I sit in my clean and rearranged and much more roomy sun room doing catalog edits, listening to cicadas and blue jays, feeling the breeze through the open windows, and listening to classical guitar on Pandora radio.

And all seems right with my small world.

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Movie Night

How do you prepare your house for 7 or 8 men to come over, watch The Fighter, and consume pizza, chips, energy drinks, and cigars? You don't do the same things you'd do if you were preparing for, say, a bridal shower or a family get-together. You still clean the bathroom, but maybe you skip dusting the living room. You still vacuum, but maybe you skip underneath the dining room table. None of those guys will notice.

Wink.

There's one thing, though, that you must tackle. The basement. You've let it go because no one goes down there except the people who live in your house. It's littered with trains and cars and blocks. It's peppered with tiny bits of popcorn from movies past. It's piled with DVDs you never put away after watching. Oh, and there's the small matter of the aquarium.

Ugh.

But to make you feel better, it has been six days since you cleaned out the kitchen and it is still clean because you've kept up with it all week.

Yes.

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Mastering the Sin of Covetousness

A few years ago, when the print media world was at the beginning of its sudden financial crisis, a favorite magazine of mine was one of the first casualties I noticed. Cottage Living was a lovely magazine filled with photos of beautiful homes. I was pretty bummed when I got the very last issue of Cottage Living. Other home magazines were nice, but this one was really my favorite. This was a publication that I enjoyed looking to for inspiration for my own home.

Or so I thought.

Shelves over the kitchen sink. At some point a magazine (or several of them)
told me to display like objects in groups and to paint the backs of my shelves
an accent color. I had to buy more things in order to get groups of them to
"properly" display. The only thing I use on these shelves and those next to
them (also populated with green and white pottery) is the teapot.

I was recently reminded of the existence of this magazine during a conversation (which I've now forgotten) and in thinking about it I've realized that rather than being a source of home decorating inspiration, it was actually a source of discontentment. I looked at the homes and rooms featured within and saw how my own home didn't measure up. I greatly desired rooms that looked like the ones I saw. I wished for more space, for better furniture, for more trendy accessories, for more stuff or different stuff.

My grandmother's Italian flower chandelier.
Decorating magazines told me these were cool.
Couldn't I just have decided for myself whether I liked this?

In the few years since this magazine has gone out of print, I have noticed that I spend far less time scheming about how I can make my home more like the ones I admired in the pages of Cottage Living. I have spent less time shopping for items I felt I needed to get a certain look. I have spent less money on home decorating. And, in general, I've gained more mastery over the sin of covetousness in my life.


The Binder

I still have ideas for home improvement, but they are (I hope) more based on me and my opinions and needs than on the style advice of others. I still see beautiful rooms featured on blogs, but I don't covet them. I still have an enormous 3-ring binder full of pages I ripped out from Cottage Living and other magazines, but I look at it maybe once every six months or so. I still buy an occasional thing for my home, but usually because it is practical and necessary. I'm letting more things get very worn out before replacing them.

Flowers from my son. He beamed as he brought them into the kitchen for me.
"Why did you get me flowers?" I asked. "Because I love you," he answered.
Commence heart melting.

I still get catalogs from Pottery Barn. I still get an occasinoal decorating magazine and flip through it. I still admire other people's homes. But it's becoming less and less important that others be "impressed" with my own home. Instead, it's becoming more important to me to try to keep the rooms I have clean (after all, I think part of the reason I coveted the rooms in Cottage Living  is because they were clean!) and livable. My decorating and home improvement schemes are largely made up of ideas for more storage and better lighting.

Do your reading or viewing habits open a door to discontentment and covetousness? If they do, what could you change in order to shut that door?

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Lydia at the Window

Lovely Lydia perches on one of my newly recovered dining room chairs in the evening light.

I moved all the chairs out from the table to vacuum the rug. We're having ten Chin friends over for dinner Sunday evening, so the house cleaning has commenced. In order to feed that many people easily and on a budget, I'm recapping the Thanksgiving-type meal I served for other Chin friends who came over in December. This time I bought a 20 lb turkey for a little over $9 (who knew turkeys were on sale for 49 cents a pound just before Valentine's Day?) and we'll be having corn, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and pumpkin and apple pies.

Now, to find enough chairs . . .

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Evening and Morning and the Problem of Time

At 5:15pm last night I sat in the living room facing west, the setting sun streaming through the window into my eyes. This position was quite deliberate. I tend to seek out the sun in mid-winter. I'm happy to report that by this time of day last month the house would have been lit only by the streetlights because the sun would already have finished its evening descent.

Upstairs I had a sick boy napping. Poor thing had been coughing all day. We spent much of Wednesday afternoon at the doctor, waiting, waiting, waiting. He fell asleep in my arms in the waiting room. When we got home I put him in bed to nap and he woke up not long after crying about the doctor. Must have had a nightmare, though everyone at the doctor's office was very kind (if slow).

Days like these I find myself wishing I was a housewife, with nothing but laundry, cleaning, and cooking to do. No deadlines. No projects waiting for me. No emails piling up from people waiting for files. Then I could be fully and completely with my son and not have work things nagging me at the back of my mind.

Ah, to be home, truly home. I'd like to make real breakfast each morning for my guys and real dinner each night, with a homemade dessert, and have the kitchen completely clean by 8pm, ready for breakfast the next day. I'd like to feel like I am directing my household tasks rather than feeling that they are yanking me around and I'm stumbling along behind. Are these things possible when you work full time? Surely they are. How am I 31 years old and still unable to do this?

I read blog posts from women who stay home and I feel sharp pangs of jealousy. This may seem to make little sense, I realize, since I am at home almost all the time because I work from home. But working from home and not working are not the same thing, folks. When you work at home you have the rare privilege of seeing all the jobs you should be doing both at work and at home piling up at the same time because you don't really have time to do it all.

I had such good intentions on Monday and Tuesday evening this week to get all the laundry caught up since my husband was out of town. What a nice surprise it would have been to come home to every speck of clothing, every towel, washed, dried, folded, ironed, and hung in its place. Nope. Didn't happen. Though I was close to my goal until Calvin threw up on my bed last night. But I shouldn't complain, I guess, because I did spend some of my time working on my quilt, which I need to prioritize if it is ever going to get done.

There just never is enough time, is there? The sun comes up and the sun goes down and still things are left undone. It's funny that this post should come the day after my post about all my cleaning and home improvement projects. Slightly bipolar of me, I know. Oh, well. That's just February affecting my brain. I'm sure I'll be back on top this weekend.

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The Home Improvement Itch

It has struck. The cleaning/redecorating/DIY project bug has bit me, as it usually does around this time of year. My mind is starting to swim with all the projects I want to get done in the coming year. Here's my short list.

~ Finish bed quilt
~ Repaint bedroom to match new quilt
~ Roman shades in the dining room
~ Tiered garden beds in the back yard
~ New living room couch and rug
~ New window treatment in bedroom
~ Repaint front porch

 

The longer list includes, among other things, painting all the woodwork in the house, possibly refinishing the front door, getting new window screens custom made, refinishing the dining room table (which our cat ruined practically the first night we had her back in 2003 by knocking over a vase at night and allowing the water to sit there until morning), a new garage, and built-in shelves on the upstairs landing and in our bedroom around the window.

 

I also want to take everything out of my kitchen cupboards and drawers and clean every surface (Mom, I know you're itching to come over and help me with this—hint, hint) and reorganize. And our basement needs some serious purging, cleaning, and reorganizing. I wish I could take a month off and do all of this. But barring that, I can take it one project at a time as schedule and budget allow. And when I can't start a new big project, I can direct all that energy into cleaning my existing rooms and things.

 

I am encouraged by the extensive list of home improvements we have made since we moved into our house a little over five years ago. In that small space of time, we have managed the following:

• Painted all walls and ceilings (every single room)
• Redid family room ceiling and installed new light fixtures
• Built workshop area
• Turned family room doorway into media shelving
• Added light to living rm. fan
• Added lawn in back yard
• New mailbox
• Completely renovated main floor bathroom
• Carpet runner on stairs
• Added screens to roof vents
• New roof
• New gutters
• Made a rain barrel
• Custom window treatments in office and Calvin's room
• Built pantry shelves in basement
• New light fixtures in office and sunroom
• New stove
• Various and sundry landscaping improvements (ongoing)
• Recovered the dining room chairs

Not bad for five years, if you ask me. So I think in the next five we can manage a number of smaller projects. And I'm feeling energized and pretty jazzed at the moment (it might have something to do with my morning workout, the bright sunshine, and the coffee I've just consumed) and raring to go. Who cares if there is a foot of snow on the ground? It's never too early to begin spring cleaning! After all, the dog started to shed her winter coat the day of the big blizzard. She must know something we don't.

 

Well, maybe not.

 

 

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Laundry Love

I don't know about you, but when it comes to laundry, I'm not a fan of socks (cheeky little fellows who like to play hide and seek), delicates (too prim and proper for the common dryer, are you?), or my son's tiny clothes (there are just so many of them in a load!).

Here's what I like: towels, sheets, and tablecloths. All things that are superbly stackable. There's nothing like a solid stack of fresh towels. And after getting de-prioritized for weeks and weeks (yes, that's a Christmas tablecloth in there) while we did loads of essentials that I hate having to put away, a lovely stack of tablecloths ready for the drawer.

Simple. Rectangles. Love it.

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There is music in the word home . . .

Last night's low temperature was 0 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 32 degrees below freezing. That's -18 degrees Celsius, for all you rest-of-the-worlders. That's cold no matter what scale you use. Today's high is 16.

It's January.


Even though the days are supposedly getting longer, in late January it is usually so cloudy that it feels like it's getting darker earlier and earlier still. This is 4:30pm and the inside of the house is dark, dark, dark as the snow flies outside.

 And in January I'm reminded how lucky I am to live in a supremely cozy brick house with heat and a fireplace and hot coffee and slippers. It may be gray outside. The wind may drive the cold into my very bones. My fluffy half-Samoyed dog may actually want to get back in the house after going out in the morning rather than laying in a snow bank like she usually does (voluntarily) all winter.

But my little boy can tear around his warm house in slippers with fire engines on them. My husband can fix the model train setup in the basement by the space heater. And I can sit inside in tights, a comfy knit dress, a shawl, and slippers and be perfectly content. Add a cat on my lap and a dog on my feet and a cup of hot cocoa and I'm very, very, very happy.

I'm getting through this winter fairly well with only a few moments of despair at the blank sky. I'm getting back to clothes sewing this week and I am continuing my regular exercise as I work up to running a 5k. And next weekend I will spend about 12 hours working the Michigan Veterinary Medicine Association convention for the zoo. I'm slowly but surely gaining the upper hand in the battle against atrophy in the house, moving troops of towels and socks, taking command of piles of random stuff gleaned from various corners of the house.

Sweet the smile of home; the mutual look
Where hearts are of each other sure;
Sweet all the joys that crowd the household nook,
The haunt of all affections pure.
                                                   ~John Keble

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The Art of Alphonse Mucha

My 2011 calendar features the art of Alphonse Mucha, a Moravian (then part of Austria, present day Czech Republic) artist who painted in the Art Nouveau style in the late 19th and early 20th century. Here is the panel for January.

La Poesie (Poetry), 1898

Even if you've never heard his name, it's likely you've seen some of his artwork. He usually painted beautiful women in flowing dresses with flowing tresses and adorned the perimeter of his works with images drawn from nature: irises, laurel, lilies, birds, grapevines, poppies, etc. His work often included circular motifs, fans, Celtic knots, and geometric designs remeniscent of ancient Greek pottery. The colors he chose were warm and vibrant, his models sumptuous and sexy.

Mucha did a lot of commercial work on commission, including theatre posters (most famously those starring the lovely actress Sarah Bernhardt); advertisements for biscuits, laundry detergent, perfume, champagne, chocolate, and other products; and . . . calendars!

Last year I bought a book called Alphonse Mucha Masterworks that is overflowing with his beautiful artwork and some history and stories behind his commissions. Mucha died in July 1939 after being captured by the Gestapo and coming down with pneumonia during interrogation. He was released but never fully recovered. He died when my house was being built.

At the end of 2011 I plan to keep some of the calendar prints and use them in the decor of my sunroom, a little tribute to an iconic artist who apparently shared my love of flowers and plants and who portrayed beautiful, sensual women (many of whom would today be considered overweight!) in gentle and sometimes powerful ways.

I encourage you to do a Google image search for "Alphonse Mucha" and feast your eyes on his lovely work.

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Sprucing Things Up

One thing I love about the removal of Christmas decorations is the clean slate I have to work with. I imagine many people just put all their "normal" stuff back in the same places it occupied pre-Christmas. But I like to think of January as the beginning of the redecorating season (if, in fact, that season has a beginning or an end). So where I once had blue in the dining room I now have fresh green:

Everything I used I already had in the house. Here's a basic rundown:

Top shelf: secondhand Crate & Barrel candle sitting on an old candle holder from Pier One, big 4-color charger from Pier One many years ago, square bowl I made years ago at Naked Plates in the Breton Village Mall in East Grand Rapids.

Middle shelf: secondhand candle holder from Volunteers of America store flanked by two trivets from Grandma's house.

Bottom shelf: little green vase that I think I got for a few bucks at Schuler Books in Lansing flanked by green books I had in the house.

On the sidebar: a geranium from my mother-in-law two years ago, bowl from a local potter filled with fresh pears, boat-shaped bowl from my mother for my birthday this year filled with fresh navel oranges, then Zach's humidor topped with a Balsam-scented candle which was a Christmas gift from my sister. (It smells great, Alison.).

I love finding new ways to use old stuff and ways to incorporate gifts into decor. I love the look of fresh fruit and by putting it in plain sight I'm more likely to eat it. Just look at these tasty things . . .

The oranges coordinate with the citrus fruits in the trivets and bring a pop of color out so that the green doesn't feel flat.

I didn't stop at the dining room, though, because I had to do something with all the blue stuff I previously had on the shelves. So now, where I once had brown I have blue:

January makes me want to redo every room. Lucky for my husband January also means very little fun money (because we just spent a bunch on Christmas) and I still have to work and grocery shop and clean up (I really need to clean up around here). So little money and little time means little changes. Changes the man of the house can handle.

I do have two projects I want to get to yet this month: recover the dining room chairs and make Roman shades for the dining room. Hoping to get these started in the next week or so.

As for my other goals, I've done the first week of the C25K running plan (eight more to go) and I've been eating pretty healthy. I have looked at my quilt and thought about quilting (and then I remembered the mountain of laundry that needs tackling). The dress pattern design and the kitchen garden work won't be started until later in the year. Gotta space these things out. Plus, I don't think you can really work the ground in 8-degree weather and I'm certainly not making a pattern until I've lost the inches!

Do you feel like a home makeover in January? What little things do you do in your house this time of year to keep things interesting?

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