Drapes for winter November 22, 2009

I have been making heavy drapes for all of my doors and windows over the past few years. It gets pretty cold here in the winter, and my doors are especially drafty. When I re-did the downstairs (stripey) hallway this summer, I got a remnant of a gorgeous teal fabric ($28), and yesterday I found some lavender silk that was remaindered ($18), and dug up some liner from my fabric archives and sewed up a nice heavy drape for the front door.

Drape with liner installed.

Drape puller thingy.

Drape in daylight (look how well it blocks the sun)

Sewing the layers

Jerome inspecting the sewing machine.

Guess who is hiding behind the curtain?

Skunkie inspects the installed curtain (okay, she doesn’t care, she’s just eating)

Lining

Look at that face!

Please pass the scissors.

Such a help.

Door and window sans curtains.

I found this fabulous burnt orange fabric on ebay, but ran out of lining fabric, so I need a trip to the sewing store to complete them. These are to keep the icy winds from blowing into the kitchen. Brrr!

Powder room by night November 20, 2009

Here’s another pair of photos of my lovely powder room. At night.

Leg

“creepy basement” September 22, 2009

On WordPress, one can see which search terms people have used to get to one’s site. Today a search term that brought someone to my site was “creepy basement” –

“Grace Flows Down” September 18, 2009

I bought this GORGEOUS painting titled “Grace Falls Down” at the Mattoon Arts Festival this year. It’s by artist Catherine Gibbs of Westfield, MA.

I saw it on her web site when she signed up for the festival and thought it was lovely then, but seeing it in person just floored me. What a wonderful painting. I love, love, love, love it and hope to be able to buy more of her paintings in the future. I like to just sit at my kitchen table and look at it.

Especially as it is getting colder and it will be a great visual comfort in the winter!

Garden Tour, Sept. 2009 September 16, 2009

Some years we have a garden tour as part of our arts festival, and 2009 was one of those years. So I tidied up my garden, filled up the fountain, and let the sun do its thing. Here are a couple of photos I’m planning to look at over the winter to remind me of warmer times….

Lilacs in pots, ready for spring

Burbling fountain and favorite chair

King Cricket September 15, 2009

I had this big cricket hanging out in my garden for a few days, but I haven’t seen him for a while. I call him King Cricket because he’s so big. He has these really soulful eyes, and I just love to look at him. He has stripey legs, but I think he may be missing one leg. Anyway, here are some photos of him in my little back courtyard. I wish I had more zooming power, oh well!

King Cricket

King Cricket

Getting ready for the festival… September 15, 2009

We have a fantastic arts and crafts festival on our street every year — it’s always the weekend after Labor Day. There is a magical moment on the street when all the cars are gone, and the street is swept clean, and no one is around…. and then the exhibitors start setting up. But here are some photos of that magic moment of silence…

And here’s the festival web site (maintained by yours truly): MattoonFestival.org

Another charming section

Empty street!

The trees are so pretty

Bow front houses

The long view…

Darkening things up nicely September 11, 2009

As one of the final touches for the stripey hallway, I looked high and low (okay, only on the Internet) for black and white polka dot clip-on chandelier shades. To no avail. The closest I found were perforated black and white shades made by Kathy Ireland and sold at LampsPlus. They were $9.99 a piece, plus shipping for a total of $65.00 for five shades. Well, after a long long wait and some calls to customer service, they finally arrived today. I think they may have been discontinued, because I just searched on LampsPlus to find a link to the product and couldn’t.

Well, they’re here. They’re pretty poorly constructed, the glue has worn away in some spots where the shade was attached to the wire frame (maybe that’s why they aren’t showing up on the site), but they look okay for now. I had four matching (quite nice but plain) silk-covered shades on the chandelier before, plus one that sort of matched the others. So if worse comes to worse, I suppose I can figure out how to re-cover the others and/or find someone to do it.

But I think these look okay — they’re pretty nifty with the light shining through them, and they darken things up considerably (I have two sorts of friends — those who love the old dark Victorian look, and those who are constantly nagging me to open drapes or get more lamps or do “something to get more light in here”).

Here are my photos, but please bear in mind what a poor photographer I am! I think they look better in person.

New shades, lights on, taken without flash.

New shades, lights on, taken with flash.

New shades, lights off, taken with flash.

My kitchen September 9, 2009

My kitchen is really nice. My house had been a boarding house for single men since at least the 1930s. Each room had its own gas stove and sink. Hence, no need for a kitchen. In the room that has become my lovely kitchen, there was a barely-used all-in-one sink-stove-fridge dealie (now in the butler’s pantry, q.v.). And a table. That’s it! So, flush with money from the sale of my old house, I hired a very inexpensive contractor and bought a lot of nice stuff. It took six months for the ground floor of my house to be redone, but it was worth every minute of agony, microwaved popcorn, and drinking out of the bathroom sink.

This is the only white ceiling in the house… it’s definitely time for a fresh coat of paint on the walls, and I think the ceiling may need to get some color when that happens (next summer though, I’m done with painting for the year).

Jerome and window (curved wall), Skunkie’s orange couch in front of window.

Jerome and window (curved wall), Skunkie’s orange couch in front of window.

Art work, brick fireplace (doesn’t work), and stark white ceiling.

Fridge, sink, cabinets, dishwasher, cooktop and stove all in a row.

View towards back door, which leads to courtyard.

Powder room that roars September 9, 2009

I’m not a good photographer, so please forgive the photos. I see so many photos of people’s homes on their own blogs that look tremendously crisp and amazing and professional. And then I try to do that at home and I get washed out colors from the flash, or a totally dark room with no flash… and forget about those crazy close ups other people do. Oh well!

Here are some mediocre photos of my quite fabulous powder room. This is on the ground floor (where the kitchen, home office, stripey hallway and door to the dirt-floor basement can be found). When I moved in in 2002, it was a full bath, with a pink-ish tub and shower where the washer and dryer now live. I believe it was all white (since everything in the house was all white when I bought it), but for some reason I have blocked it out of my mind.

My inspiration for this room was the brown pedestal sink ($50) and black granite floor tiles ($1.00 each) that I bought at my local Re-Store. (BTW, I’ve decide to post the costs of things, since I would want to know if I were reading this blog). Then I went brown on the walls. Brown paint, that is. And I thought I would do some sort of glazed finish. It was like sitting inside someone’s colon, and strangely unconducive to a bathroom.

So then I found some wallpaper… ooo la la — leopard and architectural froo fraas. I don’t remember the makers or the precise cost, but it was around $300. So I hired someone to do the wallpapering, which cost more than the wallpaper (around $400.) It was after that experience that I decided to learn how to wallpaper.

I wanted to hide the washer and dryer, and considered painting them in a camoflauging leopard pattern, but thought better of it and found some fabric to make drapes. I looked everywhere for a matching leopard fabric, and finally settled on this nice soft one (kind of furry, but not in a gross troll doll sort of way) at Jo-Ann’s fabric ($40.00 with a discount coupon). The ceiling curtain rod is from Ikea and cost maybe $5.00

Then I realized that the ceiling was incredibly plain (it was white — gasp!). I started wallpapering with leopard scraps, thinking I would easily buy another roll if/when I ran out. So of course I ran out and the paper was no longer available. Plan B: remove the paper, don’t bother cleaning up the glue, and paint it with gold paint resulting in an interestingly textured ceiling.

Enjoy!

…. and leopard curtains opened to reveal washer and dryer.

Leopard curtains closed….

This is me trying for one of those cool close ups I always see on blogs. I failed.

Other corner of w.c. art gallery nook

Sink, leg, etc.

W.C. in little art gallery corner.

View of bathroom from stripey hallway.