Lunch@Home

The best thing about the new house is its close proximity to my office at Woodbourne. It’s about 10 minutes each way, and when I get home, I set the timer for 40 minutes.

I can get a lot done in the 40 minutes I am home. For example, today, I wanted to check up on Connor, who’s been left shaken and unhappy by our recent spate of storms. Since these storms have brought in cooler, crisper and breezier weather, I thought I would take advantage of that by doing a load of laundry and hanging it out to dry. Today seemed like an opportune time to wash the pillow and cushion covers from my sofa. Before I’d made the slipcover, I’d washed all of the fabric, so if there was going to be shrinkage, it would happen before the pieces were made. When I get home, the pieces will be dry and ready to be put back on the sofa.

I am so lucky to be able to a) have time for lunch, and b) be able to go home at lunch.

Weekend Update: No. 308

This weekend was filled with lots of storms, tons of rain and hours of thunder, much to Connor’s chagrin. On Sunday, the thunder and rain started before 7:00 a.m. and continued through nearly midnight. It’s not been very relaxing for either of us. And the power outage didn’t help at all! Nevertheless, I can’t really complain, as we had virtually no rain in June and July. It’s been a huge benefit to all of the gardeners and farmers to have the rain! I went to a great yard sale on Saturday morning. When I was on the Nate Berkus show last year, and I had to help a family set up a yard sale, we talked about whether you were doing the sale to make money or get rid of your things, as each of these has different tactics associated with it. Well, the Saturday yard sale was a get-rid-of-it-all sale. The couple was clearing out the mother’s flat and when she’d moved 10 years ago, she saved all of her best things, and that was what was on offer. 

I picked up a great little side table, and now need to find a place to put it. Right now, it’s lodged under the Chinese silk painting that I hung last week (which by the way, is 1/2 inch off level, which KILLS me!). I also need to decide whether to keep the table brown wood, or paint it.

Speaking of painting, I also got this book case, which was a hideous blue, and am in the midst of painting it. I’ve already used about a half a quart of Kilz paint on it, and some of the blue is still showing through.

Another project I tackled this weekend was curtains for the windows in the main room. During one of the storms, Connor tried to do his Houdini act of escaping and chewed through another set of mini-blinds. This makes the fourth set he’s chewed. I bought some plain white sail-cloth fabric at DeBois Textiles, and just hung this panel to gauge how it would work. Excuse the crappy photos, but my Photoshop program is corrupted and keeps crashing my computer, so I am editing them in some freebie program. Back to the curtains, I want to raise the rods to be closer to the ceiling and then maybe trim the curtains with something to make them a little more exciting.

Suggestions?

Another Style Quiz

This quiz is from Ethan Allen, and you choose from sets of two images to determine your style. I keep getting “Romantic” which I am not sure about…

Oh wait! I just took it again and got “Elegance” which may suit me a wee bit better. Here’s the description:

Your Signature Lifestyle is Elegance. Elegance is the essence of timeless sophistication. A seamless composition of quintessentially classic design elements, reinterpreted through streamlined scale and shape. Luxurious yet beautifully livable. A cosmopolitan mix of clean woods paired with chic, enduring fabrics.

Try it and see what you come up with!

This is Amusing!

Today, I got an e-mail from One King’s Lane doing a satisfaction survey. As I’ve mentioned, I do like their site, generally, and have bought several things from them and have been very satisfied with their customer service.

Too bad there wasn’t a place to leave comments. I would just have had two words for them: Get Real!

Mates for Supper + Naked Ladies

I had two good blogging friends {Julie who used to write a food blog, and Wendi, who still does} to supper this evening, and we were able to take advantage of the lovely weather and eat outside. I found the candelabra at a thrift shop, and it was a rather garish blue, so I spray-painted it  a dull silvery-gold, which suits it perfectly. Instead of using my Royal Copenhagen china, we used some great pale blue enamel-ware plates with silver rims. The French Ivory cutlery worked perfectly against this linen tablecloth from Williams-Sonoma.

Now on to the Naked Ladies… They’re a variety of lilies (Lycoris squamigera), and they’re called Naked Ladies because they don’t have any leaves on them. Not on the stems, not in the ground, not any leaves at all. And they just pop up out of the ground in late summer over a four or five day period! There are five to seven flowers on each stalk, which comes straight up from the ground. These plants belong to the amaryllis family and are native to southern Japan. They are also known as Magic Lilies or Surprise Lilies, but it’s much funnier to call them Naked Lady Lilies, a name by which they are also known. I think I am going to have to plant them in my garden next summer!

Wow, Just Wow.

You know I love to tease One King’s Lane, and I do buy things from them, but sometimes, I just wonder what they’re thinking: Nice that it’s a Warhol, but not really who I’d want looking down at me from my wall. And shouldn’t this really be on 1st Dibs? And would you really buy a piece of art like this on-line?

Thoughts?

Treasure Hunt

I love treasure hunts, and the great possibility of finding something so amazing, that you gasp. I rediscovered a great treasure that I thought I’d share with you. It’s called Treasure Hunt, and it’s the blog of the British National Trust.  It’s written by Emile de Bruijn, the NT staffer whose job it is to co-ordinate acquisitions of works of art and other historic chattels that have left the UK’s historic houses in the past, and return them to their proper place. Each post is a little treasure, explaining the story of a room at one of the Trust’s houses, or how a particular work of art was re-acquired. There are stories that take you behind the scenes at some of the most beautiful houses and descriptions of how renovations were accomplished. Reading through Treasure Hunt  is like taking a mini-art history course, with fabulous images and the insider scoop on how things came to the Trust. One of the fun features is seeing the “downstairs” parts of these magnificent houses, like this linen room above, or the dairy with its stunning table with the hilarious legs. Incredible! So I hope you will go Treasure Hunting and see all of the fascinating posts that Emile has written about some of the most amazing houses.

Thanks to pal ~JCB~ for introducing me to this treasure chest!

Weekend Update: Part 23

The weather this weekend was bad, which was good, since we desperately need rain. We’ve gotten more than two inches of rain over the weekend. The strangest thing is that between rain showers and storms, there was an acrid smell in the air, like a fire of some sort.

I found out that it’s the smoke from a massive fire in the Great Dismal Swamp in southern Virginia blowing over us. While the rain washes the particulate from the sky, it then goes into the Chesapeake Bay and our groundwater, which is bad.Because the weather was so ghastly, I had plenty of time to do things around the house. I added a number of things to my Etsy Shop, including some silver items, and some pillows, and some very lady-like handbags! Look for more items this week!

Connor picked Kerry from Good Taste-Good Tasting as the winner of the Mark Hampton book. I went to the Book Thing today, and luckily, there were no wackos there!

I hope that your weekend was more exciting than mine!

And the Winner Is…

Connor was surely resting up all day for the arduous task of picking a name from the nearly 80 people who either left a comment, or sent an e-mail to me hoping to win Mark Hampton’s “On Decorating”.

With his pink pig (the version with the arms still attached and the orange stitches on his side, not Army, the pig with no arms and nothing left in his head) by his side, he suggested that Random.org might be the place to pick a number. Off we went, and came up with this: In my calculations, since Connor can’t count, the winner is Kerry, who blogs at Good Taste-Good Tasting, even though she thought I was actually shrieking at someone at the Book Thing. Kerry… drop me an e-mail here, and let me know your mailing address!

Congratulations to Kerry for winning Mark Hampton’s “On Decorating” and thanks so much to everyone who took the time to leave a comment.

Don’t Forget! (Plus Some Goodies!)

Don’t forget to put your name into the pot for the classic interior design book, Mark Hampton’s “On Decorating”.  Connor will be staying up late on Friday to pick the winner who will be announced on Saturday! I’ve been re-reading this book over the past few days, and it’s fascinating how much of what Mark Hampton says is still perfectly relevant today.

In addition to the book, there will be a few other little items tucked into this package, so don’t forget to enter!