Tag Archives: home

Family

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Remember back when I showed you photos of Younger Daughter’s Valentine’s Day party-for-10 this past weekend (scroll down to see again)? Well, everybody had a great time and the food and decor were awesome but the best part for me was what YD, 23, learned from hosting her first party all on her own. She planned and organized everything and I didn’t even make one suggestion — even when it was the day before the party and not very much had been done and I asked her gently if there were anything I could do to help her AHEAD OF TIME (hint, hint) and she said, “Oh, no. I can get everything done tomorrow.” But the payoff was the day after the party when she realized the benefits of day-before party prep. Yes! Another maternal lesson learned. Read more in my weekly newspaper column, http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20100219/ARTICLES/2195005.

Breakfast

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I’m like many of y’all — in that wonderful period when my kids are grown, my work-at-home freelance-writing hours are flexible and my night-owl husband sleeps late. This means I can — finally, after years of otherwise — enjoy an hour or so of uninterrupted peace and quiet with my morning coffee. No carpools to get ready for, no homework to finish up frantically, no wild I’ve-got-nothing-to-wear closet marathons. I love it! So on a recent morning when it seemed as if 10 people ended up in the kitchen all with Important Things To Do Right At This Very Minutes, it sort of threw me off. But we all got through it. Read more at http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20100122/ARTICLES/1225004 — and have a great weekend!

Books

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When only sitting in a toy box will do ... Almost 22-month-old grandson Capt. Adorable finds the best seat in the house for perusing his favorite read.

Home Decor

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Anybody who’s worried about today’s young people shouldn’t — at least based on their decorating skills. Isn’t this apartment absolutely adorable? I’d move in in a minute! It belongs to Rachel, a 25-year-old who’s one of Younger Daughter’s friends in Birmingham, Alabama. Rachel is a recent college graduate and recently started working — and although interior decorating is not her field, I think it should be. I loved the way Rachel used inexpensive touches — she shops in consignment and discount stores — to express her style and create a calm and peaceful environment combined with a sense of whimsy. And she’s got such inspiring ideas. For instance, she paints small wooden window shutters, hangs them vertically on the wall and puts photos in the individual slats — brilliant! She also found a practice climbing wall with various size handholds and set it up above a doorway for stress-releasing fun. And I love the way she uses the simple basic elements of candles and coffee beans for earthy and fragrant tablescapes. And she has such a good eye — her comfy thrift-store sofa and weathered chest of drawers with intriguing mismatched drawer pulls look as if they came from a top designer boutique. Rachel’s efforts have convinced me that when it comes to interior decor, money and time constraints are no excuse. Lesson learned. Thank you, Rachel!

Interior Decor

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Childrens' roomsDid y’all have a great Labor Day weekend? Lots of cookouts and Home decorpicnics and getting together? Bet you didn’t have as much fun as I did — I spent the whole weekend (and I mean the whole weekend, from Thursday morning to Monday afternoon)babysitting my 17-month-old grandson, Capt. Adorable while my daughter and son-in-law went to DragonCon in Atlanta.  And besides all the incredibly good New housessnuggle time I got with the Captain — and the chance to watch endless episodes of Sid the Science Kid, my new favorite TV show — I fell in love all over again with my daughter and son-in-law’s house. When my son-in-law, a high-school art teacher, got tenure this past spring, they New housedecided it was time to move out of their apartment and into a real house. Frugal young family that they are, they had a budget and were determined not to budge from it. Their must-haves: A big fenced-in backyard for the Captain, three bedrooms, two baths and good storage space. It took awhile, but they found it — and under their budget. It was cute and in a good neighborhood and had a fantastic backyard. The bad news? Total square footage was less than their apartment. However, after living in it for a few days, I can attest that this house seems so much bigger than it actually is. The secret is a combination of design and decor. I love the archectural details that make this compact space live bigger: The soaring ceilings, the tiled entry way, closets tucked away in unexpected but efficient places, the big airy windows. It would have been so easy to have let this be a cheap and boring house, but no. And the kids have done everything they could to enhance the feeling of expansiveness — they added white beadboard to the eating area, knocked out some useless kitchen cabinets to create more open space and used paint to their advantage with the Captain’s bed- and bathrooms in bright oranges and yellows and the other rooms in soothing and calm neutrals. Adorable!

And a note to any other grandparents contemplating days of move-in babysitting: Line up visits from friends and family. I could not have made it without help from so many people who brought us food and new toys and drove over just to visit us. Thank you!!!

Home Decor

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Home Decor

My friend Susan Cantrell and her daughter-in-law, Freda ShoppingBrewer, have opened the most wonderful store in Sheffield, Alabama. Called Upscale Resale, it’s a furniture and home-decor consignment shop — but it’s so much more than simply a place to find a fantastic bargain. Both Susan and Freda are so creative and imaginative — there are delightful surprises everywhere you look: A basket of shells, an old door used to highlight hanging shelves, a row of colorful bottles that catch and reflect the light. Consignment shoppingAnd Susan and Freda emphasize the frugal use-what-you-have approach that helps you appreciate what you’ve already got. “We’re eclectic and a little bit funky,” Susan said. “We Furniturelike to think that along with recycled furniture, we have unique investment items that will go up in value for the home — items you will not find at large import stores.  Also, we do think it is a great idea to recycle what is already available on the planet.  Remember: Reduce, reuse, recycle!” This is the place to find a whimsical painting that’s perfect for your kitchen, a pottery bowl that just fits on your coffee table or a simply chic chair that brightens the living-room corner. Or, do what I do and go to Upscale Resale for some conversation and relaxation — a visit always cheers me up and inspires me to actually decorate instead of arrange. Upscale Resale is open from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays. Call the store at 245.381.7773 for more information.

Wallpaper

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Today, for the first time probably in years, I actually did an honest day’s hard labor. This morning when I offered to help out the folks who’d come to do painting/remodeling work in the house (remember the loose-wallpaper incident?), I had no idea they’d actually take me up on it. But the head-man-in-charge was not impressed with my earlier effort at wallpaper removal in the bathrooms and said it would free up another worker to get started on painting if I tackled the wallpaper leftovers and really prepped the walls properly. I had a free morning, I shrugged, so why not? How hard could it be? Seven hours later, these are the things I have learned:

1) Never ever offer to help painting/wallpapering/remodeling people unless you are prepared to actually help. This is the not the time to be meaninglessly polite.

2) Little stripped-off wet wallpaper pieces stick to everything: Shoes, feet, floors, cats …

3) Even if you like Rascal Flatts and think Keith Urban is hot, seven hours of country-music on the industrial-strength radio turned up to an industrial-strength volume is plenty, thank you very much.

4) Patience and relaxation are the keys. “You’ve got to get the wallpaper wet and then let it relax,” Boss Guy said as he, patiently, showed me how to take off wallpaper the Right Way. “Patience, patience, patience. If you’re patient enough, it will slide right off.”  He was right. Who knew?

5) And the final thing I learned after a day of pumping a spray bottle and scraping and scrubbing walls to a shiny smoothness? I’m glad I don’t have to do it tomorrow.

Home Decor

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Home decorI love finding home-decor ideas in unlikely Home decorspots. You never know when you’ll stumble across some inspiration. Like these exuberantly painted kitchen chairs at the Bottletree Bakery in Oxford, Mississippi. How much fun would it be to grab worn-out chairs and leftover paint and create some whimsical seating like this? In no stretch of the imagination am I a painter but I think that even non-visual folks such as me could do this. I also loved this glass and metal sofa table I saw at a clothing boutique in Oxford. The owners had knotted colorful scarves through one of the support rungs Home decor— so creative! Couldn’t you just see this in one of those huge closets big enough for furniture? You could sit in there and sip wine and read “Town and Country” and contemplate what you were going to wear where that evening. But I might be able to use the same idea by knotting scarves through the ends of the storage shelves in our perfectly-adequate closet, where I stand every day and try to figure out which T-shirt is the cleanest. (And which, by the way, I am slowly inch-by-inch taking over from my husband, who luckily hasn’t noticed that somehow my stuff mysteriously keeps showing up on his side.) This lovely white painted chair with a toile cushion was at the same boutique. It looks like another renovated flea-market find that would be so simple to duplicate. Do you remember a few years ago when toile was everywhere? Then it sort of faded away but now it’s back to where it should be: A s a statement-making classic. And I think the white paint brings out the details of this chair to make it look like something special. Of course, folks who know me and have been to our house know that all my talk about interior-decorating projects is fruitless because I am much too lazy to do anything different from our current coffee-cup-and-stacks-of-newspaper decor. But I have high hopes and ambitious dreams. It just needs a lot more planning and fine-tuning … and shopping.

Spring Cleaning

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Spring cleaningHome-organization experts say you can tell a lot about Spring cleaningpeople by the state of their refrigerators. I hope you can tell from ours that I did a massive cleaning shortly after Christmas’s food extravaganza and have kept it in top shape ever since. I mean, this was a six-hour job — taking out and scrubbing each shelf, throwing away a whole garbage bag of expired/old/what-in-the-world-is-this food and getting into every little corner and those Spring cleaningannoying ridges in the vegetable bins. And maintaining it means constant vigilance for crumbs and that Unidentified Sticky Stuff that mysteriously shows up. I can pretty much guarantee that everything in this fridge is now fresh and edible. Before this cleaning marathon, I would have to sprint to the fridge to throw myself in front of it when folks headed in that direction — I was that embarrassed to let anybody see the disgusting chaos inside. Luckily, in my cleaning frenzy I even felt moved to attack the outside, excavating years of Post-Its and lists that dated, I’m ashamed to admit, to the previous century. I kept all the artwork and notes and doodling that had decorated the door for so long — our refrigerator had long served as a sort of guestbook for my now 20-something-daughters’ friends as they traipsed in and out of the house during the Teenage Years. But with 1-year-old grandson Capt. Adorable discovering crayons, it’s time to make room for new artwork. And food that isn’t growing food of its own. My daughters’ reactions to the clean fridge were telling: Older daughter (Capt. Adorable’s mom) said, “Mom, the refrigerator looks wonderful! Great job!” Younger daughter said, “Why did you take down all the pictures? They’d been there forever!” But I’ve already started a Refrigerator-Door Scrapbook — and I guess in another 10 years I’ll have another Fridge Spring-Cleaning.

Spring Decorating and Coffee Cups

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Decorating for springWhen my two now 20-something-year-old daughters were little, I went all out for holiday decorating — a trait I got from my own mom, I think. At this time of year I’d have bunnies and chicks and eggs and flowers everywhere. Now that the girls have their own spaces (one with her own family in their apartment and the other in her dorm room at college), I’m taking a break. I’m sure once I get the dozens of grandchildren I’m hoping for, I’ll once again turn our house into Holiday Headquarters — again, just like my own mom. But until then, my nods to the changing of the seasons are few: A new wreath on the front door, different candles in the living room and changing the coffee mugs and espresso cups I keep out on a tray in the kitchen, always ready for a hot steaming cup of goodness. This past weekend I finally put away all the winter mugs and cups and replaced them with Decorating for springEspresso cupsthe spring ones. I love the pink and green Portuguese-pottery espresso cups. They come in three designs: Rabbits, frogs and cabbages. I’ve found them the past couple years in discount retailers such as TJ Maxx and Tuesday Morning but haven’t seen many so far this season. Plus, there are pitchers, bowls, dessert plates and serving platters —  I finally had to stop buying  because really, how many lavender bunny-themed cake stands do you actually need? I also adore this blue and green teapot and espresso cups with flower-petal saucers I found at a gift shop and the two pottery espresso cups from Starbucks I bought just a few weeks ago. And now I think I’m all set decorating-wise until July.