arco lamp love

Lots to love - from the brighter mantel and the grays and whites.  But that Arco Lamp is my favorite - I'd make sure that I could see the marble base from my perch with book and coffee.  (When I actually get the chance to sit with book and coffee.)  Or at the table with newspaper and coffee...

Signing off to sort some girl scout cookies.

Hmmm... those Shortbread cookies would taste mighty good with some coffee, sitting under an Arco Lamp...

Images from Apartment Therapy

friday finds (saturday edition)

I stumbled across this coverlet yesterday and as soon as I saw it, I knew that it was the exact shade of the ceiling in our bedroom.  I've kept my eyes open for just the right addition of color to our all white bed, and when I saw it, I knew it would be perfect.  I'll take some more pictures later today in the daylight to show you the texture of it.  I love it.  The bench at the end of the bed was relocated from the now vacant living room, and it does make for a nice place to kick the covers off onto - at least that's the theory if it ever warms up again.   We have a wedding quilt made by my grandmother, but it's on loan to the nursery because it has birds in it, and is the perfect place to perch on the window seat with a book, now that the window seat no longer has to serve as a changing table!  (Way to go F on your big milestone!)   Next up for this room - cord control - and getting rid of that pesky computer station with cords draped across the floor.  But still - it's getting closer.

I've always though that one day I would wallpaper that window wall, or maybe even tackle some hand painting on it, but now I'm starting to think I could achieve the same thing with some great curtains.  I've been finding such inspiration for the living room, which of course bleeds over into the other rooms of the house.  Maybe something along the lines of these:

This came from a beautiful house tour on Apartment Therapy, with gorgeous rooms, including this dining room, which really evokes the feeling I'm going for in the living room.

Which of course, could spill into the dining room, and I wouldn't say no to a pair of Tulip Chairs if they were given to me!

Addition by naturehumaine via The Contemporist via Apartment Therapy

Which then of course always leads me back to the ultimate dream - adding on a new light filled kitchen addition (with plenty of room for mass cupcake and cookie bake-offs) and turning the old kitchen into a linear dining room that opens onto the existing side porch.  The more the living room sits in the dining room, the more I like the idea of two living spaces adjacent to each other.  Taking your time, living in the spaces, and occasionally clearing them out to clear your head is really a lot of fun - and at least for now, doesn't cost a single dime!

Next up:  Arco lamp obsession fueled by gorgeous rooms...  (lots of dimes, I'm afraid.)

a perfect morning

Tea with this girl...

swell

It's nice to have friends to split cupcakes with on their half birthdays, nice to have friends who pick those friends up from school to give you more time for hospital visits.  Really nice to have friends who give you blog material when you're lacking...

(Thanks for the photo P!)

slumber party

We have an extra bed in use right now, so the nursery is starting to look more like party central every day.  The pillows and stuffed animals and other critters must multiply at night.

brown, but warm

We've had a glorious run of weather, but after seeing so much white for at least a month straight, it does seem a bit brown now that it's all melted.  We're not complaining though.  We finally were able to get that snowed in Christmas bike out for a test drive.  Hand brakes, speeds - a whole new world.  It only took a few crashes before the instinct to brake with her feet was broken.  It took more than a few times for me to get her off the bike and back into the truck to go home.  We're ready for spring on two wheels.

cheaper on paper

I've got a lot of down time this weekend.  My father-in-law's surgery was bumped until Monday so we're still in waiting mode.  M's spending a lot of time over at the hospital, and so I've had a few quiet evenings to myself.  I've been digging into the model I built awhile back of our house - this time inserting various bookshelf ideas into the living room and creating a 3D version of my mood board.  When I get a chance to finish them all I'll post them like I did the laundry room options before.  I went on a bit of a tangent last night - creating my own models of furniture that I like - making them the actual size, and in some cases actually downloading the fabrics and inserting those materials into the model.  For a couple of hours I shifted things around, and tested out ways to get some coat and shoe storage as well.  Since I'm light on the picture taking around here, I'm posting these snapshot sof the living room to tide you over.  I need to build in the mantel but I'm pretty darn proud of the ripple fold curtains in a great Duralee fabric - whether or not these things actually show up in the room or not, I'm excited that I was actually able to build a little miniature version of them.  Ideas on paper are cheap - might as well explore them there!

**I just noticed that if you look through that window on the right you can see another model of the living room "outside"!

friday finds

Friday finds us waiting.  Waiting for word from the hospital where M's dad awaits surgery, waiting for good news, waiting for a sleeping baby so we can go outside and play.  While we wait (E - off school today - and I) look through artwork and scan a few to add to our artwork piece.  Friday finds us with a yard once again instead of a glacier, excited for spring, nervous for family.  We'll let you know when we find ourselves with some good news. 

What Friday finds do you have to share?

quite the lady

This is how we roll around here on Taco Night.  And when all the goodies are scraped out, we ask for more - extra salsa, please. 

heavy lifting

The great furniture shift has begun.  Over the weekend, with my parents around to keep an eye on the girls, we tackled quite a few boxes of things in the basement.  We sorted a bit, but mostly recycled or threw in the car to donate, and made room for some of our furniture upstairs.  In order to get anything done in the living room we need a clear room and a divider between work in progress and life in progress.  So the living room furniture moved to the dining room, the dining room furniture to the kitchen and the kitchen furniture to the basement.  The girls were super surprised to see the changes when they came down for breakfast - and the living room currently makes a great space for all things with wheels.  I think plastic will be going up between the rooms to head off dust, and toddlers, as we move forward.

You can see the difference in floor color in the living room now - floors like these were often finished differently at the edges from the center since a rug would have been in the middle of the floor.  That, and 125 years of sun exposure on the outer portions leaves a ghost of rugs and occupants past.

 

Here's that hard working coat hook I mentioned - this used to hang in my little graduate student studio apartment.  I'm sure the three coat hooks worked well for my jacket, keys and student ID wallet.  It's a bit overworked for the four of us and the swinging of temperatures.  This is problem area to be fixed in the living room - solution still undecided.

And the corner that houses a few toys, a few appliances and a few rugs.  Cozy, I must say.

.....

Progress - one piece at a time.

knock knock

Who's there?

Owl.

Owl who?

Owl always love you.

.....

Happy Valentine's Day

sunday afternoon in the (winter) garden

We are (quite literally) emerging from the ice.  What a perfectly gorgeous weekend with sunny skies, mild temperatures, and finally a dent in the accumulation.  It may be May before the sidewalks and curbs in front of our house melt, but the browns were peeping through at the garden, and we know that the greens aren't far behind.  A dose of indoor orchid color never hurts.

seven and a half

Becoming seven-and-a-half does not mean that you are any more likely to eat pizza without getting sauce smeared all over your face, nor does it mean that you will suddenly care a bit if you do.  It doesn't even mean that you are suddenly able to convince your younger sister to sit patiently in your lap for a half-birthday photo.

It does, however, mean that you can stand up in front of a crowd and play a rousing solo of "Old Joe Clark" - the hard version, not the easy one - and end it with a "shave and a haircut - two bits" to thunderous applause, play some pretty good defense on both the basketball court and the indoor soccer turf, and cook your own skillet full of eggs and sausage when you return home from practice ravenous with hunger.  It means you are taller and straighter and smarter and funnier and quicker than ever, and changing right before our eyes.

And you are most certainly justified in choosing the banana split to celebrate.  Happy Half Birthday, sweet girl.

following in her sister's footsteps

Pointing out the cars - on the road, on the floor, in the books.

boxing up

While I was packing up some of the living room things on a snow day, the lids of the boxes kept being re-purposed.  Here's one version, lined with blankets and pillows.  E said she had made her sister a new "bed".  When I told F that it was time to go upstairs for a nap, she closed her eyes and made snoring noises, just like she had been taught.

the befores

Welcome to the living room.  We decided to tackle this project head on in January, and in our typical style, we're getting around to it mid-February.  I'll give you a bit of a tour of where we are and a few hints about where we're headed.  We've been slowly packing up the pieces of this room in an effort to start fresh with a clean slate.

The packing began during the last big snow storm, and for every thing wrapped up and put into a box, one more thing was brought into the fray to work on by E.  The shelves on the wall were a score almost a decade ago - they were a floor sale item.  We've had them filled with photos and mementos of our time living in Italy and South Africa, but they don't hold much, and always seemed to need dusting.  Our storage needs for books greatly exceed these three shelves.

Here's the corner now where the leather storage bench currently sits, most often piled high with the backpacks and diaper bags for the following day.

Above it hang my three favorite photos from our wedding, now boxed up and waiting for readmission.  This bench serves a great purpose - it actually stores quite a few games and toys, but the reality is the things inside are not easy to access - the bench always has something sitting on it that requires moving first - so the toys that are in there are mostly neglected.  And if there is one thing that drives me crazy, it's having things around that we don't use.

The view into the dining room from the living room.  If it were an easy fix, the first thing I would do is enlarge this opening between the two rooms.  We actually did enlarge it - there used to be a 3'-0" wide door between this room and the next (remember, this was just a three room unit originally), and we made the opening 5'-0" instead.  If it were an easy and not outrageously expensive and time-consuming fix, I'd spend a few weekends scouring local salvage places for an old pocket door and reframe this wall to hold it.  Then, when the baby demands her third helping of eggs and sausage and oatmeal and individually segmented grapefruit with a glass of hand-squeezed grapefruit juice on the side (she did, in fact, eat that for breakfast this very morning), I'd announce that I was escaping for a moment to the library, slide the door shut and drink my coffee in peace.  I exaggerate, I know, but a pocket door would be lovely and perfectly in keeping with the slightly grander homes of the same period.

Here it is, mid-pack.  You can see the actual clutter of toys and stuff before being moved, and the visual clutter of the room.  The large cabinet holds our TV and various other electronics, and for the most part the doors are kept closed.  This is all coming out of this room - which opens up some possibilities for this wardrobe to actually become just that.  If you look through the opening, you'll see the corner of a winter coat peeking out.  (You'll also see the temporary snow-bound office, but ignore that.)  Just on the other side of that wall hangs the most undersized coat hook with the largest amount of coats that can possibly hang on it.  Which means that every time someone walks by, at least one of the coats fall off the hooks onto the floor.  We have a room that must do double duty - entry hall and living space.  The result isn't always pretty - particularly in the winter.

This last wall has the original mantel with a period cast iron summer front from a local antiques shop.  The mirror is nice, but this wall really lacks any appeal.  The color in the room is very drab and hasn't been painted in almost eleven years.  This was the first room we really moved into, and we've never done more to it than just the basics.  The biggest decorating effort comes around each year in December when we squeeze the largest evergreen into the space and cover it with lights.  Every January, once the tree is gone, it looks a little less inviting.  Neither of us are really moved by the color of the mantel.  The summer front is nice, but although painted a traditional black, the details are really lost.  The marble hearth is a salvaged piece, and the trim is all original.  I love the picture rail, and we use it.  We wish we had a working fireplace but have no idea the condition of the existing flue.  The floors are in great shape.  The windows aren't bad (although single glazed and drafty).  Replacing them is a big commitment, and would require the replacement of our bedroom windows as well for continuity on the front of the house. 

Packing up.

This is actually the neat version of the shoe / boot corner.  This is not the norm.  For people that do not actually own very many shoes at all, they seem to multiply under feet at the entrance to our house.

This might have been the first piece of furniture that we bought together - and this has been a good couch.  It has held up well for a decade, and I'm sure it will eventually find a good home somewhere else.  I'd like something a little smaller in here, and in a completely different color.  The room has a really nice size and volume to it with the high ceilings and almost perfect square shape, but it's not the easiest to lay out furniture in with room to move between the pieces and still navigate the front door.  Plus, this couch is all we've got in here, and I think our extended family is getting sick of sitting on the floor while hanging out with us.  Our friends don't even bother.

And rug - just fine, but not the right fit or color for this space any more.  We definitely want a rug in here - a place to throw a game board on, or build a train track, but it needs to be larger, and square and there will be no fringe.  Guaranteed. 

The winner of the most boring award goes to the ceiling light.  It's a really nice light from Restoration Hardware, and it certainly was an improvement over the bare bulb.  I think we actually might have purchased it on our honeymoon in Vancouver - we did a bit of damage in a Restoration Hardware sale up there.  Undersized and under-inspired - I want something that hangs down lower, is lighter and airier and a light that will help define the seating area of the space a little better.  I think I've got just the thing.

Ceiling Light from Normann Copenhagen - scored for a sweet deal.  Of course, we can't do everything on the wish list below (and really - that's my wish list, not necessarily ours), but I do hope to get a little bit further towards this, from what you've seen above.  And on that note - I'm off to work on those bookshelf drawings a bit more.

Stay tuned for progress...