First of all, I lost my fiddler-ring and I don’t want to talk about it. I had been wearing it on my little finger because it was tight on my ring finger, and sometime on Thursday it slipped off unnoticed.
On Thursday I visited Arabella, a women’s clothing boutique that just re-opened in Winchester. They are now stocked with fall clothing and jewelry, so go take a look if you’re in Creekside. I was making jewelry up until I left for my appointment, so I don’t even have pictures to show you what they have. I did update my necklaces and bracelets pages with some newbies, though.Friday night I met a couple friends at Gourmet on the Go, which is the local meal assembly place. The idea is to put together freezable meals while hanging out with your friends, and it was fun. I’ve been to My Girlfriend’s Kitchen before and it’s the same thing. I’m really looking forward to trying the Raspberry Chipotle Pork Tenderloin. Saturday Steve and I tackled the studio swap, and it is lovely to be writing to you from this bright room across the hall from Steve’s office (read: no more yelling when the phone rings). 
Look at all the space! In the middle of the room! You have no idea. On the left is what used to be our wardrobe (historic home in Delaware=no closets) which I retrofitted with shelves for storage. Next to it is my metals bench (the torch is in the garage) and in front of the windows is my beading station. The black chair is sitting in front of my desk over to the right, where I can update my website and answer email for hours at a time without the need of a jacket (as I did in the basement). I’m going to use the basement room for non-jewelry crafts, like sewing slipcovers for the rattan furniture and making Christmas reindeer cards from Riley’s hair. Just kidding about the cards. Reminds me of that circulating email about Martha Stewart’s calendar (French braid lawn, install plumbing in gingerbread house).
We had friends over for dinner last night, and are taking it easy today. The main event (other than lunch at Outback) was a tremendous thunderstorm that caused this tree damage. I guess we’ll be borrowing Dad’s chain saw and having lots of fire-pit parties. My little yellow maple is now bald (in JULY!), but fortunately the wind took away all the leaves. Notice Riley standing in Command Post 2.
Tag: House
Confused
This maple tree in our yard has started turning yellow and dropping its leaves. In July. (To be fair, I took this picture right before sunset, so the bright gold patch is from sun rays). Some plants bloom a lot when they are dying, a last-ditch reproduction effort. So maybe this early color is because I refuse to water the grass. I think a monoculture of immaculate green grass is boring.
Notice Riley peeking around the corner of the shed for woodland creatures. She has about five posts in the yard, this being one of them. All day long she goes from one post to the next, in order, monitoring bird activity to the point where she’s starting to wear a trail in the grass. Obsessive? Perhaps. Entertaining? Definitely. It’s better than Squawk Box in the morning.
Studio Swap
Before we moved here I designated a purpose for each room. My studio was to be in the basement bedroom so I could contain the mess and wouldn’t have to bother Steve when I’m hammering. I did my best at assigning rooms, considering that we saw the house only once before the movers were at our house after closing (click for saga). So after moving in I quickly realized my studio is cold, dark, and small. I never even unpacked all my stuff, rarely felt like making jewelry, and often took my computer to happier spots (like “Cheryl’s room“) in order to avoid the basement. And once we had the movers bring all our stuff into the designated rooms, I wasn’t about to change the rooms around. I had made a decision and was sticking to it. This photo is how it looks in the middle of the day. I could bring in more lamps, but it’s still cold and cramped.
Are you tired of me complaining about it yet? Did I mention I could see cherry blossoms and clouds from my bright old studio? Sigh.
So anyway yesterday Steve and I spent the day at home (for once!) working around the house and yard. He mowed. I weeded. We moved the old sofas down to the TV room to make room for the new sofas (and so we don’t have to sit on the floor to watch TV). I put the new knobs on the kitchen cabinets. We ate dinner with my mom (Dad’s visiting my brother). We relaxed outside and played with Riley in the wonderful lack of humidity. And I finally decided that the room assignment was a mistake and (as much work as it will be) we are going to move my studio above ground. Steve is really supportive, probably because he’s tired of me complaining. We started by moving the virtually unused guest bed to the small, virtually unused spare room, clearing the bigger room (with 2 windows!) for my studio. When I walked in the empty room I actually got choked up with relief and excitement. I’ll post photos when I get everything in there because it will probably be the last time it is clean.
Powder Room
Near the kitchen is a half-bathroom that was painted terra-cotta when we moved in. I didn’t mind that color, but I really wanted to paint something robin’s egg blue and that was a nice, contained spot. The mirror is kind of ornate and looks great against the Tiffany-box blue, but was competing with the faucet on the pedestal sink (brass). Steve tackled the task of swapping the faucet for one of antiqued copper. I wanted to get an Audobon-style print of a robin or bluebird to carry the bird theme, so I got some Arthur Singer prints on eBay. Then my mother found a pair of my grandparents’ framed bird prints in the basement and it turns out they are two from the same series Singer did in 1957, so I’ll add them to my collection. (Mom also suggested the next grandparental throwback will be crazy-loud hummingbird & vine wallpaper from my grandmother’s kitchen). All of the light fixtures in the house are brass, so I’m slowly swapping them out for more current designs like oil-rubbed bronze or rusted iron.
Kitchen
Here is the kitchen the way it was yesterday. Notice the white sink that stains easily and the brass cabinet knobs (ick). To me, knobs are the jewelry of the cabinetry. Corny, I know, but I value cool jewelry. And birds. So my friend Debora found a few cast iron bird knobs on eBay and I am planning to scatter them around and get oil-rubbed bronze knobs for the rest. The granite was installed today (woo hoo!) so I wanted to post a pic even though I don’t have the knobs switched out yet. We had a granite 
island in our kitchen in Delaware, and once you go granite it’s hard to go back to Formica. The silicone has to set for 24 hours before we can hook up the faucet, so it’s a good my parents invited us over for dinner.
By the way, I want to say a public “Congratulations” to my mother on her retirement. She has been the science department lab lady (read: mother hen) at the local high school and is looking forward to having more time to spend in her sewing room and with my nephew.
Dining Room
Here is the dining room the way it was when we first saw the house. It’s not that big of a room and all the strong color was a lot to take, so we kept the faux finish on the upper wall and the gilded ceiling (for now) and neutralized the rest. I think the new chandelier (found on CraigsList) is an improvement but too small, so I have my eye on this one. More branches! (Steve, be glad it doesn’t have birds on it like this one). Or, I may revisit my original plan of spray-painting the brass one for an iron look. Other items in the room are the dining table I bought unfinished, the vintage white cabinet I trimmed out to match our kitchen cabinets in Delaware, china cabinet from an antique store in 
Tipton, PA, and rug from HomeGoods. I’m trying to figure out which pictures to put where and right now I’m leaning toward framing a set of Anne Hussey originals (paintings or B&W photos) to flank the china cabinet. I was trying to figure out if PB’s Megan slipcovers will fit on my Ikea Hendriksdal chairs when I come across the IkeaHacker blog – a nifty resource for how to modify Ikea products for other uses (repurposing). After looking through their projects, I may try dyeing the current slipcovers.
Living Room
Our house is coming together so I thought I’d show you some before & after pictures. The first is of our living room before we bought the house, then the way it currently looks. The walls are now cafe au lait instead of Band-Aid, the club chairs & coffee table are from CraigsList, wooden chair from an Englishwoman’s yard sale, rug is from HomeGoods, and our Ektorp sofa from Ikea will be replaced soon. (The 2-ton sectional sleeper sofa in the basement that conveyed with our house has been recently extracted, so we’ll be moving our current sofa & loveseat downstairs f
or TV watching). I recently came across Bemz, which offers Ikea slipcovers in alternative fabrics, but I don’t think new slipcovers would make this set look any less slouchy. I have sagey-olive silk to make valances. Notice the birch “tree” in the back left corner, courtesy of Cheryl’s neighbors who had put the broken-off branch out for the trash. (Have I mentioned my bird-tree-leaf-berry-acorn fetish?) You may also notice the lovely ceiling fan which we have used exactly never and sorely need on the adjacent screen porch where it will be moved. Dad recently helped us replace our dining room chandelier, so now that we know how to change them out, the rest of the brass light fixtures’ days are numbered. Fortunately, there’s a Habitat For Humanity store locally that can use stuff like that.
Sleeping porch
We did our camp cooking on Monday, and last night I got to do another fun part of camping (without actually going): I slept on the rattan sofa on our screened porch. It was surprisingly quiet given the major road that runs by our house, and the best part was falling asleep smelling honeysuckle. I’m not sure if it was real or imagined, but I felt like mosquitoes were around so I finally headed inside around 4am. Riley slept on the loveseat and had no interest in heading inside with me. I’m sure she was up and watching the birds (her favorite pastime) at dawn.
Salt=soft, lime=hard
After a month of showering in chlorinated water and having water spots on everything, we decided to have Culligan install a water treatment system. Our old house was old (140) with small bedrooms and even smaller closets, but it had filtered water and the kitchen and bath storage were better then than they are now.
Our new master bathroom is about the size of the bedrooms in our old house, but the new shower is about the size of a closet in our old house. We have a whirlpool tub, which I have used exactly zero times, and what could be a dance floor in the center of the bathroom, a complete waste of space. I’m pretty sure this bathroom was designed by someone who doesn’t shave his/her legs.
New fence
Spring is on its way! Our cherry tree is ready to burst out in blossoms.
Yesterday we had an Invisible Fence installed, which means we’ll be training Riley to respect it for a few weeks. She’s agressive towards squirrels and cats, but the rest of the time she’s a ninny, so we’re hoping the latter will prevail. Right now there are rubber tips on her collar’s shock prongs so we’re training her on the leash to recognize the warning beep when she gets close to the boundary.
I decided to try the invisible fence because it will make mowing a lot easier, won’t cut this shared flower bed in half, and ultimately was so much less expensive than a wood fence that we’ve been shopping for a new TV with the savings. Notice that the grass in this picture is mostly the neighbor’s yard, and along the right side of the picture (behind the tree) it turns brown. That’s our side of the line and a shady area, so we’ve got some lawn work to do! My mom came over to tell me what I should prune and weed, which was really helpful. I asked her to come sip iced tea and wave her hand (i.e. not do any work), but she couldn’t resist digging in the dirt with me.