My computer.

My computer is getting worked on right now and will be gone for 3 weeks, so I am posting this post to imform everyone.
Thanks for the support, I will be back in 3 weeks.

After Xmas, Trying To Put Humpty Dumpty Together Again!

I am trying to put things back the way they were in my home before Christmas or make it better. I have not taken down the tree yet but pretty much everything else is in good shape. So I thought I would show you my before and afters and if you have not started then maybe I will give you the incentive you need to start on your home.

  The closet was in such array that it had to be cleaned up before anything else could be stored in it.

I am, for the first time, actually glad my pictures turned out blurred.

 

Looking pretty bad!

                                                                                YUCK!

Looking better. I placed the little lanterns that were on the hunt table on the kitchen bar.

I removed the blue and white table cloth from the table and added some orange flowers to my green roses to give the table scape a cleaner look getting ready for Spring and wanting to tie the orange flowers in with the apricot velvet curtains that are being made to fit inside the ivory satin embroidered curtains across the same room.

I took the sequiened fruit out of the cloche.

The citrus scene is gone. The hunt table has been cleaned up.

The silver balls and beads have been removed from the apothacary jar and replaced with sequiened fruit and sugared apricot colored apples.

I placed my two little minature oil paintings on top of my fridge.

I cleaned up the hearth. The hurricane lamps with candles and silver beads are gone and my coffee sack pillows and pictures of my children are on the hearth.

I placed some lime green and white balls in with my silver balls in my bowl.

I replaced the blue and white bowl that held my white flowers with a cut-glass bowl. The white leather gloves
that are under the books and angel, have delicately cut-out designs on them and were worn at my wedding.

I think things are looking better even though I still have not tackled the tree yet! Later.

A Home I would Love To See First Hand

I am so excited about this post. I don't know where to start or where to end. This is the neatest couple and the home they built is so cozy and inviting to me. Even though I basically like "the Joni Webb look", this home that is infused with so much color is just great!

Where to start. The pictures taken by John Granen in October 2007 for Traditional Home magazine and the story that goes with them are of a couple of empty-nesters. He had been a neurologist and she a designer previously. But they reinvented themselves as restaurateurs. They have 2 restaurtants and a bakery.

When they built their Europen home they combined smooth patinas with nubby textures and modern marterials with antique furniture. Below are double doors salvaged from a French children's clothing shop and they open to the foyer. Concrete steps inside the doors lead up to the main living area. This is a 3,000 square foot home. The stairs open to a 42x25- foot room with thirteen and one-half  foot high ceilings. The couple wanted the kitchen, dining room and living room to be all one big space. The home is grounded by a fireplace at one end and a range hood at the other. The custom doors are eight and one-half feet high and topped with transoms. There is a stairway and an elevator that lead to the living area. The handrail of the stairs is wrapped in jute rope which is just another way of juxtaposing textures. All of the floors are natural color concrete that have a beeswax derivative applied as finish, with water pipes under the floor that warm the  house with hydronic radiant heat. 

An old kitchen table was shortened and painted to make the living room coffee table. Shelves of books, comfortable fabrics and antique furniture give the rooms warmth.

    

The way the furniture is grouped  does what often times is done with rugs. It defines the dining and living areas of the large room with the kitchen designated by the unusual range hood. The food themed mural in the kitchen shows some pattern.

A table base that did not have a top, that was changed to a tree at a yard sale, was reinvented as a 96x39-inch island. It had to be made taller and longer so it would not be dwarfed. The wood base was topped by a large slab of marble in addition to a 36-inch stretch of butcher block. The marble throughout the house was  salvaged from an old bank building. The 78-inch round dining table that can seat 14 people is a plywood top mounted on table base from Goodwill. A table cloth hides the plywood and the chair legs.

      

Columns support a loggia on the front of the house.

Two old tables slipcovered with water resistant fabric make up the dining surface on the loggia. The chairs came from garage sales and second hsand shops. She pieced together old lamp parts to make the loggia's chandelier.

 

In the master bedroom, there is a huge, beautiful mirror. The lady's grandmother made the petit point on the chair. An old metal barrel with a sheet of glass serves as a side table.

The lady likes warm colors and natural fabrics and uses pillows and upholstery for texture and color.

 

   In the master bath, the vanity top is salvaged marble.The base is made of acrylic poles and decorative lamp parts.

The lady who built this home, worked for 22 years as an interior designer in California and Washington before retiring, to run two restaurants and a bakery with her husband. She emphasizes color and a "little bit of theater" when she designs. I think it is so neat that second hand shops and garage sales have been her favorite shopping places giving clients as well as her own home, one of a kind finds. Her design career blossomed in the early seventies when she worked at a South Pasadena, California design studio. When she moved to Spokane, Washington in 1978, she operated a design business until 1993.

 I hope you liked her home as much as I do. When I looked at the big picture of her living area, I thought that if the colorful pillows and the colorful upholstered chair were removed from the room, it might serve Joni Webb well in a second home near Round Top, Texas.  Naturally we would need to give her a seagrass rug for it and a huge lantern hanging over the coffee table! You guys, please let me know what you think of the home.  Today was chemo day so I will check you later. I think I am going to bed for a while.

Putting Up New Pics And A Coat Holder From Xmas Sales

In my last post, I talked about purchasing things at Hobby Lobby's after Christmas sale. Well, for what it is worth, the duplex I rent has a purple painted hall bathroom. I have to say that if I were going to select a purple to use it would have been this purple, but suffice to say I would not paint a bath purple. There used to be a towel holder on one of the walls but it broke off and I have not been inclined to replace it and it has been an eye sore from day one.

THE EYE SORE

                                                        The eye sore covered!
                                Even better is more cover!!

Well with cancer, it looks like that is as close as I will get to ever being in Paris!

Hark a blank wall in my hallway.

I have needed a coat rack forever so now I have one.

My infamous coat rack.

                                                                        Later.

Twas The Day After Christmas

OK, I couldn't contain myself and I joined the "throngs" of people scouting out good after Xmas sales.
I wound up at Hobby Lobby. Well, who would have guessed. And yes I bought things. I got lots of peel and stick lettering for Brooke to use in her room because she wants to put the Walt Whitman saying from his poem from the movie, The Notebook in her room. My document pillows and dogs had to get into the act.

And I needed something to hang coats on so I found a great little sign for that. And I needed some pictures to deocorate the hall bath so I found them. And I bought a bunch of atrificial artichokes but did not take a picture of them yet since I have to wait for a beautiful day to spray paint them white to go in my apothicary jar. That will be good for a post by itself! 

And I really scored on fruit that looks like glass for under the clouche along with a spray of grapes, artichokes, pomagranets, etc.  

I think the little bath sign and bathtub sign that says Paris on it and also has a postage stamp on it will go great in the hall bath.

                                      So I am going to use my little rooster to hang coats on.

I removed the sequined fruit and just put more silver in the jar for now.

I took the silver beads out of this jar. The little hand-carved wooden angel was my Christmas present from my daughter, Jenny. The angel is on her knees praying. Jenny told me that everynight when she says prayers with her three children they pray for grandma to get better.

I was able to add more silver balls to my bowl.

 

Here is the cloche I mentioned with the spray along side it.

 

I had to come home with a beautiful Santa that will stay out year round.

This is a much better picture of the notorious red lamp and shade fiasco!

                              I hope everyone had a good Xmas and did not eat too much! Later.

New Arrivals/Additions To My Home

I purchased a beautiful cloche and made two burlap coffee sacks pillows. I ordered all of this online along with a yard of Ballard Design document fabric and have made one pillow out of it so far but there will be more coming. I love that fabric! And it has not arrived yet, but I ordered the Ballard Design poem rug. I also purchased the Wisteria metal book box. It looks like old books but when you open it, it is really a box! But my favorite gift I received was from my new sister-in-law and that is my beautiful handmade warm-up wrap that I did a post on recently. Oh, I love her!