The Ultimate Francophile

Pictures are not always worth a thousand words. I think there are times when we can appreciate someone's words every bit as much as we can pictures. Traditional Homes magazine's May 1999 issue featured a story  about a couple that in essence is a story that froze their lives in time, because we do not know if they are still living their dream life.

Their name was Powers and the wife, Bonnie was the ultimate Francophile in my book. Her husband  was a OB/GYN and a lover of wine. Bonnie embraced his love of wine. The author of the article, Doris Athineos, did such a fine job writing this piece that I would rather quote her as much as posssible than paraphrase. She deserves the credit. The photographer was Jenifer Jordan and she did a great job on the pictures.

When Bonnie's husband began collecting Burgandy, Boedeaux, and Provence, she wanted to be a good French chef.  At the time, she was 35 years old and had two young daughters. "To some, that would have meant a few cooking lessons at Le Cordon Bleu.  But Bonie studied French history at the University of Dallas, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1990. She had to have a sense of the French before she could do a good job on cooking. After that, she could speak francais with the kind of accent that would elicit praise from French waiters and shopkeepers."

"Visiting Bonnie Powers in North Dallas didn't require a passport, but it should have. The flavors, fragrances, and colors of Provence would come alive in the French country-style farmhouse that Bonnie built and named Le mas aux volets verts (the house with green shutters). She made sububan Dallas feel like the South of France-even before the Cote du Ventoux would begin to flow. Her secret was to stir the senses the way a sous chef does roux. Bonnie was quoted as saying she "believed French life was all about wonderful tastes, smells, and colors, like the the warm, doughy aroma of freshly baked baguettes."

       

"In the kitchen cabinet were six different kinds of salt (La Fleur de Sel was her favorite) and sugar in different flavors and colors. She had two refrigerators for condiments like black olives with herbes de Provence, the cognac hard sauce, the tapenade, and green pepper corn Dijon mustard. A dozen copper pots dangled from a pot rack overhead.

   

"They decided it was more practical to live year-round in a Provential-style home in Dallas than part-time in France. Bonnie, with the help of builder, Chuck Shaw, designed and built a honey-colored stone mas that was inspired by the centuries-old farmhouses found in the Vaucluse area of Southern France. Austin chalk stone was too gray. Provencal  colors were seen throughout the V-shaped house. To mimic the honey-colored stone found in southern France, the Powerses carted rocks from the Arbuckle Mountains in Oklahoma, just north of the Red River. The shutters were painted turquoise, because Provencal farmers were convinced that the color kept flies away."   

"Bonnie gathered potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and garlic from her potager. A sample menu  was Troucha (a Swiss chard omelet appetizer), ragout d' agne au aux artichants (lamb stew with artichokes), and pommes au Muscat de Beaumes de Venise (Provential-style baked apples) with lavender madeleines. For ten years, Bonnie kept a planning menu so her guests were never served the same thing twice. 

 

"A pottery-shard inlaid tabletop by Robert Bellamy sat amid echinacea, English daisies, and steel blue echinops."

  

"Aromatic herbs dominated the wild garden known as the garrique. A melange of minty hyssop, rosemary, sage, and thyme added a spicy bouquet. A pebble path would alert the Powers when visitors arrived."

A wisteria basked in the sun.

A Doric column found in the South France.

Bonnie stated, "Hardly anything she grew was for show. She indicated she used everything in her garden." "She said you could almost eat the whole yard." 

She set a beautiful table.

 

"In the couple's bedroom was a memory board with souvenirs from trips to Provence and Pais. The walnut hunt board, known as a gibier. was found in an antiques shop in Dallas."

   

To me, the neatest part of this story is that Jim and Bonnie made annual pilgimages to Paris. Bonnie zeroed in on the history of appartments and hotels they planned to stay in. The Dictionnaire Historique des Rues de Paris gave the history of every street in Paris so that you could figure out exactly who lived at a certain address as far back as 1550.

I don't know about you but I am a hopeless romantic and I pray this couple is still living the charmed life!

later. 

A Fabric Re-Do

What a difference a little fabric can make. My diningroom/breakfast room chairs are covered in an orange and gold fabric. My table is the Ballard Design sculptured ancanthus leaf table.

                             The drapes are cream silk with orange embroirdered flowers on them.

The orange and cream flowers on the hunt table in the diningroom pulled it all together.

  

My livingroom, that flows into the diningroom, had ocean blue drapes and matching blue throw pillows. I forgot to take a picture of the blue drapes before I took them down. But the blue pillow in the picture is the same color as the drapes were.

   

  
                     And here are my new custom Liz Claiborne Breda Orange/apricot velvety drapes!

     Here is a pic of one of the throw pillows. My camera is not showing how rich and beautiful the color is.

This is closer to the real rich color.

xoxo,

later

Not Gone Forever

I recently read a blog that said if you do not blog for a whole month then people will think you have shut down your blog. I have not blogged for a month but I have not shut down my blog. I was taking chemo and was totally convinced I was dying. It does that to me every time.

I have some little critters that take it upon themselves to nurture me and love me. They are more like people than critters to me.

Their names are Honey, Sugar and Precious. Honey looks like she dipped her nose in the milk bowl and no one cleaned it off. She is very sensitive to people's feelings. She follows you to the restroom and sits behind the toilet and waits until your nausea passes and makes sure you are ok. 

Sugar is like a 5 lbs. bag of sugar....just pure love. She came from an abusive home. So if you put her on her back she will stay there until you move her. She loves to have her belly rubbed. She just loves being loved period. She hides from strangers and cowers under furniture and barks.

Precious...oh yes, the man who sold her to us tried to warn us about her. She weighs 2.5 lbs. and when she looks at you it is like she has piercing eyes that look right through you, indignantly. She is a lover and she has no idea how small she is. Precious speaks to people and believes she is speaking English. If she wants something that does not belong to her, she will growl, grunt, gruff and bark loudly until she gets her way.

Precious has delicate bones. Everything about her is so tiny. But the intense personality is what makes her so precious so it was not difficult to name her. She is what she is!

And below is Sugar posing!

So what is up with the flowers? Well there is a wonderful grandaughter living with me. I have had her with me almost all of her life. When the chemo started to make me ill, she just took it upon herself to water the flowers as well as care for me totally. She never in the past, ever liked my caring for flowers. So this told me she not only loves me but appreciates beautiful things in life.

I am trying to view all the blogs I have received which is considerable because I follow lots of bloggers. But I hope to post again soon. Here is wishing all of you a great day!

xoxo,
later.

"Some Things Will And Won't Join The Dance"

The title of my post is a quote from Barry Dixon. I just love it because when you are decorating or better yet re-decorating a home this is so true! These pictures are of a home in Maryland featured in the April 2008 Veranda magazine. The photographs were taken by Tria Giovan.

Whether we act as our own interior designer or retain a designer's help, we have to make the decision as to what pieces of our furniture will make the cut and which will go by the wayside. The last time I did this before I sold my home, I found that I cound use most of my furniture once I had the pieces re-upholstered.   

These neutrals are beautiful and calming.

I love the rectangular ottoman.

I found a fabric almost identical to the damask of gold and salmon color on these chairs in the swatches book from my upholsterer's for $34. a yard. It was an outdated swatch book but since the upholster had already quoted it to me, he sold it to me taking a loss on his fabric.  That being said I realized I could cover an Italinate chair and a barrel chair in that same fabric and have them blend together beautifully.

 

Who would not give their eye teeth for a bookcase and antique settee like this?

How do you view the color in these pictures? To me it is an orange color. 

I would never come out of that bath tub...no way!

Well, maybe I could be convinced to leave the bath to sleep in the bedroom above. 

Note the cloches, jars and jugs.

I wonder how many square feet we are talking about here?

And I wonder how many rooms there are here all totalled?

Front view of the house.

And the rear view of the house.

later.

Lanterns, lanterns and more lanterns!

I don't lnow about you but I can never collect enough lanterns. They speak of romance and beauty. These came from Veranda, April 2008. Pics by Deborah Whitlaw Llewellyn. Photographed at Atlanta Botanical Garden.

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The Federalist's Hanging Outdoor Globe lantern, modeled on an 1850 Boston light and made by an New England craftsman. Hinkley lighting's hanging treanslucent ribbed glass Pear light. Based on a carriage light design, and Fourteenth Colony Lighting's #3632-1 is solid copper with seeded glass.        

Vaughan's 38" Gothic style Castellated lantern with a verdigris finish. Fine Art Lamps' 44" Beekman Place lantern with handblown seedy glass. JH Lighting's L-2 French Lantern. 

  

Arte de Mexico's black rust #PM 171-4 and it's 29" antique umber #PM M8-1

 

Ironware International's #720 lantern 

 

Carolina's Lantern's #21 copper Pawley's Island Lantern from from private reserve collection.

Fourteenth Colony Lightings path light echos style of 18th-c Copenhagen light.

Beveolo's 27" Italianate lantern with custom iron bracket.

Me. I like my Goodwill lanterns that both cost under five dollars.  

Which do you like best?  

  

Before and After and McBlinky

To say I am computer illiterate is an understatement. I cannot do McBlinky (not sure of spelling). But I have 3 before and afters to post. Some of my befores were not taken soon enough.

A dear friend who lives in the country brought me a real bird's nest. A freeby! I went to Goodwill twice recently and struck gold both times once finding a cloche with a teak wood base that cost $1.99 and the other time, I bought a white metal bird cage, with a bent spoke and no way to open the cage and get inside but I figured I could find something to fit inside the bent spoke and it only cost $2.99.

A day or so after my finds, I had to go to the hospital for injections (complications of chemo) and I went inside the gift shop. As Julia Roberts says in the movie, Pretty Woman, "Big mistake, HUGE MISTAKE", because I bought a packet of blue speckled bird's eggs for $11.00.

 

   
                                                                          Well that looks good.

Next, I tried all kinds of objects in the cloche but they didn't do anything for me. Finally, I placed a silk flower inside it and it sang to me! 

                                               

Now for the bird cage. I went back to the hospital for another injection and stuck my nose back inside the gift shop and to my dismay there was a wreath with tiny green speckled eggs attached to it along the sides with blue ribbon and empty little bird's nests attached to the wreath that were just large enough to hold some of my blue speckled eggs. Below, you can see the bent spoke. So I bent the wreath and it slid right inside there. Next, I was able to unbend the wreath by placing my fingers inside wreath and re-shaping it. This is the finished product, a wreath with green speckled eggs attached to the sides of it and blue speckled eggs I placed in the center of the wreath and blue eggs placed inside the empty, tiny bird's nests along with the blue ribbon. I didn't try to close the spoke because it can be placed in a room in such a way as to not see the bent spoke.

                             Above, is a picture when I put my blue eggs in the tiny empty bird's nests on the wreath.

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        Here is a pic, after I added the blue eggs to the center of the wreath.

So since I am no threat to anyone because I am unable to enter my projects in McBlinky, tell me if you think they would sell if I could afford the rent a local consignment shop booth and had the money for a sellers license?????

Sorry, but I am so into the Shabby Chic Cottage Blog and the So Very Cheri Blog. I just love them don't you?

later.