"In The Nick Of Time"

Christmas ideas from Better Homes and Gardens Home Celebrations magazine 2000. Photographer was Mike Dieter.

Give people a peek at what is going to be their gift. Use fabric stiffener, called draping liquid, to give the outer peekaboo box it's shape. You place the gift box inside the stiffened fabric box.

  

Small containers turned into candles make great mantle arrangements or centerpieces when grouped together. Use vintage egg cups, candy dishes, teacups and bud vases to fill them using a candle making kit from a craft store.

 

Dress a bottle of wine with simple paper and tissue wrap.

        

Wrap a journal with textured paper and whimsical wire shapes for a one of a kind gift.

Turn store bought spices into a personal gift by putting them in a fabric pouch tied with cording and a leaf and a cinnamon stick.

 

Tabletop Christmas trees make great hostess gifts, place-setting decorations or favors for a dinner party.

COUNTRY in the CITY

Designer, Sandy Koepke, gave her Beverly Hills home a farmhouse look. Her home was featured in the September 2007 issue of Country Home magazine and the photographer was Edmund Barr. As a child, Sandy learned to appreciate flea markets with their vintage castoffs. She has always loved crusty farm tables, old frames and lamps made from rusty salvage. She became a interior designer and and moved to Los Angeles 30 some odd years ago.  About 12 years ago she purchased a 1927 Spanish home and transformed it into a "farmhouse" full of wanted imperfections. She turned her urban yard into a courtyard and used French doors and enlarged windows inside. She raised the ceiling to the roofline and added rustic beams and used coats of Venetian plaster with a hint of color on her walls. Rusty tin ceiling tiles became a backsplash and old mismatched glass doors replaced a wall. Discarded grates turned into tables and she covered her lampshades in old linens.

Sandy tore out the grass and concrete yard to make an outdoor dining room and kitchen. She bought two 8x10 foot leaded glass windows from an estate sale and enstalled them in deep trenches suppoted by rebar. The crunch of the gravel underfoot reminds Sandy of provence.

She tore out a wall to expand her kitchen and a new armoire brought unfitted style to the room.

Some upper cabinets were replaced with open shelves.

The vertical refrigerator was replaced with an undercounter model. Floors and walls were covered with pine boards and treated with a thick gel-based stain, then wiped down to look worn.

 

She took one corner of the kitchen and made it into a laundry room. Curtains were made from old linen sheets to conceal the Italian made Ariston appliances.

 

Sandy turned an old chicken coop into magazine storage. She cleaned and stripped the piece to reveal the old, mellow wood finish. A collection of weather vanes and a lead window, frame up a cozy living room corner.

She hinged two mismatched glass doors and replaced a wall between the living room and her home office letting light flood both sides. The large mirror's frame is made from shutter doors. The slipcovers were made from French linen sheets.

In the dining room a portion of the wall was removed and replaced with French doors.

Pottery and glass handed down from family and friends is displayed in the cupboard. Sometimes the cake platter holds soaps in the bathroom or a bowl of flowers at the front door.

She turned a windowless dressing room and closet into a sunny bath. She used an old buffet for a vanity and used antique ceiling tiles as tub siding. Fancy French fixtures show their bare bulbs.

She upholstered her headboard with linen. She laid a piece of old textile between the box spring and mattress for a bed skirt.

Her outdoor fireplace hearth was raised high enough that the fire could be seen and enjoyed from inside the house as well as the patio. The space becomes an outdoor room with a tiled floor and cushy seating.

Today I had my surgery and got my porta cath for chemo.

I am hurting as a result of the surgery and part of my lung deflated and had to be re-inflated. Not a picnic but it is over and I thought that posting something on the blog would get my mind off of it for a while, which it did.

Paint It Pretty

Two decorative painters share their secrets for filling their home and studios with fresh color. Country Home's photographer was Reed Davis.

They covered the walls of the living room in a creamy yellow as a backdrop to white linen slipcovered club chairs. They used antique but sturdy linen bed sheets for slipcover and upholstery fabric. The sheer white shades came from Pottery Barn diffusing the light while letting the walls and white painted wood floors glow.

 

In one of their studios they apply gold leaf to a French-style chair. In the entry of their home, two American farmhouse chairs flank a Swedish-style armoire and framed woodcuts balance the grouping. They store their beloved Red Wing crocks on top.

On either side of the windows, they made panels by using quarter-round strips of molding, hanging wallpaper inside. Other options are stenciling inside the panels or hanging groups of prints inside the panels.
  

They used butcherblock counters from IKEA with custom-made green cabinets. They used left over pieces from the counters to make the open shelf that acts as a substitute for upper cabinets. Stainless steel appliances were chosen for their sleek look.

For daily color inspiration they lined the shelves of their utility room with lime-washed terra-cotta pots and jars of pigment. The countertop is made from galvanized metal. They stitched an under-counter skirt from old French dish towels.

Extra clothes storage was built into unused space beside the dormer. In true-blue Swedish style, they painted a thin line around each drawer for definition.

They didn't have to paint the weathered drop-leaf table.

The wall color started out as sky-blue and they added black and brown until they reached a subtle shade. They added drawers under the window seat for extra storage.

                                                          5 Paint Tips From the Pros

Lined with gold. Give wood furniture the royal treatment by outlining its edges in gold paint.
Freshen floors. Add a coat of clear paint and a clear water-based varnish when floors show their age.
Keep it subtle. For an easy tone-on-tone stenciled effect, first paint the wall. Then lighten the wall color with 25 percent white and use that for the stencil.
Beaded Beauty. White painted beaded board, now available in strips or sheets adds architecture at a fraction of the cost of tile or custom paneling.
Mess around. Buy a sample or a quart of paint to play with color before you commit.

Cozy Places

On these Fall days, especially the cloudy, rainey days, it is important to find a cozy place to gather your thoughts and perhaps read a book or magazine or just listen to the quiet. Our days are often given over to others and we do not give ourselves the peaceful retreat we need to help us stay mentally and physically healthy. So I selected a couple of places I think might be the kind of place we need, for such as this.

The first place started, out of all thngs, as a henhouse. The 1200 square foot structure was turned into a home, in eastern Long Island. Country Home's photograher was Carter Berg. Paint was the strategic thing that made this conversion work. Every inch of the chicken coop's walls and floors were painted. Next came upholstered furniture and cushy pillows and rugs.

Even the art prints on the wall are farm prints.

Next lets look at a cozy place in Jane Bescherer's New England home. She wanted her home to remain rustic and even left her window frames that way. The Country Home photographer was John Gruen. Even the unusual rush chaise is antique. Look at the book nook as I call it. It is just inviting you to come in, sit down and curl up with a good book.

         
                                                               Happy rest, relaxation and reading!

Floral Arts and Crafts

Photography by Andrew Macul for Country Living magazine. I don't usually get into the Arts and Crafts thing but some times you come across some fun and easy things you can make to enrich your life or someone else's so here goes.

 This first picture calls for a canning jar planted with real or artificial hydrangeas blossoms. The jars are decorated by stacking one beaded bracelet on top of another and they stay in place because they are elastic. You can line them up on a table as a centerpiece and give them to guests as a favor.

This square vase holding pink peonies, tulips, red roses and chartreuse verbena is covered with stripped and polka-dotted ribbons hot glued to it.

Hot glue, colored pencils to a glass vase and fill the vase with purple and white lilacs, anemone and privet berry and tie a double faced satin ribbon around the bottom.

bouquet basics

Choose a single bloom as the focus of your bouquet and hold it in the center of your vase at the desired height. Clip the stem on an angle to let the flower drink. Continue clipping each stem so that your finished arrangement resembles an arc, or rainbow, in shape.

Is She Still There, Two Years Later?

                                THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION

Country Home magazine, in September of 2002, featured designer Liz Pierce's 700 square foot French inspired New York city apartment. Seven years later in the 2007 February issue she invited the magazine back to show how her style has evolved without starting over from scratch. I wonder if she is still there in 2009? The photographers in 2007 were, Carter Berg and Reed Davis.

Instead of starting over, Liz moves things around and puts them away. She stores furniture and accessories so when they return they look fresh. She rethinks her scheme by changing out fabrics. Then she had white slipcovers in the living room area.      BEFORE.

The living room area now has some pattern and print on some of the furniture. She replaced a small round wooden coffee table with a small silver drum table. She upholstered a screen in a print to mimic a portrait gallery making it a focal point and a room divider. The visual trick makes a narrow space seem bigger. Liz indicated a totally open space made the loft feel smaller. She has kept the same gray palette as homage to her love of the architecture and gray skies of Paris. It provides a timeless backdrop for regrouping.
 
                                                        AFTER

                                                                                                                                             

 

In the studio, she broke her rule of vintage decorating only by putting a Philippe Starck "Louis Ghost" chair to pair with her antique desk. The see through chairs are helpful in making a room less crowded. And she likes mixing the see through chairs with an old farm table. She uses wall space to create interest in her huge book collection.

  
                                BEFORE was the fussier look of florals, stripes, leopard and toiles.

AFTER:  prints rule. Mixing patterns can be fun as long as they are in the same color family. For a guest nook, blue connects the paisley with the fleur-de-lis.

BEFORE: the master bedroom had toile, red checks and leopard print in it.

AFTER: in the master bedroom, red connects the dots. Liz chose red for it's masculine and feminine appeal.

Liz believes in tossing in a few playful objects such as the life sized mannequin in the bedroom. If you look at the base of it you will see piles of French literature.

Taping up favorite flea market art work achieves instant display gratification. There are no rules. Liz moved her favorite garden urn with Mexican spirit balls from the living room floor and paired them with stone doves and sophisticated silver antiques for warmth and texture. Liz indicated if she could, she would have a million statues.

 

                                             We wish her well wherever she is now living.