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Summer beginnings

May 27, 2018 Marie Leave a Comment

Low-key weekend for us, so far. Between the Little Mr and I, we’re quite the pair of sickly things. He started a few weeks ago with an ear infection and we thought we were good until earlier this week when he started complaining about the other ear – so, back to the doctor we went. Turns out the ear he said was hurting was actually fine and might have had just a small infection but the other ear – the one that was originally a problem a few weeks ago – was a RAGING ear infection. Oy. Between that and the sinus infection I’m fighting off we’re both in quite the mood.

So with what, we’ve been relegated to taking things slow. We got an early start Saturday and actually got our garden planting done. Well, the Mr got it done. I mostly showed up to plant flowers, lol. I debated on driving up to Wooster to the Great Lakes Fiber Show and load up on pretty yarns, but I’m working on being realistic with myself right now on a. how much yarn one actually needs and b. how much yarn I can actually use given how little I get to knit anymore. So I spent a lot of the rest of the day wandering the house wondering what to do with myself, and ultimately watched movies and snuggled the munchkin.

Today, determined to do something other than sit in front of the TV being pathetic on this holiday weekend, I chopped up a pound of strawberries and poured some blackcurrant balsamic vinegar in a canning jar and we snacked away on the porch while watching the world go by (and knitting, but a worsted wool sweater on a 90 degree day was a poor choice). BTW, that blackcurrant vinegar and strawberry combo is amazing if you pair it with some bread and cheese like little appetizers!

I started reading The Bear and the Nightingale this weekend, too. It was on my “to read” list, and Amazon Kindle has it for only $2 so it seemed fated for perfect holiday weekend reading. So far I’m loving it – it’s a book that I don’t want to put down and stop reading, but at the same time I don’t want to plow through it and finish it in a single day, either. So I bounce between a chapter or two of that, and a few rows of complicated chart knitting, and then back again.

Let’s all embrace our shitty decor style

August 13, 2017 Marie Leave a Comment

I have spent countless hours on the internet, scouring for ideas for my house. What bathroom colors should I go with? What’s on trend? What goes with the age/style of my house? Do I even need to stay with the style of my house? After all, I see so many people modernizing older homes and it looks fabulous… but can I bring myself to do the same?

What about my bedroom – wood floors or carpet? Do I attempt to strip and salvage my oak floors hiding under carpet? Do I leave them their honey-colored original hue, or do I stain them darker because it’s trendy? Do I go with a light, airy vibe like I see so much on various home blogs? Or do I stick with darker, more grown-up shades for the walls and bedding? Would I ever be willing to paint my gorgeous antique dresser (the answer is always no – I hate when people paint perfectly good wood furniture, especially antique stuff).

I’ve agonized over all the stupid little details. Worried about whether my updates are appealing to other people, even though they’re not the ones that live here. Worried that I can’t choose certain colors for rooms because it doesn’t go with the rest of the house. I’ve spent so much time thinking about all the options instead of just going with my gut and what I like and want to live with.

My contractor, when we first began talking about the renovations, mentioned somewhat hesitantly that my house was “eclectic.” I remember feeling a bit put off by that assessment, because I felt it implied that my decorating style sucked. Eclectic, like it was a bad thing. I’m sure he probably didn’t mean it that way at all, but I’m a woman after all and tend to jump to the worst conclusion.

But in a (virtual) sea of perfectly decorated, on-trend home inspiration and every room “flowing” together, eclectic means my house is my own. I reached a point over the weekend where I gave the middle finger to the internet and the trends. I reached a new level of fed up and decided to stop making myself feel shitty about my home and embrace my “eclectic” style. My home isn’t decorated magazine-perfect. You’ll probably never see photos of my house used in advertisements anywhere. But it’s ours. It makes us happy.

The walls, with all their imperfections of a 100 year old house, display family photos, artwork we love, and a Doctor Who poster. The furniture doesn’t all match, but it’s what we’ve got until we find something we like enough (and money) to replace it with. My antique dresser has been with me since I was a kid, and every time I polish it up with some oil the rich colors come out in the prettiest way. My craft room houses my favorite pieces: my grandmother’s sewing machine/cabinet and my mom’s rocking chair she was given by that same grandmother when I was born. My quilt rack was made by a coworker’s wife for me, and displays the quilts we’ve been given, we’ve inherited, or I’ve made. My piano was free from a relative, and we get to enjoy the sounds of Declan playing it and making up his own songs from time to time. The kitchen isn’t perfect, but I fell in love with it when we moved in and it has been home to many culinary adventures, not to mention hours spent there dancing and singing and playing with Declan.

All the rooms have their own personality, and we’re the ones that tie it all together. A house is made by the physical structure – the wood, the siding, the roof, etc. A home is made by the people and things that live there. And no one cares that your decor isn’t up to date enough because they’re not the ones living there. And your kids aren’t going to care that your house is dated, because they’re too busy being kids (or moody teenagers who probably don’t even want to be home, anyway) to say anything.

My point is, let’s all embrace our shitty decor because the things that are in our home aren’t nearly as important as the people, the moments, and the memories.

Slowly coming together

August 12, 2017 Marie Leave a Comment

Finally, after 2 weeks, we have a somewhat finished bathroom. There’s lots to finish still, of course, but we’ve moved past just a shower to a working sink and toilet. The walls still need finished painted, the mirror and sconces hung, the trim finished, etc etc etc. But I feel like we finally have some major progress. I’m so in love with how bright this room is, now. When it’s all done I’ll show you a before and after – the bathroom was seriously awful. Just awful. And we lived with it for so long, so it’s nice to have something lovely now.

Today I DIY’d some mercury glass dishes for the bathroom. Since everything is so…. new, I wanted old-looking touches without it looking too farmhouse. (I really don’t like the farmhouse trend, and it’s hard to get away from it because everyone and everything you find at the stores is farmhouse now.) I picked up some candy dishes at the local thrift store – two, just in case I screwed one up. Have to say… I’m pretty much in love with them. SO PRETTY! And so easy, too. A can of “Mirror Effect” paint, a 1/2 and 1/2 mix of water and white vinegar in a spray bottle, and some paper towels. Spray a coat of the mirror paint on, let it sit for about a minute, spritz a light amount of water on it and dab gently with the paper towel. Repeat until you get the look you want. I coated the inside of them after they dried with a crystal clear spray to seal it up.

The dishes will most likely go onto a shelf – either a floating shelf above the toilet, or I’m hoping to pick up a white cabinet to go in a corner to store our towels now that we’ve lost our linen closet to make room for the 2nd floor laundry. I’ll probably use them to store my makeup remover pads, so they’re functional, too. I have another one drying right now that is a round vase – I saw this gorgeous mercury glass vase with white faux flowers in it that I loved, but the $100+ price tag was a big fat no. So I’m hoping to recreate it, too. I paid about $9 for the mirror spray at Lowes, and the jars were $3 each. The round vase maybe $2. So less than $20 and I’ve got my own DIY’d version :)

Sometimes you just need to reconfigure a room

August 6, 2017 Marie Leave a Comment

This week… where to even begin. Literally if it can go wrong, it has.

I fractured my hand at the gym. Put too much weight on my left hand, didn’t keep my whole hand on the floor, and popped my thumb backwards. Avulsion fracture right at the base of my thumb, and the upper joint of my thumb isn’t too great either from hyper extending it. Luckily it’s something that will heal without surgery and in the meantime I’m just in a splint to keep the Little Mr from bumping it and injuring it further.

Renovations on the full bath upstairs started Monday. We knew we’d be without a shower for a few days, so we’ve been making do – washing my hair in the kitchen sink, for example, and I’ve borrowed my sister’s shower when we got really gross and washcloth baths weren’t cutting it. We were originally told Thursday we’d have a working shower, so at the very least with the rest of it not done we could still shower in the mornings. Thursday became Friday, of course, because all renovations take more time than you think they will. Friday…. well, Friday we thought we were all set. No one as the house when we got home, probably because they wanted to get out of work a bit early on a Friday (and who can blame them). The shower was all cleaned out and the curtain rod installed, so we figured that was our sign to take a shower. Soooooo the Mr decides to be the first to use it while I sit on the porch drinking wine with a friend. He comes downstairs and there’s water everywhere. Just pouring out of the ceiling in my dining room.

I, of course, immediately take photographic evidence and email it to the contractor. Apparently there was some concern that the drain pipe might have cracked, but when they cleaned it out for us there wasn’t any leaking so they figured it was fine. Never mind that the house is nearly 100 years old and the drain pipe probably should have been replaced at the same time as the tub… I’m not a contractor, of course, but I just kind of feel like that should go hand-in-hand if you have any remote concerns about it. Because I’d totally hate to get everything installed and then 2 weeks later end up with this problem. We’re very irritated, as you can imagine.

In the meantime, between all of this, our hot water heater broke, just a few months past the 9 year warranty. Because of course it did.

I’m trying to keep my spirits up, but this is all wearing on me. I can’t find anything I need in the mornings because boxes of bathroom things are everywhere. The half bath downstairs isn’t 100% finished, so I have no storage shelves to stash my cleaning supplies and extra toilet paper. And all of it sitting in my craft room means I don’t even have space to work on the quilt I need to finish. I cried – outright cried – yesterday. I want my house back. I want everything to look nice and not covered in a ridiculous amount of dust daily. I want a bathroom with a working shower. I feel like I’m reaching my limit on all of this.

So today I attempted to reclaim a bit of my house back. I’m armed with paint swatches, a new comforter set I want to order from Wayfair, and some plans. I took an old, gross armchair we’ve dragged with us for far too long to the curb, which freed up a chunk of space. We moved the bed back in front of the windows (where it originally sat when we moved in 9 years ago), and I moved my dresser to the wall where the bed was. I fell in love with this antique mirror at the Goodwill ($6.99!), thinking I’d use it in the half bathroom, but it turned out that the frame right down the middle is problematic for a bathroom mirror. So, instead, I moved it on top of the dresser where, it turns out, it’s nearly a perfect match. The walls will eventually get repainted, carpet replaced, and that new comforter will get ordered, and then maybe I’ll have this room exactly where I want it. But, for now, I feel like I’ve been super productive and I’ve gotten the room back to some semblance of put together.

Here’s hoping this week goes better than this last one.

Little things

July 2, 2017 Marie Leave a Comment

New porch set. Wine. Knitting. The breeze. Fresh berries to snack on right next to me.