Shezebo Coming Soon!

Hola!

Still alive, still here.  I have much to catch up on here and I will.  Just wanted to let you know that I purchased a "Shezebo" to anchor a chunk of my ginormous blob of concrete in the backyard.

I was inspired to call my gazebo a Shezebo because it will be my private get-away that will keep me safe from bugs (I'm one of those people with bug magnet DNA, sigh), and I think the FYE Network show "She Shed/He Shed" is so darn cute!  Lots of inspiration there for design ideas.

It should be delivered shortly after 4th of July.  Here's a photo, it's a 10x10.  For aesthetic/size reasons (in relation to size of house and size of yard), I didn't want to go with anything larger.  It will (as you can see from the sale image below) hold seating for 4 comfortably or a nice dining table.

It comes with mosquito screening and a second "rod" for privacy curtains -- but if I want to install them at some future point I will have to buy an extra "kit" of some kind of drapery hardware that goes on the rod during construction, because once the Shezebo is put together, there is no way to detach the rod to add a drapery.  Not sure I want to go that route.  I may just go with magnetic rods or velcro tape to hang future curtains.

I purchased it from Wayfair. It is Sojag's "Dakota" steel roof/aluminum body gazebo, something strong and sturdy to stand up to the winters in SE Wisconsin.  It is a permanent structure that will be anchored to my concrete patio.  I won't have to be messing with hiring somebody to put up and take down any covering(s) on a gazebo that is not a "hard top" every season.  I can't do it myself, nor would I want to even if I could!

Stay tuned.  I STILL want to show you what I did in my living room, and then what I did in Mom's kitchen - lots has happened.  I hope some sanity, peace and quiet (which I expected to have once I was retired, geez) will return to my life!

Baseball Wall Finally Painted and Guest Room More Presentable

Hola everyone!  I know I left off in the middle of writing about all the rigamarole of updating my living room last summer, I promise I will complete that in the future -- hopefully the near future.

A lot has been happening around Maison Newton, many family-oriented matters, since last summer.

For various reasons, I wanted/needed to get the guest room, this one --

Sheet over curtain rod for "curtains," black "foam" thingies on the wall
(you can see the little black "dots" to the upper left) that would not
come off with regular scrubbing/fingernail treatment.

And, of course, the "baseball wall."  Painted stark semi-gloss
white, with red "seams" painted on it, inherited from prior owner.

-- up to snuff.  It's only taken nearly two years; I moved in on July 13, 2014 and here it is, April 8, 2016, and I finally got that damn ugly wall painted!

HOORAY!

But let me tell you, it was a major (and literal) pain in the neck, and it also kicked in my sciatica, all the climbing up and down the ladder to do the cutting in and cutting in and cutting in, never-ending cutting in (or so it seemed). OUCH!  I haven't painted a wall in probably 20 years, and it was a chore, believe me!

Merry Christmas Everyone

Ho ho ho!

I'm up before dawn and caught the Star of the East just as dawn started rising over Lake Michigan.  Sorry for the blurred image, I'm not very good with this camera even after years and years but I think it's pretty cool.  I also took a quick photo of my Christmas tree lit up in my front window about 6:45 a.m.  I did not have a clear idea until this morning what it looks like from the outside!

This is looking off my side stoop that opens to my driveway, toward the southeast.  The glow of dawn can be seen roughly at the roofline of the garage and the Star of the East can be seen near the top of the tree's branches just to the center right of the photo. [Note added later: I thought it could be Venus, but I checked a sky map for the month of December and it is probably Jupiter - or a comet that is right now at about 30 degrees angle in the south/southeast sky.  Holy Hathor!]

Thar she glows...  It looks massive, but it's an artificial 6.5 footer and not super-wide.

It was a beautiful, perfectly still morning, and not cold at all, probably in the mid-40's.  This entire month has been unusually mild, perhaps due to the El Nino.  We have had a lot of rain - thank goodness it wasn't snow, we would be buried under 20 feet of it!

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates; Happy Yule and Happy Winter Solstice to those who celebrate those traditions.  I totally missed Solstice this year, but it came and went and now the days are starting to get longer again, hooray!  The tree will be up until the end of January, when it will be noticeably lighter earlier in the morning and in the evening. The lighted decorations all around the house and candles at night help keep the darkness at bay. I am a creature of the light.

Dinette Decorated for the Holidays

Hola everyone!

I am really enjoying this holiday season -- been out making merry with my friends a lot! I am thrilled that my decorating was done quickly during the Thanksgiving weekend and finished up shortly thereafter, and shopping was mostly done online (easy peasy), so I can concentrate on socializing with family and friends and watching my annual favorite holiday movies.

Do you think these go together???

A year ago this is what I'd envisioned for my dinette.  The top pattern is on the curtains that would flank either side of the patio sliding door that floods the dinette with light; the middle pattern is a large rectangular area rug I've had for years and was in storage for just about as long - a rich red with black border and myriad colors in its florals (but no turquoise or teal), it would have gone under the dining table; the bottom pattern is the tablecloth I love to use during the holidays because of its rich color, pattern, texture and sheen, but I didn't use it last year until Valentine's Day!

But, this year I resurrected my two foot tall cardinal tree, now centered on my 56" diameter dining table, added some cardinal, red and green accents around the space collected over the years and, voila, somehow it works (well, I think so :))

So happy with how it all turned out!  Best of all is the feel of the thick (1/2") wool rug beneath stockinged feet, the richness of the colors against the dark grey walls and the dark plank-vinyl wood floors -- looks positively Victorian library and I love it.  I feel enveloped in richness, warmth, snug and cozy, things needed this time of year in the Wisconsin climate.

The cardinal plates were purchased at different times at TJMaxx for $3.99 each.  The cardinal prints are greeting cards or photos printed from the internet (I have collected several over the years and interchange them); the frames were purchased over several years (I have about a dozen wood tone frames and six black frames) from my local Walgreens for $5 each (no longer available, sadly); and here and there, not photographed, are some red/green/gold/black plaid ribbons, three cardinals perched around the kitchen and dinette (they didn't all fit on the tree); and two other framed cardinal prints; a few other Christmas-y touches.

I love spending time in the kitchen/dinette.  I have a lap top set up there during the day, facing toward the window so I can see the birds and my tribe of squirrels cavorting about in the backyard :)  Happy Holidays!

Christmas Decor 2015

Hola darlings!

I am temporarily diverting from finishing the series of posts that led to the creation of my new living room earlier this year, so I can bring you the few simple things I've done around the house to introduce Christmas this year.

Here is the tree at dusk with the tree lights turned on; well, I know it doesn't look like dusk because of the flash on my camera, but it was:

I like how the ornaments "pop" more since hundreds of them are no longer competing for attention.  It works for moi this year. Next year, I may go back to my "more is better" tree decorating ways.

I realized just how much Christmas stuff I've accumulated over the years and after this Christmas I'm going to go through all of my boxes and clear out some of it.

This year I put the fewest ever ornaments on the tree since I bought it.  I did, however, go out and buy some long-coveted pearl strand garland.  I may never used my gold bead garland again and in any event half of it at least is going to the next Easter Seals pick-up.

This year, as last year, I stayed with the white feather boas I use as garland, but I left off the faux-natural long feathers that I would bow out around the tree in arcs.  I also only used half of my treasured Gump's feathered birds this year, but I made up for that by purchasing four larger sized golden feathered birds on clearance at Macy's and four composite crowned birds in a champagne color hung from a long ribbon.  I also relented and bought five faux-crystal and pearl stems to use as tree toppers.  So, I'm still adding to my collection of Christmas decorations - me bad!

I layered some ornaments in the center of the tree as per my usual practice to fill in the holes that show up so glaringly during the day with the tree centered on the large picture window with light pouring in, but not nearly as many as in prior years; this year I wanted to get the tree trimming done with a minimum of fuss and bother.  I added my four pearl starburst ornaments, my clear acrylic and crystal snowflakes and snowflake drops, my pearl and faux-silk florals, and a few other ornaments, and that was that.  Instead of six or seven boxes of decorations emptied, I used less than three.  Holy Hathor!

Here are some close-ups of some of the ornaments this year.  They stand out more, I think, because there is more "green" area exposed on the tree (gee, what a concept):

Me (I'm the golden-beglittered Nefertiti lower center left, ahem); Mr. Don's McLean kilt pin,
upper right, a sourvenir from Duarte Castle, and the beribboned heart in the middle.

xxx

Redoing the Living Room - 4: The Search for My Perfect Grey Sofa

Hola darlings!

The hunt was on!  I did next to nothing for at least a week except look at probably 4000 sofas online.  I swear I looked at absolutely every single sofa available at Amazon, Overstock, Wayfair and Lamps Plus, and Bellacor. Then I moved on to other online furniture vendors I'd never heard of, and looked at more, and more and more.  And then I kept going back and looking at all these sofas over again - several times. I printed out tons of spec sheets and images.   It is a wonder I slept at all.

I quickly discovered that the cost of my perfect sofa clashed horribly with the reality of my perfect budget :)  I did not even bother attempting to get a price on the Pearson or the Lee Jofa grey sofas in my inspiration photos, I knew either one would cost more than all of the furnishings in my house combined.  Another reality was that very few sofas were offered with single-cushion or bench-style cushion seats.  Some sofas had a bench-style seat but it was "built-in" - not removable.  Removable was a must have.

I was also looking for a length not much larger than 84" to 86", and a depth under 40".  That automatically knocked several otherwise potential sofas out of the running.  The whole point of going with the new sleeker furniture lines is to create a smaller furniture footprint in my 14' by 15' living room.

I wanted to keep the sofa in the range of $1,000, which for me is a LOT of money to spend on a sofa.  I knew I would have to compromise.  I decided that I could live with two removable seat cushions if necessary, but I would not sacrifice the style I was after.  As the search continued I came across potential sofa options priced below $1,000, but I later deleted them from serious consideration based on online reviews and a worry about overall quality.

I slowly narrowed down my potential sofas to these two:

Sofa above at Lamps Plus, the Portsmouth Grey Portico Sofa with nickle nailhead trim, $1,400.

Sofa above at Lamps Plus, the Maggie Tufted Bella Granite Sofa, $1,500 (but as of this posting, now on clearance with only 2 left for $1,300.00).

Then, one night as I was yet again looking at an expanded sofa search at Wayfair, I stumbled across this beauty:

Image above is the A&B Home Group Provo Camelback Sofa.  Not grey, not velvet, not tufted, but a removable bench seat, a lovely curved back, the sleek lines, the right size, and best of all, a FABULOUS PRICE:  $899 WITH FREE SHIPPING!

I hemmed and hawed - did I want it?  It wasn't grey, it wasn't velvet.  I loved it.  I hemmed and hawed two days too long before making up my mind after going through a pile of printed out images of sofas with my buddy Ann.  When I made my decision on a Friday night to buy the Provo Camelback Sofa, it had DISAPPEARED FROM WAYFAIR.  Could not find it anywhere  it was not shown as Out of Stock, it was GONE, not listed.  Then, I could not even find it offered for sale elsewhere on the internet, whereas a few days before, I had found it available at a few vendors.  The Provo Sofa had disappeared from the internet, except for cached images and outdated listings!

OHMYGODDESS!  Let's just say that I was rather distressed.  All that looking, all that effort, all that work, only to discover that the sofa I was ready and willing, finally, to buy was no longer available for sale!

Guess what?  About a week to 10 days after suffering that trauma, the Provo Camelback Sofa reappeared for sale at Wayfair, for $1,541.  I'm so over it.

Redoing the Living Room - 3: Inspiration Photos

Image above from Lee Jofa, Charleston Sofa, fabrics by James Huniford (from Lee Jofa website).

Image above is the Tiffany sofa by Pearson Furniture (from Pearson Furniture website).

Image above torn out of one of my Traditional Home magazines.  I did not make note of the month/year, unfortunately, so I was unable to find it online.

Those sofas!  I wanted a grey velvet sofa with a REMOVABLE (not fixed in place) bench seat cushion.  Optional additions were a tufted and  curved back.  Must haves were sleek modern lines with a wink toward traditional styling. I was looking for something "Manhattan Classic" -- the series at Horchow -- or something reminiscent of mid-century modern without giving up altogether on more classic lines.  Something totally different than the furniture I had purchased years ago for a much larger house.

With the furniture gone from the living room, I began an all out hunt for the perfect sofa!