At last...

Well, here we are, finally finished with the living room.  I spent today tweaking the placement of furniture and decided you can see it now.

 This is the original, what we saw when we looked at the house.  A friend asked yesterday "how did you see what you could do with this???"  Well, all I knew was it had to be lighter.  That spindle railing had to go and raising the sunken two steps down living room floor was a bonus fix.  The before pics  are fuzzy because they came off my iPad. And it looks much lighter than it actually was.

 Same room, different look!  White, white, white! And I am SO happy to have my books back at my fingertips.  It's a big room and I like that.  We had a big living room at the other house so this feels right.

 Notice that dark, dark fireplace wall!  And on the very left the spindle divider at the steps that go to the basement.  They had it roped because the spindles aren't code and so they had to do something to protect their little girl.  We had those spindles taken down and a half wall built.  What a difference THAT made!

And now.  Our furniture, my books, white paint.  The yellow chair way in the back is my sewing chair.  It's what I sit in when I applique and quilt.  The blue flowered one is the reading chair.  On the fireplace you can see two busts.  Those are our kids when our daughter was three and our son was one. My aunt made them.  I think I want to be buried with them (the busts, not the kids.)  See how open it looks without that spindle railing??  The spindles had to be there to protect people from falling into the sunken living room.  We have to have the floor refinished but that can wait till we decide what we want.

 I just saw on Pinterest last night the look above the bookshelves.  Layer pics instead of pounding them into the wall.  I think I like it.  It makes the bookshelves look even taller.  Doesn't it look brighter!

This chair with no legs is quite a conversation piece.  I put it in the corner next to the kids' picture books. That whole section and half of the next one is children's books. Calvin and Hobbes right nearby on the bottom shelf. Board books where Mikey can reach them on the bottom shelf. Remember the holiday books are in the bathroom closet and there is another pile of picture books in the second bedroom.  There are several boxes of vintage books that I don't have room for.  Don't worry. I'll think of something.

Phew!!

Lake fun

We just returned from five days in South Haven. We stayed at a friend's house just two streets from our "old" house. It was vacation week for my daughter and her family.  We surely used every minute allotted to us  picking fruit, swimming in the lake every day, playing in the sun, going to Sherman's Ice Cream at night, visiting art galleries.

 This is what July looks like.

 Daddy cooked a shrimp boil for dinner one night. We all sat around the table eating with our fingers and no plates.

 They rode go-carts for the first time. Daddy and Elizabeth won.

The girls played miniature golf for the first time.

 We wore them out.  Everyday they slept where they dropped, Adelaide is on the floor!

The big drama event of the week was the anticipation of the loose tooth.  Elizabeth's tooth was hanging on by a mere sliver of skin but she wouldn't pull it.  While playing in the wavy water in the afternoon the tooth came out on it's own and fell into the lake.  We held our collective breath wondering about a solution for the problem.  We agreed to look around on the shore for a little stone that looked like a tooth and suggested she write a note to the tooth fairy explaining the situation.  We thought the tooth fairy had heard a lot of different stories about teeth and probably wouldn't even be surprised by this one.

The little stone looks quite like a tooth!

This is the note she wrote.  The tooth fairy did indeed find Elizabeth at the cottage. She left $1.00, took the tooth but left the note.

 Notice her picture of the scene.  Elizabeth is on the left with the tooth falling into the water.  I am sitting on the chair with my book. Mommy is next to me in sunglasses, the picnic bag is in front. Adelaide is wearing her life jacket, though she was just as brave in the lake without it.  Grandpa and Daddy are on the end.

Just when we thought

Just when we thought we had a handle on things around here it was time to bring the books upstairs.  I have been very nervous about how they've been stored the past year and I am very, very happy to have them back in the atmosphere they are supposed to be in.  Books should never, ever be stored in a basement nor on shelves in a room on an outside wall. Well, for the past year these babies have been in a storage facility exposed to the climate changes of summer, fall, winter, wet spring and then the basement here for two months.
   The shelves won't be ready for them for a couple more weeks while the paint cures, but we had to get them upstairs so we can settle the downstairs furniture.
So, here we have...

Books

Books

Books

even in the bathroom closet...books!  I know, I know, but the two bathrooms in this house have very large storage closets we can't even dream of filling with stuff.  So in our bathroom I'm going to store the holiday picture books (This isn't all of them.  That quilt won't be on that shelf much longer.)  In the second bathroom closet I put my yarn stash (for whenever I begin to knit again) and my sewing machine ( ! ) and a couple of other craft supply tubs.

It's going to take some creativity to find places for all of the books, though.  Once we get them settled I'll take some 'after' pictures of the final look.  I am still charged with painting these bathroom cupboards and the kitchen cupboards but I'm going to wait till September when the kids go back to school and all of the workers have left. There are still boxes in the garage to unpack. We have certainly transformed this place just with paint and carpet.  Oh, and raising this floor so I don't kill myself and adding bookshelves.

Almost done!!!

This is the day

 Today was a good one

Our carpet was put down!  You can't see but it's a celery green.  Light but with a color.  The new bookshelves are in the background.  Someday I might tell the story of spray painting those things. I need a glass of wine first.

 The carpet on the stairs is a little darker and shorter nap - because stairs get a workout.
Oh, I wanted to just lay on that carpeted floor and hug this day!  The carpet is the frosting on the cake of this whole project.  It was the last part.  So we can now bring up furniture and books from the downstairs and lay down those rugs, put the furniture in place and the painter can go to town.  He estimates three more days....just three more days!!

 I even cut some templates for a quilt project!!!! Imagine that!  The first time in about 3 months I actually thought out a project!!  Lots of ways to use scraps for this one.

 Then, I heard the birds.  Lots of them singing their little hearts out. I took a bit of time from watching the carpet layers and sat out on the patio and just listened.  It was one of those days you'd order if you could.  Bright blue sky, gentle breeze, no humidity, temperatures in the 70s, no mosquitoes, a day just made for noticing.

 Even the tiger lillies were smiling

The blue ribbon smile of the day goes to Adelaide. She lost her first tooth after supper!  It was hanging by sheer determination, she was eating a fudge bar and said, "Ohhhh Grandma!  I think it's going to be soon!"  She went into the bathroom and we heard, "Guys! My tooth came out!!!"  We grabbed the phone to call mommy and told her.  Daddy just came in for a surprise goodnight kiss and he got to see the tiny little pearl in a great big zip bag.  She's too excited to go to sleep but we told her the tooth fairy is like Santa Claus.  You have to be sleeping first.

Baby steps

When we moved here I lost a lot of storage space for my stash and so I've had to be creative about how I fit it all into this new non-space.  You will recall my Ikea Happy Cabinet from a couple of posts ago.  Well, this is my new idea.  I was wandering through a garden center/gift shop one day recently and found this marked 50% off.  The baskets all sit on little ledges so they come out easily.  Each basket is holding a color.  It might make some of you cringe to see this but I had to do something  to get the bins unpacked and the bedroom organized. AND it fits in the closet!  And now I'm at least to the point of touching the fabric!  It's a good thing I'm not a machine sewer or there would have to be more major concessions made in the name of lost space for a sewing machine.  Right now I found a perfect spot for it in a bathroom closet!!

The brown dresser next to this rack 'o' baskets used to be in our bedroom (and is now also filled with fabric.)  You saw in the house pictures we thought we had things settled in that room. 

 Well, we just had to find a place for this armoire (I think this is spelled wrong but the dictionaries aren't unpacked and spell check isn't recognizing it.)  It's our pride and joy, one of a kind, painted just for us and the only piece of furniture this particular artist ever painted.   We used it at the other house because there wasn't a closet for coats.  It's served us well and we baby it.  But here, there just wasn't anywhere big enough to hold it.  One morning I woke up and looked at the corner where the dresser was and told PH to think about maybe putting this in the bedroom.  After all, in old houses there weren't closets and an armoire was essential.  So putting it in the bedroom wasn't that far off the mark.  We put together a shelving system that fit inside, got some baskets and he put his socks and undies and jammies in the baskets.  It works and now we can look at it every morning when we wake up.

The painter's name is James Brandess and he lives and works in Saugatuck, Michigan.  His technique is to paint with a series of trowels and knives so the texture is deep and true.  It took six months for this piece to dry till the sticky outy tips didn't bend because it's on so thick.  You could dive off some of the tips and swirls.

When we approached him about painting these doors (because he had never painted a piece of furniture) he asked what I wanted.  I said, "I want people to walk in the front door and gasp."  He smiled and agreed to do it ( I do believe in letting an artist have their way.)  We love, love, love his paintings of red geraniums so I added it would be good if he did some geraniums.    

 I love red geraniums.  I like just about all flowers but red geraniums are my favorites. How can you not smile when you see a pot of them?  They remind me of a little kid who knows the answer and jumps up and down in his seat waving his hand so you'll notice him.

How can you not notice?

Speaking in Bones

Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs

(advance copy provided by NetGalley)

Temperance Brennan is again in the middle of a pickle of a case.  She’s also up against the wall in making decisions in her personal life.  But there’s nothing like a new case to distract her from real life.

Brennan is contacted by Hazel Strike (“Lucky”) an amateur cold case sleuth who uses the internet to mine cases and who believes she solved a cold case and thinks the victim’s bones are in Brennan’s lab.  Cora Teague has been missing for three years and Hazel is convinced she was murdered and she has a tape recording to prove it.  But Brennan needs more than that. She needs bones, evidence, a body would be good. 

Brennan finds herself dealing with an extremist religious group protected by a defrocked Catholic priest.  The clues take Brennan deep into the Appalachian backwoods where she finds body parts scattered over three sites.  All indications are these parts belong to Cora but then there’s another story twist and another and another that take us (and Brennan) back and forth like a winding mountain road with unanswered questions.  There’s the fundamentalist family shielded by the priest, there’s a dead brother, a dead baby, a dead pet. 

True to form, Kathy Reichs doesn’t let us rest till it’s all over.  Including Brennan’s response to her Andrew Ryan’s marriage proposal.