Beauvois, St. Jean De Braye, Loiret, France - watercolor sketch by Paul P. Cret
“observe the effect of light shining through the foliage masses, also the breadth and simplicity of treament…”
(click on sketch to enjoy slightly larger image)
all the locals will recognize this brick! it’s the fleeting but luscious OP farmer’s market, of course. We scored much goodness this bright, beautiful morning, then jiggety-jigged to some great live music and played with friends.
and inspected some bugs on the sidewalk.
I was a little sad to see that Mildred’s coffeehouse was no more in it’s original location. The replacement coffee bar/bakery is up and running, but screams “chain” even if it is locally owned, which I believe it is. They even took the funky doors away! Remember when it looked like this, and had all those unsanitary but oh so comfy couches and chairs about for lounging?
anyway, took some photos of the stunning produce we picked up but my kitchen is so messy not even cropping would help.
here’s what you missed: dirty wine glasses from last night, waffle iron needing a bath, glitter from yesterday’s art project all over the bottom of the sink (how? why? dare I ask?), assorted cups and plates and bowls and cutlery strewn about. it’s quite lovely, indeed.
moving on: dinner this evening will be basil and tomatoes from our frolic in the market, with fresh mozzarella (food of the gods!) on individual grilled flatbreads, if I get the bread machine going in time and can find my yeast in the refrigerator. yum.
Made such good progress yesterday on the living room walls. Hoping to do as well today, so I’m off.
poor sick mayfly, I do hope you’re feeling better.
happy midweek!
before we get to start this
we must do this
(my tools, and small helper)
lots of scraping and patching and sanding and priming to attend to today. these walls are in terrible shape, but I’m sure they’ll perk right up with a bit of tender loving care and a nice new coat of Benjamin Moore Eggshell Latex.
we’re deep into negotiations regarding the paint selection.
every so often (okay, every time we repaint something), I fantasize about marriage to a man who might just grunt his acquiescence and ask for a beer and the remote when I make a comment about paint colors, instead of jumping into a heated discussion about hue and saturation and intensity and the colorwheel and oh just shut up already.
oh I know, I might hate being married to that man, the man who didn’t care a whit (although many of my friends happily run the entire domestic decor front singlehandedly. I’m not envious. much.). I know I’m probably lucky that he’s very involved in the process. And it’s likely a good thing that he’s around to keep the place from looking like a jumbled mass of jewel tones (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
I guess what really bugs me is that he’s nearly always right.
Anyway, the kidlets are installed downstairs watching The Incredible Journey (the original version, please) and I have fortifications at hand (sweet tea, no-bake cookies, iced coffee fixings), so on to the task.
happy tuesday!
This weekend we received some very good news: we will not be sued for wrongful death.
Earlier this year my husband was involved in a fatality accident. It was a horrible accident, and no one was truly at fault, although the police report has determined the victim was speeding and made a simple mistake that probably cost him his life. M could not sleep for weeks, and there isn’t a day goes by we don’t think of and pray for the family this man (the age of my older brother) left behind; a wife, teenagers. But the powers that be have determined we were not at fault, so the insurance company is settling for our liability policy (note to all: umbrella coverage is worth every penny). We are blessed that the victim had great foresight in providing for his family in the event of his death, and that the family holds no malice.
So we will finally get our impounded truck back, which we’ve sorely missed. And we’ll pay a hefty deductible. But considering my husband walked away without a physical scratch, it’s a minor inconvenience.
Still working on paint choices to go with my new swedish-looking floor in the living room. Leaning heavily toward something like this or maybe this, but what to do about my giant 60’s wall o’ brick? When we moved in we plastered it and painted it to disappear but I’m thinking it should now be a focal point, perhaps with some new punchy paintings or a giant sculpture?
Had an idea for a little doorknob pillow for my new nephew’s room…
wow, linen really doesn’t photograph well, does it? anyway, it’s yet to be padded and I’ll add a little loop for hanging on the doorknob or wherever they’d like it. The other side may or may not have a little wide-awake baby waiting for “story time” - we’ll have to see how my day goes and if I can sneak some stem stitching in later…
did a little work on my blog this weekend, too. still deciding if I should shell out the cash to do custom CSS with WordPress or just leave it as is. hmmmm. what do you think of the color scheme?
old,
mistake,
at long last,
feeling very proud of ourselves this morning, for turning big fat lemons into tolerable lemonade. also feeling very swedish country. and tired.
made it through the homeschool gauntlet with flying colors (I thought). Even gritted my teeth and signed up to host the Valentine celebration. Me! a Host! egads. Hopefully a craftier, wiser mom will step up to assist me. please.
just an aside, and I speak as someone who has an immediate family chock full of teachers - why do all Kindergarten teachers seem to be on uppers? If opposites attract, the kind lady who introduced herself last night and gave us approximately 342 pages of handouts (remember - school is one day per week) must be married to a sloth. And my daughter will adore her.
I can only assume since I’ve heard not a peep from my son’s 2nd grade teacher that she is laid-back. hallelujah.
So I returned from the meeting, fortified myself with rioja and olives and CHEESE and we completed the sparkling satin maple loveliness you see before you. Of course, now everything else - the walls, the trim - looks like crap and must be redone. Isn’t that just the way with this blasted home ownership thing?
On a completely unrelated note, we listened to Treasure Island on cd last night while working. It’s the hard-to-find unabridged version narrated by Neil Hunt and it is fabulous. We are total books-on-tape geeks and this is one of the best narrations I have ever heard. The guy does at least 6 different British dialects/accents and shiver me timbers I swear we checked the case several times looking for additional voices. Highly recommend (if you check on Amazon I left a lone review). Treasure Island always was one of my favorite stories, and you don’t have to be 12 to enjoy this.
Going for paint chips today, checking on estimates for duct cleaning after all that sanding, and maybe a little picnic in the park with the kids if it doesn’t get too hot. ha! fat chance.
adios, mi amigas.
Not much going on here.
We’ve returned from a trip to Costco. In case anyone cares, the midtown location has Spaten Oktoberfest for what amounts to about .75/bottle. Great beer, particularly as the nights become crisp (which heaven help us must please happen soon). The midtown Costco also has the BEST cheese selection today. I just about went crazy deciding between some aged dubliner and a gorgeous chunk of manchego I wanted to buy just for the basketweave-patterned rind. In the end, Spain won out over my husband’s ancestral country - we’ll have tapas this evening, with a nice Rioja, also in my cart, and some garlic-marinated almond-stuffed olives.
The sample ladies were out in full force, of course, and we had sliced asiago (but I ask you - how difficult to slice your own for half the price?), little tubs of cinnamon applesauce and fresh hot cornbread! Definitely a good sample day.
The wine and special cheese are for a little celebration in honor of how wonderfully our clear-coated maple floor looks after getting its first layer of finish last night. and BY THE WAY, what were we thinking? Why didn’t somebody send me an email and yell “PLEASE DON’T TOUCH THE BEAUTIFUL FLOORS.” You heard me.
In other news, the hummingbird feeder we put out in mid-April, which saw nary a hummingbird but plenty of large black sweet-eating ants, was removed and washed (ugh) and filled with cooled sugar water. We immediately had a pair come to feed. I mean it, immediately. That nice lady at the bird store (I won’t mention names) was very clear that my feeder HAD to be out by April 15 or the hummers wouldn’t show up, ever, and that it couldn’t be very near the back door, should be by flowers, etc. etc. yada yada yada. Welp, should I call to tell her it is now attached to my glass sliding door, the kids are sitting here looking at it, my flowers have long since fried here in late August, and the birds are ogling US, too? hmmm?
Tonight is Parent Night for the school my older kids will attend every Thursday this fall. I’m extremely nervous about Parent Night. How can a woman who is 37, has 3 children, a mortgage, a job and an American Express be so afraid of a room full of mommies and daddies? Oy. It will be all about smiling and nodding and listening intently and pressing the flesh and making small talk (the horror!) and remembering names and kids and O MY GOD I so suck at that. It’s easy to chat with people I like and want to get to know. But that’s so not the case with this crowd. The Homeschool Mafia we call them. yes, I’m TERRIBLE. Perfectly nice people. But I fear I’ll never fit in, what with my lax housekeeping skills and haphazard teaching style and slip of the occasional swear word, and my fill-in-the-blank-with-your-choice-of-non-christian-homeschooler-approved-activities-here. Oh, and my refusal to diss public schools. Choice, people. Choice. It’s just like the working/non-working mom self-righteousness, the self-assured “we’re the only ones doing the right thing.” It really gets to me, and I absolutely, 100% disagree. But my kids really need another social activity midweek, so we’re jumping in, mama’s objections be damned.
Oh, and the fact that I’m covered in poison ivy scabs (yes, I scratched) isn’t helping my natural introvertedness along. I have a huge one on my neck that looks like a hickey (did I spell that correctly?), or, as my son said this morning “Mama, that sore on your neck is sort of shaped like Africa.” Nice.
This concludes my nervous rambling. Hope everyone is enjoying these last of hot summer days (we pray), and that school is going well for all of our kids. We’ll be trying to finish the floor tonight and perhaps I’ll have a photo or two in the morning. And hopefully a juicy story from my evening….not!
but let’s not talk about that.
this costume design was handed to me today by my nature-loving boy. I’m glad he made such detailed instructions for me (!)…now I’ll be scouting my rag bin and my sister’s extensive fabric stash for just the right pieces. The more recycled materials, the better!
we love halloween around here. actually we love any excuse to costume ourselves and act silly (for candy or not). I once made a cave woman outfit by tearing and tying fake fur fabric, smearing myself with black eye shadow, blacking out my teeth and handcrafting an elaborate set of prehistoric/Wilma-ish accessories from Sculpey®, including a necklace, earrings, several bracelets and *hair bone*. there’s a picture somewhere.
so yes, we’re already thinking about late October. it’s something to look forward to once we get past the mess made of the living room.
some fun outfits from years past (I’m still trying to use up the green felt) :
fall is coming!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
happy weekending
expensive lessons learned today:
so we’re probably going to sand everything down again and just clearcoat the maple. it’s either that or we paint it. eh. not what we wanted, not at all, but we learned the hard way that this just isn’t possible. I’m tempted to get really down about this. and really angry about spending double to correct our mistakes, and really depressed about spending another week, possibly longer, with 3 kids and half my normal living space available.
BUT we’ve done stupid stuff before (every DIYer has, I think) and we usually find a way to work together beautifully and correct it (after the blame and yelling have subsided) and take the experience along with us to the next project.
sigh. and they are so pretty from afar. up close they are a nightmare. i’d post photos but don’t have the heart to go in there right now.
thanks for the encouraging comments today ~
glistening wet wood
drying time you tell me lies
hours pass no steps
____________________
maple - friend or foe
hubris prevents my learning
HGTV die
____________________
waiting is for us
those who brush and walk no more
odors waft and wane
just because you want to see it.
don’t you?
note to self: if consideration of another house with circa-1950 shellac floors in need of refinishing comes to mind, RUN SCREAMING INTO TRAFFIC.
it seemed to be going well. 15 pads of 26-grit later, we realized the shellac was turning to yellow sludge from the heat of Mr. Random Orbital Sander (thanks, Angela, now I have to call him that). My hands are raw this morning - oh, and I picked up some poison ivy at the Farm, because it has encased my body. And the Artiste thinks he has strep. Just call us Itchy and Scratchy.
But being the good midwestern kids we are, we will persevere. Picked out the stain last night (deep nutmeg!) and it actually looks fantastic on the scrap pieces we are trying. Kinda dark (gulp), and that makes me nervous because my sofa is chocolate brown, but the man swears it will have an amber cast. he so better be right about that.
Better get our sick little selves in gear because the kids are at the Farm, still, and I miss them, and they miss us. Hoping to put down a coat of stain and one coat of finish, then get out of here and let it dry while I pick up the offspring and hang out with my mom.
Oh, and for those of you wondering about that photo of my man at work yesterday - that’s not him - this is he:
- and just so ya know, the baby was playing in the sandbox while I worked inside - he was eating sand, not piles of lead-filled shellac dust, and I could see him the entire time :)
update: o crap. he DOES have strep. he just went and got a shot in the tushie. poor grizzly ad- Artiste. does this mean everyone in my house has it? i’m throwing out the toothbrushes right now…
day 2 of Operation Refinish finds me here:
(not shown: clinging baby, dust-covered matriarch)
and the Artiste here:
hmmmm…
My hands are still vibrating from using the Random Orbital Sander hours on end yesterday. But things look good. A few more passes and we should be ready to stain. Nervous about going darker, because maple is notorious for not accepting color evenly. We’ll need to wet it first to raise the grain, then rub the gel stain on evenly. Wish us luck…we’ll need it.
Oh, and here’s something my mother passed down to me this weekend. I’d been coveting this for years. I’m sure someone out there with quilt-y knowledge can identify this pattern (she probably told me but in my state of giddy shock I didn’t register the name). My entire bedroom must now be reworked around this lovely.
sweet holy hotcakes, i’m away for 4 days and my blogs-of-daily-visit are so chock full of new post goodness. is it weird that i missed so much all these people whom i’ve mostly never met IRL? only the internet/blog-addicted could understand this, methinks.
so the oldest children had so much fun on the Farm yesterday when they begged to stay with their grandparents i relented. no clothes? no problem. Granny still has MY playdresses and my brother’s pants and shirts. Sometimes that packrat thing can really pay off.
Such a relaxing non-blog week (although at every turn found myself wondering “is this shot blog-worthy?”); accomplished some good things and visited some sweet newborn loves. We decided to nix the Chicago trip for now - thanks, terrorists! - and stay nearby for our 10th. I’ll have to pay tribute to the shrine of IKEA at a later date. Oh well, gives me more time to dog-ear my catalog…
we’ve hatched a plan to refinish the living room floors and repaint/cleanse bookshelf of disappointing titles/rearrange everythingm while the kids are gone. I’m supposed to be boxing up books right now. Honey, if you’re reading this, i swear i’m starting the minute i finish typing this. absolutely.
Hope the weekend was grand for all. i’ll spend my iced-coffee breaks checking emails and all the great stuff everyone has been up to - i so enjoy reading about projects and inspiration and life lived daily and how we’re all making it with kids and crafts and stuff. the companionship is palpable, and heartening.
still busy. back monday.
in the interim: some new goodies from the Artiste - he’s experimenting with a puppet idea with his owl characters…
I like.
ignoring this space for a few days, ’cause here’s my to-do list for the week:
very quickly before I go - had such a great weekend! mojitos, tapas, saw an old dear friend and looked at her ART, visited a penthouse at the Metropolitan building downtown (incredible) and forgot I had 3 kids for about as many hours. ’twas exceedingly fun.
and because no post is complete without a visual, here I am, working (as seen by the Artiste). My piano isn’t a grand, but a guy can dream for his wife, no?
Happy Monday!
