Home Decor

Anybody who’s worried about today’s young people shouldn’t — at least based on their decorating skills. Isn’t this apartment absolutely adorable? I’d move in in a minute! It belongs to Rachel, a 25-year-old who’s one of Younger Daughter’s friends in Birmingham, Alabama. Rachel is a recent college graduate and recently started working — and although interior decorating is not her field, I think it should be. I loved the way Rachel used inexpensive touches — she shops in consignment and discount stores — to express her style and create a calm and peaceful environment combined with a sense of whimsy. And she’s got such inspiring ideas. For instance, she paints small wooden window shutters, hangs them vertically on the wall and puts photos in the individual slats — brilliant! She also found a practice climbing wall with various size handholds and set it up above a doorway for stress-releasing fun. And I love the way she uses the simple basic elements of candles and coffee beans for earthy and fragrant tablescapes. And she has such a good eye — her comfy thrift-store sofa and weathered chest of drawers with intriguing mismatched drawer pulls look as if they came from a top designer boutique. Rachel’s efforts have convinced me that when it comes to interior decor, money and time constraints are no excuse. Lesson learned. Thank you, Rachel!

Interior Decor

Did y’all have a great Labor Day weekend? Lots of cookouts and picnics and getting together? Bet you didn’t have as much fun as I did — I spent the whole weekend (and I mean the whole weekend, from Thursday morning to Monday afternoon)babysitting my 17-month-old grandson, Capt. Adorable while my daughter and son-in-law went to DragonCon in Atlanta.  And besides all the incredibly good snuggle time I got with the Captain — and the chance to watch endless episodes of Sid the Science Kid, my new favorite TV show — I fell in love all over again with my daughter and son-in-law’s house. When my son-in-law, a high-school art teacher, got tenure this past spring, they decided it was time to move out of their apartment and into a real house. Frugal young family that they are, they had a budget and were determined not to budge from it. Their must-haves: A big fenced-in backyard for the Captain, three bedrooms, two baths and good storage space. It took awhile, but they found it — and under their budget. It was cute and in a good neighborhood and had a fantastic backyard. The bad news? Total square footage was less than their apartment. However, after living in it for a few days, I can attest that this house seems so much bigger than it actually is. The secret is a combination of design and decor. I love the archectural details that make this compact space live bigger: The soaring ceilings, the tiled entry way, closets tucked away in unexpected but efficient places, the big airy windows. It would have been so easy to have let this be a cheap and boring house, but no. And the kids have done everything they could to enhance the feeling of expansiveness — they added white beadboard to the eating area, knocked out some useless kitchen cabinets to create more open space and used paint to their advantage with the Captain’s bed- and bathrooms in bright oranges and yellows and the other rooms in soothing and calm neutrals. Adorable!

And a note to any other grandparents contemplating days of move-in babysitting: Line up visits from friends and family. I could not have made it without help from so many people who brought us food and new toys and drove over just to visit us. Thank you!!!

Home Decor

My friend Susan Cantrell and her daughter-in-law, Freda Brewer, have opened the most wonderful store in Sheffield, Alabama. Called Upscale Resale, it’s a furniture and home-decor consignment shop — but it’s so much more than simply a place to find a fantastic bargain. Both Susan and Freda are so creative and imaginative — there are delightful surprises everywhere you look: A basket of shells, an old door used to highlight hanging shelves, a row of colorful bottles that catch and reflect the light. And Susan and Freda emphasize the frugal use-what-you-have approach that helps you appreciate what you’ve already got. “We’re eclectic and a little bit funky,” Susan said. “We like to think that along with recycled furniture, we have unique investment items that will go up in value for the home — items you will not find at large import stores.  Also, we do think it is a great idea to recycle what is already available on the planet.  Remember: Reduce, reuse, recycle!” This is the place to find a whimsical painting that’s perfect for your kitchen, a pottery bowl that just fits on your coffee table or a simply chic chair that brightens the living-room corner. Or, do what I do and go to Upscale Resale for some conversation and relaxation — a visit always cheers me up and inspires me to actually decorate instead of arrange. Upscale Resale is open from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays. Call the store at 245.381.7773 for more information.

Wallpaper

Today, for the first time probably in years, I actually did an honest day’s hard labor. This morning when I offered to help out the folks who’d come to do painting/remodeling work in the house (remember the loose-wallpaper incident?), I had no idea they’d actually take me up on it. But the head-man-in-charge was not impressed with my earlier effort at wallpaper removal in the bathrooms and said it would free up another worker to get started on painting if I tackled the wallpaper leftovers and really prepped the walls properly. I had a free morning, I shrugged, so why not? How hard could it be? Seven hours later, these are the things I have learned:

1) Never ever offer to help painting/wallpapering/remodeling people unless you are prepared to actually help. This is the not the time to be meaninglessly polite.

2) Little stripped-off wet wallpaper pieces stick to everything: Shoes, feet, floors, cats …

3) Even if you like Rascal Flatts and think Keith Urban is hot, seven hours of country-music on the industrial-strength radio turned up to an industrial-strength volume is plenty, thank you very much.

4) Patience and relaxation are the keys. “You’ve got to get the wallpaper wet and then let it relax,” Boss Guy said as he, patiently, showed me how to take off wallpaper the Right Way. “Patience, patience, patience. If you’re patient enough, it will slide right off.”  He was right. Who knew?

5) And the final thing I learned after a day of pumping a spray bottle and scraping and scrubbing walls to a shiny smoothness? I’m glad I don’t have to do it tomorrow.

Home Decor

I love finding home-decor ideas in unlikely spots. You never know when you’ll stumble across some inspiration. Like these exuberantly painted kitchen chairs at the Bottletree Bakery in Oxford, Mississippi. How much fun would it be to grab worn-out chairs and leftover paint and create some whimsical seating like this? In no stretch of the imagination am I a painter but I think that even non-visual folks such as me could do this. I also loved this glass and metal sofa table I saw at a clothing boutique in Oxford. The owners had knotted colorful scarves through one of the support rungs – so creative! Couldn’t you just see this in one of those huge closets big enough for furniture? You could sit in there and sip wine and read “Town and Country” and contemplate what you were going to wear where that evening. But I might be able to use the same idea by knotting scarves through the ends of the storage shelves in our perfectly-adequate closet, where I stand every day and try to figure out which T-shirt is the cleanest. (And which, by the way, I am slowly inch-by-inch taking over from my husband, who luckily hasn’t noticed that somehow my stuff mysteriously keeps showing up on his side.) This lovely white painted chair with a toile cushion was at the same boutique. It looks like another renovated flea-market find that would be so simple to duplicate. Do you remember a few years ago when toile was everywhere? Then it sort of faded away but now it’s back to where it should be: A s a statement-making classic. And I think the white paint brings out the details of this chair to make it look like something special. Of course, folks who know me and have been to our house know that all my talk about interior-decorating projects is fruitless because I am much too lazy to do anything different from our current coffee-cup-and-stacks-of-newspaper decor. But I have high hopes and ambitious dreams. It just needs a lot more planning and fine-tuning … and shopping.

Spring Cleaning

Home-organization experts say you can tell a lot about people by the state of their refrigerators. I hope you can tell from ours that I did a massive cleaning shortly after Christmas’s food extravaganza and have kept it in top shape ever since. I mean, this was a six-hour job — taking out and scrubbing each shelf, throwing away a whole garbage bag of expired/old/what-in-the-world-is-this food and getting into every little corner and those annoying ridges in the vegetable bins. And maintaining it means constant vigilance for crumbs and that Unidentified Sticky Stuff that mysteriously shows up. I can pretty much guarantee that everything in this fridge is now fresh and edible. Before this cleaning marathon, I would have to sprint to the fridge to throw myself in front of it when folks headed in that direction — I was that embarrassed to let anybody see the disgusting chaos inside. Luckily, in my cleaning frenzy I even felt moved to attack the outside, excavating years of Post-Its and lists that dated, I’m ashamed to admit, to the previous century. I kept all the artwork and notes and doodling that had decorated the door for so long — our refrigerator had long served as a sort of guestbook for my now 20-something-daughters’ friends as they traipsed in and out of the house during the Teenage Years. But with 1-year-old grandson Capt. Adorable discovering crayons, it’s time to make room for new artwork. And food that isn’t growing food of its own. My daughters’ reactions to the clean fridge were telling: Older daughter (Capt. Adorable’s mom) said, “Mom, the refrigerator looks wonderful! Great job!” Younger daughter said, “Why did you take down all the pictures? They’d been there forever!” But I’ve already started a Refrigerator-Door Scrapbook — and I guess in another 10 years I’ll have another Fridge Spring-Cleaning.

Spring Decorating and Coffee Cups

When my two now 20-something-year-old daughters were little, I went all out for holiday decorating — a trait I got from my own mom, I think. At this time of year I’d have bunnies and chicks and eggs and flowers everywhere. Now that the girls have their own spaces (one with her own family in their apartment and the other in her dorm room at college), I’m taking a break. I’m sure once I get the dozens of grandchildren I’m hoping for, I’ll once again turn our house into Holiday Headquarters — again, just like my own mom. But until then, my nods to the changing of the seasons are few: A new wreath on the front door, different candles in the living room and changing the coffee mugs and espresso cups I keep out on a tray in the kitchen, always ready for a hot steaming cup of goodness. This past weekend I finally put away all the winter mugs and cups and replaced them with the spring ones. I love the pink and green Portuguese-pottery espresso cups. They come in three designs: Rabbits, frogs and cabbages. I’ve found them the past couple years in discount retailers such as TJ Maxx and Tuesday Morning but haven’t seen many so far this season. Plus, there are pitchers, bowls, dessert plates and serving platters –  I finally had to stop buying  because really, how many lavender bunny-themed cake stands do you actually need? I also adore this blue and green teapot and espresso cups with flower-petal saucers I found at a gift shop and the two pottery espresso cups from Starbucks I bought just a few weeks ago. And now I think I’m all set decorating-wise until July.

Spring Trends

After being assailed by an e-mail from Anthropologie about harem pants being the new It trend this spring (gag), I was so glad to see some good news in my inbox today. Such as the wedding boutique at www.net-a-porter.com. Net-a-porter.com is an online retailer specializing in true designer and runway looks for less — still way beyond my budget but still fun to browse through. The editors’ picks at the new wedding boutique will have you scanning your mail for invitations. I love the pretty and feminine dresses paired with statement-making accessories, all organized according to wedding type: beach, evening, day, etc. If you’re like me, you pick your favorites, then head straight to TJ Maxx!

And then there was the e-newsletter from www.myhomeideas.com, the home-decor online arm of Southern Living, Southern Accents, Coastal Living and other must-have magazines. Featured today are spring-decorating trends, how to create spring bouquets and 10 new uses for old things. Did you know that filigree would be big this season? I love the light and lacy look, although it’s not quite manly enough for my husband, I’m sure. But I’ve noticed delicate ironwork pieces showing up in home-decor shops lately, so maybe I can sneak something small into the house to get the same effect. This room looks so calm and peaceful that I just want to camp out there — wearing a gorgeous pink silk dress, of course.

Interior Decorating

Have you ever walked into somebody’s house and immediately felt both impressed and comfortably at home? That’s how I felt recently when one of my book clubs met at the home of a new member who bravely invited us over for only her third time with us. And was I glad. She’s a smart and funny free spirit who’s traveled the world, and her house so richly reflects that. On the outside it looks like any normal house in any normal subdivision, but inside she and her husband had remodeled and renovated and redecorated to make it their own. Every corner and every detail told a story of their lives. I loved especially how they mixed textures and colors and  cultures, but because everything springs from what they’re passionate about, it all works. I especially loved the built-in bookcases designed for use, not show — a display of books that obviously are never read always annoys me; I mean, what’s the point? – and the functional and stylish kitchen that works whether there’s one person cooking or a crowd. I am stealing so many ideas from this house, even if the most exotic place I ever shop is the home-decor aisle of TJ Maxx.

Random Thoughts

When the bottom shelf rack fell out out of the refrigerator door not once but twice a few days ago, I knew we were heading into our own personal Series of Random Unfortunate Events, because this is what happened next (and I’m not even counting the fact that our upstairs heating-unit stopped working on Christmas Eve Eve and my college-senior daughter got her nose pierced in October): 1) My car needed all new tires; 2) My digital picture frame’s screen went weirdly and sort of scarily red; 3) Our Comcast Internet and local NPR station were gone for days; 4) Our new Christmas-present TV wasn’t working properly, leaving us unimpressed with big-screen high-def; and 5) The refrigerator incidents resulted in two broken bottles of wine and one smashed-to-bits shelf. But 1) we got new tires and figured out how to set up our TV properly, 2) Comcast and NPR came back, 3) I’m working on digital-picture-frame and refrigerator-shelf replacement and 4) none of these problems required calls to or visits from plumbers, electricians, doctors, hospitals, insurance agents, fire fighters or police officers and all loved ones are happy and healthy and accounted for, so what am I complaining about?