Thanksgiving to Christmas in 23 days....oh my!

This morning I sat and viewed some blogs and saw all those who have blown past Thanksgiving and are in full blown Christmas mode.  I mean like trees up and houses, porches, even powder rooms all beautifully decorated.  Really?? I mean wasn't Thanksgiving just a few days ago?  oh yeh, it was. 

I am still patting myself on the back for pulling that festive Thanksgiving dinner together and managing to set the table: 

And buying flowers and making a centerpiece with the kids:

 

 

And heck - even making the name tags for the table:

 

and alas....dinner was over in an hour or so :(

 

Today, Monday morning on the car pool drive, I am told it's Dec 2nd and I have 23 days until Christmas.  Since this is where I am at on Christmas, I guess I had better get my ass in gear! 

 

 

Very pathetic indeed! 

Not sure 23 days is enough time to pull this sad old tree together but I plan to give it my best college try.

 

A Bar at the Beach Place

Anyone who knows me and yes, that is most of the people who read this little blog, all know that there is always an open bar open at my place.  Any time of day.  I'm all about living in a "non judge zone" and figure why not continue my tradition?  So, my mission for the little beach place was to find something that could serve as a bar and also have a dual purpose of storage for linens.  I had been looking for just the right piece for some time and finally......Bingo.  Found something at a consignment shop. 

Not exactly sure why it is I cannot find "easy" at a consignment shop.  I loved the size and style of the piece and it was an older piece and solid as they come.  Made me think of the whole "Mad Men" trend, despite the fact that I have never seen the show.  My friends have told me about it, so I imagine the scene and anything that looks 50s-60s makes me think of that era.

Back to my find.  I see this cool little console, but it's almond wood and not in a good way.  Here's the before:

Open shelving inside, allows for the linens/pillows that go on the big hide-a-bed in the room.
The piece had been sitting in the place for quite a long time and it was marked down to $125.  Would have been great if I loved the color, but I bought it and had to have it professionally painted.  OK, so perhaps I could have painted it myself, but the truth is I am sick of painting just now and I really wanted to open the bar.  So off it goes to paint shop.
I then paid a delivery fee to haul it down to the beach, so another cha-ching.  But in the end,
when it was placed in the room, I thought to myself.....it's exactly what I wanted. 

Look at it now:

I had thought I would replace the original handles but they were solid brass and I really felt like they just belonged on the piece.  It's also on wheels, so can be easily moved to another location.  A moving bar - how perfect! My old PB tray from a former bar came back into my world too, as did the old ice bucket.  Some remembrances of the past are a good thing.

Didn't have huge a huge amount of time to take pics, because the workers were on site finishing up my to-do list.  Quite sure they were wondering why I was SO happy over this little bar (they are non-drinkers).  But for all my friends who have been known to enjoy a good glass of wine or martini with me.......heads up - the bar is officially open!



My $20 chair after 20 years

About 20 years ago I found an old chair at SA for I think about $20.  Might have been half-price day, so it could have been $10.  Anyway, always loved the classic shape of the chair and it has been in my life for a long long time.  OK, that makes me sound old!  I think I was about 20 when I bought the chair.  Kidding!

I don't have a true before shot of the chair before it was upholstered the 1st time, but this is what it looked like in it's former life.  It served me well and I have always liked it and used it at my many houses.   For a while, it was even at my sister's house "on loan", which is always what I say, when I might one day want the piece back. 

So first we have this, which did look ok for the big house, classic black/animal print and all:

 

However I needed a "sticky chair", as my sister calls a chair that visually takes up little space, at the beach place.  So, off my little chair goes to the upholstery shop to be stripped, I then paint it turquoise and started looking for a bold colorful fabric.  Believe it or not, I found just what I was looking for in a bold orange and white stripe at IKEA.  You just never know what you'll find there, which is why I go in for a couple of things and leave with a car full of shit.

I teamed the fabric with some blue and white paisley that is on a couple of other chairs in the room it will land in and I now end up with an upbeat look and feel on my old chair.

Figure I'm feeling upbeat and cheerful and my chair should reflect that feeling too.

Side note: not sure why the chairs look more "wild blue" than turquoise, but fairly sure it's due to the fact my photos suck.

 

 

 

 

 

Detail of trim:

 

 

 

The new chair will sit with a pair of these chairs. 

Maybe when I take shots with good light in the beach place the new chair will really look like the true turquoise that it is.

 

 

Can't wait to see the new addition at the beach place this weekend.

And if I can remember to take my camera and find time to actually take some pictures....

I might be able to post the entire room's progress. 

One question - Why in the hell does it take me SO long to finish a space?

After all Mary McDonald finishes a room in a week.  Right?

Then again, I don't think she has twins tagging along looking for their next meal.

 

From a Mess to a Guest

The "year of the merge" continues with the merging of two households, two families and two houses.  This summer we elected to concentrate on letting everyone just adjust to our new shared environment.  I'm pleased to report it went well.  We redecorated the twin's rooms (will show in later post/s) and decided to re-do the last room, after son G left for Grad School in Boston.  So, off he flies to start his next chapter in his life and my thoughts are - well, I really need to tackle that room before he returns for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Fast track to November with Thanksgiving and his arrival scheduled for next week.  Yikes!

Let me show you what I started with:

 

Sort of looks like a scene out of Hoarders!

 

But in fairness to a guy who keeps everything else in his world extremely neat,

I think it was his last hurrah at "let's have a mess".  Somehow he just crawled over everything and drove his father completely insane.....until I came up with a simple solution.

My suggestion - "Close the door until he leaves" :)  Worked like a charm!

 

I decide to turn this room into a guest room, that can function for anyone overnighting.....including him.   IF he can stand to walk into a room that has dramatically changed and keep it relatively clean, I think we are good to go.

 

Here's the revised version:

 

 

 

 I had all the built-ins removed, the Murphy Bed taken to the beach place

and now we have a nice comfortable bed for all to enjoy. 

 

 

 

While the room is not 100% done, I thought I had better take some pics before Son G gets home. 

It might not look quite this clean after his arrival :)

No, seriously - can't wait for him to get here and Thanksgiving fun, food and family time to begin.



Door Love

Can a woman be in love with a door?  Guess I should say doors.  Yes, this weekend I decided I had a serious case of door love. 

When we bought our little beach place and I was going through the list of items that I wanted to change, the doors were seriously on the list.  The problem was they were good wood doors and it seemed sort of a waste to change them when there were so many other things on the list too.  So, a little change up was requested of my "man who can do anything".  I love him....and no it's not my husband :) 

So here is the plain blond, but perfectly good door in a before shot.  BORING!

 

I thought about just painting them white, but then thought I would end up with a ton of perfectly good, but still plain and boring, flush white doors.  So, Mr. Patient (the man who can do anything) came to my rescue and we decided that we could trim them out and then paint them.  Of course the wood trim I wanted was nowhere to be found and had to be milled.  So, I waited and waited and kept looking at the plain 'ol doors.  Finally, the wood came in and last week - they were trimmed and painted.  Voila - I give you the after:

 

 

 

They are still in the process of final coat of paint, but you can get the idea.

Did I mention there were a ton of them to do and he did both sides of each door, except in the closets. 

So when I walk into a room and close the door, I see the same trim/detail on both sides.

This was a time consuming project and one of the reasons I love working with Mr. Patient. 

You can sort of get an idea of how many are down 1 hall in this shot.  This only shows a portion of the doors on one floor. 

I think there were a total of 12 doors.

 

 

 

Now I should not end the post without a little shot of why I love the beach place. 

After a weekend of R&R without any kids, we got up on Sunday morning to a beautiful day,

 took a nice walk on the beach and enjoyed these.

 

 

I love a Sunday morning without children and with a good man and a good Bloody Mary.



From old and sad, to new and cheerful

I have had a desk which was inherited from my late husband's family.  I briefly parted with it and gave it to another family member, but eventually it was given back to me.  Ok, upon request - if you must know the truth.  Call me an Indian giver - I'm ok with that.  The desk reminded me of my very favorite mother-in-law, who was an eclectic woman and to this day when I see the desk, it still reminds me of her.

The problem was that the old plantation style desk had seen better days.  It was dark, heavy and really had no place in my current life.  Still, I did not want to let it go.  I decided it would go on my project list and be jazzed up.  After all, I do have a little beach place that is all about color. 

The desk's before shots: 

And after several days of continuing to work on this thing -

coats of chalk paint, sanding and sealer which all seemed like

it was taking for forever ... my determination paid off.

 

See the after and tell me what you think.

 

 

 

I have no idea why the lighting in the above two shots make it look more blue than turquoise other that to say my photography skills obviously need some improvement.

 

Below, more accurately displays the true color.

 

And just because I wanted a little color on the inside and my pop of orange,

 when you drop the top of the writing space down, this is what you see:

 

 

I'm happy with the cheerful little desk now and have the perfect spot for it -

so off to the beach place it will go this weekend.

 

I also think that my much loved mother-in-law

would be pleased with the new life of her little old desk. 

 



Art hung at the beach place

Decided that hanging art comes first for me and actually finishing decorating rooms, well I guess doesn't come first.  Yes with rooms in the "not nearly done" phase, furniture and rugs yet to arrive and a ton of shit to do, today I thought to myself that if I could not actually pull the rooms together, I could at least play with hanging some art, some of which was already here.  I just love how I justify my thought process.

Hit a cool little gallery today and left with 2 pieces I love.  I even shopped and bought art with twins in tow - let's just say I felt extremely accomplished.  Normally, they would NOT be into me shopping for art and hanging with me through the process of selection and negotiation.

For your review, some of my newer pieces:

Love this painting and supporting local artists in the community.

 

Next up a painting on glass that will probably serve as the top of a bar cart.

 

 

The artist suggested lighting it from beneath the piece and told me it was beautiful when it was illuminated. 

I was honestly thinking that I thought this was a great idea, but at the same time I was also envisioning my blue martini glasses, a martini shaker and some vodka on top.

A useful piece of art! :)

 

Next up are two pieces we had commissioned specifically for this space:

 

 

They are each 48" x 48", so large in scale, but are in the LR on a large wall and I love them.  They just make me happy!

I also see something different almost every time I sit and stare at them.

I might add this is even before I drink the the martinis.

 

A shot of a painting the we recently purchased at an art fair:

 

 

The piece was framed by the artist in the stainless, which I might not have chosen myself, but actually do like the look.

 

and my last piece to share today, which was painted by an artist in Miami:

 

 

There's a story behind the painting that touches my heart, has to do with a very sick child and a parent who donated his work to support the mission who helped his son.  I purchased the painting due to the story I know behind it and also because in some odd way it reminds me of me and my twins.  I should add that this is despite the fact my daughter looks nothing like me, rather like her father and is not blond!

 

There you have it - while I probably should be trying to pull rooms together to show I am making progress, I'm just strolling around looking at my art and thinking to myself - yes we do need a DR table....but until we can find what we want, we at least have some beautiful paintings to enjoy.

 

Does art make you happy?  even if you are sitting in unfinished rooms?

For me the answer is a definite YES.

 

 



The Beach Place

So, I now know people actually read this blog - because I barely mention that we bought a place at the beach and I got emails saying "show us the beach place"!  So, I figure why not bring my blog friends up to speed, despite the fact it's not all gorgeous on the interior (yet!).

Here's the story.  About a year ago we started looking for a little place at the beach that we could enjoy weekends at.  My initial thought was, how hard can this be? That was until I found out that what we were looking for was not exactly easy to find.  Quick determinations had us seeing places and ruling out what we did not want: a drive that was more than an hour from our house, a high rise building, a "cookie cutter" interior layout and a busy touristy area.  All of those are easy to find in FL and truly are a dime a dozen.  So we finally decide on the area we want - a very small beach community without buildings of mega proportion and a small village type feel.  Once we found the area we wanted, we quickly found that the inventory there was very low....especially because we did not want the standard cookie cutter model and wanted to be on the water with views from the LR and MBR.  Oh, did I mention we had a budget?  well we did!!  We looked and looked and just when I was about to throw in the towel on the whole idea (or area), we found something I thought could work.  The fabulous Mr. S was not quite as sold on the place as I was. I had to point out how different it could look if we got rid of all the bright canary yellow painted walls and dark wood trim.  He finally agreed that we could put our own stamp on it and that it did indeed have most of the things we wanted on our checklist.

So, here you go.  First a shot of the exterior of the building - as seen from the beach side:

 

It's a very private small building, which is shared.  The shared part is a good thing, as we also share the cost of the hurricane insurance.  If you know anything about FL coastal insurance, you know it's outrageously expensive.  Our place has 3 BRs and 3 baths (small baths, but full baths) and beautiful views.

 

 

This is the view from our LR and balcony.  LOVE the privacy and the little trail to the beach.

 

 

The beach is beautiful and perfect for looking for seashells early in the morning.  The twins and I have already started our little collection for a Christmas project we plan to do.

 

 

And every night we get to enjoy this view from our new little place.

And you just know that every night, there is a glass of wine in my hand while I'm watching the sun set and thinking.....life is finally good again.  It's been a long road.

Lastly, my 10 yr old daughter took this shot.  She also informed me that I should have a new photo of myself that shows my fun mom side vs. my professional head shot for work.  So she now think she's a budding photographer and is on a mission to show the new relaxed me....and get me up to speed with Instagram.  Yep, my twins are keeping me current!

 

Interior before and after shots soon, I promise. 



I'm finally back!

So it's September already and I'm wondering exactly how that could be.  I remember mentioning 2013 would be the "year of the big merge" and ok, I'll blame my absence on that.  See how easy that was - I feel better already.

So yes, I did marry Mr. S and we did merge the 2 households this summer, which turned into a boatload of work in the 90+ heat.  The process of deciding what to keep, what to purge/donate/give-away was challenging, but for the most part I'm done with the bulk of that challenge.  I still have a storage bin area with a boatload of things I want to keep and they will be going to our new beach place just as soon as the workers are out of there.  But, I'm getting ahead of myself....

Let's begin my catch-up fest, by showing you a project that I can finally check off my to-do list.  Moved out of the interim house and was happy with the progress completed.  A couple of before exterior shots: 

And now a couple of after shots:

 

 

 

I can't take the credit for any of the exterior work, because daughter #2 (owner and her husband) were in the States this summer and oversaw the exterior painting.  What a difference a paint job can make.  Love it.

 

But I will give an award for my most favorite interior room transformation and it goes to

the LR.  Before/after shot below:

 

 

 

It's nice to look at a completed room and think yes, eventually I will complete others.

 

Ask me the real reason that I came back to the blog and I would have to tell the truth - I have resigned my professional gig and now may actually have time to enjoy all the things it's hard to do when you are a working solo mom with zero time.  and yes, I must give credit where credit is due - Mr. S convinced me I would LOVE being able to focus on family and fun.  Well, it didn't take that much convincing.  We also agreed to buy a little place at the beach, under the condition that "you have time to enjoy it"  (his exact words).  So, now I have no job but a funky little place at the beach and a brand new project.  It's not a real big ugly duckling, more of a mini-me ugly duckling, but a fun new project indeed.  So here's to future posts of finishing the merge/projects here at our home and shots of progress at the beach place, that's underway as well.  

 

It feels good to be back :)



 

 



From Man Cave to Dining Room

I hate it when I read a blog that starts with an apology for not blogging forever.  So, no apologies to my few friends who read this.  Lord knows I have like zero time available to get shit done and then find more time to actually post.  So people, this is a rare day!

Although the room is not yet completely done, I will show you that I am making progress.  I keep saying I just want 1 room in the entire house to be done.  Just ONE....is that asking too much?  probably, since I am working on the entire house.  I skip from 1 room to the next and think:  Good God will this place ever be pulled together?  So you know what I decided to do?  Throw a party at the end of June.  You know how hosting a party kick-starts your ass to accomplish an attempt to at least try to pull it together?  Hoping it works.  It at least forced me to order some furniture this weekend.  It's a start. 

Now for the room I feel I have made the most progress in - The Dining Room.  Remember it started out looking like this:

Loved the rug, hated everything else and the room was NEVER used.  I promised if I converted it to a DR, we would actually use it and we have.  Not as much as I would like to....remember the woman with zero time to throw fabulous dinner parties.

Anyway, when I do find some time for those dinner parties, we now actually have a place to host a group for dinner.  Take a look:

From this angle you can't see that the fabric still has not made it to the upholsterer to have the window seat cushion and pillows done.  Let's just say - it's on the to-do list.

 

Sorry for the glare, but when I took the shots the sun was blazing.  I also thought that the bright glare might just keep you from noticing that very bare unfinished window seat.

 

Some details:

 

 

An old favorite I have had stored forever, in hopes that one day I could again use it.

My framed Hermes scarf with a beautiful slew of tassles.  Loved it long ago, love it still.

This piece will be mounted above an English pine hutch, also dragged out of storage.

 

And another piece of pine from storage was mounted to the other end of the room.

 

 

The sideboard trestle table (which flips open) was originally white and blended into the wall.

I decided to paint it to match the base of the DR table and it looks 100% better.

Gotta give it up to Martha Stewart metalic paint selections now available. 

 

I was trying to match this table base:

 

 

And a detail of my CL rug!

 

 

This might be my bargain of the year and I LOVE it.  It's really beautiful in the room.  I found it on CL, went on my lunch break to see it.  The woman selling it had many rugs in her home and said that this was from her grandparents collection and made in a village in Afghanistan about 50 years ago.

Negotiated Price: $125.00

Can you believe that?  I left and felt a bit guilty.  I mean I think the rug pad was close to that.

It has 1 imperfection, but I think it adds to it's character.  And only 1 imperfection after 50 years.....well, we can all only hope to be so lucky.

 

The only thing I needed to purchase for the room was the DR table and chairs, which I found at Arhaus in Atlanta.  Ok, I know that's sort of a big thing, but I love the fact that with Arhaus there is 1 flat fee shipping price.  Buy 1 piece or a room full, the delivery fee is $299.

On top of that, I ordered everything when they were having a buy 1, get 1 free deal on the side chairs.  Add to that the deal on my rug and the fact that I had everything else, I think the room came in at a very affordable price. 



 

So here's to progress.  Still need to hang the art, finish the window seat, bring in a few odds and ends that I have - just have not yet taken them from storage or the other house - and oh yeh, then find the time to actually host a dinner party.  When I do, I'll take pics and send you the completely finished room.  That's IF that ever happens.  A woman can dream....