Spring Is Finally Here!

Without any enormous painting jobs hanging over my head, I feel a real sense of freedom to goof off and have fun.  We have an annual all-town tag sale and Historic Society huge book sale in April and my sister and I had fun checking everything out.  I've also been snapping pictures of beautiful spring-flowering shrubs, trees and flowers.

Lovely old Greek Revival house around the corner.

Forsythia bordering my neighbor to the north.  Love this color.

A beautiful flowering cherry tree down the road.

Tulips at Elizabeth Park.

Gorgeousness.  I love red tulips.

Grape and regular hyacinth in front of the wisteria.

Cute little violas self-sown from last year.

Parrot tulips.

The wisteria survived the porch re-roofing.

It seems our cold winter really helped the flowers.  The peonies are loaded with buds and tulips bloomed that hadn't in several years.  The wisteria and lilacs had a decent year as well.

Happy Spring!

Easter 2013

Oh, how I love Easter and the whole Holy Week experience.  The lows, then the highs.  It's the ultimate.

Well this year I finally was prepared enough to have a clean house and nice meal.  Plus I actually put out decorations.  I tried to force forsythia but it still hasn't bloomed!  Oh, well, next time I'll know better.

And I even colored eggs!  I dropped my laptop on the driveway and trashed it so I've been kind of lost.  I couldn't remember the "natural" way to color eggs so I just used vinegar and food coloring.  They came out weird, plus I only had brown eggs on hand.

 Below is a three-layer carrot cake, a Susan Branch recipe, on a Star of David platter.  It's very yummy.  I used the grater attachment on the food processor my sister bought me.  Wow, that thing is fantastic!  It used to take forever to grate the carrots with a grater, and I'd end up with bloody knuckles.

Dreaming of This

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's just a little hard to remember because we just got slammed with another foot and a half of snow.  This snowstorm was wet and heavy.  At my job 15 miles away there were only a few inches.  The high elevations got the most, and this is the hilltop, after all.

I'm so anxious to clean up my gardens.  I'm usually in a painting frenzy in the fall so I don't get around to the yard clean-up.  Plus last year I hurt my shoulder and was in physical therapy until July.  I wish I had taken more pictures because I divided and relocated some plants but don't remember the end result.  The exciting thing about gardening is that it changes every year.  Things grow, die and sometimes move around on their own, or due to animals.

Anyway, this year I'm very anxious for spring.  I think I want to buy more colored ceramic pots.  My mother beat me to it and already bought her pansies!  I just can't see the point until this snow is gone.  She was one of those who only got a few inches.

Oh, Charlotte, how could you!?

Poor arborvitae.

Wow, no more smugly thinking that this winter was a breeze.  Here I sit, sick as a dog, for the second time this month.  No more smugly thinking that I'll get through this winter untouched by germs.

I don't remember this much snow in one storm before.  I think this tops the blizzard of 1978.  It started around 9 a.m.   By 11 p.m. it really looked like about two feet had fallen.  My power went out briefly at around 8 p.m.  It continues to be windy now at 5:15 a.m.

Typically for us, we should have some warmish temperatures starting on Monday.  That's good because there's a whole lot of snow that needs to melt.

OK, it finally stopped around noon but it's still very windy.  I just came in after 2 1/2 hours of shoveling and I have the tiniest driveway and walkways.

Recycle cart and car buried.

I've never had this much snow blow onto my porch before.

Snow on deck is up to the window.  That hump is a table.

Oh well.  Back to coughing, nose-blowing and Sarah Richardson marathons on the computer.

Bathroom Before, During and After

This project took a long time to complete, like maybe two years?  That's my ADD, inability to finish projects, kicking in.  But then I got hurt.  It was nearly complete; so close, and yet so far.  So this past weekend I finally reinstalled the doorknob and strike plate!  Now people can be assured that the door will stay closed when they're using the facilities.

It started when I noticed paint peeling on the ceiling.  I scraped it and painted it Extra White Sherwin Williams ceiling paint.  Then my perfection issues kicked in and I put joint compound on the uneven spots.  Then I left it.  For two years, I think.  My brother-in-law had cut two holes in the wall to look for leaking pipes.  It also was bright bubblegum pink, from my pastel phase when I chose every wrong color imaginable.  Can you believe that after I painted it this time, I missed that pink?  My inner five-year-old took over once again.

So by the time I got around to priming the joint compound patches, I needed to do more patches.  Then after I primed and painted those spots, the rest of the ceiling didn't match!  Can't anything ever be easy?  The trim was painted Sherwin Williams Extra White in semi-gloss acrylic latex.  I painted the upper walls Benjamin Moore Wythe Blue.  Did you know that that's not blue?  It's listed in the green family on the Benjamin Moore website.  It's sort of muted, darkish aqua.   I like it and it coordinates well with the Martha Stewart Milk Pail in the kitchen.  (I had already painted the bottom, fake-tile portion a white semi-gloss, whose name I don't know).  The goal is more sophistication, I have to keep telling myself.

It's such a horrible, small little room that it's hard to make it look good.  The corner shelves and vanity are homemade jobs.  Note the animal-print curtain on an angle below the sink.  Sorry, don't do animal print.  Never have, probably never will.  I don't even wear it.  I have nothing against it, I just find it tacky for myself.  I'm Plain Jane that way.

The previous owner had a small towel bar on the side of the bottom step in the basement, a few inches from the floor.  Haven't the vaguest idea what he used it for, but I recycled it and placed it above the bigger one.  I wanted to use hooks but thought they wouldn't dry well in this room with no insulation or fan.  I also toyed with the idea of putting the towel racks on the door but didn't think towels would dry well there, either.  I didn't have room on the vanity for a convenient spot for the hand towel rack.

The other problem was the window treatment.  This window has the best view of the garden, so I'd like to leave it bare.  However, my modest guests are uncomfortable with that so I opted for a cafe curtain (from Ann & Hope) on a pewter tension rod (Country Curtains).

I don't know if you can tell in the before pictures, but the light fixture above the mirror was a light strip, Hollywood-style with round light bulbs (I don't know what they're called).  I replaced it with a Pottery Barn one.  The shower curtain was angled inside the tub due to the placement of the window.  That didn't work for me, so I raised it above the window.  That puts about four inches of it inside the shower curtain.

I noticed that the subfloor was starting to rot due to water escaping underneath the too-short shower curtain and liner so I bought extra-long ones.  I also put three coats of polyurethane on the window to inhibit peeling.

 I have three beautiful shower curtains (one of my obsessions):  a blue and white, pink and green, and aqua and pink.  I decided to go with a plain white one to simplify and unify this tiny room.  I wanted a nice waffle-weave one but at the extra length, the cost was prohibitive.  This was from Target and is good enough.

You can't tell from the before picture but I switched out the blue-framed mirror that was here and replaced it with a wooden one I got from the trash at a church where I used to work.  I just love recycling garbage.

The room is so small I have to put bath towels in a Shabby Chic basket under the sink.  Also, I'm waiting to have a fan installed before I replace the overhead light.

Here's when I moved in:

Bubblegum pink!

Benjamin Moore Wythe Blue looks very much like Martha Stewart Milk Pail.

 

Christmas in New York

Some friends and I went to New York to see the Rockettes.  Can you believe I couldn't remember if I'd seen them before?  Seems to me I went with my cousin in the late '80's for the Easter show.  Anyway, New York is always an adventure, what with the subway deaths and all.  A country girl like myself finds it a challenge to drive to New Haven, hop a train, then a subway, to see Rockefeller Center and the gorgeous storefronts and architecture.  The churches are magnificent.  St. Patrick's had scaffolding all around so I didn't take a picture.

Saks Fifth Avenue

Grand Central Station's main concourse.

Lobby of Radio City Music Hall.

Chandelier in lobby.

Stage.  There are organs on both sides.

Shoe Department at Saks.

Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.

Trump Tower.  Gorgeous.

Tree with ice rink below.