One Big Weekend - Four Small Posts... Part 3

All the Trimmings

My children are still in school for another week, right up to Christmas eve. It lulls me into a false sense of complacency, believing that it's actually ages until I need to be ready for the holiday.

I did manage to get some Christmas decorations up last weekend. I'll share with you a couple of highlights. A few years ago I went to an estate sale in my neighborhood and bought a box of odds and ends including this handful of vintage Christmas light bulbs. I don't have those kinds of light strings, but I think they are just beautiful, so I threw them in a candy dish and put them in the piano room.



Similarly, I'm displaying some vintage ornaments in a bowl as a centerpiece on my dining room table. I've been collecting the ornaments over the years, imagining I'll have enough to one day decorate a whole tree. But lately, I've been putting the tree in the foyer, which has a tile floor, not known for being kind to dropped glass objects. I fear for their preservation, so I put them in a bowl this year and sort of dig it.

Sophie's choir has a Secret Santa situation as they build up to their mega-Christmas-Concert-Weekend. It's difficult to think of small gifts to give that aren't candy or junk. Sophia's Secret Santa did a good job of gifting small, fun items that were creative and wholesome. This garland was made from a kit they gave her on night three. We made it together and I think it looks pleasant hanging on the mantle in the piano room.

There is still much to be done before I can say I'm anything close to ready, but what is done pleases me.

Color in the Music Room

Before: White walls. There was plenty of natural light, which gave it a very good vibe. I think some rooms "want" to be bright and airy and some rooms "want" to be cozy. It never turns out well if you try to make a room something it's not. I worried that adding a color would take away the appeal of all the light from those windows.



I thought I would put Butter Yellow on the walls here, unsure of anything else that would work with the red furniture and still allow the room to be so cheerful. At the VERY last minute I went instead with gray. Choosing the right color was a harrowing experience. I eyed the gray color samples, chose one card that seemed as good as any other, and picked a shade that seemed the right balance of light and dark. After collecting my gallon, I took it home, opened it up (it was gray), poured it in the paint tray (it was gray), and put a coat on the wall. Suddenly, it was blue.



I returned to the paint store three times before we finally got it tweaked to the right sensible hue. I think the salesman and I were good and sick of each other by the time we got it right, but I'm really happy with the result. I'm not sure this is the right picture to show it off. It was taken at a different time of day from the before and it doesn't wow. I really like the way the framing underneath the chair rail pops with color around it.



I had a stash of antique sheet music which I framed and displayed above the couch. I gave myself permission to cut into the pieces that were falling apart. I'm pleased with the variety of frame sizes which that allowed.



My students sauntered through as piano lessons resumed this week, and folks were very complimentary.

It's a good room.

Color and Highlights

Five years ago we moved into our current house. We chose it mindfully, planning for it to be the house we were carried out of feet first. Could I care for an elderly parent here? Could the kids all come home for Christmas, grandchildren in tow? Can my knees and hips go bad and still get to the laundry room? All the answers were "yes."

The house was built in 1976 and when we bought it from the elderly original owner, most everything in the house was in its original state. When the old house sells, we said, we will enjoy the updating process. Until then, all shall remain "as is."

It is too angering to get into the details of it all, but with the recession, the bottom falling out of the housing market, dishonest potential buyers - turned slovenly renters - turned bankrupt evictees, we still own "the old house." And I still have Coppertone appliances in my kitchen.

I don't choose to focus on the negative in this post. We still wish we owned only one property and are reluctant landlords, but the renters we have now are reliable and hard-working. It pleases me to see them taking pride in the house to which I once brought home my newborn babies.

While I can't put in the hardwood flooring and new bathtubs that I long for, I tweak little things as I can. There were two rooms that still had white walls. Since I disapprove of white walls, I planned from the start to repaint them in some inspired color. And for five years, inspiration refused to strike.

The rooms in question were the music room and the kitchen. The music room (which I mostly only enter to give lessons) had a pretty good vibe to it already and I spent most of the five years parylized that I would irreperably mess things up by choosing a wrong color.

The kitchen lacks much natural light. Everyone has a kitchen window, right? Not so. My kitchen is, strangely, an inner room and I have to rely on light bulbs to wake it up. I worried that adding a color would diminish the already meager lightness in that part of the house.

Last week I took the plunge. My brilliant grown-up niece (my brother's step-daughter) has done the painting and I'm very happy with the results. The kitchen is finished and I'm hanging up some pretties. The music room will be touched up tomorrow.

I can't wait to post pictures.

In Which She Cleans Her Pantry

I have one of these numbers in my kitchen cabinets.



Honestly, I've lived here for almost five years and the jury is still out on it. The shelves on the right are deep and I can't see or find the stuff at the back. The shelves on the left are shallow and actually serve as a door that pulls out revealing more shallow shelves. Every time I think it should be filed under Fancy But Not Useful, I'll have an organizational tangent in which I realize that it really holds a ton of crap.

It had been ages since I'd cleaned it out and I had been coming home from the grocery store feeling like I had no place to put the new stuff. (Honestly, why do I need new stuff when there is no space in my pantry?) When I emptied it completely, I could see all of the nonsense cluttering the shelves. All of my baking ingredients are here. Of course I had three containers of ground cinnamon. And taking up valuable real estate on the seasoning shelves were some cork-topped bottles which I had purchased to store spices, allowing me to buy seasoning in bulk and store them prettily. I had several bottles that had been emptied, but not refilled. They still sat, uselessly, in my pantry door. I'm washing them now so that I can relabel and refill them with fresh ingredients.

Also hogging the shelves were "quick meal" options that I forget about using. I realized that I had an extra shelf, which I installed down low and now there is a shelf for those kinds of things so that they can be displayed prominently at the front of the shelf.



I realized I had MOUNTAINS of dried beans and legumes for crock pot cooking. However, I hardly ever use my crock pot. I need to. I MUST! But it's not my habit and it's hard to change habits isn't it? Because my dried bean cup runneth over, I whipped up a batch of these the very next day:



My mother used to make something called butter beans. I don't know what the technical definition of butter beans is, nor do I know how my mom made them. I just asked my dad recently how mom used to make them and he had absolutely no idea. Several years ago I came up with a good simulation for that dish. I threw about 2 cups of dried lima beans into the crock pot, along with about a quart of flavorful chicken broth. I had the cooker on low for 6-8 hours until the beans were soft.

So rich and savory!

Now I only need to make them about 14 more times so that I can have elbow room on my rice and bean shelf.