Maeve, He's Just Not That Into You!

I'm stuck in the house trying to shake the last of the virus baby Stella gifted me with and the quarantine is starting to make me just a teeny weeny bit lonely.  So, I'm hanging out with the cats and I discovered we have a problem.

The oldest cat belonged to my daughter until she married a guy who was allergic to pet hair.  Since there aren't a lot of people looking for crusty, fat, old tom cats, Utah came to live with me.  He was a city boy and had spent years in a high rise.  The first few months he cowered at the sound of Canada Geese honking and lived in terror of falling leaves at the window.  But, after the first year, I started letting him outdoors and now he patrols the property with the commitment of a Knight of the Round Table.  I pretend I don't know he is responsible for saving my gardens from an out of control rabbit population.  He should have been named The Terminator!

All that bunny murdering property surveillance is tiring for an old cat and Utah is very attached to taking long naps.

Today, he tried to nap on a scratching post ~

Maeve thought he wanted her to keep popping out and swiping at his tail.

Utah moved to a chair.  Maeve thought he wanted to play some more.

Utah went to the box I can never get rid of because he loves it so much ~

Guess who's there?  Maeve thinks he wants to play some more ~

Utah went outside to sleep on the porch ~

I can see you!

I know any good girlfriend would tell Maeve that he's just not that into her but she adores him.  Maybe, girls, we should all take her out for drinks and break it to her as a group.  I just don't feel I can do it alone.

After all, I've been there myself!

It's A Continuum For Us

The Thanksgiving and Columbus Day weekend is fading away amid memories of summer like temperatures, last boat rides, bike trips and cottage closings ~

There is one group of people who need never fear their pleasures ending.  For gardeners they never do end. When the sunflower heads begin to droop, there are seeds to be harvested. ~

As sad as it seems to pick the last glorious rose blooms, there are rose hips to collect and mulching to be done. ~

The surety of a hard frost coming soon means it's time to dig the last of the potatoes. ~

Frost nips on the Basil leaves say I must give up on my daily, fresh supply.  Instead, I will now make it into Pistou. ~

I pack 2 cups of basil, 3 Tbsp. of peeled garlic, a dash of sea salt and 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil into a food processor and give it a good chop. ~

Then I put it in ice cube trays and cover it liberally with more EVO. ~

I freeze the cubes and move them to freezer bags to keep frozen until I want to thaw and drizzle on soup or add pine nuts and Parmesan cheese for a classic Pesto.  Note:  I call it Pistou because that's what Julia Child called it.  Unable to reach my French sister-in-law Mylene, my usual translator, I googled it.  The French word Pistou = Pesto.  Who knew?


I love to collect gardening books as my tea in bed January reading material.  Then, I'll make elaborate plans that would take a large contingent of professional nurserymen to accomplish.  The book I really will follow is my gardening bible. ~

Follow what this guy says with no deviations and you will have the most amazing veggie garden of your life!  The book is out of print but you can find it on Amazon and it is really, really worth the $20 investment.

I'd like to share a pic of some of my favourite things with you.  This shabby chic dresser came from my sister when I suddenly had only half my bedroom furniture.  (I'm not telling you - you have to guess why!)  My father gave me this hand thrown vase just before he passed away.  It was made by my grandfather for my grandmother, in the height of the depression, when they had gone from riches to rags.  It means love to me.  The old print of the horses towing barges up the river depicts the same transportation means as happened on my river in the same era.  The rose petals will be left to dry and placed in a bowl to scent the house long after the snow falls and to remind me I must decide what seed catalogues I need to order to start seedlings indoors. ~

Have a continuously pleasant day!  

Don't Try To Keep Up With My Neighbours!

Fall is the one time of year I feel totally intimidated by my neighbour's decorating abilities!  It's a season when you want to convey colour and abundance and really overfill baskets, planters and window boxes.  I plug away and do my very best.

Then I look out my kitchen window and I see this! ~

My neighbour's place is modest enough but I'm sure they have some extra help at times ~

The colours always seem more vibrant from there. ~

It's like competing with this at the back of my yard ~

On Hallowe'en, they'll outdo me again ~

I just may slip over there and ask them who their designer is!  Someone sure knows what they're doing!


Have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving Canada!

Do I Cover It Or Not?

When I first moved into my house, the staircase and upper hall were adorned in wallpaper designed to look like panelling.  It didn't really look like panelling; more like a drawing of panelling.  Odder still, panelling is fake wood made to take the place of real wood.  It doesn't look like real wood either.

I scraped the wallpaper off the staircase and found (get ready for this) real wood. ~

That was encouraging enough to move on to the hallway.  I stripped more paper and found (you guessed it) more wood!

I've never understood the rationale that has someone take it into their head to replace real with fake.

In the 60's, we would have stripped the paint to reveal the pine.  By the 90's we would pay a fortune for anything that retained it's original milk paint. Oops!  The reason we go to all that trouble with chalk paint is to duplicate the look of aged milk paint.  Sigh.

In this case, I go with the fact that the baseboards and walls would have been painted to reflect as much light as possible (remember there was no electricity) and to disguise that it is a cheap (pine) wood.

A total gut of the dining room revealed the original beams. ~

I think those have more presence left in their natural state.

An old door lintel was given a new lease on life as a shelf.  It was very dingy looking and got a paint treatment that looks old but isn't.

As a decorator, the fastest way to upset a client is to suggest they paint wood.  It takes a lot of tact to help someone realize their solid wood, shiny, Mediterranean style china cabinet is not real wood.  The same goes for much of the hardwood flooring they don't want obscured by an area carpet.  Rarely is it real wood.

I would never suggest painting a hand crafted piece of vintage furniture that is in good condition.  A mass produced, Victorian era dresser, in poor condition, is fair game to me! Anything mass produced, from that era on, falls prey to my paintbrush.

What should always, always be painted is this. ~

These are my kitchen cupboards, installed in 1985.  They are paint splattered which is a good start.  Honestly, I'm going to paint them just as soon as I can psyche myself up for the work and kitchen devastation! 

It's so much easier to be the decorator than the handyman!!!

Three Ladies And A Great Idea!

This story begins with my sister spying a couple of dressers being loaded into her neighbour's truck to go to the dump.  She unabashedly asked if she could have them and called me to come help her take them to our workshop.  The young fellow who was trashing them tried not to show that he thought we were crazy and kept apologizing for how old and decrepit they were.

They were in rough shape with non functioning drawers and mismatched handles.  One handle was a hook that you use to hang plants from the ceiling.  I'm sooo thinking a man thought that one up!  They had layers of paint and the final one was a shiny, dark brown. Still, these dressers were in fabulous shape compared to the furniture the gal at Upcycling My (ordinary) Life! tackles.  She does a beautiful job on stuff that would have gone straight to my burn pile!

We repaired the drawers and replaced the handles with simple wood knobs.  Now for the fun part, the paint treatment!

I started working on these before I thought to take a picture.  Sorry, in a hurry again! ~

The idea was to use a light grey for the undercoat, use soft white on top and rub back to the grey in spots.  If you put Vaseline on the spots where you know you will rub back, the second layer of paint comes off easily.  The problem with this dresser was that the red pigment in the brown paint kept bleeding through.  Primer isn't going to take well to the Vaseline so I need a plan B.

Chalk paint will adhere to pretty much anything so I do a Google search for a supplier near me.  There isn't one.  I stumble across a site No Minimalist Here and find a recipe to make your own chalk paint.  Now, chalk paint is expensive and I'm sticking to thrift, gift, reworked and found so I'm definitely interested in giving this a try.  It wasn't really necessary for me to spend two hours perusing all the beautiful stuff on her site but I sure did enjoy that part!  Then, I checked out her Etsy shop.  Then, I joined her site and submitted a wreath to her linky party.  Then, she joined my site and I was blown away because she has a huge following!  Then I was nervous!

I clicked on another site that had used her method.  I liked the little table I saw done on Kristybelle's site.  I had more fun reading all her stuff.  She's very funny and her excitement is contagious!  Drop by and give it a boo.  Then I joined her site and she joined my site.  Eeeeks!

I haven't done any work but I'm making great friends and having fun.

I followed the recipe and made a mixture of 2/3 latex paint to 1/3 Plaster of Paris with a little water to thin it out.  The Plaster of Paris was $9.99 at Michael's.  

You should wear one of those lovely paper masks while you are mixing this as it's bad for your lungs.  Once it's mixed, it's non toxic.  I think you can eat the stuff and be fine but don't just in case.

I used a darker grey, Benjamin Moore Silver Fox 2108-50 and put one good coat on the dresser.  Then, I sanded back to the lighter grey.  I know that wasn't the original plan but sometimes a piece just begs for a certain look and I have to go with it.  The piece is finished with a coat of ebony tinted furniture wax.


Here's the front and top finished ~ 

Here she is in all her chippy glory! ~

Now, do I sell this dresser or keep it?  Hmmmm.

All A Matter Of Perspective

On Sunday, the most important things in my world were finishing my decorating before our Canadian Thanksgiving next weekend and doing a chalk paint treatment on a dresser.

By Monday morning I was in a state over my well pump acting up.

By Monday afternoon all these things were forgotten when my daughter called for help with her sick baby.  She has been back at work for a month after her maternity leave ended, daddy is in NYC working on a film and she and the baby have just recovered from Norwalk flu.  Now, baby Stella has double ear infections and mommy can't take any more time off work.

So, I go to one city to take a bus to a bigger city and hop in a cab to her apartment where I find this ~

One day later Stella is on the mend and moving around at her usual high speed pace! Fifteen (I'm not exaggerating!) shots turn out like this before I can get her to stay still ~

Back to happy fuzzy top ~ 

Anyone under the age of forty, please take note of 'Grandma's' bed in the background. Unless you are in college and attending nightly frat parties, you do not enjoy sleeping on a futon!  I don't even like looking at futons!

Tonight, I am home with my own bed and my own concerns and I have left mommy looking a little more rested and baby Stella looking like this ~

I've been reading blogs for quite a while and I know what kind of people are in blog land.  Every one of you would say hang the dresser, the decorating and the pump.

Because, you all have the right perspective!

Child's Play

This one is so simple a child can do it!  In fact, a child did do it!

It started with wanting to redo a couple of fake, orange pumpkins. ~

These ones looked soooo fakey!

I was inspired to do something fabulous with them after I saw some covered in fabric, twine, raffia and so on. But then, dock removal day managed to sneak up on me and I had a house full of helpers to be fed and entertained.  I'm very, very happy to do that since I can't get the dock out of the river by myself!

My twelve year old niece was getting a little bored waiting for the guys to finish hefting dock sections up thirty feet of river bank.  She's a crafty kind of girl and always ready to help me with my projects so I sat her down with a paint brush and a bottle of DecorArt Crafter's Acrylic paint and had her paint over all the orange on the pumpkins.  This is wayyy easier than what I had planned!


The result is lovely ~

Paired with my new sterling candlesticks and a sterling trophy dish from the 1951 So. California Men's Double Championships (that I bought super cheap at auction) these pumpkins are stunning!

I've been trying to take better pics for the blog and was concentrating on getting a tight shot.

Then this happened! ~

Yup, that smoke is from the leaf catching fire!  Now I have to apologize to my niece for burning her craft.  Sorry Camryn!!!  Let's just pretend it's frost damage to the leaf.

With all the time I've saved, I can get at redoing a dresser in chalk paint.  I'm anxious to get it done and let you know where I discovered how to make my own chalk paint!

So, haul out your fall decorations and put those kids to work!


PS~ This one is at the Common Ground link up.  Her site is loaded with ideas ripe for the stealing!  Shhh.