Window Treatment

the before and after

I love Battenburg lace. I think it's charming. But I really needed some color in my kitchen. There's a lot of beige and natural going on and a little of that can go a long way. We plan to paint the kitchen, but a quicker fix is to change the window treatment. I happen to love light just as much as color so I didn't want full curtains on this window that allows me to spy on my weird neighbors. Basically I wanted the same size and shape of valance that I already had, just cuter and brighter.

So I literally copied it. I hand traced the scalloping with tailor's chalk which is why it looks so rustic. My friend Lisa E suggested doing a double layer of fabric so that the outside would look just as cheery. I begrudgingly admitted that it would be nice to see the fabric from the outside too. The only problem is that light shines through both layers so that you can see them through each other. Oh well.

Now my kitchen looks a lot more like it's mine. This is one of my all time favorite Michael Miller fabrics. I used it to make aprons and they always sold well. I was going to make myself an apron in this fabric but I think I'll have used it all up by the time I make the matching valance for my kitchen door. It's worth it!

The neighbors' view.

I have to say that it is a complete pain in the tookus to have lost my zipper foot. I have not sewn a thing in months. Not since before the move. I didn't pack up my sewing room either. So there are a lot of missing things. My regular sewing foot (I'm using one that works but isn't the regular one) and my zipper foot.

Some random thoughts and observations:

I got my second ever wasp sting yesterday while I was picking tomatoes in my community garden patch. IN THE SAME PLACE THE OTHER STING OCCURRED. What has made me suddenly irresistible to the wasp population? This time the area of itch is like this 3" flat whitish pancake on the back of my arm. Will I go into anaphylactic shock next time? Am I getting more allergic with each sting? Will I have to live in a bubble soon? Can you get beer into a bubble?

Allergies suck.

I really love that the school year is starting up again. (Max is not excited.) It gives the structure and space we all need to survive. Max learns a ton, like he's supposed to, even though he thinks school has no point. Hopefully he won't have an annoying teacher who doesn't like him like he did last year. Poor kid. Women who don't understand boys shouldn't teach co-ed classes.

Fall is in the air. I know lots of people around here are saying that we never really had a summer and while I understand that the fact that it came quite late, and was very short, makes it feel like it didn't ever happen...but all those uncomfortable nights we didn't sleep because of the heat? That was summer. And I'm much more comfortable now. Bring on the fall!!

I am growing shelling beans in my community garden. They aren't dry yet. You have to let them dry in the pods at the end of summer. There were just enough already dry that I was able to fill one bowl three quarters full and I'm so retarded that I spent a half an hour running my fingers through them because they look so cool and feel clackety and smooth and I will eat them in soup at some point which kept making me smile. I must have looked like I was on some really great drugs the way I was enjoying those beans.

In The Cantina

Otherwise known as Dave and Doe's house where every possible surface has had a rich patina of color and art applied to it. Dave and Doe are both artists and being in their house is like walking into the most vibrant playground of texture and surprises. The most prominent style is a Mexican folk art mixed with comics.

I could sit in their kitchen (referred to as the "cantina") for hours just to bask in the cool religious iconography and skeletons. Hanging out in their house reminded me of the great potential for a home to become a reflection and a joyful funny monument to what makes us most happy. Why play it safe in the one place that is yours? So often we view our home as the place to create "peacefulness" and often we choose colors that are soothing and calm so that our house is a get away from the rest of the world.

But when I'm sitting in Dave and Doe's vibrant kitchen I want to know how come so few of us think of our home as the ultimate playground? Or a place to seek inspiration the kind of inspiration we get from travel and museums? Or why so few of us decorate our homes in a way that offers amusement and thought provoking conversation? Why should we play it safe at home in our decorating? The one place we can do what we want to in.

In my mad scurry to find employment when we returned from our trip I almost forgot my new resolve to start planning the transformation of my personal space into a completely personal space. Not something likely to end up in Sunset magazine but something likely to make me feel alive and energized.

Lord knows we have a tough road ahead of us for both obvious reasons and reasons you don't even want to know about. Life is ever shifting and rearranging itself. My house should be a place not just of peace and rest, because after a certain point that just sounds funereal, but a place of fun and vibrancy, a place to wake up and feel alive in.

Thank you Dave and Doe for the huge nudge in my fat ass- I intend that when we finally drag your bones up here for a visit you will feel equally good in my home as I did in yours.

When Houses Speak

We chose the pink paint. I loved my pink house with the dark green trim. I don't have a better picture of this house because most of my good ones were stored on my old hard drive that crashed right before we moved out of state. Seriously, California was shoving us out in every possible way.

After writing yesterday's post about putting my feet on the ground I got to thinking about my obsession with houses. It is, perhaps, particularly on my mind because of a post I read about someone else's adventure with her house and the fact that houses speak to her. I share that experience. I believe that the house you live in is like a spiritual shell and therefore one should choose their homes carefully. Some houses are sorrowful, some full of happy memories, some have wild stories in the walls, some carry a thousand unanswerable questions, some are toxic, and some don't speak at all.

Back when I was thirteen or fourteen my parents were looking at houses in our town. I don't know why. At some point I decided it was an effort to make change in hopes of saving their marriage but that may be wholly untrue. They found this really big house on top of Wimer Heights and took us to see it. It was modern and had wall to wall carpeting. It had big windows which might have been impressive had it not been for the bleakness of the neighborhood it was in. It was a house for wealthy people. The kind of large showpiece you buy when you start to make money. To this day I can remember the cold sunshine washing over the grey carpet and the howling wind outside cutting a hole in my happiness. I felt the fiercest need to never go back there. I knew that if I had to live there I would die. I knew that the wind would never stop whistling through those windows because it never stops blowing on that hill.

Until I found our stucco house in Santa Rosa I had a continuous dream of returning to my childhood home in Ashland on Scenic Drive. It's been in my dreams almost non stop since I had to suddenly move away from it when my parents divorced. There were lots of bad memories to leave behind in it, but the house itself wasn't sad. The house took care of me. It had good bones and the wonderful details you can only find in homes built before the forties. I loved it completely.

Several years ago when I found our dream house I knew it the second I walked into it. I just knew I was meant to move into it. It was an almost impossible transaction. A desirable house in a great location about fifty thousand dollars out of our price range. It was a gorgeous stucco early thirties Tudor style house with gorgeous original windows- the living room window was almost floor to ceiling, a great big curved multi paned affair. The light in the house was wonderful. The layout was great. The yard was big. I walked in and knew it was the house I wanted to grow old in. Somehow the house also knew it and against the odds, we got it.

Our current house.

Is it possible to be in love with a house? And if you have to leave a house you're in love with, is it possible for your heart to break? Because that's what happened. I came to McMinnville to find us a house. There wasn't a lot on the market in March 2006 and very little of what I found was vintage. I don't like new houses. I actually really dislike them. I like old houses. Old houses with fine bones. Ones with the original wood paned windows still intact. The only ones on the market were either in really bad repair or had postage stamp yards. When I found the house we're living in it was the shiniest best thing out there. The yard is almost twice the size of our old one. The house is solid, it's been extremely well cared for, and it was a reasonable price.

But it lacks fine detail. It has mostly hardwood floors which is nice and a brick fireplace and a brick gas fireplace. However, most of the windows in the house are typical mid century ranch style and are tiny. The air circulation in the house stinks. The layout is awkward. Many of the rooms are dark with inadequate light fixtures. The bedrooms are tiny and the ceilings are not high*. The kitchen is ridiculously small and poorly planned for someone like me who spends so much time in it. While some mid century ranch houses boast interesting roof lines and cool funky details, ours is as plain as they come.

The question is: how do you fall in love with such an architecturally mediocre house? Every time I start to feel alright that I live in a boring house, I see pictures of other people's old farm houses, or their thirties cottages and I feel a physical pain in my heart. Every time I walk through the vintage neighborhoods and see the pretty windows and the lovely arched doorways, or the big old porches, I feel my spirit reaching out.

Can the house I live in be so important? Can a person who's only ever been happy in old houses find real happiness and joy in a featureless fifties ranch house? Will I always pine stupidly for an older home? I realized yesterday that it is my lack of enthusiasm for this house that has made it difficult to settle into it. The truth is, I'm still in love with my old house. I feel like there are questions that need answering such as: did we lose the dream house because we didn't deserve to have something so elegant? Is the lesson I'm supposed to learn to be happy with whatever I have and let go of what I thought I wanted? Yet, I had already been happy with what I had.

Or was it all just bad luck with no attached lessons? A part of me keeps thinking that some day we'll find another wonderful old house with a big yard. Maybe an old farmhouse on an acre or two. Yet if I let myself wander around with those desires in my heart then how will I ever settle into this one? A part of me doesn't believe I'll ever be able to love this house because it isn't the kind of shell my spirit needs.

What if I really invest myself here in this ranch? What if I put all my energy into somehow (how?) making it fun and pretty and interesting to live in and then life pulls me out of my house again?

I'm not depressed right now, by the way. My happiness from yesterday has not diminished. It's just that these questions have been lurking under the surface all this time. I am just realizing how I have not been able to stop loving my old house and longing for my old kitchen and my old gorgeous living room and my pretty bedroom from which I could see the whole back yard and watch the weather turn.

I don't miss or long for my old city in my old state. Moving to Oregon was (for me) an act of pure dream fulfillment. I belong in Oregon. It didn't even take thirty seconds to love being back in this state. This region, the people here, the landscape, the weather- all of it I cherish. It is only a question of houses.

I have had a plan to apply a little vintage 40's kitsch into the decor. A little vintage Hollywood version of life in a ranch house. Back then a ranch house evoked something specific like the wide open western skies beneath which you moved hundreds of heads of cattle by day and lived rustically comfortable by night underneath the dim glow of your wagon-wheel chandelier. Angela coined the style name "Lucy Goes West" which perfectly captures what I plan to go for.

As I wade through all these thoughts, uncomfortable with how sentimental it makes me sound (I'm not), I feel bad for this house. It has no bad stories to tell. We are keeping the linen closet door inside which the growth of all three of the Meyers' children was recorded over the years. It was loved and it feels like it was loved. We wouldn't have bought the house if it didn't have a good feeling in it. It's plainness means it's more humble which is perfectly in keeping with our circumstances. Can I bring it alive in such a way that I stop feeling pangs of envy every time I walk into someone else's charming vintage home with all it's sweet details?

Can I make it charming enough that when I pull into the driveway I feel pleasure just sitting there looking at it as I did with my old home?

I am fortunate to have my own home at all. If I sit around worrying about the very real possibility that we may have to sell it if our income situation doesn't improve then I waste time. Who has time to waste? My new quilt makes me happy. This house just needs lots of attention and paint. It needs to be given the benefit of the doubt that it can be prettied up enough to make people with cute cottages kind of wish they had a charming funny simple ranch house.

That's my cue to get into the studio and put together the two orders I'm working on, because every penny means a better chance at keeping what we already have. Then, I will work on a backing for the quilt. Oh yeah, and a slip cover for my chair in the living room... and kitchen curtains...and paint chips to pore over...


*I don't care for the 15' ceilings that new houses often come with either-too much wasted space to collect cobwebs in.

A Miracle On 18th Street

My kid ate this yesterday! (Shhhhh. He's eating some now, so don't say a word or the magic spell will break.) To most parents this is a real dull moment because their kids have been scarfing down piles of innocuous cucumber since the day they were weaned. As I mentioned before, although I totally accept that my child is an incredibly picky eater, it is still my job to always be offering up good food. Wholesome food. I dutifully do this. So yesterday I listed cucumbers with ranch as being one of his dining options. The kid floored me by saying that's what he wanted.

AND HE ACTUALLY ATE IT ALL.

Which, by the way, he did again just now. While writing this post I went into the living room to collect his plate because he was screaming that he was all finished. What this means in Max-speak is that he has finished the absolute minimum required of him. He has this little quirk where he doesn't feel comfortable unless he is allowed to leave something uneaten on his plate. It's like a young blossoming of OCD. It gives him a sense of control. He must always feel that he has some say. I let him do it because I'm crazy too and understand these little necessities. However, can you imagine how I felt when I picked up a completely EMPTY plate?

How I felt: like springtime just opened up in my chest and I am flying through the wild flowers on the set of "The Sound Of Music" and wearing that awesome dirndl and I'm not fat...like snow just started falling in the summertime and I get to drink a gin and tonic and catch the flakes which, for once, aren't coming from my head...like nothing can ever be wrong again because

MY KID ATE CUCUMBERS AND DIDN'T LEAVE ANY ON HIS PLATE.

My joys are simple. I spent all day (prior to the occurrence of the miracle) cleaning. I don't mean I was scrubbing toilets. I'll do that in the near-ish future. I mean I was DUSTING*, and putting crap away. For the first time in two months I can see the surface of my buffet cabinet in my dining room. For the first time in two months this table was relieved of it's burdensome piles and decorated with one of the last vases of garden flowers for the year.

My pictures of all this bliss kind of suck. Which is ironic because I finally bought a new camera that can actually perform the tasks I want it to. Unfortunately, I have to learn how to use it first. I think I may have been using an ISO setting that isn't ideal. Whatever.

I desperately need to interrupt myself here to tell anyone who is still listening that I have just realized a virgin birth is no longer impossible. For those of you who always believed in it in the first place-you will be disappointed (but hopefully not offended) when I say that I never believed that a virgin could give birth to a child. All information indicates that sperm is always involved in the baby building gig. However, with the help of lots of money and a sperm bank a virgin could absolutely get knocked up without ever having lost her highly over-rated innocence.**

Do you think God was operating as the first ever sperm bank? Do you think he used a petri dish in his transactions with Mary to bring about the "son" of God?*** Was Joseph God's personal petri dish?

Gratuitous shot of the new pantry. I include it only because I think this is a better picture of it than the last two I offered up. There is no need to comment on it again.

I also decorated today. For Halloween. Not a lot. I don't go over the top with holiday decorations. In fact, before having Max, I never decorated for the holidays at all. Having him forced me to unbend my holiday-hating ways and stop acting like a grumpy old man. (It's interesting how often I remind myself of grouchy old men). Max loves holiday decorating. LOVES IT. So I enjoy it now through him. I pulled out my minuscule collection of Halloween decorations and since I had cleaned surfaces off today-there was actually a place to put them. I have to say that there are few things as homey as sprucing up your pad with sparkly black cats and skulls. Taking the time to make one's home festive is really satisfying.

I have missed the homey routines I had before our life crashed down around our ankles two years ago. How can I have been thrown so far off track? How can it have taken me so long to settle into this house and back into the comforting routine of cleaning it and decorating it? I know the time has come to rip out the living room carpet and paint all the white walls. It isn't until the sterile white is replaced by warm color that I really start to feel that my home has our spirit in it. This house is not as pretty as our last one but I realized today that it hasn't received the love and attention it deserves either.

When the hardwood floors underneath the beige carpet is revealed and the walls of my living room are painted, it will feel so much more welcoming. Life may have been tail-spinning for two years as we have tried to find our footing again, but I think a part of me has been scared to settle in. To plant my feet firmly in this house and say I like it and I'm going to stay. I've been scared to love this house and make it better because the last time I loved my house and my life was as perfect as life can get it was taken away from me in one really huge sweep of misfortune. All of it. What if I come to love my humble fifties ranch house? What if my life starts to seem completely perfect again?

What I felt today was that my feet are finally touching the ground and the ground isn't moving anymore. Time to find places for everything. Time to really make it ours. Time to return to the old happy routines like cleaning day being every Friday. Time to love what I have and trust that things will work out so we don't have to lose it all.

See? I may not believe in miracles but I still hope for them.

*See Capello, you're not the only one who abuses caps at times. Sometimes you just have to break the rules.

**Just to be clear here, I'm not saying that innocence is highly over rated in the teen crowd. I'm not saying there's no value in being a virgin. Only that I don't believe that virginity is all that virtuous for it's own sake. It's just the state of being you experience before you experience a different state of being. It's not wise to get me started on the whole innocence topic though. It only ever makes every one hate me.

***One of billions, apparently. Aren't all men sons of God? That begs many questions. So many that my head is beginning to get buzzy.