kitchen brown

hmm

hmm

working on this little corner of the house.  the kitchen is this somewhat enchanting collage of different brown wallpapers, a once-white floor that seems to have taken all the deep cleaning it can take.  the overall picture is this brown/green, very comforting tone when you’re in the kitchen at night.  pulled the flowers off the hydrangea bush, now all colors of white and pink as it’s getting colder.

up until about three hours ago this nook was a pile of tupperware, a litter box, a wooden shelf.  a few weeks ago its where our kitchen table was until we decided we liked eating in the living room, instead.  so in quite the unorthodox move we have decided to create a nook in the living room.  for light snacking, coffee + tea drinking, newspaper reading.

i think it needs an area rug.  and maybe one less chair.  and the loveseat needs a cushion or two – the ropes just really aren’t that comfortable on their own.  some other curtains.  the heinous orange ones with brown accents might be nice.  and more art on the walls.  more, more, more!

eventually the kitchen will be painted some bright, saturated colors as is the fashion under our roof.  i have no idea what these future colors are, but let’s take a peek at the living room, shall we?:

oh yeah!  that's bright!

oh yeah! that’s bright!

and it clicked in my head today that the master bedroom will be mustard yellow.  master mustard.  mellow yellow.  here’s some inspiration:

don’t see me by The Light Fantastic on Etsy – click for link

nesting, nesting, nesting.

once upon a time

once upon a time

p.s.

a quick note on the photograph that’s hanging in the ‘nook.’  it was part of a project i did years ago 60 memories in 60 minutes where I drove around my home town photographing places with historical importance to me.  i’m glad i did it – a lot of things have changed since then.

this is the house i grew up in — doesn’t look like much in the picture but it was taken in late fall, perhaps one of the deadest looking times in maine, and it was before we had done some repair to the home.

the house was sold – it seems like eons ago – we painted it white, added some black shutters and all the trees around the house have been cut down.  it’s a little sad, now, just this little white box on a corner lot in a friendly neighborhood.  i took the image with a 4×5 field camera, and the negative is big and luscious.  the print has a lot of depth and is enlarged to 20×24, stuck inside a 30×40 frame.  i had to readjust it in the frame because the paper had come unhitched since i originally framed it in 2007.  when i hung it one the wall i found myself face to face with the warm glow of the living room lamp shining through the bay windows and remembered that the shadowy figure in the leftmost bay window is that of my mother.  her, that house, that living room glowing struck me while hanging it last night, hit a chord deep, down inside of things that were once familiar.  my mother is not a memory – she is very real!  but the rest of it… all together like that… ghostlike.

I like the idea that photographs, be they well compositioned, lit or not, can have such weighted meaning for different people.  faded relics, distant memories, lost friends.  yet another reason i went in to this field way back when.

frogs out here

IMG_0621

 

an epic discovery in the way, way back of the yard today – frogs!  we shouldn’t be surprised, the big gray cat was causing quite a stir for the last couple of weeks coming in to the house with entire amphibians stuffed in his mouth, just a little arm or leg popping out… somehow all of them made it.  seems he just wanted to show us what was going on back there.

IMG_0616which is great, because it provides hours of entertainment for several ladies, all under the age of 6, who visit our house.  and two big people.  and two cats.  heck, everyone loves catching frogs (and releasing them).

IMG_0599they’re fantastic, patient little creatures that will tolerate your presence as long as they know you’re just watching.  how many do you see in the picture above?  so far, i’ve just seen two but there could be little froggy figures in the murky ‘deep’ (oh, about 8 inches or so, depending on rainfall).

looking forward to the spring and their tadpoles, long strands of bubbles with little black eyes, tremendous little lives in there waiting for the warmth so that they can spring forth.  we want to dig a deeper hole for them, a pond if we dare, since they are pretty keen on mosquitoes and we are not.  would not want to disturb the good thing they have going, though… advice?

 

 

silence is golden… this time!

Usually when someone disappears off the face of the internet it means things are going really great in the real world… or really bad.  Lucky for us the last few months have brought about a cagillion new opportunities to my humble little existence.

take pictures of everything when you have a smartphone, it's the rules.  like beautiful farmlands five minutes from the house.

take pictures of everything when you have a smartphone, it’s the rules. like beautiful farmlands five minutes from the house.

Firstly, I got a smart phone.  That’s really not that big a deal, but it’s worth noting that this tiny device is completely revolutionizing my ability to be organized.  And to play Candy Crush Saga which also ate up about a cumulative month of 2013.  Oh wellz, not as bad as The Sims when it came out when I was in 7th grade, literally didn’t sleep for a year and ruined my chance at ever making honor roll past age 13.

view of the moonrise from the back of our HOUSE!

view of the moonrise from the back of our HOUSE!

But mostly, mostly, husband and I have moved to a house.  A really real house in the middle of some other houses that make up a neighborhood.  So for the last month or two we’ve been in the process of picking everything up, dusting it off, putting it in a box and moving it ten miles north.  Cool!  So please excuse me but a good chunk of my future posts will be related to things like weed whacking, catching field mice and two-prong adapters for three-prong devices (which, by the way, I just picked up at Lowe’s tonight which enabled me to plug in the ol’ computer and get back on the WordPress horse!  Seriously, look at these things, they’re heaven and you can get ’em for just about seventy five cents:

you complete me

you complete me

The computer’s still not grounded so she’ll have to go off and unplugged in a thunderstorm, but it’ll do for now until I can convince j. to brave possible electrocution by rewiring every. single. outlet. in. the. house.  Seriously!  There’s not a one.

Off I go – need to install the second toilet seat in as many days… the first one we got was the wrong size.  Did you even know toilets came in different sizes?  You do now.

Home Improvement: Cleaning Up the Attic

Darn it, I know I should have taken some true ‘before’ pictures.  But really, I’m glad I can’t possibly get back to where the attic was before I attacked it with a vacuum and some organization tonight.  Just picture less twinkly lights and more cat fur embedded in the carpet.  Ew.

Music Space

Our apartment is awesome.  The first floor has all the regular living necessities:  kitchen, bathroom, living room, bed room.  But then we get an entire extra floor, the same size as the rest of the apartment, to make art and music in.  Yesss.

Tonight I spent time setting up the music area.  This is about 1/3rd of the total floor space of the attic, the other 2/3rds reserved for my crafting (ay ay ay I can’t get this organized!) and my closet area.  Music was an easy place to start.

keyboards and amps

So now, upstairs, we’ve got a place to make nice sounds.  That seems like a pretty good luxury to me.  If I can get it together again this weekend the next task will be cleaning up the closet/dressing area so that my mornings before work aren’t so hectic.

Then:  the dreaded crafting area.  I think I might actually need a different piece of furniture from what we have to make an actual work area, so this is the biggest challenge because I can never seem to commit to what will be the most functional.

Stay tuned for more improvements, and more pictures!

the rest o' the mess