Claudia — Page 1652

Pink Saturday

September 18, 2009 at 10:31 pm by Claudia

Welcome to Pink Saturday at Mockingbird Hill Cottage. Autumn is here with leaves falling, cooler air, golden light and a chill in the morning air. Please visit Beverly for a list of all those participating.

I found this wonderful pink hobnail vase the same day I found the blue bench and linen laundry bag I blogged about earlier this week. I fell in love with it, of course, and brought it home. I’ve never seen one like it before – it is about 10 or 11 inches high and quite heavy. Isn’t it pretty?

These delicate pale pink roses were on our kitchen island for several days.

The outer petals are the palest of pinks and the center is a deeper pink. Simply gorgeous!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mini Baby Carriage

September 17, 2009 at 10:10 am by Claudia

This little mini wicker baby carriage was found when I was in San Diego. At Vignettes, of course. I couldn’t resist it. There are hand painted flowers along the top and the sweetest cushion inside. I don’t know how old it is, but it is definitely vintage. The scale seems to be a bit too large for the dollhouse, but I love it nonetheless.

The details on the cushion are so lovely. For now, it is in my china cabinet in the den.

Life here at MHC is a tad stressful at the moment. Both my husband and I freelance and neither of us is working at the moment – with no work in sight. I don’t know about you, but when I am feeling stressed, my worries seem to pervade everything I do. I wish this wasn’t the case and it is something I am trying to let go of. Trust, faith…I know these things are the key, but sometimes it is very hard to remain calm and trusting.

In the midst of the worry, I found out I had to get new tires for my car in order to pass inspection. And I spent an hour on the phone with the cable company arguing over an overcharge that they insisted was valid. I felt like my head was going to explode. Try as I might, I couldn’t change their minds and they couldn’t change mine. When I asked to speak to a woman from the main office who spoke with me (and agreed with me) about the problem last month, I was told that it was impossible: she couldn’t call out, I couldn’t call her….it wasn’t done. I hung up in tears of frustration, convinced I had a battle ahead of me.

A couple of hours later, the phone rang. It was a gentleman from the main office calling to tell me that he had researched the problem and that I had been ‘exactly right.’ I was dumbfounded and very grateful. I don’t know how he knew about it – I suspect customer service calls are monitored – but he took the time to take my complaint seriously, researched it, ran it by his co-workers, then called my local office and explained it to them. I will be getting a credit on my next bill. Yesterday was a long day, full of worry and frustration. Thankfully, this call ended the day and I was heartened by this man’s extra effort to resolve the problem.

Sometimes, a gesture like that can make all the difference.

Vintage Finds

September 15, 2009 at 9:23 am by Claudia

I was shopping the other day, looking for a smallish vintage bookcase for the hallway upstairs. We need to build bookcases in the den – have needed to build them since we moved in – and still haven’t. We have boxes of books out in the shed, books in the bedroom, books everywhere. This doesn’t include the boxes of books I sent home from San Diego, many of which are work-related. The point is: I have too many books and no place to put them! I wanted a cute little narrow bookshelf that would hold a huge volume of Shakespeare’s plays, all sorts of textbooks, etc.

I found a lot of bookshelves, but none of them were the right size. I know this happens to you, dear readers; you go in the shop for one thing but come out with 3 things that have nothing to do with your original intention. That happened to me the other day. Here is what I bought:

This is a vintage laundry bag. Hand embroidered on gorgeous, soft linen. I fell in love with it. Look at that fringe! I had no idea at the time where I was going to put it, I just knew I had to have it.

I also fell in love with this chippy bench.

I originally thought I would put it in the upstairs hallway and stack some books on the lower shelf. As often happens in this house, my husband had another idea and it was a better one. We placed it in front of the always-closed-french-door-on-the-left leading into the den. I had already decided that the laundry bag would look wonderful hanging from that same french door. The light filters through the linen beautifully.

I bought the large frog in San Diego. The bricks have their own story – they are from the theater-in-the-round in San Diego where both my husband and I worked. It is our favorite of the 3 theaters in the complex and last year it was razed in order to build a bigger theater. That made us sad. A friend of mine passed along the bricks so that we might have a little piece of this much-loved place.