decorating — Page 83

Painting a Table & Missing Followers Gadget

September 23, 2009 at 1:03 pm by Claudia

I see the Followers Gadget is missing again. It was there this morning but when I signed on about noon it was gone. My dashboard says I have followers, but when I click on the number the page is blank. I tried deleting the gadget and then adding it again – nothing. This seems to be an ongoing problem with Blogger and is getting very annoying. I’ve checked other blogs and their gadgets seem to be missing, too.

On to more pleasant things. I have this little table that I have had since I was teaching at Boston University. You can see a bit of it in this photo. There is a little back story on this table. When I started teaching at BU, I was very poor, having just left graduate school. My salary was not very much as I was just starting out. Boston has one of the highest costs of living in the country. Translate all this to: I didn’t have much and I could afford nothing. The Theater Department had 2 Prop Rooms – one in the main theater and a small one in the classroom building. The smaller room had all sorts of cast-offs donated by faculty and students that were used for acting projects. I needed a little table for my office and found this one in the shop. When I moved to a larger, rent-controlled apartment in Cambridge, the table somehow left my office and appeared in my apartment. And it has stayed with me ever since. (Disclaimer: I repaid that loan by donating some pieces to the prop room when I moved on to San Diego.)

Although it is a bit wobbly, I would never get rid of it because it is full of memories of that time in Boston. But I have been staring at it for a while thinking it needed something. You can see that it is tucked in right next to the piano and the piano is mahogany. Too much dark wood. As I am not about to paint the piano, I decided to paint the table.

Simple – but I think it lightens things up a bit. This part of the living room tends to be dark. Now I am going to paint two tables in the den. I keep wanting “lighter” here at MHC. By the way, this is paint I already had on hand – I used it for the kitchen island.

Speaking of the piano, it sounds so much better!

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.

Still need a bookcase. And bookshelves in the den. But we love these new additions to our home, found by chance while looking for something else.

Dorm Decorating in New Jersey

August 26, 2009 at 11:58 am by Claudia

Picture, if you will, a sweltering day of heat and humidity and a miniscule dorm room without air conditioning. Add to that picture 3 grown women trying to decorate and you can imagine what yesterday was like. Heidi and I drove down to New Jersey (a 2 1/2 hour trip) to help Heidi’s daughter, Whitney, with her new dorm room. Whitney is a resident advisor this year, so she gets to move in early and she has a room to herself. Whitney had already moved in the day before and we were coming to ‘tweak’ everything.

The 2 and 1/2 hour trip turned into over 3 hours. On one of NJ’s famous roundabouts we encountered an overturned tractor trailer and had to find a new way to get to the campus. By the time we got there we were starving and went to lunch. Then it was off to Target and Home Depot with a list of things for the room.

Plant shopping at Home Depot. Heidi and I repotted everything on the lawn in front of the dorm.

Forgive the less than stellar quality to my photos – small dorm rooms and my camera don’t get along! The photo above is of a typical dorm room. Two people usually share one of these closet sized rooms.

This is Whitney’s room. She got to take out the extra desk and bed, thereby freeing up more space. Look at her wonderful sheer purple curtains from IKEA. Oh, look at that chair – what do you see?

Yes, yes, you see a cute teddy bear, but I’m talking about the beautiful green and blue throw! Who made that gorgeous thing? Oh...I made it! (It was Whitney’s graduation present.)

This is my favorite thing in the room. Whitney took a set of old bedsprings, spray painted it and then attached clothespins (also spray painted). It is on the wall behind her futon/sofa. Now she can attach photos, notes…you name it, and have a fun way of displaying everything.

Here is her trunk/coffee table. Also spray painted and decorated by Whitney. That’s an IKEA rug underneath.

Heidi – resting on the futon/sofa.

Futon/sofa and corner after we rearranged things.

New hanging spider plant from Home Depot – by this time, as you can see, Wheel of Fortune was on.

Tired Whitney – her bed is covered in pillows and a spread from Anthropologie. It was the basis for all the wonderful bright colors in her room.

All 3 of us were wiped out at the end of the day. Heidi and I headed home and stopped at McDonalds for the perfect pick-me-up: a giant chocolate shake and french fries. I headed for the shower immediately upon entering MHC.

I wish I had the photography skills to capture the whole dorm room. It is charming, full of color – the perfect place to nest and hang out. These girls are going to want to visit their RA! Great job, Whitney. You remember Heidi owns a home and antique shop nearby? She has a fabulous eye for presentation…and I would say the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree!

Painting a Table & Missing Followers Gadget

Vintage Finds

Dorm Decorating in New Jersey

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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