Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Thank You & the Living Room

September 14, 2010 at 12:42 pm by Claudia

Thank you. For being my friends. Your loving, supportive, caring comments mean the world to me. Please know that I carry each and every one of you in my heart.

Yesterday, we had a big, sudden thunderstorm in the late afternoon. I heard something hitting the house and realized it was hail. We ran out to the porch and watched the little perfectly round pieces of ice hit the ground all around us. The storm was short-lived but tempestuous. I love a sudden storm.

I thought I’d share the other end of the living room with you:

We bought the tiger oak sideboard when we moved into our first place together in San Diego. It’s heavy. The large cupboard was one of my favorite auction finds ever. It has lots of shelves inside that store all kinds of supplies, phone books, receipts, wrapping paper. At the moment they are a tad messy. That’s green McCoy pottery on top. What else would it be? The two paintings by the front door are very special. The one on top is of Mockingbird Hill Cottage and was painted by my father. The one below is of my grandmother’s childhood home in Canada and was painted by my great-aunt Ruth.

The french doors lead two steps down into our den. That’s where we watch television and where I usually sit with my laptop (which you can see if you look closely.) And there’s the piano on the right. Snug quarters, that’s for sure. I didn’t do any staging for this photo – what you see is what I saw. Thank goodness there were no piles of folded laundry on the chairs, as is quite often the case.

Jill from Little Nest Studio sent me a note about a Vintage Spode pattern named Claudia. Oh no. I love it. That spells trouble, if you know what a pottery and china lover I am. And now the hunt begins.

In Which I Talk about Various Things

September 9, 2010 at 8:42 am by Claudia

This is what I call a “potpourri post.” Do you like that alliteration? Me, too. I have little snippets to share with you, none of them weighty enough to merit their own post. So, I’m tossing them all together. Here we go:

We live in the country but on a very busy – annoyingly busy – road. That’s a whole other post. We are unable to walk the dogs on our road because there is no shoulder and it is too dangerous. So we load them in the car and drive a few hundred feet to a quiet little lane. I walk by this sign frequently but it took my husband to point out the…umm…rather frightening implications here.

Yes, the road is a dead end. It ends at the edge of a local river. But…those are bullet holes, my friends. Need I say more?

After a hot, dry summer, we were graced with lots of rain and I noticed the grass in the back forty was alarmingly overgrown. So I spent the afternoon recently plowing through it with our lawnmower. You can see the edge of the woods that is on our property. A few years back, husband made a couple of paths that cut through the trees. We would often walk through the woods and be transported to a quiet, magical world. I still do sometimes. But we have found out the hard way that ticks live there. Husband has battled Lyme disease, and last spring when I was searching for rocks and clearing out the paths, I had a few encounters with them. So, we tend to avoid the woods…and the paths get overgrown. However, I’m sure I’ll bundle up, plaster myself with bug spray and try to clear them out once again next year.

Why is this here? I just like the photo. My impatiens are still blooming in various pots on the porch, I love the sign that lives on the bench and you can see pieces of the old army cot we found at a yard sale – remember? – and have yet to put together. If I had to hazard a guess I would say that it will not be put together this year. One more thing to pack away in the shed this winter.

I took this photo because the dappled light was so lovely. I was positioned in the dog corral. Don made that sort of temporary patio last year and we added the birdbath and flower barrels. The parking area is just to the left of the barrels. Love, love the sugar maple and the willow. And the porch, of course.

I found this doily roll in an antique shop last year.

The embroidery was so beautiful that I couldn’t resist, although I had no idea what I was going to do with it. The other day, I hit upon an idea.

A perfectly lovely cover for the sewing machine – the roll acts as a weight and the cover stays in place. And the colors fit right in the studio.

That’s the news from around my world on a Thursday morning.

5 Years at MHC

August 29, 2010 at 9:41 am by Claudia

We moved into Mockingbird Hill Cottage 5 years ago tomorrow on August 30th, 2005. It was such a wonderful day for us, two artistic types who worked in the fickle performing arts and had been through their share of financial ups and downs. We actually bought a house. My dream for years had been to have a little house in the country. The locale in this dream changed depending on where I was living at the time, but the idea of a place in the Northeast kept recurring. Then we moved from San Diego to Westchester County, NY, rented a little cottage and the dream became more specific: find a place that is affordable in the the very expensive greater NYC area. That led us to the Hudson Valley and eventually to our little abode.

My wish list at the time included an attic, a basement, 3 bedrooms and a garage. We looked all over the area, on both sides of the Hudson River, and saw house after disappointing house. One day, after seeing the listing for this house, we paid it a visit. Light filled the rooms. The kitchen, in a house with low ceilings, had a very high ceiling – perfect for a guy who’s over 6’4″. It was built in 1891. It had been owned for years by the local ‘cat lady’ and when she died, the new owner took it down to the studs, rewired everything and flipped the house. But – it only had 2 bedrooms, a basement that was small and entered from the outside (no storage opportunities there), no attic and no garage. It had a large shed that had been built recently. And it had a glorious, wrap-around bluestone porch.

Don loved it. I loved it but was hesitant. Where was the attic, the extra bedroom, the basement? We sat in the realtor’s office, debating our list of ‘must haves.’ In the end, we knew it was for us.

The day after we moved in, we drove back to our rented cottage and spent the most humid day I can ever remember cleaning every inch of the space. We put things we no longer wanted out on the street with a ‘free’ sign. Exhausted at the end of the day, we left renting behind and moved into the new world of a mortgage payment that is larger than the rent we were paying. Sometimes I miss renting – the smaller monthly outlay, someone else being responsible for repairs. But not really. This is our house. We have almost 2 acres of land that is ours.

We freelance in an enonomy that is deeply troubled. We sweat the payment every month. We dream of winning the lottery and just paying the whole thing off. Stranger things have happened. We know this whole house-owning thing is a gamble…but it is for everyone, isn’t it? We are no different.

We love this little cottage with its quirky imperfections. We love the warmth and shelter it gives us. There are things that need to be done around here ( a new furnace in the not-too-distant future) and things that we dream of doing (adding an extension that would have a master bedroom, laundry room, family room, studio space, and storage.)

Sometimes the dream seems impossible but I’ve learned that nothing is impossible. After all, a few short years ago, the dream of owning a home seemed equally impossible. And look where we are now.

Happy Anniversary, Mockingbird Hill Cottage. We love you.

Thank You & the Living Room

In Which I Talk about Various Things

5 Years at MHC

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

Archives