Wallace Nutting

Tuesday Thoughts

March 3, 2020 at 10:52 am by Claudia

Goodness! Yesterday was supposed to be cloudy and rainy but it remained sunny all day. Today was supposed to be cloudy and rainy in the morning and it’s sunny, with a high of 59 degrees. It will most likely rain later in the day, but I can’t complain. It’s beautiful out there.

On the wall in the office. A map of Paris that Don gave me for my birthday a year or so ago. A gold Paris/Eiffel Tower medal that I found in San Diego many years ago. And three Wallace Nuttings. It’s hard to get a clear photo because the sun pours in on either side of this wall. Those are sheep in the Nutting on the bottom right.

I finished M Train by Patti Smith this morning and Don and I promptly traded books. I’ve now started Year of the Monkey. I really love her writing. She has a strong streak of the mystical in the way she sees life and those around her. She’s also a bit of a loner. As I am one, as well, I identify.

As more and more signs of an early Spring show themselves, I am treasuring this time to read with no distractions. Soon, the garden and clean-up will be calling me. The lawn will have to be mowed. I’ll be distracted – happily- by bees and bugs and butterflies and blooms. I saw the beginnings of one of my day lilies yesterday. The daffodils have started to poke through the ground.

So for the present, I’m fully into reading mode. And I’m so grateful for this time in life when I don’t have a 9 to 5 job that takes me away from my books. Been there, done that. I feel as if I’m heading into a stretch of non-fiction, what with the Patti Smith books, the book about the Seine, which I’m still reading, and some other books that are catching my attention over in my TBR piles.

That’s one of the joys of winter that I discovered this year in our attempt to live in the present season, to be patient, to fully see the beauty in the winter landscape. We are afforded the opportunity to hunker down and nest. And that includes reading.

I was discussing ‘alone time’ the other day with our friend, Doug. I’ve always had a great need for privacy and time with myself since I was a young girl. Whether this would have been in me no matter what, or whether it was shaped by four kids and two adults and a dog being crammed into a tiny bungalow, I don’t know. I just know that I need it. I need quiet and reading time, time for reflection, time away from the world. Happily, I am able to find that with Don right here in the house with me. He gives me space. He needs his space, as well. We compliment and support each other that way.

I’ve worked in the theater for most of my life; coaching and teaching. That means that when I was working, I was surrounded by lots of people all of the time. Lots of lively people. I had to be ‘on.’ (Teaching is rather like performing, at least in an acting program.) When I went home at the end of the day, I craved quiet. When I was teaching at Boston University and had the summers off, I was fully capable of being alone for weeks at a time. I would venture out, of course, and take a walk, run an errand, converse with the grocer or the clerk at the bookstore, but mostly, it was time to replenish my energy.

I have friends who are very social. They need to go out to lunch or go somewhere with some friends. I always felt they were normal and that I was not normal. But I now know that it’s normal for me and that there’s nothing wrong with it. I’m an introvert living and working in the theater. That may seem impossible, but there are more of us than you’d think!

Don is more social than I and that’s a good thing. He balances me and his spontaneous ideas for adventures get me out of the house. I’m pleased to say I’ve come up with a few spontaneous ideas as well.

As so often happens in these posts, I had no plans of writing about this, yet here we are. That’s what I love about blogging. I rarely know what will come up in a post.

Happy Tuesday.

The Vintage Dollhouse and Sheet Music

January 3, 2019 at 11:01 am by Claudia

I took the Christmas decorations down yesterday – since we don’t do a whole lot of decorating, it isn’t all that time consuming – and then I moved the egg cup cubby cabinet away from the wall, which is always scary, opened the door under the stairs, and stored everything for another year. Then I moved the cabinet back, which was a bit tricky this time around, but I finally got it in place.

Then I vacuumed like crazy.

(By the way, Don broke a glass yesterday and then I proceeded to break a glass and a bowl. What’s with us? We’re down to three glasses.)

I sorted through the sheet music in our music cabinet. That cabinet was one of the very first things we bought for this house. We got it at an auction. I have a lot more music than I had remembered, some of it from my childhood, some of it from my grandmother (a hymnal, and three songs from Oklahoma, which means the sheet music is from the 40s,) and my first Beatles Songbook, which I got when I was 11 years old. I wrote the names of each of the guys under their photos – in pencil. And look what I found:

Neither of us can remember how this got here and we were shocked and thrilled to discover it! Was it in my grandmother’s music? Doubtful. Was it from my parents? Also doubtful. Was it a gift from someone after we moved to the house? Or did we find it when out antiquing and forgot about it? Either is possible.

It’s getting framed, that’s for sure.

After all the chores were done, I moved the vintage dollhouse onto the coffee table in the den to give it a cleaning. Eventually, the exterior will need an even deeper cleaning but for now, this will do.

I took some pictures.

By the way, the chimney on the roof actually connects to the fireplace. I dropped something down there by mistake and the object ended up in the fireplace.

I put this in the living room to see if the scale worked and it does.

There are arched doorways into the adjoining rooms.

The other two rooms, which are small. And I can only get into the front room from the doorways, so that will be a little awkward!

This is the opening at the back of the house and it’s the only way to get into these rooms. There’s a high, vaulted ceiling. I briefly debated painting the walls, but it would be very difficult. I can’t lay the house on it’s front because the porch is there. I think I’ll put battery operated hanging lights on the ceiling just so I can see more of the room. But that’s down the road.

A corner of the house. Aside from a deeper cleaning of the exterior, I plan to leave it alone. These shutters, by the way, are adorable. They work. They completely cover the window space.

Just playing around. I don’t really have a large stash of miniatures – a few things, but nothing like other miniaturists have. The painting is a mini Wallace Nutting given to me by Barbara. The books were in my stash.

Since I’m currently working (or not working, which is more the case at the moment) on three different houses, and since we are back on a strict budget, I’ll have to take my time. That’s what I did with my first dollhouse. I did what I could, when I could afford it.

My thoughts are still the same with this treasure. Keep it rustic – maybe a little removable wallpaper, maybe not – and honor the work of the creator. Living room, bedroom, kitchen…and we’ll assume there’s an outhouse somewhere nearby.

I really love it.

We have a wee bit of snow on the ground this morning, but once again, it’s not covering all the grass. Still, it was neat to see some snow-covered tree branches this morning.

Happy Thursday.

The Dilemma

April 8, 2018 at 10:05 am by Claudia

Dear readers, it is sometimes hard to come up with yet another photograph for a blog post. I mean, how many photos of the interior of my house can I inundate you with until you begin to scream?

And the outside? Well, it isn’t all that attractive at the moment. We’re in that pocket between winter and spring. The daffodils are coming up. I see some growth here and there, but taking a photo of it would require a kneeling position on the cold grass and/or gravel and that ain’t gonna happen today.

It’s too early to clean out the garden beds as there as been mild frost the past two nights, so the leaf mulch must stay in place for a while longer. So no pretty pictures from the garden.

And really, do you want to see pictures of all the debris from the wind and falling limbs and that sort of thing that I raked up yesterday afternoon? I thought not. Actually, raking wore me out. I realize that I have to get back into gardening shape after a fairly sedentary winter. But it was so lovely to be outside on a cold, but sunny, day.

And certainly you don’t want to see pictures of me vacuuming every corner of the house, which is what I did after raking? No, of course you don’t.

This is the dilemma of the every-day-of-the-year blogger. Sometimes, life isn’t all that interesting. Or photogenic.

But I do have one little photo for you, snapped this morning in a moment of desperation.

This is where my tiny Wallace Nutting ended up. I couldn’t find the perfect place to hang it, at least not until I get a few more smallish Nuttings for the wall in the office. Then I’ll be able to insert it into a larger display. But I quite like it here on the shelf in the den, in front of the Nancy Drews. It works.

That copy of Anne of Green Gables was my mother’s. I was lamenting the loss of some of my mother’s childhood books that were also a part of our childhood one day on the blog. They had lived on a shelf in our bedroom. Our estranged sister somehow ended up with a lot of them. When Meredith read the post, she remembered that she had some of Mom’s books, so she secretly sent them off in the mail and completely surprised me. I opened the package to find Anne, along with Mom’s copy of Daddy Long Legs, and one of my dad’s books. I’ll freely say that I cried. It was like a reunion with dearly loved friends.

I have the best sister.

Happy Sunday.

Tuesday Thoughts

The Vintage Dollhouse and Sheet Music

The Dilemma

claudiahillsparks

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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