Starting Over

I have so many words lost in me, swirling all around day in and day out, in my dreams when I'm asleep, in the back of my head when you're talking to me, over top of me when I'm holding a sweet baby girl or dancing with another two or driving or cleaning dishes or....they are everywhere. These words and thoughts, they need to come out and play more often.

So maybe vintage living isn't always about decor or all things fine and dandy. In honesty, a lot of the times, I'm pretending things are fine and dandy, even when things like overdue bills and the broken garbage disposal say they aren't.

We had? have? this crazy dream that it took us forever to say out loud and then we finally did it was too late. We realized that having tears in our eyes and heavy hearts when we left the Great Lake and the cedar groves and the cherry orchards...well it wasn't normal. Aching and hurting when we drove back to the city.  Our kids perk up to the smell of the lake. They can hike a trail with those tiny legs like nobody's business. Did you know, that there are stars there? At night? Millions of them. And our children never see them here, aside from one or two or three.

Maybe, we thought, it doesn't have to be this way, we can change our lives, we can do this, we can live our dream. We could pack up and leave this city and these people who seem so different than us  and we could lead a simpler life in a part of the world that Is. Us. People do that! You read about it every now and then and they are so much happier, ya, let's be like that!

And then...2009 happened. My husband's career veered this way and that with the economy. And continues to do so. Our This Old House that we'd thought would become more and more valuable became less and less so.  And, continues to do so.

Now. We feel sort of stuck and trapped and scared and damn it all, when will our luck change? What are we doing wrong? This is what you get for being dreamers, we think.

If it weren't for my three girls, I don't know how I'd deal.  They keep me happy and distracted and I don't need or want for anything but them and My Man and all I wish is for these four loves of my life to be happy and healthy and me too and for all of us to live until we are 112 or so.  Rich or poor.

Hello, dark empty room. Cover your ears or walk away if you are bored. This blog will have some fine, like the new blue and white dishes I found and that great Ina coffee cake I keep making. And some dandy, like how Maren wiggled her rear dancing today in the silliest most wonderful wayand some vintage mixed in for the character we all should have and the patina of time and history and the joy in simplicity, but really what it should all be about is LIVING.






Laird Residence by Designer Bilhuber in February Architectural Digest



You can just tell. This is one for the "record books" for those of us that get excited about these things. It's right up there with Kate and Andy Spade's place. 

Amazing colors and layers, artwork and personality!

I'm kinda giddy. 

David Hicks La Fiorentina Really is EVERYWHERE

  

 I was reading the girls their bedtime story last night.


"Playing outside will make him cold. He'll want to go inside and curl up on the couch."

Wait. A. Second.


He'll want to go inside and curl up on the couch covered in designer David Hicks La Fiorentina!



"He'll ask you for a blanket."

(If the blanket is Hermes, I'll really flip.)

 Thanks illustrator, Felicia Bond, for infusing some good taste in my girls' nighttime read.
Intentional or not, made my night. 

Do It Yourself Christmas Wreaths?



YOU could do this! If you were inclined. And talented. 
Had lots of spare time, hot glue sticks and patience. 

Jenny from Little Green Notebook could surely do it. She is oh-so-talented. And she has kids. 
Three of them, like me. And a job. 
And yet she manages to do things like upholster head boards while her kids are sleeping. 

However, if you're like me, you are probably more prone to "buy it yourself" due to life logistics like three kids, a dishwasher to empty, gymnastics, music class and a house to Swiffer. 

Target and West Elm had some great wreaths that look "do it yourself"



Except, Cyber Monday is much, much too late to be thinking about purchasing them, because the ones I wanted are sold out by now.

By the way: West Elm, I'm loving most everything you did for holiday decor this year. 

As for me, with the current time predicament, its likely we'll end up with Home Depot evergreen wreaths on our front door and over the mantle. Dolled up slightly. But not painstakingly. 

I guess that will make them, "Modify Yourself".
Which might just make me the Sandra Lee of craft projects.