Oodles and oodles

A restful spot

 

Maybe I'd sleep better if I picked just one color for the bedroom. Or even just two or three.

 

Maybe I'd feel more rested if I picked just one print. Instead of two different florals, polka dots and redwork.

 

But I think this jolt of color is just what I needed.
 
 
 
And somebody agrees with me.

 
 
Of course, some of us never have a problem getting to sleep.
 
 

Favorite colors

 

Having spent more time than I would have thought possible cooped up in a house that I only weeks ago decided should have a monochromatic color scheme to go along with the snow-covered landscape, I've reached a few conclusions.

One: I'm perilously close to losing my mind.

Two: I must have color.

Three: Just like I need to whittle down my possessions, I need to focus on a few colors I really like instead of buying anything that strikes my fancy.

And it occurred to me that year after year, the colors I always come back to are clear, pretty shades of blue and green, with the occasional pink and red thrown in. Like these colors of embroidery thread.

 
 
Like the colors on the decals of my glass canisters. Maybe blue, green, pink and red seems like every color, but it eliminates a lot: purple, orange, black, brown, beige, various shades of the chosen colors like aqua and navy and sage and rose. I'm not going to go too heavy on yellow, either, but a tiny bit here and there won't hurt. And I am never, ever going to give up my yellow McCoy vase with the raised bird design.

 

(I'm also perilously close to running out of baking staples, by the looks of things.)

 

My favorite shade of blue, in a mixing bowl and in the flowers of a Swanky Swig and on an old print of a delphinium. As luck would have it, most of my Swanky Swigs are in the chosen colors, but even the few that aren't are staying.

 

This tablecloth is a keeper, and so is the apron.

 
 
The little Dutch girl planter stays (and so does the matching little Dutch boy).

 

And, of course, the Jadite. There will always be Jadite.
 

 
 


 

 

Another way to get rid of stuff: the expiration date

 
 
  
 

I once thought it would be an excellent idea to buy vintage books and papers and sell them on Etsy. I still think it's an excellent idea. For someone else. In my brief experience, I found it too much work for too little reward. Maybe if I were a scrapbooker or altered art-maker or a paper crafter of some sort, I would have found it really enjoyable. But I didn't.
 
The part I like is seeing what other people make and find. Lindsey, for example, has just the sweetest tutorial for a last-minute Valentine card. It's so cute that even I may need to make one.

 
 

This realization leaves me with an awful lot of stuff I don't need and no longer want to accumulate. Children's books. Ledger pages. Old coloring books. Color prints from a French dictionary. Too good to throw away. Too much to keep. And so I have whittled down the collection to a reasonable size (maybe the equivalent of a small dresser-drawer full) and here's how I'm finally getting rid of it: It has an expiration date. Just like a gallon of milk. As soon as I'm back on my feet and up to hauling boxes, I'm going to destash like I've never destashed before. If the paper isn't gone by the sell-by date, it has to go anyway. It will be no good. It will have expired, just like a gallon of milk.

 
 
I imagine that when the sale season rolls around again, there still will be paper things I want to buy, like old greeting cards. And if I run across something too good to pass up, I'll certainly get it. Last summer I found a pile - like 20 or 30 - of tiny, never-used ledger books, and they sold as fast as I could list them. I think those ledger books bought a week or two of groceries.

But I'll be less inclined to give the sheet music and old books a look. They'll find good homes with someone else. I'm very much feeling the need to focus more on fewer things. It's finally dawned on me that I can appreciate what other people make or have without needing to make or have it myself.

 
 
That leaves just one little detail: the actual expiration date. If I commit to a date, I have to stick to it. So: April 30. This is more painful that I thought it would be, I have to admit.

One way to get rid of stuff

 

Like everybody else, after New Year's I was really in the mood to organize and clean up. In my case that meant tackling a lot of stuff that I had somewhat categorized and stashed away but not really sorted - like the vintage suitcase full of patterns, and the vintage suitcase full of sewing notions, and the vintage suitcase full of linens. You can hide a lot when you have a sufficient number of vintage suitcases.

I don't set out to buy junk. The problem for me comes with box lots - those boxes that I love to find at sales that are full of great stuff, and also a lot of terrible stuff. I manage to get rid of the obvious junk right away - stuff that is broken or just plain awful. My downfall is the borderline stuff: the Very Easy Vogue patterns from the 1980s, for example. What if they're worth something? What if they're not worth anything, but maybe they will be a generation or so from now? The volume of borderline stuff really had begun to feel suffocating.

You know what helps? One short exclamation: "You bore me!"

 

It's best to say this to yourself, unless you really want your family to think you're crazy, sitting up in the attic talking to your collections. There's something about taking charge of your stuff, rather than the other way around, that's very helpful. The stuff I have needs to start earning its keep. It needs to have resale value, or it needs to amuse and delight me. Everything else is just boring. I don't want it.

This works with everything, by the way. Partial spools of thread in unattractive colors on plastic spools. Plain brown buttons. 1970s craft magazines. And at least a shoebox full of Very Easy Vogue patterns from the 1980s, almost all of which are for suits with ghastly shoulder pads. It's all headed for the thrift store.
 
 

This pattern isn't going there, by the way. It's in the resale-value category. In case you were wondering, in 1957, when this pattern was made, the measurements for a size 12 were a 32 inch bust, a 25 inch waist and 34 inch hips.  

A true story

Once upon a time there was a young lady with a dead-end job and a deadbeat boyfriend. One day she woke up and said, "I am going to spend the rest of my life in this situation if I don't do something."
 
So she packed up her car and drove hundreds of miles away to an exciting new job and an apartment in what had once been the ballroom of what had once been the governor's mansion. It was an amazing apartment, and the fact that the kitchen was too small for a normal-sized refrigerator was more than compensated by an enormous bay window and a marble fireplace. She made many new friends, enjoyed her work and spent her free time exploring the New England seacoast and the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire.

"I don't think my life could get any better," she thought as, as usual, a traffic light turned green just as her car approached it.

 

At her workplace was a young man who was beloved by all of his coworkers because he was hard-working and kind and funny. He and the young lady seemed to get invited to all of the same parties and barbecues and after-work outings. Soon they became friends. One evening, in a discussion of various seafood restaurants on the Atlantic coastline, the young man declared that one restaurant was better than all of them. Then he made a bold proposition to the young lady.

 

"If you can't get anyone else to take you," he said, "I will." The young lady accepted his invitation. "It's almost as if he's asking me out," she thought. "Or not. I don't really know." They consulted their calendars and scheduled a time for the outing, and when the day came, off they went.

The evening was a success. They made plans for other outings. Soon they were inseparable. They decided to get married.

 

 And on February 4th of each year, they celebrate the anniversary of that event.

 
 
 
Even though this is the 21st year of that occasion, neither one of them can quite believe their luck.

Don't you love a happy ending?



 


 

Banishing the plastic bins

 

My work space/attic/storage area was due for a big post-Christmas clean-up, and a single sentence kept popping into my head: "I must end the tyranny of the plastic bins!" This is just one more reason why parents should never let their children major in English: They turn items on a to-do list into snippets of Elizabethan drama.

 
  
But old sewing notions are so pretty, and it's tragic to store them in plastic. They need to be out where they can be seen and admired and possibly even used. I got rid of the stuff I didn't want, like half-used packages of gray bias tape - some things are vintage but just not pretty - and sorted out what I wanted to keep.

 
 
And now everything is out where I can see it, and the trims are arranged in pretty planters and boxes, and the plastic bins are gone.
 
 

I'm using an old metal bread box to hold more notions. You'll notice two other things in the picture: a vintage umbrella, which is just for decoration or if the roof springs a serious leak, and the guard cat. Nobody can get to the notions cabinet without getting by Polly first. It's possible that Polly has concealed a weapon in the umbrella, a la James Bond. I don't ask a lot of questions. I just let Polly do her job.

 
 
Polly also keeps watch over the drawers of Christmas trims.

 
 
The new work area required spiffier seating, and so I did a quick remake of the world's most boring chair. It's sturdy, but you could fall asleep just looking at it.

 

A thrifted bedspread provided the fabric and a ready-made skirt.

 
 
The skirt is just tacked on the seat, with another piece of fabric tacked over the center to cover the wood. This part is concealed underneath the cushion, so it doesn't show, but it just looks a little neater.

 

Then I made a quick cover for the cushion and a simple cover for the back. The most satisfying part of the project was sewing on the red pom-poms. Since I had just sorted through all of the notions, I actually could find them, and there is almost no project that a row of red pom-poms can't improve.
 
   

Vocational education

 

This chair, which is sort of a family hand-me-down, has been a problem. Unless I wanted to re-do the living room in burgundy velvet, it was not going to fit in. It's too large to store anywhere. I didn't like it enough to pay someone to reupholster it. And yet on two occasions when I had the chance to sell it - when I had a yard sale, and when I was taking some other stuff to an auction - I wasn't quite ready to let it go.

 

So over the weekend, I decided to try to reupholster it myself. Taking it apart was fun. I like to see how things are put together.

 
 
I got a little nervous when the chair was completely unassembled and I was left with a skeleton, two lumpy cushions and several assorted small parts. It's at moments like this that I revisit the humiliation of the high school aptitude test on which I scored a two (out of a possible 100) in mechanical aptitude.  

Well, I've got one thing to say to my snickering high school guidance counselor: Ha!
 
 

I am crazy about my made-over chair. Sometimes I look at it and beam like an adoring mother. It was not very difficult to do at all. It makes me want to take an upholstery class.
 
So on the heels of this triumph, I went to work Monday not to do my usual job, which consists a lot of sitting at a computer and writing and updating a web site and such, but to help our building foreman on a project. I sort of came up with the plan for the project, which involved building some display units from scratch, and he was desperate enough for another pair of hands to welcome my help.

And you know what? It was probably one of my top 10 best-ever days at work. I don't mean at this particular job. I mean at any job, from high school graduation to today. It is so satisfying to figure out the solution to a problem. I loved going to Lowe's in the middle of the morning for drill bits and toggle bolts. It's also really nice to work with somebody who thinks you're completely capable of measuring and drilling and gluing, and who does not know a single thing about a long-ago aptitude test. It's so much fun to build stuff that Monday did not feel like a day at work at all. 

Winter white

Maybe the snow has inspired me, or my eyes are tired from Christmas, but the only color I seem to like any more is white. A little ivory or beige is OK, too.

 

After I put the Christmas decorations away, I got out the vases and planters, but only the white ones. All the pink and yellow and green and aqua will need to wait.

 

Fortunately, the local thrift store had stocked according to my needs, because I found a perfect Haeger vase last week. It's on the large side - maybe 10 inches tall - and must weigh 10 pounds.

 

I found this planter, too, which I think is adorable, if a little wildly colored for my current mood.

 

She's very sweet. But she might end up on Etsy. I'm just not sure.

 
 
I got this purse out to list on Etsy, but this is as far as I've gotten. Apparently I'm attracted only to neutral colored items in my storage bins, too. I wish I'd had a purse like this when I got married.

 
 
On the same thrifting trip, I found the perfect chenille spread for me. I need an abundance of white chenille with that sort of ribbed design, and I wanted to find a spread that was kind of beat up because I wouldn't cut into it otherwise. And sure enough, there was this one, with the top in pristine condition, but the sides kind of tattered. So I got the chenille that I needed, and a nice big piece with a pretty design left over. I may just hem the sides for a coverlet. Eventually. Right now, it's too bright for me to look at. 
 
 


  

New Year's Resolutions, a birds-eye view

 

This year, I'm going to tackle some long-overdue home improvement projects. The bluebirds would appreciate a little foundation work, for example.

 

I'm going to take time to notice the little treasures that surround me daily ...

 
 
and count, for instance, how many snow-capped birds' nests I can see from the path around the meadow.

 
 
Fourteen. (But I didn't take pictures of all of them.)

 

I'm going to get out more with friends. Even the badly behaved one who lives next door.

 

I'm going to eat more vegetables and fruits. But not these.

 
 
I'm going to be constantly grateful for a family that knows, given the choice of buying me diamonds or furs or a vintage handmade string holder, what will make my heart sing on Christmas.

 

And ever thankful for the cozy home we share.

Wishing you every happiness in 2010!
  
 


 
 
 

A week at the summer house: tableware

Summer (and my imaginary summer house) is a good excuse to collect some tableware I normally would pass by. A little bit of red goes a long way in my house, but red is just about the best color there is for vintage tableware -- so, if it's red and vintage and inexpensive, I buy it and save it for the picnic table. The red Pyrex refrigerator dish belonged to my mom; the pitcher, the salt and pepper shakers and the tablecloth all were yard sale finds. If I find one more Jadeite plate this summer, I'll have enough for everybody at dinner - a prospect that I'm sure will thrill me more than anybody else at the table.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe corn on the cob requires extra utensils, and those who don't. You know which side I'm coming down on. My pal Lillian has the best idea for corn on the cob - she puts melted butter in a pitcher and uses a (presumably) unused paint brush to brush it on the ears. This works so well you wonder why everyone doesn't do it. I'm looking for the perfect butter pitcher. It's not like I don't own a pitcher or two, but I like having something to hunt for.

The red Pyrex bowl on the left is the one that I got for 50 cents at a sale a few weeks ago. If you find one of those low, square Pyrex bowls, buy it, even if it's more than 50 cents. There's something about its size and shape that just makes me want to use it every day. I found the glasses at a thrift store a couple of months ago, and I swear they're the last decent thing I've found thrifting. I might give up thrift stores during the yard sale season. There's only so much looking at really awful stuff my eyes can take.

It might seem a little frivolous to buy tableware just for the picnic table, but I figure I've spent about as much on my little finds as I would have on a couple of packages of paper plates. If I have to choose, I''ll happily live without paper plates. I'd rather wash dishes. Especially pretty ones.