Putting Things Back Where They Belong (A post for women)

Stephen and me with our four children.

Psst! This post gets very intimate. If that bothers you, you may want to move on to other stuff. Like this website full of things that make you say "Wow!"

Once upon a time, I had perky breasts, a flat stomach, and flawless skin. And then life happened. Time, aging cells, gravity, childbirth, hormonal changes. The result is that things are no longer quite where they used to be or where they ought to be.

Oh, Christmas Tree!

I have a love/hate relationship with decorating the Christmas tree each year. I love how it looks when it's done, but I do not enjoy the process. Usually.

Skin Deep

February 2015 | The yellow tinge in this photo is because of the lighting, not because of the make up.

On a whim, I decided to have my make-up done professionally for Valentine's day this year. It was eye-opening in two ways.

1. I always thought I was pretty good at doing my own make-up, but I had room for improvement. (I now pay more attention to my eye brows.)
2. My eyes really 'popped' with the techniques a professional used.

The Big Reveal

Clematis and salvia from our garden.
I'm seriously contemplating having this picture printed to hang in the dining room.

Done. The kitchen is done. Done like dinner -- never was that phrase more appropriately used, I think. Let me show you the glory that is now my kitchen.

Oh, Interwebs!

The Lotus Building in China, by Studio505 (Photo by John Gollings). See more pictures here.

Welcome to my periodic round-up of things I've found online that make me smile, cry, laugh, think, shout, or drop my jaw. 

Vintage

This was our wedding gift, sewn with love by my Aunt Betty in 1984. 

I believe that, until her final illness, Aunt Betty sewed every single day of her life. It was her great joy, and everyone in our family has an heirloom to remember her by. When she passed, my Aunt Betty left her vintage 1936 Singer sewing machine to my daughter Katie. I am lucky to be housing the beautiful machine until my daughter has a place in her home for it.

It's more than a little embarrassing, however, that it sat in our home for several years (I've lost track) before I finally got around to opening it up. That's partly because the drawers were so jam-packed with stuff that they wouldn't even close properly.

The Douchebag Genius

Frank Lloyd Wright, Chicago, Illinois

If you've watched the Steve Jobs movie, then you know that brilliant people can be total assholes. The obsessive drive that leads to innovation doesn't always come with great social skills. Frank Lloyd Wright, architect extraordinaire was one of those douchebag geniuses.

A Traveller in Her Own Land

Captivating skies over highway 407, heading east.

Although I've written about my last full day in Switzerland, I still haven't brought you up to speed on our (relatively) local travels since then. There's something about visiting another country or region that casts a real contrast with what you're used to.

(More) Chocolate, Cheese, Churches, and a Château

The Château de Gruyères, Switzerland

When I first started writing about my trip to Switzerland with my Aunt Winkie, I mentioned that the four words in the title of this blog post really summed up my experience of Switzerland. Today's post really makes that clear. On our trip to Gruyère, we visited a dairy, a castle, two churches, and a chocolate factory. All on a beautiful, clear, sunny day.

One Step Forward

Kane is happy as long as he's in the same room as we are,
but he doesn't think it's fair that the cat is allowed on the couch when he is not. 

I love those reality shows where designers go in and completely revamp a room, from ceiling to floor. It's such a satisfying, dramatic metamorphosis.

But in the real world, I expect that very few people completely redecorate and refurnish a room in one go. Even when we were a family with two professional incomes, that never happened. Instead, we change out one or two pieces at a time, hoping eventually to achieve a room we're happy with.

If you can't lose it, decorate it!

If you can't lose it, decorate it.

Someone gave me this set of napkins (as a stocking-stuffer, I think) and I just love them. Recently, I realized that the rule applies to more than just clothing. It also applies to home decor.

Before and After

Our newly-painted front door. The yellow and blue flowers are actually hair clips.

The kids in our house are starting to worry that if they stay in one place too long, they are liable to be painted. They may have a point.

Ever since tackling the ghastly-green living room, I've been pumped to splash some colour around.

Seen in Passing

Mysterious triangles

Everywhere I go, lately, I seem to find messages left by people who trod the path before me. For example, I showed you the street art that adorns the vacant school down the street from us. Right now I'm kind of fascinated by the triangle in the picture above.

Womp . . . womp . . . wommmmp.

Primed and ready for the test paint!
(iPhone pictures, so don't judge.)

After weeks -- nay, months! -- of procrastinating, I finally got out the paint and prepared to tackle the ghastly green walls of the living room.

Doesn't cost anything to look.

So many colours to choose from!

I've about had it with the decor in our living room. It's too dark, it's too green, and the furniture is too big for the space.

Pick a Pretty Posy

A garden bouquet with salvia, chives, poppies, and a peony.

[This was going to be a quick-and-dirty blog post: snap a couple of pictures, add a narrative, and Bob's-yer-uncle. It didn't work out that way because I rushed the photography and had to redo my shoot TWICE more. Three hours later, I'm just starting to write.]

I love cut flowers. I know that some people believe them to be frivolous or even wasteful (they just die, right?), but I love bringing that splash of colour into my home, to enjoy as long as it lasts. And judging by the number of "likes" my arrangements receive on Facebook, I'm not alone. 

I read a blog somewhere that proposed a "bunch and fluff" method of arranging your flowers. I was to grab the bunch, stuff it loosely in the vase and just "fluff" it and let things fall as they may. It didn't work very well for me. Today, I share my tips for arranging flowers, using plants from our garden.

Oops. I did it again.

Russian Princess

Today was one of those glorious spring days that send a siren call to everyone: come out and play in the sun! So I did. I decided to take Kane for a walk at the Tulip Festival.

Face Time

No make-up, no filters, no airbrushing. Also: no sleep in the last 30 hours.

I came in from my walk with Kane today and, although it was eight degrees below zero (Celsius) and quite windy outdoors, I was sweating. The polar fleece vest had kept me mostly dry, but the lining of my windbreaker was dripping wet.

After dismantling the many layers of my bitter-winter dog-walking garb, I fed Kane his lunch then edited some photos while I cooled down.

Garden Variety Bouquet

I've been quietly enjoying freshly cut flowers from our garden this summer. In previous summers, I've hesitated to cut flowers for fear that there would be nothing beautiful left in the garden. But this summer I discovered that if I clipped off a stem or two, the plant would burst forth with renewed vigour in a couple of weeks.

For the first weekend of fall, we had this on our dining room table.

This was the third summer since we moved in. Not one of those plants was in the yard when we moved here. You can see:

• periwinkle (foliage draping down, it flowers in the spring)
• sage (the velvety, grey-green foliage)
• white roses
• miniature pink roses (mostly in bud in this view, but you'll see more in the other pictures)
• pink-cream hydrangea
• ferns
• euonymous (the variegated green-and-white foliage)

That pink-and-cream hydrangea is actually our second attempt to grow a hydrangea.

We've had a couple of challenges with our  gardens:

1. Most of the garden areas are full shade, though we do have a large section that gets full sun. That's where I've planted the herbs. It's such a hot spot that even the parsley survived last winter! I finally got wise and planted ferns in the deepest shade - they LOVE it!
2. The soil is exceedingly poor: sandy with hardly any organic material. We've been building it up with mulch and rich soil, but I think I'm going to layer on some serious sheep manure this fall.

I am sad to see summer go, I've so enjoyed our back yard. I think I will dry some of these hydrangeas to get me through the grey days of winter.

How does my garden grow!

Please! Please! Come right in! Welcome to our oasis.

It's been two years since we started planting our garden, and I think it's finally starting to come together.  The plants are maturing and settling into place. We've moved some plants around, to suit my fancy.

The northwest corner

Some of the shrubs have had minor setbacks, but the purple sand cherry and the dogwood have really made themselves at home. The hydrangea struggled, then died. The magnolia (more pictures later) suffered a fungus attack and all but died.

The stars of the garden right now are the snow-in-summer and the mother-of-thyme.

Snow-in-summer

Mother-of-thyme (with snow-in-summer in the background)

The flowers will soon fade, but the foliage will last, giving a dusty-green cloud to the border of the pool, and soft green along the paths.

You can see clumps of mother-of-thyme under the hammock.
We planted those last year; they'll take a while to mature as they're in a shady spot.

I've got oregano, sage, chives, parsley, thyme, and basil.
Also a rose bush and lavender in the back corners, for colour.
I also read something about roses being good for herbs. Or maybe it was the other way around.
Next year, we hope to add a tomato or some lettuce.

The herb garden was a pleasant surprise. Everything except the basil survived the winter! I didn't think parsley was so hardy, but there it is. (The herb garden has a perfectly sun-drenched corner of the yard.)

I don't usually let my herbs flower, but the chive flower matches my colour scheme, so . . .

The poor magnolia

We trimmed the magnolia back last summer, almost to the ground. It seems to be doing much better this year, so we'll see how it goes.

Magnolia buds

My poor iris!

The iris broke out in a nasty fungal attack. I've trimmed off most of the blighted leaves and sprinkled it with sulfur, but it seems to have taken a toll on the plant. But it's not dead yet!

And now for a little flashback. This is what the back yard looked like when we moved in.

July 2010

The northwest corner.
The flowers are "mallow" an invasive weed.

October 2010
After the construction of the pool.

Looking towards the southwest corner (where the hammock now is).
Starting from scratch.

July 2011

The garden border was made of ditch lilies and spiderwort - also known as weeds. But they were free and helped us fill in the blank spots without going broke. (You can see small, newly planted  clumps of snow-in-summer under the weeds. Now that the lilies and spiderwort are gone, the snow-in-summer can really shine!)

Day lilies (ditch lilies) at left, spiderwort at right.
(Though I did not take any pictures of them today, the clematis are still there.)

These weeds were fine, but they hid everything behind them and under them, including the snow-in-summer. With the help of my son, the day lilies have been moved back along the fence, and the spiderwort has been eradicated. We hope.

My plan for this year is to bring in some hollyhocks and some poppies. Also some phlox.