On home decorating

Hi, my name is Alina, and I am a slow decorator. A really slow decorator, to be precise. Between budget constraints and my uncanny ability to become gridlocked in indecision, home decorating is generally a long process. Now if you also throw in my high standards and deep desire to have a nicely decorated home, well now you have a really big mess on your hands. Actually, that would be me having a big, crying, foot-stomping, stuck-in-a-quandary mess. For me, home decorating is both yucky and exciting all at the same time.

My family and I recently moved into our first purchased (!) home last fall. We love it, and feel it meets so many of our standards. It is a small but well-sized brick home built in 1940 with all the charm of an older home (i.e. mudroom, arched doorways, wood floors, sunroom, built-ins, etc.) The price and location were right, on top of it all, and so we sprung. And, as is the case with all moves, I've landed in a vacuum of decorating decisions ranging from furniture placement, color choices, style preferences, and wall hangings, just to name a few. To complicate things a bit more, we sold most of our furniture when moving cross country two years ago, so we've also been slowly building back up our furniture collection.

I can and do tell myself I've come along way from that time two years when I stared into the moving truck containing only a 1/4 of the stuff I used to own or even since a mere 4 months ago when we first started to renovate this home. Floors refinished-check. Walls painted-check. Large furniture items (sofa and chairs) purchased-check. Clearly progress made, right? Yes. I totally agree. And yet I'm still struggling with indecision. If I'm completely honest, I think I'm feeling a little pressure to get things right the first time. Without getting too psychoanalytic on the topic, let me explain. In the past, when I rented a home, I would decorate rather quickly. I'd easily make decisions regarding walls, colors, furniture, etc. I knew that the home was somewhat temporary, and so no mistake was too great that I couldn't walk away from it at the expiration of the lease. But with this being a "permanent" home, I am feeling a little bit like a lover with a history of bad relationships...slow to commit.

My plan thus far has been this: keep it neutral. Our walls are varying shades of khaki. Furniture is white, cream, black, or dark leather. The curtains are a similar shade as the walls. Where I've been wild with colors in the past in my rental homes, my fear and the knowledge that I change my design preferences often have led me to keep the big items neutral. My plan is to bring in splashes of color with the smaller, less expensive, and more easily replaced items (i.e. pillows, vases, pictures, etc).

My only problem now is that I've grown used to the bare walls, the bland palette, and sparse decor. Perhaps it lacks warmth and coziness, as my patient husband kindly insinuates every time he asks, When are you going to hang pictures on the walls? And, without fail, I respond, Soon, Honey. Truth is, I'm just not ready yet. I'm percolating, toasting, and processing slowly, much to my husband's dismay.

I went shopping this week and popped in a few stores for ideas. I visited a fantastic store near my home called NestLiving. Karis was the first to point out the store, giggling excitedly over this Eames Elephant sitting in the storefront window. Apparently her tastes lean towards mid-century modern, and I can't blame her. Along the same lines, I popped into West Elm yesterday and was awed by their collection of kitchen chairs and lamps and color palette. On the other hand (and literally across the street) Ballard Designs and Potterybarn have updated cottage and classic elements that really appeal to me as well. And let's not forget about Anthropologie with it's (seemingly) effortless, vintage charm. Ok, that list I just typed is enough to make me drool.

Maybe you've spotted the problem in all of this store love I just mentioned. Here it is: I like a lot of styles and very differing styles. My sister-in-law (and yesterday's shopping buddy) says the same thing, but unlike indecisive me, she follows it up with, I just know what I can live with. I've yet to figure that part out.

Clearly my tastes are varied. I like a lot of different styles, and I don't seem to mind them all co-existing together. Fortunately, I've found homeowners that share a love for mixing up the styles as well. The following pictures are taken of their home which exemplifies that hodgepodge, eclectic mix of styles I'm talking about. These pictures are from Beloved Homes!, a coffee table book purchased at IKEA and featuring nine homes in Sweden. While IKEA has, of course, had an influence in the style and design of the homes, this is not an IKEA catalog. The pages I'm going to show come from an 18th century mansion, and I'm in awe of how the owners' seamlessly blend the old and new. Flea market meets modern style and doesn't bat an eye lash. I love that, and, to date, the way they have decorated stands in my mind as my ideal. This is what I'm working towards, for better or for worse.

So, now that I've rambled on about such things longer than I care to admit, I'm curious, do you have a magazine or store or design book that you try to emulate? Is there an ideal room sitting somewhere in somebody else's home or on the pages of a magazine or online that you drool over? Care to share a link or picture?

Happy staring, everyone.

Around the block

Karis and I went for a stroll yesterday. The sun was out in full force, and a chilly, mid-60 degree breeze was rolling off the Trout River. Karis opted for a ride in the stroller instead of working her two always-dancing-and-hopping legs. I was pleased she chose to ride because it meant I could bring my camera and more safely take shots along the way without worrying about her darting off.

As we were strolling along, something caught her eye, and she suddenly began to whisper in hushed tones, like that of a hunter. "Look, Mom, over there!" she said. When I didn't respond, she repeated herself, this time more urgently. I looked to where she was excitedly pointing and saw two beady eyes staring back at us. Two, very fake, completely plastic, deer eyes.

That's when it hit me. This child's only experience with deer have been of the faux variety, sitting, standing, or grazing, completely motionless, in lawns across North Florida. Some are a white, metal shell with tiny white lights to give them shape at night, and others are like this one, plastic all over and a sun-faded brown. And let's not forget the blown up culprits looking like giant air pillows, threatening to topple over at the first decent breeze.

I'm pretty sure she has no idea that deers really exist, in flesh and blood, or that they actually move, without the help of a tiny motor. I suppose it's a price you pay for raising your child in the city. But the irony in all of this, of course, is that we live a mere 3 miles (probably 1 mile, as the crow flies) from the Jacksonville zoo. So lions, tigers, and bears? Totally real. The common deer? Mere yard decoration.

Kitchen diaries

::Orange juice tastes amazing when fresh squeezed into a vintage juice pitcher and sipped out of the coordinating glasses. I scored this set recently at a thrift store, and I finally got around to using them this week. There is something nostalgic about this set as it reminds me of my late grandmother, Ruthie. She stands in my memory as the quintessential 1950's woman. She kept a clean house, supported her husband tirelessly in achieving all his career dreams, and had a never-ending supply of ice cream treats in the upright freezer on the porch. I had my first taste of guacamole at her house when I was five, and this pitcher is just the sort of thing that I imagine sat in her avocado-colored fridge, filled with orange juice, fresh-squeezed that very morning for my grandfather's breakfast.

::I've always been a fan of tv chef Alton Brown's philosophy that kitchen tools should have more than one function. When starting a load of laundry yesterday, I did what any housewife has done at some point in her laundry washing career. In my haste to finish the task, I poured the detergent into the fabric softener compartment. Recalling what happened when I poured softener in the bleach compartment a few, short weeks ago (the machine temporarily broke), I panicked. Then...I pulled an Alton Brown. Out came the turkey baster from the kitchen drawer where it had been hibernating for two months, and, in no time at all, the detergent was sucked out and the load sent spinning on it's way.

If any of you reading this are my neighbor and happened to be looking out your window...Yes, that was me walking back into the house with a soapy turkey baster and a smug, MacGyver-ish smirk on my face.

And that's MacGyver, people. Not MacGruber.

Success sounds like a whisper

We made it. Actually, I guess I should say Karis made it. But, in all honesty, I feel like I've crossed the finish line. This picture represents my finish line moment. Karis is walking with the nurse back to the operating room for her surgery. I watched as she walked off, lured by the nurse's sweet offer to show her the zoo animals on the wall, and I breathed a sigh of relief. My job was over. I delivered her healthy and hungry to the surgeon's table, and from that point on, it was all up the the skillful hands of the doctor.

Thankfully, Karis' surgery went as planned, and this morning, as she lay in bed next to me while I was waking up, she whispered softly to her dolly, and I knew the surgery was a success. If you've ever spent any length of time in our home you would know that the loudest noise, by far, originates from my daughter's vocal chords. With all of her ear infections and the doctor's repeated exasperated reports of "there's still fluid in her ears," we knew that her hearing could best be described as the equivalent of hearing under water. So when I heard her whispering, something she's done almost never before now, I was pleased. Thrilled, really. She can now hear well enough to monitor her own voice and talk softly. Or softer...she is, after all, still only two years old. And, a little later on, when she jumped and spun around at the sound of the coffee grinder, throwing her hands around her ears and proclaiming it "too loud", I was certain all the work and sacrifice over the last week had paid off!

I thought I'd give you a little photo tour of the things we did to keep ourselves busy at home over the last week.

First, we went canoeing on the river (read: sat in a box in the hallway and rowed with a plastic golf club).


Pokey the puppy was taken on many walk/runs around the house.


We picked cherries and somebody tried to eat them. Incidentally, this is her first board game experience. It went quite well, and since then we've visited the game board section at the store, and I can't wait to get this game by Eric Carle. I'm quite excited that we're entering the world of board games.


We celebrated Karis' cousin Evie's fourth birthday party...alone at home. Since Karis couldn't be around kids and their snotty noses, we had to miss the party. But Aunt Megan, party planner extraordinaire, sent cupcakes, party favors, materials for the craft, and the Alice and Wonderland movie (the theme of the party) for us to watch. Very fun. Thanks for the at-home party, Aunt Megan!

Stay

Survival is the name of the game this week. With an adenoidectomy and a myringotomy surgery scheduled for Monday, Karis is under strict orders by the doctor to avoid other children, public play areas, and the church nursery. She's technically already sick right now, go figure, and we're desperately trying to avoid piling on any other illnesses to this one so that we don't have to reschedule the surgery. Allow me to summarize what I just shared: doctor's orders = isolation = survival mode.

Here's the thing...I like to go. I like to go out. I like to go over to friends' homes. I like to go into restaurants and eat. I like going. With our eyes on Karis' health, going has taken a hit and staying has become the norm. Stay home. Stay healthy. Stay sane.

Apparently cooking is a bit of a survival technique for me, something that treats boredom and listlessness. Today has found me puttering around the kitchen quite a bit. With Karis standing on a chair looking over my shoulder, I've cooked and/or prepared the following items: oatmeal and fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast, grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup for lunch, cranberry apple butter...because it sounds amazing (thanks, Kate!), and I'm marinating top round roast for dinner, served alongside kohlrabi au gratin and mashed rutabaga.

Karis thinks she has found her own method of survival as well. At one point in the day, I sent her to her room for not listening. When I went in to discipline her, she abruptly cried out, "Christopher Robin, save me!" Forget Jesus, God, or Mary. My child shuttles her prayers off to the fictitious characters of the Hundred Acre Wood. (Sigh) I've got some work to do...that is if I can get out of the kitchen long enough to do it.

Changes

::In the pantry
I first heard about this CSA in my area a couple of years ago. At that time, I called and the kind farmer himself told me that he and his family farm together because they love hard work and are passionate about growing organic food. I was immediately sold. But since our life has been so transitory for the last two years, I haven't been able to try his food until this weekend.

Karis and I braved the blustery Saturday temps to drive out to the little farm in Switzerland (Florida, that is) where I met the farmer and his wife. I asked questions, they shared recipes, and I had my first taste of digging through boxes of fresh veggies. And when I say fresh, I do mean fresh...when I first walked up and saw dirt and earth debris clinging to the veggies, I had to take in a deep breath and remind myself this is how all veggies start out. Some just get a really big bath and get handled by untold amounts of people before being placed in nice, neat rows in the grocery store.

And the citrus bag they gave me? I literally watched their son walk out to the groves to pick them right off the trees. Now...if I can just figure out what to do with kohlrabi, Chinese cabbage, tatsoi, pumelos, and rutabaga...

::In the playroom
Matt and I changed around the furniture in Karis' bedroom last night. Her bed had been sitting under a drafty, old window, and with the cold weather of the last couple of weeks and her lingering illness, it simply had to be done. With the bed in place, I began arranging around the play kitchen, table and chairs, and other furniture items. Karis was happily watching me and playing with her toys wherever they were set down, no matter how temporarily.

Those moments of decorating reminded me of when I was a kid. My mother had a knack for home decorating, and since there was literally no budget to work with, she became quite good at mixing up what she had to make the whole room look brand new. I can remember my bedroom after one such decorating spree. The beds (for me and my sister) had been rearranged, old bedspreads retrieved from storage, and in the end, it was so gleaming and different and pretty that the whole thing felt like someone else's room. Some other little girl with nice things. It was exciting and new though everything had most definitely been there all along.

I saw a little bit of this excitement in Karis last night. I had finished up and was taking Karis to the bathroom, when she suddenly glanced back in her room and exclaimed, "My kitchen! My house!" She then promptly went about her bathroom business all the while chatting to me, "Thank you for my kitchen, Mom. And my high chair. And my table and chairs, and...". And on it went like that, continuing into her prayer time...all that thankfulness for her things that had been there all along.

::At the store
On our way back from the CSA on Saturday, Karis and I passed by a Fresh Market, and I knew my mission. Get this drink. Now, I'm not normally a fan of vitamin waters. I don't often pay $2 for a bottled drink, and I wasn't particularly thirsty at the time. But I needed this beverage. My brother, who lives in Brooklyn and works in advertising as a copy writer, put together a team on his own and designed this label. The name, the graphics, the copy...the works.

When I first got to the store, I had trouble locating the drink, and then I asked a guy who asked another guy who took us right to it. I was so excited by that point that when I saw the drink, I gushed the news about my brother to them both. One worker was kind and replied, "Oh, very good for him." I couldn't agree more. I called Andrew right away to tell him, and ironically, he hasn't even seen the label yet in person since none of the stores carrying it are near NYC. So here you go, bro. It looks awesome!

Judy

An image has haunted me all day. I meant to write about this incident weeks ago, but then December hit and everything crawled into that crazy holiday hole. As I have begun to crawl out this week, this memory is one of the things that has resurfaced.

I went shopping one night at Publix back in November. It was undoubtedly a moment of freedom in my day. Matt was home with a sleeping Karis, and I was free to go off by myself to shop (so fun! so exciting!). I had just arrived and was looking through the "buy one get one free" bins at the front of the store, when, out of no where, I heard a feeble voice address me.

"Ma'am? Ma'am? Could you please read me the numbers off this machine?"

I turned around to see who was talking to me and saw a man, probably in his 70's. He was scruffy-looking, and his speech was somewhat hard to understand, perhaps caused by a speech impediment. My first impression was that he was homeless.

"Sure," I replied. Feeling only slightly nervous (I'm not sure why), I read the numbers listed on the blood pressure machine.

"159 over 93," I said. He paused to think about it, and then asked me to repeat it two more times. He had some questions about what range these numbers fall into, and feeling a little unsure in my total and utter lack of medical knowledge, I simply read the labels explaining the different ranges. Turns out his blood pressure was a little high, I explained.

"Oh," he said. He stopped and stared off about 45 degrees to my left for a few brief moments, and I took note of the worn clothing, the jacket half off his body, probably from when he placed his arm in the blood pressure machine a few moments earlier. He had very few teeth, and his face hadn't had a chance meeting with a razor in months, it seemed.

"I'm legally blind," he started explaining to me, perhaps explaining why he needed help reading the machine. He then told me how he has been on a feeding tube for the last 3 years. As if he knew I was wondering what he was doing in a grocery store, he explained he was with his wife and she was shopping. Alone. The image of her shopping alone for food she would prepare for herself alone and eat alone seemed so sad to me.

"I'm so grateful. Life is so good," he said abruptly and then paused, giving me only a second to process his amazing outlook on life in the midst of what is clearly a life not easily lived.

"You know, I was born on the same day as somebody famous. You wanna know who?" He looked at me, honestly thinking I might guess who.

"Judy Garland was born the same day, same month as me. She's gone now," he told me with a mixture of pride, gratitude, and a little sadness on his face.

I wasn't sure how to respond to this onslaught of very personal and incredibly interesting information he was giving me in quick succession, so I just listened and offered "uh huhs" and "oh reallys?" at appropriate times in the conversation to show him I was listening and interested.

But just as quickly as the conversation began, he trailed off and eventually quit talking. I took my cue to continue on my way shopping and left him with a "have a good night" or "God bless" or something else that didn't seem quite enough. The whole interaction probably lasted less than two minutes. He shared so much in that little bit of time, and I wasn't sure how I should have responded.

So what's the image that's been haunting me all day? Well, part of it is the image of this man, in all his dirty and disheveled state, talking to me about gratitude. (Gulp). I wish I had half of his gratefulness. Honestly.

But what I can't shake is the image of two mothers, 70 something years ago, doubled over in labor pains. Each one anticipating meeting the new life in their belly. The fathers are undoubtedly standing very nearby. Anxious. Doting. Excited about a new child. One would give birth to a red-slippered movie star, and the other would give birth to a boy who, in his 70's, would ask a strange woman in the grocery store to read his numbers on the blood pressure machine, and, unknowingly, teach her about gratitude.

Two different moms. Two different babies. Two very different futures. Though, if either knew her child's fate, neither mother would be any less proud, I'm sure.

Cheers to you, 2010

Here's to darkening the doorsteps of my daughter's pediatrician office only half as much as we did in 2009. It was a sick, sick year. May the tubes being put in her ears next week help toward that end.

Here's to taking time out to play with Karis more often in my day. She needs it, and the dust balls and dishes can wait.

Here's to growing in patience with 2-year-old logic. It is, after all, only 2 years old.

Here's to stretching the limits of my writing skills...to writing with more passion and creativity than I thought possible.

Here's to finding the beautiful in the ordinary...and taking great pictures of it.

Here's to making this poem our family creed. So much truth in it. So much hope.

Here's to this being a year of trust. In my marriage. In my talents. In my Creator. In His timing.

Here's to the hope I've already found this year...I started writing this post a few days ago, and I'm glad to report today's version is much more hopeful. :-)

Here's to the grace I will give myself and others around me when 2010 doesn't quite live up to my expectations.

Here's to the inner city of Jacksonville. Only 113 homicides last year. Only. It's gut-wrenching, and I deeply desire to be a part of bringing hope and life to the streets. You're a beautiful city.

Here's to figuring out what it looks like to bring hope and life to our city streets. I have no idea what my small part is.

Here's to getting rooted in my neighborhood, meeting my neighbors (finally), and building community around us through a program I'm calling '52 Fridays.' A dinner party nearly every Friday night for a year (give or take a few). This is the year I embrace hospitality in all it's stressful, humbling, life-affirming glory.

Here's to bright winter sunlight, the brick side of our house, Karis' adorable boots, aperture f4.5, and shutter speed 1/4000 for this series of photos. I'm in love.

Here's to you, 2010.