bluerainroom

hounds about town

On gorgeous fall Sundays, we all spend a lot of time outside.

Every time one of us steps outside, they feel the need to put on a show.

Let's face it, they do it all the time, anyway.

Thea looks like she's laughing her dang fool head off.

Violet's a lover, not a fighter.

Break's over.  We joke that Violet is the hardest working dog in show business.  She takes her duties very seriously and clearly feels more comfortable controlling the perimeter than cavorting with those other two bozos.

Thea's ready to rest, however.

Violet, listen to your mother.

But Lucy's a restless soul.

 

D.O.D. Dogs on Duty.  The trick is to make it look like you're resting.

 

Lucy and Thea cave pretty sharpish.  Violet has everything under control.

and garden

It was the garden that really got us though. 

Roughly three acres, directly across the street from a world-famous botanical garden.  I guess that means you'd feel as if you'd have some "keeping up of standards" to do.  It really showed off for us too.  Look at that splash of red at the top of the photo. Breathtaking color.  We're not that far into fall down here.

And a creek!  What memories of this creek Neel and his brother have from growing up.  It's the thin line midway through that first photo and crosses the property.

 

This pergola had Neel in fits of both inspiration and envy.

 

 

It was where house met garden that we were inspired the most.  These were the images that had us standing in our own backyard in an early November drip, drip chewing on our lips and wondering, "what next" with our blank slate of a back yard.  Deconstruction, then construction was about as far as we got. 

 

Too bad we can't put in a creek.  I'm starting to think every kid needs a creek.

house

When I was a little girl, my mom had glossy issues of House & Garden magazine floating around our home.  Stacked on the coffee table or in baskets in the bathroom.  It was a beautiful magazine (does it still exist?), but much like Vogue, which also floated around our house and was full of gorgeous pages of things I'd never wear, the homes in H&G never felt like ones I'd ever live in.  I guess I'm more a Better Homes & Gardens kind of gal. 

The house we visited last weekend was definitely a House & Garden kind of house. Neel's aunt and uncle have lived there for thirty-five years.  His uncle saw the outside and liked the location (it was equidistant from three hospitals where he worked as an ENT doctor), and he bought the house!  They hadn't even seen the inside.  As his aunt says, it's basically a brick ranch and she tried to work with that. What she did was make it something special.  

 

She has the kind of timeless good taste that never goes out of style.

This was my favorite room almost twenty years ago, and it still is today.  These two love to travel and that love is reflected in their surroundings.  The whole effect is one of elegance, luxury and comfort.  

This is the room where we watched the deer.  I'd have trouble concentrating with that amazing view. For those of you keeping score at home, note the expanse of white windows.

 

You'd think a ten year old boy would find it tricky to navigate a home with so many lovely things in it, but Callum managed just fine.  Especially when he made it outside, but more on that during the garden portion of our tour.

Although perhaps he did a little editorializing.  To his mind, no decor is complete without the addition of a fighter jet.

100% scarier this year

The amount of loot he hauled home was pretty scary too!

we went away

We made a quick trip to Pennsylvania last weekend. Neel's aunt and uncle live there, as well as some friends of ours. It was the perfect time to go. Autumn in all its glory.  Neel's aunt and uncle have the most amazing home, straight out of the pages of House & Garden, and worthy of its own blog post - which I'll make you wait for. 

I got up before anyone on Saturday morning and raised the blind on a window in the living room. 

This is what was looking at me.  My first thought was that these guys don't seem to be the type to have deer statues in their yard. And they aren't.  Turns out we weren't the only visitors that weekend.

 

 

They came every morning around 7:30, and we sat so still, holding our breath as we watched.  Mostly doe, sometimes two, sometimes three, they were always alert as they munched on acorns and leaves.

On the last morning, a buck came along with the doe, and it seemed clear that they were a family.

My family was mesmerized.

wide open spaces

It occurred to me as I was putting things on the shelves, that this is a bit of a dream come true for me.  Open shelves in the kitchen.  A coming true of a pretty old dream.  I had such fun deciding what pieces were going to go in this space.  My very favorite kind of editing.  They look pretty nice, don't they? 

You know those boxes that they sell at craft stores?  The kind that holds video tapes or photos?  Although who has video tapes anymore?  Anyway, I have one of those boxes filled with clippings of rooms and houses from decorating magazines.  Inspiration.  The one time I let someone peek, she pointed out that a huge chunk of my pictures were of banks of white-framed windows.  Windows after windows after windows.  It's fascinating to me what threads other people find that may have escaped my notice. 

I guess another thread for me are these open shelves in the kitchen.  Many, many years ago, my in-laws had a cottage in western Virginia that I loved.  Simple home, a combined kitchen-dining-living room with a view for days.  And the kitchen had open shelves.  Now, looking at my own kitchen, I remember that kitchen, seen over fifteen years ago, and I remember my box of inspirations.  I pulled out page after page of of kitchens like these Wide open spaces, spare of cabinets with dishes and glassware within easy reach.  These two are my favorites.  Lord only knows how long ago I pulled these pictures from an old Better Homes and Gardens magazine. 

When we planned this kitchen and these shelves, I only knew that I was simply doing something that I wanted.  What it took awhile to realize was that it's about time.

chilly/chili

The sun is finally shining after a weekend of chill and misty weather.  Oh the complaints at the cold!  I didn't mind it, really.  I must be ready to hunker down for the winter because the gray and damp days suited my mood.

We've been having football food for dinners on Sunday nights and eating in front of the late game.  Wings, ribs, quesadillas.  This weekend was a perfect weekend for chili.  (Hat tip to my dad for the idea.).  Add shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream and fritos (and beer), and we're good to go.  Hunker down.

fall beauty

Q: Do hydrangea bush bloom twice in summer?

A: Maybe

B. Yes

time out

It feels, right now, as if there is anguish all around me.  All last week, my mind was peppered with petty grievances and irritations. Death by one thousand paper cuts.  A daily deluge of nodding inconsequential details.  It's easy to get wrapped up.

And then there's perspective.  In the past several days, we've been hit by so much more.  Death, illness, concern and fear.  Nothing touching my own little gray house, worry not, but certainly skimming too, too close.  I have a lot I want to write about here: Hungary still simmers, photos a-waiting, the kitchen, now nearly fully-functional and the spate of one-pot meals I've been working my way through, courtesy Martha and Everyday Food. But even I know when to take a breath.  I want to write, and I am (although the stuff coming out of me right now is not necessarily for human consumption.).  But this is our first fall day, with low(ish) temperatures and low skies and a butternut squash and roasted corn chowder on the stove, and what I think I really need to do right now is take that breath, wring my hands and fret a bit. 

Wild Geese 
You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees 
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.            Mary Oliver

Thanks for your patience. I'll be back next week, endeavoring to have found my lighter heart.

countered

We had dinner with some friends over the weekend with the thought that we'd bring the kids back to our house to have s'mores over the fire pit for dessert.  It ended up too hot for the fire pit, but we came back here anyway (sangria!).  So these guys were appropriately appreciative of the progress we've made on the kitchen and the new counters (aw shucks), and we answered question after question about how they were poured and installed.  It reminded me that I hadn't posted any of that story here on the blog, so here, all your questions answered.

Don, the guy who did the counters for us, called a couple of weeks ago to ask if we wanted to see the third section poured.  Um, hello?  Of course we do.  

This is the mold of the last section of counter.  It's a corner section, so shaped like an "L." Don pours the counter upside down, and after it sets, he'll flip it over.  If you look closely, there's a black line around the perimeter of the inside of the mold.  That's the depth line.  We wanted 1.5 inch thick counters, so that line is 1.5 inches above the base.

When we got to his studio, he had five big buckets lined up, ready to pour the concrete.  The buckets were filled with water, and after we got there, he added a cup of stain to each bucket.

When it's time to add the concrete, the clock starts ticking.  Don says he has about thirty minutes after he pours the powder into the water before the mix starts setting up.

Time to start mixing.

I always go to food analogies, but this was very much like making a cake.

And then right straight to the pouring.

Bucket,

after bucket,

after bucket.

  Don scraped those buckets dry. He said he'd never had it come this close.

After that, the gloves come off. Don walked around patting the back of this baby for quite awhile.  I may try that with my next cake batter.

After the patting, a wire grid is added to strengthen the form.  It'll sink a bit, but not all the way to the bottom, which is really the top.

Almost before you know it, it starts to dry.  The dull spots are drying first, and because drying concrete is an exothermic reaction, things start heating up from here. 

By the time we left it was hot to the touch, and Don said that by the time he'd break the molds off that night he could fry an egg on it.  How cool is that?  We left soon after that, but from what he explained, Don broke the counter out of the mold that night, and flipped it as early as the next day.  From there on out it's about drying and sealing and getting the color right.

Here it is, just about to be installed last week.  That little ramp, maybe you remember it from the mold?  That's where my dish drain goes so the water slides off into the sink.  Dear concrete counters:  I'm sold on you.