Beautiful Jewelry I can Afford!

Last weekend (two weekends ago? who can keep track... )

Sometime in the recent past... I accompanied my mother to a Gem and Jewelry Show.

I'd never had much interest in going to one because frankly the word "gem" is out of my price range. I didn't realize that fully half of the show is things that I can afford, like beads and wire to make my own jewelry, jade and pearl creations from China, and the occasional much more expensive looking gem (look, turns out I can afford to use it!) buried amongst the rest. Here is the one I found (and obviously took home with me!):

That's a rather overexposed shot, so here's an underexposed one to balance it out:


The designer, Babrbara Garwood, was manning the table herself and was more than happy to tell me the wonderful story of how her pieces are created. Inspired by designs she sees in museums, Ancient Byzantine being one of her favorite influences, she sketches out each piece and sends her sketches to Mongolian master-craftsmen where the pieces are constructed from silver wires, enamel, jewels and stones and coated in 24 karat cold. Even the backs of her pieces are gorgeous!

She has a website www.importfolio.com where you can see some of her other stuff and see the unbelievable prices. I practically got this pendant for free because as pieces sell out at her show, she takes the odd men left from sets (like someone else bought the earrings and necklace that match this) and puts them in a box and marks everything $34! So with tax my pendant was $35! Unbelievable...

Someday, these earrings will also belong to me...:$88!!

Though these are gorgeous, too...:Ahh, to shop, perchance to dream?...

Let There Be (Pretty) Light!

I've finally found a fixture to replace that awful (ok, not awful, but awfully plain and traditional) light on my dining room ceiling!
This is the fixture that was up there before:Except the shade was a pure white, which cast an awful, glaring light.

And this is what I've replaced it with:


I also installed a dimmer switch for it (and when I say "I", I mean the same friend that helped us do the window-sills,) which might have helped the old fixture be more user-friendly.
I'm so happy that before the family descends for the holidays I actually have lighting that will simultaneously allow me to create a lovely candlelit atmosphere, and the guests to see their food!

Yay!
I confess that this wasn't my first choice, I wanted something arm-y that wasn't flush mount so that when we get a real table set (to replace this patio set we stole from our deck, which is bar height) we can lower the light accordingly. But my husband loved this one (as did my mother) and it was one of my top three choices, so I guess with this style it doesn't matter so much if it's not 30 inches above the table top, right?

Baby, It's COLD Outside!!

Is that ICE on my River?!!!

Yes it is. It's been below freezing for a little over a week now, but I didn't think a moving river would freeze so quickly! Shows how much I know...

Despite the below-freezing temperatures, Saturday afternoon I evilly forced my husband out on a bittersweet collecting trip. I thought, ,"He's always complaining that we don't spend enough time outside, he loves a little hike, and he skis, so the cold really shouldn't bother him." Boy was I wrong!

Bittersweet is a vine that grows around other plants (and trees and telephone poles) and in the fall grows beautiful reddish-orange berries. The vines make wonderful holiday wreaths and garlands, and though I've never made either before I thought I'd give it a try.

So we took a trip back to the fields we'd taken the dogs running a couple of weeks ago, where I knew there was plenty of foliage to be found. Clippers in hand, we hiked out and partook of the bounty.

For about 20 minutes.

After which my husband was complaining so loudly of the cold that I gave up!

We did manage to come home with two big arm-loads of bittersweet and enough birch branches to fill my two big vases.

These branches in the blue living room I'll spray a silvery white and sprinkle with an opalescent glitter. I'll make a trip back to the Christmas Tree Shop to see if they still have the battery operated mini lights, which I'll weave in the vase and lower parts of the branches.

And these in my orange and red dining room I'll try to give an antique gold coating. I may have to make my first attempt at gold-leafing to get the look I'm thinking of! For the lighting on this bunch I've put a short pillar candle behind it so it up-lights the branches, casting a really cool pattern on the ceiling.

Great New Christmas CD!

Rachel Ray has come out with a Christmas CD, and it's fantastic!

No, no, she hasn't taken up singing (probably a good thing since she always seems to be losing her voice,) she has gathered together a bunch of classic Christmas songs on one very well priced CD. I picked up How Cool is That Christmas at Borders books for $5.99! What makes it really great is that while they are songs I recognize, they are versions that I haven't heard on the radio a million times (and I'm one of those people that listens to 103.3 as soon as they start playing the holiday tunes, which was the day after Halloween this year!)
Strangely, Amazon is selling this same album for twice as much money...

I also received Harry Connick Jr's 3rd holiday album, What A Night! I have been playing his first, When My Heart Finds Christmas, for about 6 years now, and while I adore it, my husband was getting a bit sick of it. I wasn't sure if this one would live up to the legend of the other, but it's pretty darn good! It's jazzier than the first was, but while I'm less tempted to sing along I think it will be great to have on in the background while cooking (and you know, dancing around the kitchen!) And best of all, it sounds different enough from the first one that the husband has no cause to complain!

Christmas is A Comin' !!

I know, I know! It's not even Thanksgiving yet! I know because my husband keeps yelling that at me...

And although I can't begin playing Christmas music (when the husband is home...) until after the Turkey has been eaten, and can't go buy my tree until someone is actually selling them (yes I still buy real ones and spend the intervening year sweeping them up,) no one can stop me from planning the decorations!

So I spent the afternoon on HGTV.com looking for inspiration, and here's what I found:

I love the traditional look of this red white and gold theme. It always seems so hard to get that wonderfully full look they have achieved here. How to do that without looking like a rats nest?

They've done a good job of that on this slightly more Toyland tree, too. Though since my living room walls are now blue, I don't think the classic Christmas green will look quite right against it.


I am strangely drawn to the white trees this year. Strange, of course, because I have banished all the white walls in my house... But I like how easy it is to do a shimmery ethereal effect, or...

go for a real POP!

Sadly, a pretty white tree is neither in the budget, nor the list of allowed items my youngest sister (who has taken over planning family Christmas at my house) has issued. Maybe I'll find a nice one at the after-Christmas sales and have two trees next year...
On an unrelated note, I adore that coffee table! Or part of that coffee table... it depends on what those insets are: tile good; glass bad! And is that wall above the fireplace bronzed?

Speaking of tables, I found some interesting ideas for that, too.

I like the combination of the natural and shiny elements. Though the shininess of the orb candles on the stag is somehow distracting... possibly it is less so in real life. But what a striking stag that is! I would love to find something like that. Though, frankly, I would never spend the money required to purchase one that large! But a nice idea...

And while this one isn't quite so striking, I have a scarf that I could use for that table runner, and I have some gold chargers and cream pillar candles... so really I copied this because I could conceivably do that with what I already own! And though I can't see it completely, I am fascinated by that chandelier!

And finally:

The guest bedroom! I have plans to paint the guest bedroom a nice spring green, and how cute would it be to turn it into a little Christmas suite with pops of red and gold?! I also really like the effect of the twinkle lights in the glass vase. The Christmas Tree Shop had tiny strands of battery-operated mini lights for like $3 that I liked but couldn't think of anything to do with, and those would be perfect in a vase! Maybe with some sparkley branches stuck in there... ooh I like that idea!

I don't suppose my husband could complain if I just started experimenting with decorating ideas... it's not really decorating then, right??

Good Scents!

And yes, that's meant to be a play on words implying that I found a great, inexpensive fragrance!

I like to attempt to match the scent in my house somewhat to the current season, and I always have a little difficulty this time of year. Most winter fragrances make me or my husband either hungry, or head-achy.
But I am pleased to say that I have found both a candle and a reed diffuser in scents that make my house smell like a wonderful forest, and cost less than $10! (ok, the initial reed diffuser is $13, but stay with me...)
First, Glade's Glistening Snow candle:

I can't find any product images, so you'll have to put up with my bad picture of it.
For about $5 (I got it on sale at Target for $2.50!) this candle fills my house with a wonderful, slightly sweet woodsy fragrance for hours. Justscent.com tells me that it's fresh bayberry with undertones of cinnamon, clove and peppermint.
Though I rarely actually burn it for more than an hour at a time since the essential oils in the candle let off a rather strong aroma that fills the kitchen and living room very quickly.

And then the Chesapeake Bay Oil Diffuser in Winter Pine:

This is a very fresh evergreen smell that I love- it makes my house smell like a fresh Christmas tree!
I purchased this one at Target too, for I think $12.99, but the best part is that you can buy refills for $5! So if you have a pretty bottle that you paid a little more for but like the scents available in these refills (I remember there being Sandlewood, Apple something, and one other in addition to the Winter Pine), instead of paying another $15 for the oil in the fancy bottle, you can just buy the $5 refill and put it in your nice container!


This less expensive line from Chesapeake Bay doesn't show up on the Target website, so you'll have to make a trip to the actual store to get them. They're in the candle aisle.


Time: Months of searching, and a 10 minute trip to Target!

Cost: $17.50! (if you don't count the $30 I spent on other fragrances I didn't like...)

Unexpected Art

There were two bare walls in my pink bathroom that have been bothering me for a bit.
I couldn't quite think what to put in there that would look right both thematically and aesthetically. And then I inherited three square gold picture frames with teapot paintings in them. Well, clearly teapots aren't quite my speed, but the frames were interesting sizes- one about 6 inches square and the other two about 4 inches square. So I decided to frame a few things that don't necessarily belong in a normal person's bathroom.


I filled the larger frame with the cover from a souvenir box of Godiva chocolates from Paris. I thought it was cute, so I'd saved it, and here the colors turned out to be perfect!

The two smaller frames I filled with postcards of miniature paintings I had picked up in India.


Most of the postcards I'd purchased were from the Kama Sutra, so I was happy to see that I had two that were not so... explicit!

The larger frame nicely filled the empty spot on the wall next to my medicine cabinet, and I stacked the other two kitty-corner to that in the slim spot next to the door.


They make me grin every time I walk into my bathroom now!

Unapologetically Cute

This past weekend my siblings came to visit, and brought their dogs with them.
I don't have any dogs (yet,) I have two cats who spent most of the weekend hiding outside or under the couch. Between the five animals (yup, five!) there was so much cuteness going on that I felt the need to share.

First Toby started trying to cause some trouble by batting at Skittles' whiskers while Skittles was trying to eat.


Skittles didn't like it much, but behaved very well, only hissing and swiping at Toby twice.

Moments later my younger sister, Sarah, arrived with her two Pointers, one 6 months old (Mia) and one about 9 years old(Promise), and the cats high-tailed it to their favorite hiding places. The dogs, meanwhile, quickly discovered a motorized mouse toy that made so much noise that the cats were too terrified to play with, so I happily let the dogs at it.

Though they were trained to hunt birds, they didn't seem to care much that this was covered in fuzz instead of feathers.


After my older sister arrived with Oscar, her sweet but ENORMOUS mutt (best we can figure he's some kind of Rottweiler/Great Dane mix), we decided to take the dogs out for a nice walk to tire them out a bit.
Mia, the younger of the two Pointers, loved the idea and decided to help out.


Oscar, though twice her size, played along and let Mia lead him around the house a bit.


What a good sport, eh?
A run through a nearby field had the desired effect and tired the dogs out nicely.


Awww... Which allowed us to do a little shopping. We headed over to the Christmas Tree Shop to check out the early Christmas decoration specials, where Sarah found the PERFECT Christmas outfit for Mia.

The men were appalled that we would do such a thing to the poor, defenseless dog, but she didn't seem to mind too much. And she's soooooo cute!

Aw, so sleepy and so cute... time to go home!

Our Sailboat Baby is Here!

Our brand new (to us) Olympic class 470 sail boat!

Doesn't Haris look so happy? He's posing there with the spinnaker pole. The guy who dropped it off showed us how to rig it up. Here's a shot of it with the jib up:


Look at the size of that thing! The mast is something like 26 feet long (you can't see the top of it in these pictures,) and with the 15.5 foot long hull, this thing is going to move! We didn't raise the main sail in the driveway because it was way too windy, and the boom was within swinging distance of the Volvo's rear window, and though eager we were, we thought cracking his window would be a poor way to repay the guy for driving the boat all the way up from Rhode Island.

Haris has told me that instead of jewelry this year for Valentine's Day I'll be getting a wetsuit and sailing gloves! Check out this video of the pros sailing some 470's (in much heavier winds than we'll be sailing in, I hope!) and you'll see why!

The Newest Member of the Family

Now, don't get so excited Moms! Here she is:



For about three years the conversation has gone like this:
Husband: "When will you buy me a boat?"
Me: "After you buy me a house!"

Well. I have my house, so last weekend we drove down to Bridgeport Connecticut (via Teaticket, Cape Cod, MA to see a trailer that we didn't buy...) to fulfill my end of the bargain. We couldn't fit the boat on top of the car- the current owner is going to deliver it this weekend- but we filled the car with sails, tiller, rudder and centerboard, which have kept my husband giggling happily all week. I'll post some better pictures and more detail this weekend when she arrives. Yay!

Halloween: 0 to 60 in 1 Year!

Over the last five years and last five homes, we've had a total of 1 trick-or-treater, and this year we got 60!

I guess that's what happens when you move to a quaint neighborhood in the suburbs! Since I will dress for any occasion, I donned my good ol' gypsy costume to answer the door. Normally this costume involves a very bare midriff, but in consideration of the small children (and let's face it, the temperature!) I added a tank top and

shawl to make it a bit more modest.





We had a notion that we'd get a few kids at the door, so we stocked up with three double-sized bags of candy. Around 7:30, though, we could see the bottom of the bowl and Haris panicked and ran out and bought 3 more bags. Which we are now trying very hard not to eat, because apparently 7:30 is the end of suburban trick or treating time... we'll have to remember that for next year.

Somehow my decorating enthusiasm failed me on this holiday, and this was the extent of my Halloween decorations:

That's Skittles in the window there- I had to tempt him up there with a bowl of food. Oddly, though, I'm already planning my Christmas decorations...

The Joys of Home Ownership

When we bought our house, we of course had it inspected...

Other than a few cosmetic issues (the previous owner seems to have had some rage issues and there are punch and kick marks in most of the doors and a few walls) the house passed without reservation. New roof, new-ish windows, old but working furnace, brand new hot water heater... we were excited. We thought we'd scored big. (We did get a good deal, even knowing what we know now.)

And then about a month ago, when the remnants of hurricane 'H' poured through town, I noticed a brown spot on the drop ceiling of one of the downstairs guest rooms. I climbed up on a chair to inspect, and low and behold, it was wet. So I popped the panel up and saw that there was a slight stain on the ceiling itself that also felt wet. I popped up a couple more and the ceiling there was also damp, though not stained. The spot was about 6 inches in from the wall and strangely centered, so it took me a minute to figure out where it could possibly be coming from, until I realized that the second floor is about six inches inset, and there's a big double window in the middle of the wall up there.

So up the stairs I went into the upstairs guest bedroom (it's a four bedroom house and just the two of us, so there are lots of guest rooms) and measured it out, and sure enough the leak was somewhere in the window. I opened the window and began poking at the frame and found that the sill was really soft and wet. To see just how bad it was I grabbed the edge and wiggled it back and forth a bit, at which point the entire sill fell off into my hand!

In a bit of a panic I called out to my husband who ran in, assessed the situation, and somehow figured out that my main problem right that moment was what the hell to do with the massive rotten piece of wood in my hands.

"Just drop it," he said.
I looked down the three stories to the ground (there's a walkout basement and two stories of house) and said, "Really? Is that safe?"
"What, are you worried about the fern?"
"What if the turtle is down there?" I replied absurdly. There is a turtle that lives in our backyard.
"Hon, just drop it." So I did.

At which point our attention turned back to the big issue: the massive rotted hole in our house. You can see here (this is actually a picture of the bathroom window, the bedroom was worse) the remains of the old sill that has broken off and the shards of rotted wood where the rest of the sill ought to be. (you shouldn't be able to see the white part- that's the siding on the house)

I quickly ran around and checked the rest of the upstairs windows and discovered that 5 out of the 9 window sills were mostly, if not completely, rotten through.

At which point I ran back downstairs and checked all the ceilings and walls underneath the rotted sills. Thankfully none except the one I'd already found had leaked through. When we pulled the windows out on those it turned out they weren't nearly as bad as that first one was, thank goodness!

The question at that point was What now?
Do we call a contractor? We just bought a house- we didn't have money for a contractor!
Which brought us to Can we possibly do this ourselves?
Well, Google helped answer that one. And the answer seemed to be, probably. Since our sill was completely rotted away we wouldn't be able to use it as a template for a new one, and we'd have to take the whole window out to remove it, but the rest seemed simple enough.
SEEMED simple... and once we'd had a friend who knew better help us do the first four, the fifth, and smallest, only took four hours to do!

The Technicalities:
- Use your trusty 13 inch pry bar (the same one that we used to take up the tack-strips from the old carpeting) and a hammer to pry the window frame off.

-Take all the screws out from around the window frame, and try to pull the window out.

- When it doesn't come out, pry out the plastic pieces in the side of the window to find the hidden screws, remove those then pull the window out.

- Use a task saw to cut any nails or screws from the remaining part of the sill that you can't access to remove.

- Slide (or in our case, use a hammer and rubber mallet to beat) out the old sill.

- If you can, use the old sill as a template to cut the new sill from the piece of pre-treated lumber you've purchased from your local home store. If not, measure as best you can, then cut, try, cut some more, try again, chisel a bit, and hopefully succeed in eventually sliding the new sill back into place. It will go in at an angle- that's so the water slides off away from the house- and the angle should be preserved, using wedges under the sill if you must.


- Fill in under the sill, behind the frame, and around the window with insulation as you slide the window back into place. (It was helpful to have two people at this point so that I could slip in the insulation as my husband held the window.) We used the white general purpose insulation.

- Screw the window back in and reassemble all the pieces you previously unscrewed and popped out.

- Once you've managed to remove all the old nails from the trim (whoever constructed ours apparently thought that we'd be hooking bowling balls to our window frames because each piece had about 10 nails in it...) nail it back into place.

- Caulk around your new sill and re-installed window inside and out, caulk generously, and check back to see if gaps have formed over the next couple of weeks. If it rains in the 48 hours after you caulk, a good deal of it will wash away, so you're best off you start the project with a clear weather forecast. If it does wash away, smooth out any bumps and then re-caulk.

- And voila! You're done! Or once you've filled in the nail holes from the new and old nails with wood putty and repainted, you're done. I haven't done that yet myself... it took almost a month to finish replacing all those sills! Not to mention the scraping, sanding, repainting and re-caulking of all the frames that didn't need to be replaced... I'll worry about the interiors sometime this winter!

At some point I'll tell you what we're doing about the ceiling in the downstairs guest bedroom...

TIME: 5 windows at about 4 hours per window, during daylight hours over 60 degrees only took about a month.

COST: About $200
- $30 lumber
- $50 circular saw
- $50 task saw
- $45 one gallon of self-priming interior/exterior paint
- $50ish nails, caulk, screws, wood glue and other sundry hand saws, files and chisels.

Fun in a Different Suburb

About a month ago I received a brochure from the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem advertising their new exhibits...

They had an exhibit on Indian modern art that I wanted to check out to use as fodder for discussion with a family friend that sort of collects and deals it. There were a couple other exhibits that looked interesting, but really I'm just a little obsessed with all things India.
Since it was the beginning of October and before this cold streak hit, we decided to make a day of it, kind of forgetting that the town of the original witch hunts might be a little busy even four weeks before Halloween.

So we drove for an hour, following signs in from 95- they've done a really good job marking the roads until the last major turn onto 1A, which is completely unmarked- and followed the signs in for museum/mall parking. We didn't really bother looking for street parking on the way in because really, how bad could it be? Well, the only garage in town was charging $20, cash only, to park for any amount of time. $20! In freaking Salem! It's cheaper than that to park downtown Boston on the weekend! And we hadn't gone to the bank yet... So we drove back out around on to Rte 1A and found street parking about 6 blocks from the museum for free. So much better.

Toby the cat wishes to add: 87 yu66vcm

All over town the tourist attractions had awnings set up for a block in each direction leading off their entrances heralding the crowds to come. Trolleys packed to bursting plied up and down the streets as we hurried to the museum. Fortunately, however, for the most part the crowds hadn't yet arrived, and none of those that had were headed to the art museum. There was no line to get in, and for most of our visit we had the place virtually to ourselves, which was pretty cool.

The Gateway to India exhibit I had been looking forward to was a little disappointing. There were a couple pieces- like a great MF Hussein piece that was an interpretation of a Bollywood poster- that I liked because they reflected something very specific to India, but most of the rather small collection looked like lots of other modern art that could have come from any city in the world, except possibly for a greater than usual use of the color saffron. I admit, though, that I'm not a huge fan of modern art.

There were two other exhibits- the Maori tattoo photographs and "All My Life" which was a collection of contemporary pieces by Native American artists- that were really very good. The latter particularly surprised my with its breadth of sources, and the sharp wit with which the artists depicted the contradictory plight of Native Americans in America today. Definitely worth the drive over and the price of admission.

After the museum closed we decided to wander down to the water front to look at the boats.
The East Indiaman Friendship was also closed for the day, but Haris (who is a sailor as well as a bit of a history buff) enjoyed gazing at the rigging for awhile.














When it began to get dark we headed back up toward town to grab an early dinner before driving back home. I had seen on the town website that there was going to be live Irish Music at O'Neill's Irish Pub from 4- 7:00, so we asked directions ("Excuse me, do you know where O'... umm... O', or McSomebody's... hang on I wrote it down... it's an Irish pub with live music...") and a helpful local pointed the way. O'Neill's turned out to be one of those quintessential Boston Irish pubs with lots of heavy woodwork and red paint, fantastic local beers on tap, a roaring fire and- as promised- a trio of fiddles and flutes roaring away in the corner.

I would love to find a place like that a little closer to my house- there used to be a nice one on Rte 9 in Framingham called Desmond O'Malleys (the bar, not the restaurant) that had live music four nights a week, and I LOVED going and hanging out there in the evening where everyone was playing games and singing along with the drinking tunes (and occasional U2 cover,) but it burned down.

The food (at O'Neill's) was if not good then at least perfectly adequate (I had fish and chips, Haris had a burger), the pint was Guiness, and the atmosphere cheery. A very nice end to a fun day out.

Autumn in New England

This whole weekend was one of those lovely fall weekends...
where if you sit inside and lament the 50 degree temperatures you'll be convinced it is miserable and freezing, but if you get out and do some vigorous activity it will be a gorgeous fall day. Happily, we took the latter route.
Mom came over around lunchtime and we decided to trim the apple trees. We have two in our front yard that gave dramatically different crops this year (one gave two stunted apples, the other gave about 50 variously stunted and squirrel eaten apples.) I looked up online how to go about it a couple of days ago (trim off anything that grows straight up, and encourage those that curve out and up away from the trunk,) but I've never trimmed a fruit tree before, so I was glad to have Mom's more experienced, discerning eye.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a before picture, or an after picture for that matter, but my brilliant husband got excited enough to go in and grab the camera when Mom managed to convince me to start climbing. Or maybe it was more my conscience that convinced me.

We only had an 8 foot ladder, and these trees had been growing unchecked for some time, so there were some large branches that needed to go above the 8 foot line.
I should say, because this story will be more remarkable if I do, that I am terrified if heights. Terrified, like in high school when we were required to pretend we were gymnasts (for phys. ed.) and we were asked to do a "routine" on the balance beam, my legs would turn to jello and I would try desperately to find some way, ANY way to beg off.

Haris (the aforementioned husband) first said, "I could probably reach them if I climbed up."
And then Mom said, "I love climbing apple trees, these are good ones to climb, too!"
And a few things flew through my mind:
- Haris is quite a bit heavier than either Mom or I am, and these trees are not very thick.
- Mom is quite quickly reaching that technical "senior" age, where falling from an apple tree would be a rather bad thing.
- Both of them have full time jobs that they need to go to in order to pay our respective mortgages.

Which lead me to say, "I can go up." And surprisingly, I did! Up the 8 foot ladder, into the tree, and up a few more feet of branches. Mom handed up the saw, and down came the branches!

We didn't end up taking off as many as we originally intended to because a) when I got up there I realized they were MUCH bigger than they seemed from the ground, and b) we'd already taken off about a third of the tree, which is really all you should take at a time. Oh well, more fun for next year....



On another note, here is where our cat Toby now spends the vast majority of his time:

That would be the heating vent right behind him. Does anyone know if heat eventually flows THROUGH fur? Or is all that expensive oil fueled energy ending right in my friendly fur ball? Hmm...