Weathervane

We recently returned from a ten day trip to Maine and New Brunswick, Canada, and one of our stops was at Acadia Weathervanes, in Trenton, Maine, where we purchased this watering can weathervane. We also bought a molded horse weathervane, and a hip roof cupola, with a copper roof. The weathervanes and the roof will be treated  chemically to "age" a greenish-gray patina. The horse will top our old stone barn, and the cupola and watering can will go on the kitchen end of our house. They should arrive sometime next month. I'll need to get the cupola painted white and have it all installed by the roofers, I guess.

There were a number of fabulous designs at this shop. My favorites were the Golden Retriever, the racing bike, the golfer, and the guitar - none of which particularly applied to us. Acadia Weathervanes; 1-800-698-5538; and www.acadiavanes.com

My Kitchen Window Box at the End of Summer

These are the last few days of my summer window box, which I have really enjoyed. I love the colors of white, pink and lavender with our gray farmhouse. It was designed and installed by the talented Roseanne Bohan of Kendrick and O'Dell landscapers. Tracey Meade designed and supervised everything else that is outside my house, and I call her my Garden Guru. She has done a splendid job. Rose and Tracey were just here at my house, and we walked around and reviewed how the plants were doing, and what needed tweaking. Rose will be planting a new window box for me soon for Fall. There will be cabbages and peppers - it will look very festive, I think. 

Rebecca's new master suite

Rebecca and Peter are redesigning their master bedroom and bath by combining it with an adjoining sitting room. The new space will include two large closet/dressing rooms, a sitting area, and a bath. Bookshelves will flank the fireplace; there'll be a Herez carpet in each room, peachy-apricot walls, and fabrics will be yellow, coral, green and a dab of blue. We will be making a yellow upholstered headboard. I want to use a stripe silk for the bedskirt; Rebecca is leaning toward the floral chintz we are using for a chair and Euro square bed pillows.  The house is an old Tudor, with a lovely garden (Rebecca is a master gardener). It will be beautiful bedroom! Maybe it will be finished by Thanksgiving.

The Most Useful Piece of Furniture

Let's say you have an empty apartment: living room, dining room, bedroom, bath and kitchen. Where do you start? What is the first piece of furniture that you should buy?

The bed, of course. The biggest size you can fit attractively in the space, the best quality mattress you can afford, and all the accompanying linens required for your comfort and pleasure. And that's all I'll say for now; we'll get back to the bed at a later posting.

So, okay, what I really want to talk about is the second most useful piece of furniture: a chest of drawers. And if I were to select my favorite of all styles it would be an antique English, mahogany, bow-front chest of drawers. There is nothing cutting edge here; it's a style that has been around for a couple hundred years.  It's also an elegant classic that adapts well to many settings.

And it's versatile. You can put in the entry hall (store gloves, scarves, umbrellas, the dog's leash), or the dining room (store your placemats, napkins and silver flatware). It can anchor a living room, topped with two slender lamps flanking a mirror or painting. (Store coasters, candles, cocktail napkins, barware, games, photo albums.) But you'll put in your bedroom for now. You'll line it with subtly-scented drawer paper. After you move to the condo with the custom dressing room you can try it in the baby's room.

It will be perfect there, too.

The Hanger Project

When I decided to upgrade the hangers in my closet from plastic to wood, I went to Organized Living and purchased walnut shirt/dress hangers and walnut pants hangers with clips. These are sold in packages of three. I didn't count my  clothes, I just bought a couple of shopping bags-full. It looked like a lot of hangers. This will get me started, I thought. I can always go back for more, if I need them.

After four return trips, I started to seriously cull my clothing. I learned to evaluate my wardrobe: Is this garment really worthy of a nice wood hanger, or should I pitch it? Lots and lots went into the give-away pile and I miss none of it.

 The result is a well-organized closet, with shirts hung by color, ranging from light to dark, everything facing the same way, all the pants evenly spaced, all the bathrobes hung in descending order of thickness. 

 This project - purchasing the hangers, taking the clothes off the mismatched plastic hangers, getting that dammed cardboard off the new ones, hanging it all up, finding shopping bags for the give away clothes and all the old hangers, and finally trying to find people who were willing to accept my old plastic hangers (The Wire Hanger People) while pretending to be mildly grateful - took several weeks.

Please Come In

Well, I decided I needed a little needlepoint "Please Come In" sign to hang on my front door for a cocktail party we gave in May. I haven't done needlepoint in years, and I was surprised to find it to be such a pleasantly soothing activity. It has, in fact, a distinctly soporific effect, which may explain why I didn't finish this project until July.

No matter. Our two hundred guests managed to find their way in and out of our house without signage.  

Still, the unfinished sign seemed to call for a door knocker on which to hang it. I found this one at finegardenproducts.com, made by Michael Healy.  It has a dark bronze finish and looks like a Nantucket lightship basket. The florist, Del Apgar, filled it with pink spray roses and ivy for the party. They were stuck into water-soaked Oasis foam, so the arrangement lasted for several days.

The caterer, La Petite Pierre, arranged crab claws and shrimp around an ice sculpture of our old stone barn, and we served flutes of Proseca with a dash of Chambord and a fresh raspberry, because I always enjoy a pink beverage.

There were also pink flower cookies and cicada cookies made by The Bonbonnerie. We had been expecting the cicadas to be swarming, but, happily, they did not arrive in full force for another week.

 

Here are some other ideas for pink beverages:

Watermelon juice and vanilla ice cream: puree watermelon in a blender, pour into a glass over vanilla ice cream. Add a straw.

Pink Champagne. I like Schramsberg.

Strawberry-orange-banana smoothie: put a scoop of ice cubes into a blender; add a ripe banana, and a handful of frozen strawberries.  Cover with orange juice and add two packets of Splenda. Blend.