What do you love about your home?

Posted on September 25, 2007 by Barbara Harper

Karla’s Cottage is a blog new to me. I saw a link to it from ArtsyMama’s, telling about a “What do you love about your home?” party that Karla would be hosting today to celebrate being published in Romantic Country magazine. I loved perusing Karla’s lovely decorating featured on her blog, and looking around at just a few of the party entries, I’ve found a couple of new blogs to subscribe to already and have been inspired by the beauty and creativeness.

The link to the party post is here, and anyone who participates or comments is eligible for a drawing.

I have to admit there is a lot I don’t love about my home. When we found we would be moving here for my husband’s job, we made a whirlwind trip to look at houses and interview at Christian schools for my sons. This house was really the only one that had the space we needed. But after we got here, there were a few problems we hadn’t noticed when we first looked at the house. Plus we knew we wanted to change a lot of the wallpaper, paint, and carpeting, but that just takes time — both time to work on it plus time to spread out each project to be able to handle it financially. So there are things I have chafed about while trying to remind myself to be content with such things as I had. Over the past 9 1/2 years we’ve lived here, we’ve redone the living room, kitchen, family room (still a work in progress), one bathroom, and one of the boys’ bedrooms. There are still a few problems with the layout that we can’t change without mega-bucks and time and frustration, so it’s still my hope to move some day. But as far as the basic “look” inside goes, I am enjoying it a lot more and feel more at home in it.

This is our living room from different viewpoints:

If I had it to do over again, I think I’d mostly paint the walls and maybe have a rosy border along the top. But I do love the muted tones and colors, the roses on the wallpaper, in the pattern of the sofa and curtain fabric, and in the accessories. Overall it is a cozy room that I love to be in.

Here is the kitchen from the doorway between it and the living room:

I should have straightened that picture, eh?

This is the dining area:

This is taken from the far corner of the dining area showing the other side of the room:

As you can see, this room has a little bit more of a “country” feel to it. The previous owners had peach and blue wallpaper in this room with pink and blue diamond patterns on the floor. I don’t know why. It drove me crazy. 🙂 I was so glad when we could get rid of the peachy stuff. Again, if I were doing this over I think I’d stay with just the pink and white stripe all the way up — I think that would be a little less “busy.” But overall I do enjoy the look of it. This area is the one that is till the most problematic with the layout, kind of small and crowded with not enough cabinet space or room to have guests. We thought it looked cozy at first — the previous owners were retirees. But we weren’t thinking about having growing boys and their friends over through the years and family coming in from out of town, etc. But we’ve learned to make do.

This is our bedroom, which we haven’t redone yet. I hope you’ll overlook the pile of books there — I’ve finished them and need to send some to my mother-in-law, who reads as much or more than I do!

One thing I just love about this bedroom is the carpet with its bouquets of flowers:

When we do redo this room, I don’t know if I can let myself take this up, even though it’s discolored and worn in places.

This is our most recent project, the upstairs bathroom. We needed to replace the broken tile with a shower surround and ended up taking down the old wallpaper and painting (I say we — husband and two of three sons did):

I figured the menfolk needed a break from all the pink and florals, so this room is blue, tan, and beige with lighthouse accents. I just love the color of this paint. I wish I could remember the name of it so I could tell you!

One of my sisters made this:

I think those are all the rooms I’ll show — some are still a work in progress. 🙂 But I also wanted to show just a few of the little touches I love that help personalize a house and make it at home. Some of these have been gifts, some have been collected over the years, some have been made. Most I’ve mentioned in previous posts, so I’ll just show a representative photo with a link to the rest if you’re interested.

One of my most recent prints is this one, which my husband bought for me, the story of which I told about here :

This hangs in our family room (still a work in progress, which also has blue, tan, and beige colors). But abundantly more than the colors, I love the representation of the Good Shepherd finding His lost sheep.

I love pink roses and showed several of them here. Here are a couple of my favorites:

I also loved heart-shaped things. One of my favorites:

I found when we moved here I had several small houses: here are a couple of favorites:

Finally, I have been collecting Boyd’s Bears figurines for years. Most of them were given to me by my husband and my mom. Since my mom passed away almost two years ago, the ones she gave me are a special remembrance of her love. I posted some of my collection here, and then some from a division of Boyd’s figurines called Dollstones here. Here are a couple of favorites from those:

Thanks so much for coming by to visit. Enjoy the rest of Karla’s party, and always feel free to stop by any time!

(P.S. If you stop by for the party I’d love for you to leave a comment and let me know you were here. 🙂 )

Show and Tell Friday: Autumn door decorations

Posted on September 21, 2007 by Barbara Harper

Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home hosts “Show and Tell Friday” asking “Do you have a something special to share with us? It could be a trinket from grade school, a piece of jewelry, an antique find. Your show and tell can be old or new. Use your imagination and dig through those old boxes in your closet if you have to! Feel free to share pictures and if there’s a story behind your special something, that’s even better! If you would like to join in, all you have to do is post your “Show and Tell” on your blog, copy the post link, come over here and add it to Mr. Linky. Guidelines are here.“

I’ve told you before that I love hearts….so when I saw this heart-shaped autumn wreath at Hobby Lobby I just couldn’t resist.

I usually look for something small and matching for our “back doors” (actually the doors by the driveway. As many come to those doors as to the front), and HL also had these.

Those are all the fall decorations I have up so far — it has only started to feel like fall the last few days. I hope to put more out this weekend or the beginning of next week. This afternoon some friends of Jesse’s are coming over for a belated birthday sleep-over, and we’re all supposed to go tomorrow to one of those places with video games, laser tags, go-carts, etc. So I need to dash off to the store and do a few things to get ready.

Have a good week-end!

Show and Tell Friday: Tapestry

Posted on September 14, 2007 by Barbara Harper

Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home hosts “Show and Tell Frida y” asking “Do you have a something special to share with us? It could be a trinket from grade school, a piece of jewelry, an antique find. Your show and tell can be old or new. Use your imagination and dig through those old boxes in your closet if you have to! Feel free to share pictures and if there’s a story behind your special something, that’s even better! If you would like to join in, all you have to do is post your “Show and Tell” on your blog, copy the post link, come over here and add it to Mr. Linky. Guidelines are here.“

Some years ago we had an outlet mall nearby set in an old textile mill. One of its stores sold different sized tapestries. It seems like most of them were smaller sized, not the museum-wall kind. I don’t remember if the store sold anything else. But once day I needed something of a proportionate size to go above our piano, so I looked in the tapestry store and found this:

I loved the colors, the style, and the setting. And it was only $14. I covered the edges with bias tape binding (I don’t know if that is the “proper” way to finish off a tapestry, but it worked) and made a pocket on top for a small curtain rod to fit through. It fit above the piano nicely.

In one sense it doesn’t go as well in this room — we had a lot of blues in the living room in the house where we lived when I first got the tapestry. If I ever have a sewing/craft/guest room combination I think I will move it into there. But from time to time I like to look on this peaceful scene of these ever-diligent ladies (who convict me sometimes) doing their handwork.

I think I might be out of style….

Posted on September 5, 2007 by Barbara Harper

In the mall recently I was excited to see a new store with clothing in my size until I neared the window and saw that everything was red and black.

I’m not into wearing red and black.

Even the catalogs I usually order from have not had much of anything to interest me lately. My husband probably doesn’t mind that as it saves money. 🙂 It’s a good thing I have plenty of clothes at the moment — I’d be pretty frustrated if I needed something right now.

Even in the realm of fabrics and home decorating I can’t find much in the colors and styles I like. Recently I was thinking about adding a little round table in the living room to coordinate with this one…

…but I couldn’t find any kind of pink tablecloth. I’ve been looking for pinkish table linens, too, but can’t find anything. Most of what I can find is either very dark or white or off-white.

I don’t know quite how I’d define what my decorating style is. I used to say it was somewhere between country and Victorian. Pure country is too rustic for me, pure Victorian too fussy. In the past years I’ve heard about cottage style, shabby chic, and romantic style. I like elements of those. Probably what I really love is what the older Romantic Homes magazine used to feature, samples of which are here: the newer issues under a new editor are even getting away from that look. It can be overdone, of course, but I still like the pinks and whites and roses. I can find a lot of that on online shops, but at great expense. There’s nothing on the Wal-Mart affordability level. Target does have Shabby Chic line, and while I like the overall look, the specific pieces don’t fit with my things.

Part of the fun of those kinds of styles is the freedom to create your own look and do your own thing. I just wish I could find more elements to create and do with.

I do dislike the way the whole industry of clothing and home decorating decides certain colors are “in.” I remember walking into a department store several years ago and seeing the entire clothing section in moss greens, mustard yellows, and rusts. I like those colors in nature, but not on my body. Whatever happened to diversity, allowing for different tastes and styles and colors?

I’m not too worried about whether I’m “in” or not, but maybe I’ll just have to sit tight until pink comes back into style to find things I like a little more easily. In the meantime maybe I’ll hunt around on ebay….

Show and Tell Friday: Shepherd picture

Posted on August 31, 2007 by Barbara Harper

Way back in March, I posted a drawing portraying the Good Shepherd hugging the lost sheep who was found and asked if anyone knew the artist or anything about it. A commenter provided a link to the full-color print by artist Katherine Brown. I had seen this years ago and loved the truth it portrayed as well as the expressions of both shepherd and sheep.

Well, my husband saw that post, and, unbeknownst to me, ordered it and gave it to me for Mother’s Day last May. He also printed the words to the hymn “That One Lost Sheep” which I had referenced on a previous post.

Though I loved the print and loved his thoughtfulness, I also wrestled with whether such a print was a violation of the second commandment about not making any graven images. I hadn’t thought of it when I saw the small image online, but for some reason seeing it big and full color, that came to mind.

My husband had thought the picture was just of a shepherd and didn’t realize that it actually represented Christ — he didn’t notice the nail prints at first. He said he thought it was ok, but if I felt uncomfortable with it, it would be fine to send it back.

I rolled it back up and put it in the mailing tube to keep it safe and thought about it off and on.

I read over the passage where the second commandment of the ten is contained in Exodus 20:

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

I felt that, if we took it to mean we shouldn’t make images of anything in heaven, we also shouldn’t make any likenesses or images of anything, really, the way the verse reads. But just a few chapters later, the Israelites are told to make cherubim out of gold whose wings were to cover the mercy seat in the tabernacle (Exodus 25) and curtain hangings with designs of cherubims woven in (Exodus 26). So the verse in Ex. 20 must not mean that people aren’t to make any images or likenesses of any kind whatsoever. Verse 5 of Ex. 20 seems to indicate the main idea is not to worship or bow down to those images or likenesses.

I tossed out a question about it on a Christian message board, and one man said he didn’t feel we should have pictures of Jesus because we don’t know what He looked like — I guess maybe he felt any representation would then be a false one. But to me it’s better that way: if we truly knew what He looked like, people might be more tempted to venerate the picture in a wrong way. The point of this picture is not to show what someone thought Jesus looked like, but rather to portray the truth of the love the Good Shepherd had for His sheep, the relief that it was found, and the contentedness and safety of the rescued sheep in the Shepherd’s arms.

So, with all of that in mind, I decided to keep it. My husband had also given me a gift card to Michael’s to get it framed, and they have weekly 50% off coupons for framing, so I took it in a couple of weeks ago. I just got it back today! I should wait til I have it properly hung to show it. I just took the picture down that was above the fireplace and put this up to see how it would look. I want to put the framed hymn next to it or near it somehow. I’ll have to wait til Saturday when Jim can help me with it. But I wanted to go ahead and show what it looks like:

And here is the hymn:

I’ll put the words for you here:

That One Lost Sheep

Safe were the ninety and nine in the fold.
Safe though the night was stormy and cold;
But said the Shepherd when counting them o’er,
One sheep is missing, there should be one more.

Although His feet were weary and worn,
And though His hands were rent and torn,
Although the road was rocky and steep,
Still the good Shepherd searched long for his sheep.

There in the night He heard a faint cry
From the lost sheep just ready to die.
Then in His arms to shield from the cold
He brought the lost sheep back safe to the fold.

The Shepherd went out to search for the sheep,
And all through the night on the rocky steep
He searched till he found him,
With love bands He bound him,
And I was that one lost sheep.

— Seat

Interesting things seen around the blogosphere

Posted on August 23, 2007 by Barbara Harper

Charity at Vintage Threads made a wonderful collage of fall decorations and links.

Rabbit at The Hutch has a wonderful post about the Name of God regarding whether God cares what He is called.

Katrina at Callapidder Days has a two-part post about how injustices are perceived and handled and right and wrong ways to react.

Grafted Branch at Restoring the Years has a great post on children’s interruptions.

Dr. Jim Hamilton, Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at Havard School for Theological Studies – Southwestern’s Houston campus, had a very thought-provoking interview on the topic of writing books reviews. (HT to Jason Button).

Chris Anderson references an excellent, thought-provoking article titled What You Can Learn from Calvin and Hobbes about the Message and the Medium, asking “If chintzy merchandise cheapens a comic strip, what in the world does it do to the gospel of Jesus Christ??!”

Bathroom renovation, stage 2

Posted on August 21, 2007 by Barbara Harper

We’ve been tackling right and left this week.

Last week I showed “stage 1” of our bathroom renovation — taking out the old tile and replacing it with a shower surround. We decided, instead of patching up the wallpaper, to pull it off and paint. Jeremy and Jesse pulled off the old wallpaper, then Jim patched up several little imperfections and replaced some pieces of molding and primed everything. He and I went shopping for paint and towel racks. We found a really pretty light tan called “Pecan Sandie” — looks like coffee with cream to me. But he painted and put up the towel racks, then today I put the wall decorations back up. Here is the finished product:

Here are most of the decorations in there.

This print was a very inexpensive one at K-Mart years ago. The old sailor reminds me of Mr. Peggoty from Dickens’ David Copperfield.

We had gone with a lighthouse theme with the old wallpaper because the pattern looked to me like sand dunes and sea grass and seagulls and blue, beige, and tan as the color scheme, and early on I found the above Thomas Kinkade lighthouse prints for a very good price in a catalog. We decided to stay with that theme and color scheme. I looked around just a little for a lighthouse border or stencil but didn’t really have much time to put into it this week. I may look some more — I don’t know — I don’t want to overdo the lighthouses. I may expand into a general nautical theme. Or I may just leave it. Right now everything related to a theme is in the decorations and shower curtain, which can be easily and inexpensively changed if I want to do something else.

We’re also having out of town company come in tomorrow, so I had the boys tackle vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, taking out all the trash cans, and a few other odds and ends. I changed the burner pans and rings on the stove, cleaned the range hood, cleaned the microwave inside and out, moved everything on the counters out and wiped them off and cleaned the counters, dusted the little ridges on the cabinet doors that collect dust as well as the back edges of the dining room chairs, which do the same thing, did several loads of laundry, and did “my” dusting (my room, picture frames in the hall, and some of my decorative shelves). I also took Jason for an appointment at the oral surgeon’s: at his dental cleaning last May, before he left for the summer, they said his wisdom teeth would be needing to come out. He has none on the top, but one of the bottom ones is coming in exactly sideways, and the other one is at a 45 degree angle. There is some concern that one is close to a nerve, and if it develops more roots may cause problems, but they felt he could safely wait til Thanksgiving or Christmas break. He decided he wanted to do it over Thanksgiving break. I tried to talk him into waiting til after Christmas — there’s more time for recovery and a little more flexibility in his schedule then. But I think either he wants to get it over with or they scared him about the possibility of damage to the nerve. He said he didn’t mind missing Thanksgiving dinner — I wonder if he’ll still feel the same way when the time comes. 🙂

Anyway, Tuesday the one thing I have to do is clean bathrooms. I also hope to get the laundry finished, clean out the toaster oven, declutter the sunroom, vacuum the lamp shades in the living room (one of those odd little jobs that is often overlooked, but once I notice it I can’t stand it), and a few other little odd jobs. Once you get started, especially when company is coming, it seems like the more you clean the more you notice tings that need attention. But I have learned from experience not to spend so much time cleaning that I’m exhausted when company finally does come, so I’ll stop and rest in the afternoon.

Happy tackling!

Bathroom renovation

Posted on August 14, 2007 by Barbara Harper

This isn’t my tackle — my husband and oldest and youngest sons have done all the work. I’ve just been a consultant and encourager. 🙂

We’ve been needing to redo our shower for a long time. The tiles kept coming a little loose, though my husband had reapplied grout several times, and water had gotten behind the tiles enough to warp the shower walls. This close-up shows it a little bit.

I really don’t like tile anyway. We constantly have to battle mildew in this bathroom, and it tended to settle in the grout easily. Plus I didn’t like the color of the tile here. We wouldn’t have redone it just for those reasons, but I was glad to have the opportunity to change it.

So here’s the “before” picture:

Removing the old tiles:

I didn’t take a picture of the most disheartening part. After getting the tile off, Jim saw the sheetrock behind it was water-damaged and needing to be removed, but he was expecting that. But the insulation behind that was wet and a couple of joists were rotted. It looked really awful at that point. Thankfully Jim know how to take care of those things. This is the end of Day 1:

This was the debris taken from the bathroom: old tile, wet insulation, etc. They took all of this to the dump.

The next day they began putting the shower surround in.

This is the end of stage 1, the shower ready to use:

I like it!!

As you can tell, the wall above it isn’t finished. The shower surround is shorter and not as deep as the tiled shower was. We talked about trying to patch up the wallpaper but decided to remove it instead. That room gets so humid, even with a fan, and some corners and seams were peeling anyway. That’s what the boys are working on this week while Jim is at work.

I need to go look at paint colors and maybe a border or stencil this week. We’re hoping to have it all done before out of town company comes a week from today. 🙂

This is in the category of “You don’t get everything you want while renovating” — unless you have a lot of time and money — or the Extreme Makeover: Home Improvement people are doing your renovations.

We had wanted to replace the old faucet. It was still functional, but it was chipped and pockmarked. But when Jim took it off and took it to Home Depot to compare, there were no other faucets with the configuration in the back that was the same. Jim felt he didn’t know enough about plumbing to cut and redo the piping, and to call a plumber in would have added a lot more cost and time. He had already taken off a couple of days to work on this, so he’d lose that window of time if we had to bring a plumber in, and we had to get the faucet figured out before we could do anything else. So we decided to keep this one. He filled in the holes and tried to paint the chipped panel with chrome paint, but he said it looked worse, so he took it off. He was able to take the knob apart and clean it thoroughly — some mildew had gotten in where it couldn’t be reached — so it looks much better now. We might get a little soap dish to cover up the chipped part, even though we don’t really use that shelf for soap.

We were without use of the shower for two days. The first day, the boys just went without, Jim washed his hair in the kitchen sink, and I washed my hair there, too, and had a little “sponge bath” in the bathroom. The next day was Sunday, and of course, we were wanting to shower before going to church. Jim had “points” for a certain hotel (kind of like frequent flyer miles, accumulated during business trips), so we rented a room for the night, and Jim and I took showers then. The boys went swimming in the hotel pool for a bit. Jim and I like our own bed, so we came home to sleep, but let the boys have the adventure of staying in the hotel overnight. They had showers the next morning and we joined them for the hotel breakfast, so it was a nice little treat. I was so glad for a real shower after just one day of missing one. I remembered one of our missionary friends to a primitive jungle area talking about the only place for bathing being the river, and, since the people were so curious about everything they did, they came out to the river with them (along with watching them eat and almost every other aspect of their lives). So they kept their clothes on and soaped up underneath. 🙂 I’m sure after a while they probably rigged up something, and the people got more used to them and didn’t watch every move. But remembering that did make me appreciate how easily we can get clean in this country.

By next week I hope to have pictures of the finished room!

Show and Tell Friday: Boyd’s Bear figurines

Posted on August 10, 2007 by Barbara Harper

I used to like all kinds of bears, and then I discovered Boyd’s Bear figurines. I love them! They’re so cute and so detailed. Through the years my family, mainly my mom and my husband, have given me various ones. Some of my favorites are the ones that reflect my interests or what’s going in my life.

I have several “couples,” most given to me by my husband. This one is special because he gave it to me on our last anniversary because we had gotten engaged while sitting on a log in a state park.

This is where we’re headed. 🙂

Here are a couple of the “Mom” ones.

This reflects my love of reading…

…and chocolate. 🙂 And hearts.

This is a Boyd’s Bear Collector.

I love Irish folk music, and this bear is holding sheet music for “The Last Rose of Summer.”

My mom gave me this one when we were home schooling several years ago. This was one of my first Boyd’s Bears.

I love these gals “just because.”

Cooking is, of course, one of my major duties.

This is a little sewing basket. I used to do a lot more sewing.

Finally I want to show you the little curio cabinets where most of these stay (though I have several throughout the house.) These were just little cheapie ones at Wal-Mart, and we discovered when we got them home and put together that they weren’t deep enough for many of the figurines. So my husband took apart the back and added about an inch of wood all around the back and added a mirror because the bears really weren’t showing up well amidst all the brown. Isn’t he talented?

Artful Blogger Party

Posted on August 8, 2007 by Barbara Harper

ArtsyMama is having an Artful Blogging Party today, partly to celebrate the new Artful Blogging Magazine by Stampington & Company (in which she is featured!) and also “to applaud artful bloggers everywhere.” She encourages participants from all over the world to post anything “artsy,” from tutorials, instructions for a project, “pictures of how you display your own art or vignettes of art you’ve received from others. Anything goes… whatever artful blogging means to you.” Then go to this post and put up the information about your post as per her instructions, and she will create a link to your post. Whether or not you want to add a post of your own, I am sure you’ll be inspired and delighted by all the neat information and artsy, crafty eye candy.

I wasn’t going to post anything of my mine because I’m way out of my league here, having just ventured back into crafting after a long absence. But…I just wanted to! So here are a few of my offerings.

I’ve really enjoyed the new (to me) art form of various paper crafts that I have seen around, and I’ve just started making cards, bookmarks, and a few other things.

Here are some tools of the trade:

These are some leftover hearts from our ladies luncheon several weeks ago.

Here is a little plaque I made:

Here are a few cards and bookmarks:

The last picture came from some bookmarks we made for missionaries our church supports to use in their ministry.

I used to do a lot of stitchery and would like to start back up (after getting my eyes checked. 🙂 ) This is one of my favorite pieces, made 23 years ago when expecting my firstborn.

I loved the detail, the little raised cookies and french knot cupcakes and fringe on the blanket:

Paper crafts are definitely a lot faster!

One other craft I’ve dabbled in a little recently has been button crafts. These are my favorite products of that:

I didn’t make the plaque underneath, though I have thought of making similar ones.

For the button wreath, basically you just glue buttons on to whatever shape you want. The base can be cut our of lightweight cardboard (for something small like ornaments you could use probably use heavy cardstock). I found the heart shape just by searching for “heart shape” online and finding a coloring-book style heart. I started with flat, plain buttons and added the shaped and decorative ones on top as I filled in spaces. I used a small hot glue gun. I imagine craft glue or tacky glue would work, but would take longer to dry and work with. I glued a ribbon for hanging it on the back, then backed it with white felt (I read that some other used decorative paper for backing).

I was going to also post some favorite art around the house, but this post is way long already! I have posted some of it on my Show and Tell Friday posts.