Slow but steady progress

We knew when we bought this house that our road to making it something we loved was going to be a long one. I don't think there was a single thing we gazed upon our first couple of weeks here that we did not want to change -- everything from ceiling paint to walls to trim to carpet to a remodeled kitchen, to exterior colors. That's a daunting feeling, which is a fancy way of saying sometimes it made me feel hopeless. But the key to overcoming that is action, and so every day we chip away a little bit at the chore list and try and take time to enjoy the progress. I will have to start taking more "before" pictures so the real impact of the "before and after" transformations can be seen. 

Some things will have to wait until we have the financial resources to make them happen, like the kitchen expansion/remodel, and exterior painting. But a coat of interior paint costs very little in comparison to either of those things, so I've been focusing my energies on that, as well as adding a bit to the landscaping (which was already about 90 percent complete and done well when we moved in, amen and hallelujah to that) and making the front porch a bit more welcoming. Our totally-out-of-place-in-a-farmhouse vaulted entryway needed something added to it, too. It's amazing what some accessorizing can do for a room, and I don't think there's a single room in our house (including ceilings) I will not be visiting with a paintbrush and/or some tchotchkes very soon. 

Come on up and sit down, even though heaven knows I'd love to get rid of this whole blue motif and go with a nice warm gray. Patience.

Coming soon....a new farmhouse chandelier. Be gone, brass monstrosity from 1996! In the meantime, enjoy some colored fish bottles and random farm decor.

I love clean, bright trim to a point of being neurotic about it. I literally re-paint baseboards once a year, so this freshly painted window trim is thrilling me. Help.

I also decided that the oak trim on the doors, windows and closets has to go, starting with the bedrooms on the second floor.  I've only done one window so far, but the difference is astonishing. 

One other funny side note is that there were some areas of the house which just weren't working. Namely, the entryway which runs directly into the stairs. Upon doing some research, I learned that this is actually terrible in terms of the feng shui of the house, or energy flow. I moved a painting, added some inviting candles, plus a nice round wine barrel and lamp to help the "energy" flow into the rest of the downstairs rooms, drawing focus away from the front stairs. I think it worked. I'm not big into the fortune-telling aspects of feng shui, but I do believe in having good flow from room to room, and some feng shui remedies address just that. So sign me up. I'm a believer.

Round shapes are supposed to invite energy flow in small, boxy spaces like this one, according to what I call Feng Shui and what Big Ag refers to as "Furniture Astrology." 

In unrelated news, we also visited the local iris gardens and I bought about 10 bulbs to put into the ground this fall, in an assortment of gorgeous colors.

Here for now

Allow me to introduce you to our temporary digs, Mouse Turd Manor. The garden and brick walkway actually look scarier than the house in this pic, but I've worked on it since then. 

The last two weeks have passed in a kind of haze. Isn't that always the way it is with huge life events? We may hang onto a moment or two from high-stress times, but a lot of it passes in a blur.

Every week here seems to feature a new form of help for the house, which is good because it needs it. I feel bad for this house. Someone obviously loved it a long time ago, but being a manufactured/modular home which stood vacant for almost two years caused it to fall into disrepair. If it was a person, it would currently be in the Emergency Room with a saline IV drip line, antibiotics, and full x-rays and a blood panel being done. It might even be feeling a little better at this point. At least the many fixes are happening, and at no cost to us.

But we are making sure we get out and have at least one day a week of fun, and one weeknight in town. Last week we went into Independence for dinner, and its simple beauty and friendliness made me feel like I was walking through a Hallmark movie.

Hanging flower baskets on the streetlights -- so pretty.

That sweet, small town feeling!

The Willamette

And last weekend we went to the famous Pelican Brewery in Pacific Beach for lunch and beach walking. Sometimes you need the familiar in your life, and the beach and ocean are that for me. It's still the Pacific, after all. 

A day at the beach!

Say yes to stress eating lol.

But this place is beginning to feel more like home as well. Next week I begin painting over these miserable colors and half-painted walls in a more neutral palate. This house is proof that some people watch way too much HGTV, and/or believe you can successfully replicate what the professionals do there in regards to paint. A 2,000 square foot home painted in 12 different colors is a little like a gypsy wedding (sorry, gypsies): Something old, something new, something red, something blue, something yellow, something gray, something turquoise, something orange, something black, something green, etc.....Yes, friends, it IS possible to love color too much. It works for The Property Brothers, most of the time. But don't try it at home, no matter what the Valspar commercial tells you.

Can you count the colors? Dark grey, gatorade yellow, and turquoise. Ick.

I've also decided the vegetable garden is beyond saving, but the flower garden in front is not. So I'm weeding the flower beds but won't be planting any vegetables this summer. I'm not really sad about it, except when I need some onions or parsley for a recipe and realize I have none outside.

And so it goes...a little at a time, in the garden and inside. Making sure I stop and take in the greenery on a regular basis. Because while you can have too much color, too much greenery is something I just can't get enough of right now.

Just a little white life

Temporary perfection.

So did I mention that I snagged two Chippendale chairs when I got the dining room set a couple of weeks ago at auction? Well, I did. They were gorgeous mahogany and at $20 each just too nice to not drag home, with the idea being to find other similar chairs and re-cover them all to match each other.

The re-covering was necessary because the seats of these two lovely matching chairs are white.

I brought them home and, as I knew I would, absolutely fell in love with those white seats. So elegant, yet simple. So clean and pretty.

You see, in in the deep-down recesses of my brain I have a Fantasy of White. In it, I am able to live a gorgeous, pristine Little White Life.

In my fantasy, I find myself on a comfortable sofa with white denim slipcover fabric over it, and similar covers over the arm chairs. The room doesn't look TOO white, because I've chosen some bright colored pillows offset the blinding perfection of the white sofa. In this fantasy my kitchen is white marble with pale gray cabinets. In the dining room there are white linens, with eight of those gorgeous white Chippendale chairs and their lovely, contrasting mahogany wood accenting the whiteness of the whole vignette.

In this life we have no pets and my husband always comes home in a pair of clean dress slacks and carefully folds his napkin over his lap before eating (perhaps my husband is George Clooney in this scenario, since it is, after all, MY fantasy.) Did I also mention I have white floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with literati and tchotchkes which never need dusting?

The utter cleanliness of the place should be the first cue this is a fantasy. My Little White Life does not exist. But I think we all have a fantasy like mine somewhere deep in our unconscious -- a fantasy that tells us things could be a certain way, if only we were just a little more perfect ourselves. We imagine in our best circumstances that we could somehow make it work. That the Little White Life would always stay clean, fresh and snow-driven perfect.

I know that because last night, while sitting on my white Chippendale chair in the dining room I spilled refried beans on the seat, because I'd set my napkin down while going to the kitchen to get something for a guest and forgot to put it back on my lap once I returned.

Refried beans. It could have least been an expensive red wine. But no, my royal fantasy ran head-first into my Tex-Mex-flavored country peasant life.

And even more surprisingly it was not Big Ag, the resident bull in the china shop around here. It was me who screwed it all up. I outed my Little White Life for the fantasy it was.

And for the record, Big Ag has never come home in a pair of jeans that did not have half the vineyard's dirt on it, or mystery oil of some kind, so that's why I always imagined him to be the one to ruin my fantasy. But second to him, there are the hordes of pets. (The fact that I currently have a pooping indoor chicken should be the first clue, right?). And then of course there's the canning -- when I can tomatoes I am fully capable of launching pieces from the kitchen all the way into the dining room and within striking range of those beautiful Chippendale chairs.

So really, it was only a matter of time. About two weeks, to be exact.

There is no such thing as a Little White Life, at least not at this homestead. And so I will re-cover those chairs as soon as I find their mates and have a complete set. I'm looking at a brown floral pattern to do them in. And this will make me sad, because somewhere deep down I believe in the myth of the Little White Life -- the slipcovers that always wash to snowy perfection, the chair covers that stay clean, and the bookshelves that never need dusting.

The truth of my life, and life in general, is a lot more colorful...