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my spring mantel and some thoughts on decorating

March 29, 2019

Now I don’t fancy myself a master decorator, but I do enjoy puttering (my mom’s word) around my house and creating views that just make me smile. So let’s talk about my spring mantel and some thoughts on decorating for a minute.

Joel’s response to the question “what do you think about the spring mantel?” … wait for it … “it looks busy.” womp womp Does that mean I’m going to change it? No. Everything is really considered temporary around here for now anyway. We’ve been back in this house just short of a year and a half and after 8 years of living in rentals and a complete renovation I had forgotten how much I can’t commit like to just try things in different spots around the house.

spring mantel decorated with plants and lanterns

It takes the pressure out of decorating. I haven’t just bought this one $200 thing that fits just perfect in this one spot so now I need to live with it there for. ev. er. We have just collected things (junk really) that means something to us that makes me smile when I see it.

Is it perfect? Not even close. Will it get moved and rotated and rearranged at a different time when I get a hairbrained idea that this one picture could look good there, but not with that table that’s there, so that table should go here, which means I need to move … you get the idea. And often times it doesn’t work out. But enjoying the process is really all of the fun. I think that’s the secret.

It’s getting my hands on this little credenza that came from my grandmother. Taking the time to remember it in the little cottage on the lake where I would go visit her and my grandfather and she would teach me how to sew and show me how to make moss gardens or ornaments out of old egg cartons and beads. I always thought my grandmother had the most beautiful fingernails. They weren’t too long or too short and they were always perfectly filed, and never painted. Funny the memories we keep.

It’s finding the next perfect spot for the glass jars of shells and sea glass I’ve gathered over the years and practically feeling the sun on my face remembering all of the walks on the beach with Marley and Mico.

Which brings us to the spring mantel with the scrap wood whatever-it-is that I can’t seem to quit. If I remember correctly I found it while cleaning out the crawl space under our Key West house. (Don’t judge.) And that paint splatter, that was our very first test spray the day we repainted the exterior of that house. It really has no business being on our mantel, or any mantel really. But I love it. I smile every time I see it. And it perfectly illustrates that you don’t have to spend any money to surround yourself with things that you love to create a home you enjoy. (And there’s an outlet that needs blocking right in the middle of the wall just above the mantel, so form and function.)

And the two little plants are fake you guys! Funny thing is I bought them specifically to go in our master bedroom which is missing out on my new houseplant obsession because it doesn’t get enough light. Of course, they were in their designated spots for like 3 days until I decided the mantel needed a little bit more “life”. You know to make it look, what was the word … oh yeah … busy. **eye roll**

A few main strategies that might help if you’re working on your own mantel:

One main focal point

Some of you may have the most perfect reclaimed wood mantel ever to be found on earth. If so, I’m jealous, also that requires less “decorating” because your mantel is already the décor. But one large thing of your choice hung above (say that authentic tobacco basket with chippy green paint you have, Casey) could be the perfect accent. I started with this image of the boats and ended up propping the scrap wood behind it to cover an outlet we have that was glaringly annoying with just the lanterns and plants.

Vary the height

This one is best learned through practice. Just take a look at what you have and if everything is essentially the same height it probably looks a little ho hum. Try stacked books or a little box to set things on. My grandfather made that little jewelry box the plant (the one real one on the spring mantel) on the left is on and my grandmother painted the top. You can’t see that from it’s current spot on the mantel, but it makes me smile to see it there anyway.

Use repetition

Now what would look busy to me would be if there were a lot of different things going on at the same time. We’ve got a plants and lanterns thing going on here with pretty much a green and neutral color scheme. Could there be less things, sure. But plants! That’s all I have to say about that.

Total aside: Joel just said to me “where is the chest that was here?”, pointing to where my grandmother’s credenza is now. haha Living here is like mystery theater, he never knows what’s going to be where at any given time. You’re welcome.

Also, these two.

And is it creative or creepy that I found almost all of Marley and Mico’s old dog tags recently while cleaning out an old memorabilia bag (If you have an awesome way to store/display your memorabilia pretty please let me know, my memorabilia needs your help!) and thought is was a good idea to frame them hanging from little hooks? I honestly am not sure what to do with it now.

If you like peeking into other peoples’ houses to check out their decorating ideas you have to check out our friends’ colorful and fun Key West house tour.

If you want to see our BH&G winning front porch you should check out the post creating curb appeal or “you’re decorating with exactly how many street finds?”.

And for a real throw back to the Curacao house days click here to see the rustic, coastal summer mantel with beach accents. Spoiler alert, all of the photos are so close up because that was actually a shelf in our kitchen.

Hello … hello

March 14, 2019

Hello … hello? Is this thing on? (Picture Midge Maisel walking up to the mic.)

I’ve been playing around with this here blog for about the last month. It all started when I got a message that it had been shut down due to suspicion of it sending out malicious emails. (Enter all of those mind blown, WTF and general shock and awe emojies here.) Turns out I was hacked. Something you don’t realize if you’re not paying attention, so it was totally down for a good week minute. But after a security company was hired to clear it all out and get it back up and running I started messing around with cleaning up some old posts that still get some decent traffic.

Turns out this old shower pan series is a winner, and a lot of people seem to either need this type of outlet cover or are struggling to get their outlets to sit flush with their outlet covers.

So then the wheels started turning about dusting it off and getting back at it. But where to begin? What to write about? I started the blog in 2011 and other than one post last year I essentially stopped in 2016. Three short years ago that feel like a lifetime. Isn’t it something how time does that? I mean, I just graduated from college last year, how can I also be 42 years old?

And on one hand I really like the idea of continuing this little venture, while at the same time feeling particularly private (or is it insecure?) about it all.

Then this morning I saw this:

Somehow this put into perspective my fears. I am not the same. I don’t know how I’m different, I just know I’m not the same. First of all we live in Maryland. I KNOW! No more Caribbean island life for us (for now). I’ve actually blogged about our Maryland house before. I repainted the front door a few years ago (and have already repainted it a totally different color) and spray painted the old door hardware and mailbox. We have already replaced the hardware with the keyless entry we love so much in our Key West house. You know what they say, once you go keyless you never go back, or something like that.

We left Maryland for 8 years with no intentions of ever moving back, and yet did move back and into the exact same house no less. We never sold it, we were literally thisclose but didn’t go through with the sale, that’s a funny story for another time.

rental property to-do list
our Maryland house

In Aruba I got really tan fit. After living in Aruba for only a short time I wasn’t motivated to put a lot of time or energy into updating our apartment that was owned by Joel’s employer. It just wasn’t as gratifying as it had been renovating our entire little conch house. So, as tends to happen, I replaced one habit with another, I found a really great group of people at a gym I had joined who, over time, ended up becoming incredibly close friends. We connected over shared suffering during the hours we spent together challenging our limits in the gym. And somehow this experience spiraled into an adventure I could never replicate if I tried.

Looking for a photo of me looking “really fit” I found a whole collection of old videos from the gym. Too funny. We would do different online qualifiers for different competitions around the world and would have to video our submissions. Now, I am definitely not the strongest girl in the room, so I don’t post this video to say look how strong I am/was, I just had fun discovering these videos I didn’t remember I had and thought you might get it a kick out of it. Maybe?


I am already not the same person I was in that video. And I really liked that person. I really, really liked her. But if moving every few years has taught me anything it is that I use my surroundings to help structure a bit of who I am. I think we all do to some extent, for better or worse. I think it is a big part of what has made the moving lifestyle work for us for so long. 20 years to be exact. Like exact-exact. Joel and I moved in together 20 years ago yesterday in South San Francisco, California.

moving
@2001, first house, 2nd move

I’m thankful for that girl right there, she learned some lessons that have served me well throughout the last 18 years and 5 moves.

I guess all this is to say I may write a post or two here and there. And who knows what they will be about. haha We still do our fair share of DIY. In the year and a half we have been back in Maryland we have expanded our fenced yard area (oh, yeah, we have two new pups!), repainted 85% of the interior of the house, made a couple of Adirondack chairs to sit by the new firepit area we made to go along with some new landscaping around the new fence. And I can see it all from the kitchen window which brings a smile to my face every single morning.

Enter pic of said side yard as seen from the kitchen window, which I don’t have, because, you know, not a blogger. I will need to dust off the camera, quite literally, and see if I still remember how to use her.

Speaking of landscaping, you guys, I am totally into plants right now! It was the winter blues that inspired me to buy my first houseplant in January and my collection has grown exponentially in the last 2 months. And now we are seeing some life in the plants outside that we bought and planted last fall with pretty much a hope and a prayer at deep discount prices as our local greenhouses were clearing out inventory before winter. The anticipation over what they will all actually look like is pretty intense.
We’re also trying our hand at vegetable gardening and bee keeping. Man, did we miss having a vegetable garden!

solo and santo

These are our girls!! They are sisters!! Sorry for the terrible cell phone picture, it had no aspirations of being on the internet. We named them Solo and Santo, meaning Sun and Sand in Papiamento, the national language of Aruba, where we adopted them.

So, here I am, dreaming of spring in Maryland, and potentially ready to share some of it along the way, but I definitely wanted to say hi.

And if you are reading this thinking whaaaaaat? You can read about our history, learn about where we’ve lived and take a peek at the different types of projects we’ve tackled around here.

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