suziebeezieland

mother's day weekend

I had the nicest Mother's Day weekend. I hope you did, too. On Saturday we went to a very sweet wedding at our church, and on Sunday morning we went to church and Sunday school and all talked about how happy we were about that wedding. :) 

I spent a lot of the weekend on the back patio reading and enjoying my family and crazy pets. I think Mother's Day to me is Official Permission to Relax. I never have that "I should be doing something productive" feeling on Mother's Day. What a blessing.

Last night we went to The Luggage Room, which is one of my favorite restaurants in Pasadena during the spring and summer. (I don't like sitting inside there particularly, so that is why I prefer it in spring and summer. My favorite thing about California is how much we get to eat outside.)

I like to sit at the long wooden tables on the patio and eat avocado pizza (with basil and lemon zest and sun-dried tomatoes ... it is DELICIOUS) and talk. :)

One of the good things I read this weekend was Talitha Piper's sweet letter to her birthmom. I was blessed by that.

I hope your own weekend was nice. What did you do?

noodles

Every spring, Claire goes to the Kidspace Children's Museum with her dad and gets a Painted Lady caterpillar. Then she raises it, watches it turn into a chrysalis and then a butterfly, and releases it into our backyard when it's ready.

She named this year's caterpillar/chrysalis/butterfly "Noodles". :)

where's hannah?

eggy-bunny easter decoration

Cost Plus World Market has the cutest scherenschnitte-ish Easter gift bags right now. I bought two and cut away the bag, then glued magnets on the back so they would stick to the metal blackboards.

The tulipy white borders are "Dutch Garland" vinyl decals from Shanna Murray. The garland is always there, but I rotate what I stick in the middle. :)

p.s. I am going to paint the living room and dining room when we get back from spring break. After all these years, I'm finally ready to get rid of the yellow and try something else for a change. I am currently fascinated with blue-gray and blue-green colors, so I will throw some swatches up soon and we can see what's what. It will still be light and bright, but more subdued. Maybe I'll even just do a shade of white. I'm not sure why I suddenly got sick of the yellow after 17 years. Maybe I'm just getting old. :)

kitchen

My kitchen has changed quite a bit (cosmetically) this past year. 

I think it started early last year, when I realized that the kitchen island I was using as a buffet in the dining room actually worked really well as a kitchen island. :)

Bob and Claire bought me the stool for Christmas. It has been great, because Claire perches there and does her homework or talks to me while I make dinner. The cat likes to sit on the stool, too, when she wants to tell me that it is time to feed her.

Last week, we bought Claire a couple bigger bookcases for her bedroom. She had outgrown her little kid bookcase, which was also my bookcase when I was little. I didn't want to put it out in the garage, so I stuck it in the kitchen, replacing the wire rack I had in here previously. (The wire rack went into the garage for storage out there.)

I am so happy with it!

About eighteen months ago, I was looking at Lissa's neat Keep It Simple, Keep It Fresh blog, and fell in love with the storage shelves she has in her dining room. I immediately grabbed her idea to keep pantry items in these Weck canning jars (I found mine at Crate and Barrel ... they are cheap), and label them with clear (instead of white) labels. For me, this wouldn't be practical for things I get into every day, because the clips are fiddly to take on and off, but it has worked out great for my baking items. And I think they're pretty. :)

I've also been able to tuck the trashcan in next to the washer and dryer, which has been nice.

Another opportunity for more RED! :)

Do you see those paint chips above the washer? The kitchen is due for a paint job, because it hasn't had one in almost ten years. I've chosen the green on the far left, which is lighter and a wee bit yellow-er (less gray) than it is now.

We also got a new dishwasher, because the one that came with the house finally died a month ago. I know the fashion now is to get stainless appliances, but I actually prefer white appliances. So as the old stainless/black appliances conk out, we're replacing them with white ones. I guess this is backwards from the trend, but who cares, right? :) 

I think those are all the bigger changes. Everything else is me just moving stuff around occasionally, because I'm fidgety.

It is a blessing to have a kitchen that I enjoy working in. We sure gravitate toward this room ... maybe because that's where the food is. :) 

new sheets

I am always surprised at how happy new sheets make me. The sheets from spring 2009 only lasted about 18 months before they had to be replaced, but the 2011 sheets that went on the long, long journey are still going strong. And Bob's Star Wars sheets will probably last forever, because I don't put them on that often ... mostly his birthday and Father's Day. :)

I got these new sheets on sale at West Elm, because I wanted a second, non-gallactic-battle option. They are so sweet. They have a white background, with little navy and light-blue flowers sprinkled all over them. It's a cotton that feels good, too. However, the quality of the sewing on them is not great ... it is completely wonky in a few places, and the hems are thin ... so they may be short-lived, like the Sheets from Spring 2009. We'll see. You get what you pay for. But I'm very happy with them right now. Love of pretty floweredy cotton sheets on sale beats out the need for sheets to last forever.

I like seeing all these patterns jumbled up together when I'm making the bed. :)

There are the remnants of muddy dog paw prints on our headboard that happened when Violet chased a fly in the front door and straight onto our bed and up the wall. It was hilarious but I was mad, all at the same time. That happens so much with kids and pets. But love of living things always beats out love of stuff, thank goodness. :) I need to rent a Rug Doctor with the upholstery attachment to get it all out, and I still haven't done that. Gross. Sorry, dear readers.

I got Bob this print from Ideal Bookshelf for our anniversary in December, right before Christmas. My local framers messed up the matting (it's supposed to be the same thickness all the way around -- they're usually quite good, but a temporary holiday employee was helping me and their computer software was new and she was struggling with what I wanted, bless her heart, and I was in a hurry because I had to pick up Claire from school and I should have double-checked that she understood ... it was doomed to fail, really ... I blame myself) but I didn't notice until I got home, and then Bob was so happy about it that I decided to be okay with it. Love of people being happy on their anniversary beats out love of perfectly matted artwork.

In fact, he is so happy about it that I think it makes up for the lack of constant Star Wars sheets. :)

the welcome-home present

I haven't told you about my new washer and dryer. They come with a story.

A couple weeks after we got back from England this summer, our cat, Hannah, brought us a welcome-home gift. 

"Oh, no!" Claire and I heard Bob yell from the kitchen.

Then the kitchen door slid shut with a "wham!", and we heard a lot of banging.

About twenty minutes later, a grim Bob emerged to tell us that he had let Hannah inside, and she had dropped a live mouse on the floor.

"A WHAT?" I asked.

"It went under the fridge and then just ... vaporized," he said, averting his eyes. He looked a little wild, and I reached over and pulled the dust bunnies out of his hair before I went and looked for the missing mousie myself.  

The mouse hadn't vaporized, of course. Over the next seven (yes, seven) weeks (yes, weeks), the mousy grew and grew, and as he grew it soon became evident that mousy was, in fact, a rat. He had been a baby rat and we, against our will, were raising him into an adult rat.

I will not go into the amount of time and money we spent, or the number of contraptions and services we tried, or the sheer mountain of advice I listened to. (Before you are tempted to blurt out "try peanut butter," WE WENT THROUGH AN ENTIRE JAR OF SKIPPY BAITING TRAPS, AND THIS RAT HATED PEANUT BUTTER and ignored the peanut butter. Stop talking about peanut butter.)

I cried a lot, and I may have mentioned divorce. ("How is this MY fault?" Bob asked. "Because you are supposed to CATCH HIM," I wailed. It was not my finest moment.)

Before all was said and done, Chewy did about $1500 worth of damage to the kitchen.

He chewed through the refrigerator water line and through the Dualit toaster cord, gnawed on the Kitchenaid mixer cord, and, for his pièce de résistance, bit a hole through our washing machine -- through the plastic dispenser cup, and right out the back of the machine.

"I haven't seen this before," the repairman said. "They usually just gnaw through the electrical cord and kill themselves."

No such luck.

We chose not to make the repair because it would have cost more than a new washer, but we couldn't buy a new washer until we killed the rat.

Unfortunately, whatever smidge of hunting instinct that had kicked in and made Hannah pounce on that rat to begin with, promptly left her once she was back indoors. During this whole ordeal, she did not so much as bat a whisker at the commotion in the kitchen, but spent her days and nights sleeping on the foot of the bed in a purring, useless little comma of warmth.

And then, one triumphant evening, in a gruesome spectacle I will not describe here (think "Nearly Headless Nick"), we snapped him dead.

And when I say "we," I mean "Bob."

Thankfully, by the time Chewy was getting bold enough to venture into the middle of the kitchen at night (we believe he lived between the cupboard and wall next to the stove), he was too big to squeeze under the door, which remained shut for the entire seven weeks. So his reign of terror was limited to the kitchen itself.

And also thankfully, I ended up with a new washer and dryer. 

And Chewy is now a distant memory.

Except when Bob (how quickly he has forgotten the word "divorce") and his always-game-for-fun sidekick, Claire, play little jokes on me.

a $15 garage sale find

Bob and I found this cabinet at a garage sale a couple years ago. In another life, it was a snazzy midcentury modern piece, but now it had two broken doors and was yellow with chipped varnish. I didn't have a plan for it, but it was good cheap storage, so we grabbed it. 

I removed the doors and painted it white (the wood finish wasn't in good condition), and it held our television and components for awhile, and then eventually ended up in the dining room.

A few months ago, I was happy to find some Pottery Barn baskets that fit in the bottom almost perfectly.

It's the little things in life. :)

accidental art

Water gets trapped in the cut-out parts of the swirly, scroll-y rubber door mat on my back patio, and whenever I remove it to hose down the patio, there is this cool moss art underneath. 

I guess I could bleach it away, but I choose not to. 

:)

bedroom

I've been doing stuff lately more than I've been blogging about doing stuff lately. 

I got around to painting our bedroom last week for the first time in, oh, I think eight years. It's pretty close to the color it was ... a very pale, yellowy green. It makes me feel relaxed. 

I hung up three hooks I bought at Fade Interiors in Woodstock this summer. I bought them there, hauled them back in my luggage, then saw them in the Pottery Barn catalog when I got back to the U.S. Silly. :)

We have temporary $5 paper shades up. The old (cheap) roman blinds konked out, and I haven't decided what to replace them with. I actually like the paper, which does not bode well for getting new window treatments up any time soon. I'm always laziest when I'm fairly content.

I also have a bit of artwork to hang up right over each nightstand, and a tray and some lotions and potions for the top of my chest of drawers. I'll post some newer photos when I get around to that. Although I am a fan of spartan bedrooms, so those might also be awhile. :)

a little bit of art in the loo

While we were in Chipping Campden this summer, I visited the Court Barn (a lovely craft and design museum) several times, and picked up a few cards I really liked in their gift shop.

When I got home, I had them framed at Aaron Brothers. The cards were a standard size, so I bought two standard frames and mats, but then had Aaron Brothers replace the glass with nonreflective glass, and put the dust cover, hanging wire, and plastic bumpers on the back. This is cheaper than a completely custom framing job (they are just cards, after all), but is nicer than if I'd just used the regular glass that came with the frames. (Framing shops can also cut a custom-sized mat for you, if you need it, so that you can put a non-standard-sized card into a bigger, standard-sized frame, but then have a mat that makes it look nice in that big frame. This is also cheaper than having them build you a custom frame.)

I hung them both in our newly remodeled big bathroom. (I guess you can't really tell from these photos, but this bathroom is painted a very light, icy blue.)

It's a very small thing, these little framed cards from Chipping Campden, but they make me so happy. :)

the new big bathroom

Here are a few photos of our new big bathroom. I haven't decorated it yet at all, so it is sterile rather than serene, but you get the idea. 

We have really been enjoying it all fresh and clean. ("Before" photos are here ... you can see how the shower has improved, especially. It is the same size ... 3x3 ... but it seems so much bigger with the glass and the bulkhead removed.)

I am especially happy with the big storage cupboard ... our old cupboard was that deep but was only accessible from the outside hallway, so all that back space was really wasted. (What did people put in these extremely deep linen cupboards? What kind of linens did they have, for goodness sakes?)

Our carpenter split the cabinet in two and made it accessible from the bathroom side, too ... it has doubled my usable storage space. I am very grateful for that. 

Claire and I are getting ready to take off for the airport in a few minutes here to head to England, but I wanted to post this quickly before we left. We'll see you soon with photos from the other side of the pond. :)

peonies

Our Trader Joe's has bunches of peonies right now, right as you walk in the door, and I was so excited to see them that I forgot what I went in to buy.

We can't grow them here, because it doesn't get cold enough in the winter, so usually I get my fill just looking at photos online.  I don't know where our TJ's got them ... I know you can grow plants in hothouses in places it doesn't get hot enough ... are there such things as coldhouses for places where it doesn't get cold enough?

hydrangeas + bunnies

The hydrangeas out back are in bloom. They haven't reached their full flush yet, but are coming along nicely. Hannah the Cat likes to sleep under them and then come in with her belly all dusty. If you walk too close to her when she's hiding there, her paw will shoot out and pat you on the ankle, or whatever she can swipe. 

Hugo the Bunny used to have a warren under the big bank of hydrangeas against the house wall. That was when he still had the run of the backyard last year. It was cool and a little wet where the water faucet dripped, and it would keep him from withering in the summer heat.

You can see the ineffectual bunny blockade we set up last spring with flowerpots, to keep Hugo from squeezing under the gate like Peter Rabbit. But he just dug a big tunnel anyway, à la The Great Escape, and has been confined to quarters ever since. (Although he gets to come in the house quite a bit, too, and visit. But I don't make him chamomile tea.)

Quarters aren't so bad, but if we don't feed him exactly on time in the morning, he gets mad and flips his bowl over and knocks his little ramp down.

I didn't know bunnies threw tantrums.

swiss dot

The curtains for the small bathroom finally arrived. The first set disappeared mysteriously after they'd reached my local post office, but Country Curtains very graciously sent a replacement pair at no charge.

I wonder if my local post office is setting up a cottage-themed break room or something. They had my sheets for awhile, you may recall.

I'm very fond of swiss dot and curtains that flutter in the breeze. :)

the rose is not obsolete

The roses are doing that thing they do every spring. It never ceases to amaze me.

the new little bathroom

Here are some pictures of our new small bathroom. (There are some "before" pics here.) It has been so nice to have it usable, clean, and fresh. :) Our big bathroom is under construction right now, so this is the one we're all using while that goes on. 

I'm still waiting on curtains (the first order disappeared ... I'll have to do a separate post on Minor Setbacks and Inconveniences) so I'll take a photo of the window when they come. :) For now, I have parchment paper taped up there, which I removed for the photos. I'll probably also hang a picture or something over the towel bar ... I haven't decided what yet, exactly. But I'll keep you posted.

I got several ideas for what I'd like to do in our bathrooms by looking at my mom's bathroom and Alicia Paulson's bathrooms here and here. :)

Here is a little source list in case you want to know where something came from. I always like it when people do that on their blog posts. :)

paint: Woodlawn Blue by Benjamin Moore and Ultra Pure White by Behr
tile: Daltile
pedestal sink + bathtub: Kohler Memoirs line
toilet: Kohler Devonshire line
medicine cabinet: Restoration Hardware
tub spout + turn-on handle: Kohler Bancroft line
sink faucet: Metropolitan Chrome Widespread Bathroom Faucet at Overstock.com
showerhead: Speakman
towel rod, toilet paper holder + ceiling light: Pottery Barn Sussex line
bath mat: Cost Plus Imports
shower curtain: Restoration Hardware
towels: Lands' End Supima in Antique Violet

the new porch

Our porch paving got finished up awhile ago, and then this weekend Bob mulched the front beds and it rained (look how gray our house looks in that second photo ... I guess it's because the sky was gray), so although tile for the bathroom is being stored on the porch and it's not all quite put back together yet, it seemed a good time to get a few photos.

I've got some flower pots to put back to soften things up, but I think I'll wait so they're not in the tilers' way. 

When we first looked at this house eight years ago, I thought, "that porch would be nice if it were paved or something, instead of peeling red paint," so it's good to have waited for awhile and then be able to actually do it, because I appreciate it more. I feel excited every time I look at it, because I will not have to paint the porch anymore! Hooray! 

Look at that little face. Sweet, sweet pups, wondering what in the WORLD I'm doing out in the rain, which she herself has to be pushed out into, because she is not a fan of being wet. And I think she's a little scared of rain, too ... she runs and looks up at it kind of sideways, as if she is trying to get away from it. She takes it personally. :)

dear home depot

Dear Home Depot,

I am not a superstitious woman, but I'm starting to wonder if I should avoid mail order forevermore.

San Bernardino is 53 miles away from my house. Bloomington is 44 miles away from my house.

Why has the Kohler one-piece Devonshire toilet we ordered from you been within one hour of my house for the past ten days?

Is it being used?

Please advise.

Sincerely,

Suzanne

a series of unfortunate events, an elephant joke,and a nice front porch in progress

Today started off with a series of unfortunate events. Or do I mean a comedy of errors? I am not sure which.

Claire was up in the middle of the night coughing and feverish, and this morning I decided to keep her home. She crawled into bed with me and went back to sleep, and at around 7:30 she woke back up and said, "But what about N?"

N. is her best friend. We were supposed to pick her up this morning on our way to school.

So I yelled "Yikes!" and threw on some clothes, asked Bob (who was getting ready to leave for work) to wait 10 minutes until I could get back home, jammed a baseball hat on my head, and went flying down the street to pick up N. and take her to school. (It is a pleasure to do this. She is a delightful little girl.)

But somehow I started daydreaming, and before I knew it, I was at the school. Without N. Just me in the car.

Yep.

So I zoomed back around and got her, dropped her at school, made it home, and released Bob to go to work.

Then I turned around and spilt an entire cup of coffee on the living room rug, and I cleaned that up best I could and then walked into our bedroom, where I discovered the dog was busy throwing up on our bed. (That has never happened before.) So I stripped the bed and got the sheets washing,

Then I remembered that I hadn't texted Becky (who was teaching Bible study this morning) to tell her I wouldn't be there because Claire was home, so I sent a text at about 9:25 (Bible study starts at 9:30) and I am hoping she got it in time. 

Then I called Claire's doctor to see if I could get her in today. The only appointment the doctor's office had was twenty minutes from when I called, and the doctor's office is about 20 minutes away, so Claire quickly threw clothes on, brushed teeth, etc., and we zoomed over to the doctor's, and then waited almost an hour until we were seen. (Our appointment was for 9:50, we got there at 9:50, and we saw the doctor at 10:45.)

Claire took a peak flow test and got a 160 when she's supposed to have a 320, so they gave her a breathing treatment. When it was over, the nurse said the doctor would be in in ten or fifteen minutes to see if it had worked. They apparently forgot we were in there waiting, and I fell asleep and Claire read her book. Fifty minutes later I went out in the hallway and just happened to see her doctor, who seemed to remember us, vaguely, and came in. 

The doctor had sent a prescription for an inhaler and some other stuff to our pharmacy, so we stopped to get it on the way home. The pharmacist said they hadn't received the prescription. So I called the doctor's office and was on hold for fifteen minutes, and then finally got someone, and she re-phoned the prescription in.

When I went to pick up the medicine again, I found out that the reason they hadn't given it to us the first time was because the pharmacist had misunderstood the name. 

It wasn't that bad though, really. These are minor inconveniences in the overall scheme of life. :) And I bought Claire a Shamrock Shake from McDonald's (across the street from the pharmacy) while we were waiting, and she told me this great joke I hadn't heard before while we were hanging out:

Claire: How can you tell if an elephant is sitting in front of you at the movies?

Me: I don't know. How?

Claire: You can't see the screen.

So now we're home, and Claire is sitting in her bed reading National Geographic Kids, and I am sitting in the chair in her room, and it is quite pleasant. We are hiding in here with the dog and the cat, too, because the contractors are here paving our front porch with brick. They had to jackhammer the front step first, and that part was loud. But it is going to be so nice when it's done. I am very thankful for that, and not having to paint that old porch every year.

Here is a verse I really like:

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
(Colossians 3:15-17)