We’ve got a true disaster scene in the window boxes at Chez Perry. It’s a grave emergency and we need to divide and conquer for window box victory before the whole season has past. Here’s a look at the mess we’re in:
Yeah. I wouldn’t exactly call the petrified ornamental cabbages left over from the winter a steal-worthy idea. And in these window boxes we are dealing with another enemy of the state of gorgeousness. That enemy is shade. And lots of it! What you want in a window box is cheerful color and with shade that can be much harder to come by.
But we aren’t the only ones with window box woes. See this reader write-in from Cincinnati, Ohio:
Dear Ask Julia,
I need advice. Every year I plant window boxes and set them outside on the window ledges and for a while they look cute. But then the window sills start to look dirty from inside the house (no matter how much i reduce the dirt in the planter), and the plants start to get overgrown, I need a new approach. I just planted pansies, but a month from now I’ll need to replant. Ideas???
Please steal a good idea for me.
- Carol
Thank you Carol for this thoughtful question. Lots of issues to tackle here. Before we get into the fun stuff of designing an plant combination, let’s pause for a minute and go over the basics of successful window boxery.
DRAINAGE
This is the number one key to window box success. You need to keep an eye on 2 different elements of drainage. First, your container must have drainage holes and plenty of them. You can put something down (like chicken wire or a couple of stones) to make sure that your dirt doesn’t run out but don’t be shy about the drainage holes. The second thing to consider is that you leave drainage space between the box and the side of the house for water to get through. Most window boxes, when installed correctly, will leave 1/2 inch there so that water doesn’t pool and wreak havoc on your wooden window frame.
LIGHT WEIGHT
Choose a light weight container. I do not want to hear from any genius idea thieves who found a gorgeous concrete planter for under the window only to have it break their foot when it gave way under the weight of the concrete, potting soil and water. Choose wooden, fiberglass, or plastic window boxes. Fill them with potting mix (it’s less dense than soil). Make life easy on your brackets.
WATER
Your window boxes are going to need more water than the plants in your yard. They just plain dry out faster and they don’t get the same nutrients. I recommend watering them with a watering can instead of your hose. It keeps the potting mix from eroding out of the container and lessens the water spots on your windows (you can bank on leaving the Windex spending more time under the kitchen sink and less time out front).
FERTILIZE
Pop a little Miracle Grow in that watering can or sprinkle a little Osmocote in the dirt before the plants arrive. Osmocote is my favorite time-release fertilizer. And they just came out with these fun pellets. Haven’t tried them myself yet but from where I sit it’s a genius product extension.
So Carol, with those basics, I think we might have hit on 2 items that could help you to address your issues. It sounds like you are working with window boxes that are not installed on brackets. Rather, they just sit on the window ledges. This is preventing you from getting that good drainage from between the box and the window/wall. Water is pooling, it’s dirty, and it’s splashing. No bueno. In addition, might you be watering with a hose? I think using a watering can would probably help you a ton.
I also recommend PACKING IN THE FLOWERS. It’s a window-box so the standard 6-8″ between plants just isn’t going to cut it. I’ll show you more about this in Part 2 of the Window Box Triage series which focuses on window box design. But aside from being beautiful, packing in the flowers keeps the dirt in place. No washing away, no splashing. Bueno.
Stay tuned … in just a day or so I’ll reveal The Solution to my own window box woes.
Sometimes, an experience makes a better gift than a material item. My Mom’s birthday was last week and she hinted to Dad, who told me, that she wanted to try growing an orchid. Mom’s a green thumb but she had always been intimidated by orchids in the past. Now’s she’s ready. Mom and I, we’re thick as thieves.
So I visited my trusty friend Google to see what was available in the world of Nashville orchids, hoping I might happen upon something special. And something special is exactly what I found … Merkle’s Orchids. Ed and Lydia Merkle run a little backyard orchid business from their home in the Inglewood area. The greenhouse isn’t open all the time. As a matter of fact, it’s really just a hobby for the two of them and they show their orchids at events across the region. But if you use the contact information on the website, Ed will meet you and give you a tour of his greenhouse.
Mom and I spent over an hour touring with Ed. We sniffed orchids that smelled like peonies, coconut creme pie, root beer, nutmeg, and believe it or not, exactly like Fruit Loops. We learned about orchid reproduction, what makes an orchid and orchid, how best to care for them, and how the various species of orchids have adapted to ensure pollination. Some become fragrant only at night to attract the moths that pollinate them. Others smell rancid like a carcass or dog poo to entice the flies that pollinate that species. Still others (and Ed didn’t have one of these to share but we loved hearing the story) use sex to lure in a pollinator … here’s an article about the wasp orchid that looks and smells like a female wasp. The male comes by looking for action and pollinates the flower in the process. How in the HECK did evolution cause that to occur?? Mother Nature is a fancy lady, indeed.
Here’s my favorite orchid from the Merkle’s collection. Never seen anything like it:
Isn’t it STUNNING? And here’s Mom with Ed and her new purchase (plus a little baby orchid that is a hybrid that Ed himself created – couldn’t resist).
Happy Birthday, Mom!
Steal this idea … think outside the box to make a gift a little more special. Mom’s orchid was only $25 but the time spent together and the things we learned were priceless.
Project #2 of that famed flea market run from so many weeks ago has finally come to fruition, folks! Let me tell you, travelling for business does not a happy idea thief make! PHEW! Read on to find out how I’ve created this Stylish Bulletin Board Alternative (with custom decoupage clothespins, I might add)!!
Today I’m ripping off an idea from one of my very favorite catalogs – Wisteria. You see, my office is on a lovely sun porch which makes me feel like I’m working in an aviary (I adore this fact) but leaves little room for getting rid of clutter. So when the space between my lamp and my phone started to look like this ….
… I decided it was high time to find a place for all of my “fun mail”. You know all of the baby announcements, wedding invitations, sweet cards and photos that I just can’t throw away … at least not yet. But I didn’t want a traditional bulletin board that would block the view and the light. When I came across this on Wisteria …
… I knew I had found just the right concept. But I’m not crazy about chickens and $39 seemed a little steep. That is when the hunt for the perfect frame began and by golly if I didn’t find a beaut!??!
All the gory details on what you need to get from flea market to fabulous are just below.
MATERIALS:
Flea Market Frame
Needle-Nose Pliers
Sandpaper
Caulk
Spray Paint (I chose an Heirloom White in Satin finish and Gold Leaf for the clothespins)
Yard Stick
Hammer
Tacks
Floral Wire (mine was wrapped in neutral raffia from the floral department at Michael’s)
Mini Clothespins
Decorative Paper
Mod Podge
Foam Brush
Spray Enamel
STEP 1: PREP YOUR FRAME
I started by giving my frame a nice bath with a damp cloth. Next it was on to removing staples, nails and tacks with my handy needle nose pliers and below a screwdriver to pry off the name plate. I even sanded down the back of my frame since it was going to be hung on a window but if yours is going on the wall then why worry with that?!? My frame was super old so we put a little bit of caulk in the corners just to smooth things out a bit.
STEP 2: COAT THAT BABY WITH PAINT
Not much to say here except follow the directions on the spray paint can! And even though I’m painting at night here, the second and third coats had to happen during the day to get a nice, even spray on all of those little nooks and crannies. I’d like to thank my good friend John Deere and my husband for collaborating to make me this fancy painting platform.
STEP 3: MEASURE FOR YOUR “CLOTHES LINES”
I ended up spacing mine 10″ apart but it’s worth noting that I think it looks best to have the top one about an inch and a half from the top of the frame (it looks like 2 inches here but see how that lip of the frame takes up 1/2 an inch – that will make a big difference in the look). Wouldn’t want to waste a whole bunch of space up there but wouldn’t want it crowded either. Mark where your tacks will go on the backside of the frame.
STEP 4: CUT, WRAP & NAIL THE LINE
(Just don’t Walk the Line … that’s never fun.)
This floral wire wrapped in a raffia-like material that I was using was heavy-duty stuff. I needed the needle nose pliers to manipulate it, no doubt. The idea is to create a little loop that you’ll wrap around the tack on one side and get that hammered in. Then, cut the line so it’s just slightly beyond your marked spot on the other side of the frame. You’ll use the wrapping action to wrap it just tight enough that the wire is taught. You can always give your pliers a little bit more of a turn if you need it a hair tighter. Pull, pull, pull and then nail in place. Here’s a shot of those tacks (available at your home improvement store) as well as what it looks like to wrap the wire around it.
Use your pliers to make a little loop that a tack can just barely fit through. If your raffia stuff starts to fray like this did, trim and secure with a piece of scotch tape. It’ll be on the back of your frame anyway.
Then slide that tack in there:
And nail that puppy in place (and I mean the tack, not actually the puppy! see my old boy snoozing in the background of the pic above – such a sweet guy he his):
You will notice that all of that care that I took to sand the back of the frame and paint it got just totally demolished by my hammer. Oh well. Our neighbors will forgive the ugly view. Oh and I suppose you could use twine and spare yourself all of this wrapping and pulling taught. But to me, it just seemed like the wire would provide a more sturdy foundation for the mail and keep things from tipping this way and that. I like to think my selection makes for a tidier presentation in the end but who really knows. If you’ve got the twine already, give it a whirl!
STEP 5: HANG ‘ER UP
Forgot to get a pic of this step but I happened to already have some hooks hanging in the metal frame of my sun porch for a Christmas stained glass window so I used some fishing wire to loop the frame to the hooks. If you are hanging your creation on a wall, you can easily add a picture hanger. Just choose the kind with the little jagged teeth that doesn’t use a wire.
STEP 6: SECURE YOUR GOODIES TO THE CLOTHESLINES
Clothespins are easy enough to find but with all of that fancy carving, a plain one just seemed BOR-ING. I thought of just giving them a coat of paint and calling it a day. But then I remembered seeing these cute clothespins on Etsy:
You can buy those at The Papered Crown on Etsy if you like. They are only like $8.
When I remembered those, I realized I could do anything I wanted to complement my new frame remake. So I purchased some mini clothespins, sprayed them down with a little gold spray paint (mostly just on the sides so there would be a little shine) and then decoupaged them with this cute, muted, floral craft paper that I found at Michael’s. Here they are on the tray drying after their decoupage treatment.
Kind of cute, huh??!?! And I had never decoupaged before but let me tell you it is really easy and really, really fun. I just used these instructions. I pretty much feel like a 1960′s housewife but I might be hooked on the decoupage now. Eeeks! We’ll see if it becomes a new blog category. HA!
So let’s have a few final shots of my Wisteria rip off before we close down this post. Hooray for cute, custom, DIY organization!
Be Green: reduce, REUSE, and recycle
Save Green: like, free
Get Green: no more pesky bald patches in your landscape
Intrigued? Read on.
The first time we saw our little abode, we loved her straight away, even if her paint colors were looking a little dated.
My hubby was chomping at the bit to get started on that landscape tout suite but we were practically broke. The previous owner had been an avid gardener before she just got too old to take care of the yard anymore. So there was some beauty lurking around but it needed some serious TLC. Case in point: shrubbery abounds on the right side of the front porch, nada on the left. Weird, right?
We really wanted some boxwoods to match what was on the right so we put up a wanted ad on CraigsList. We knew this was a bit of a long-shot. Boxwoods are coveted in Southern gardens and we’d heard many a tale of vacations and cars being financed by selling big, old boxwoods right out of the yard to newer homes seeking that “always been there” look. But we tried anyway and would you believe that on the very first day our post was live we got a bite!? The voice on the other side of the phone said:
“We just pulled 6 boxwoods out of a yard up here today. I was just about to haul them to the dump in the morning. If you want them, come on out and pick them up.”
Visualize Will and Julia doing a happy dance.
Except that when my husband drove out to timbuktoo, TN, they weren’t boxwoods at all. They were hemlocks. So our original boxwoods to the right of the porch got moved elsewhere and we become the proud parents of 6 new hemlocks.
Now just about the only thing I can think of that hemlock has made a bigger impression on is Socrates. But while hemlock killed Socrates dead, it totally brought our yard to life:
(Please ignore the petrified ornamental cabbage in the windowboxes. Yes, those are the same cabbages that I planted in December in my very first post and there’s a windowbox post coming soon, I promise.)
Now here’s the real kicker about these hemlocks. My hubbs went down to the garden center to find out what fertilizers and such would make these puppies thrive. And would you believe that the nursery told him that he would sell hemlocks that large for $400 apiece!!! We have 6! That’s $2400 in landscaping for nuthin’ except the cost of gas to get to timbuktoo and pick them up. Not to shabby.
So …
Be Green: reduce, REUSE, and recycle
Save Green: like, free
Get Green: no more pesky bald patches in your landscape
And although I am sure I’m not the first to come up with the idea to source landscaping on Craig’s List, I devised this plan sans rip off or inspiration file. So let’s call this one a Julia Original. Why not give it a whirl! What do you have to lose?
This Saturday is one of Nashville’s most time-honored traditions. It’s the 69th running of the Iroquois Steeplechase to benefit the Monroe Carrell Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. And although the event raises tons of money for the Children’s Hospital (over $8M over the 26-year relationship), I was still feeling a little funny about putting on a sundress and hat and sipping cocktails while my fellow Nashvillians are cleaning up the wreckage in their homes this weekend.
(Image courtesy The Enabler from Flickr)
So my hubby and I decided to take one small step to funnel some good to our flood victims from Steeplechase day. We’ve asked our guests to pack a little extra folding money when they meet us for this weekend’s festivities. As we always do, our little tailgating crew will draw horses out of a hat and place small bets. But this time, Will and I will match the winning purse up to $100 and donate the proceeds to the winner’s flood-related charity of choice. We’re encouraging our guests to donate their winnings as well. We figure maybe it will make the betting a little more exciting if dollar amounts are increased and do a little good to boot. You know how it is, a little booze and a bit of excitement and all of a sudden the charitable donations start to flow. Just ask anyone who has ever chaired a live auction for charity!
I thought I would share this idea via my blog in case others want to jump on the bandwagon. If you are thinking of supporting flood victims through your Steeplechase festivities this weekend in other ways, please let me know and we’ll post those ideas here. I’d love to hear from you!
Giddy up, Nashville! We’re going to be ok!
I’ve always loved Nashville. Even during my years in Oxford, Ohio and Atlanta, Georgia neither felt as much like home as Nashville. Until this weekend I thought that was because it was familiar, family-filled, and wrought with character. This weekend, when a 500-year flood brought devastation to our town, I learned what it is about Nashville that makes it so special. Nashville is a community in the truest sense of the word. In a time when Community means everything from Facebook to a sitcom on NBC, it’s easy to lose sight of what a community really is and how valuable living in a real one can be. But Nashville has not forgotten and it’s a very beautiful thing.
Nashville is in a world of hurt right now. My little corner of the world that I so lovingly write about on this blog is blessedly in-tact despite this scene that played out Saturday literally in front of my very own home (on the left is the street in front of our house and on the right our neighbor’s home on the downhill side of our creek).
But I have friends, family, fellow church members, and even close neighbors who are in a state of disarray that they never dreamed possible in their lifetimes. This isn’t the kind of flood that hit only homes perched on riversides. This flood moved entire homes completely on dry land off their foundations and down the street. It tore the ashalt off of roads who previously had seen only a gentle bath from a storm drain. It filled thousands of cars with murky, muddy water. Grocery stores, banks, small businesses, and restaurants are still (3 days after the rain stopped) waiting for the waters to recede so they can pick up the pieces. Historic and important tourist (read economic) resources like the Grand Ole Opry, Opryland Hotel, 2nd Avenue, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Titans Stadium, Bridgestone Arena, and countless others have sustained millions of dollars in damage. The submerged stage of the Grand Ole Opry hits Nashvillians particularly hard since it’s the same circle of wood where so many great musicians have been both discovered and made, even back to the days when the Opry was at the Ryman Auditorium (they moved the wood from the stage out to the new Opryland location when it was built).
(pic courtesy Matthew Daniel via Facebook)
My own father had to rescue a friend’s daughter, her husband, and her 2 kids from their home in his fishing boat. This is the real deal. It’s depressing to see a city that I love so dearly in such devastation.
But what is indescribably uplifting is the fact that Nashville has once again proven herself as one of the most graceful and lovely cities of the South thanks to a true sense of community. As so many others have said, we’re seeing little in the way of national news coverage (given the magnitude of the situation) in part because there is no rioting in the streets, no looting to speak of, no complaining about our metro government’s inability to help those in need. Instead, neighbors are helping neighbors, congregations are helping congregations, and little by little Nashville is picking up the pieces and making ourselves whole again.
Here are just a few things I have witnessed:
- Hart Ace Hardware sending out social media messages asking if there are special order items that they can bring in via truck to assist people in their clean up efforts when just days ago this was the scene from just a few doors down:
(Photo courtesy Ann Ripley)
- Our own neighborhood association email listserv has transformed into a trading platform for fans, de-humidifiers, hoses, piping, sump pumps, and just plain help (and I’m very proud of my very own husband who helped to keep that rotation like a well-oiled machine).
- The Gordon Jewish Community Center so overflowing with donations of food, clothes, towels and toiletries that they have asked that donations stop. They have set up one of their halls like a grocery store and they are inviting anyone in who needs assistance, not just those staying at the shelter, to pick up supplies and basic necessities. If you know anyone in need, they are at 801 Percy Warner Blvd.
- Woodmont Christian Church’s Mobile Loaves and Fishes operation served over 1,500 meals yesterday alone with donations from Kroger and Trader Joe’s and the assistance of over 300 volunteers. They have focused on serving the poor and homeless displaced by the flood as well as the individuals working to keep our one remaining water treatment plant in tact and at our Emergency Command Center and 5 disaster response information centers where affected individuals without phone, television or Internet can get information and assistance. With all of that aid going on, you can simply stop by 3605 Hillsboro Rd. at Woodmont Christian’s South Hall and volunteer your time or make a donation of any of these following items:
fresh fruit (apples, pears, oranges, clementines, bananas)
washclothes + towels
toiletry items (toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, deodorant, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, conditioner)
sandwich-sized zipper baggies
disposable to-go containers with lids
disposable oven-safe aluminum baking pans
Cousins Tallu Scott Schuyler and Margo Martin Cloniger are coordinating the efforts at Mobile Loaves and Fishes. I know them both personally and I have no doubt that their fabulous organizational skills and can-do attitudes are a large part of what is making this ministry so successful. Go volunteer alongside these smiling faces:
(stolen without permission but with gratitude from Tallu’s Facebook page)
- Hands on Nashville had registered over 7,000 volunteers in the first 2 days since the rained stopped and I’m sure there are even more volunteers registered now. They are doing an excellent job of matching volunteers to opportunities via their website but even more help will be needed. Even if you can’t volunteer this week or weekend, get on the list since clean-up will likely continue for a very long time.
- And if you are far away and you want to assist this lovely town as we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and reclaim our beautiful city, you can donate to the American Red Cross by texting REDCROSS to 90999. When you do, an automatic donation of $10.00 will be made. There will be a $10.00 charge on your monthly cell phone bill for the donation.
While it’s been horrifying to watch the devastation play out, it has been uplifting to be a part of such a generous and open-armed community. I’ve never been prouder of Nashville.
When we bought our house, the hallway featured a built-in coat rack. It was a 1×4, painted the same color as the wall, and out fitted with a series of simple, wooden pegs. It was functional, for sure, but just not all that attractive.
Will and I decided that we would pull that rack down and recreate it later to better match the casual elegance we are hoping for in our house. And last week, we finally got around to doing just that. Here’s our new coat rack:
It turns out that this is a great feature to have in the downstairs hallway of our house. For starters, as is typical with any home built in 1930, ours is light on the closets (at least downstairs). And the closet that we had designated as our coat closet is inconveniently situated behind a rocking chair. We rationalized that the rocker would be easy to move for access to the closet. But what has happened instead is that the rocker has BECOME our closet … where we drape jackets, hats, scarves, the dry cleaning, dog leashes … you get the picture. Our hallway coat rack has really helped to corral all of that clutter. And what else is a hallway good for anyway? Might as well be for hanging coats.
How’d we do it? Glad you asked:
putty knife
STEP 1: MEASURE AND CUT
First things first you want to measure the length of your coat rack. We were butting ours up against the frame of 2 doors which made finishing it off pretty easy. If you don’t have 2 door frames (or even a door frame and a corner wall) between which to position your coat rack, you’ll want to consider how you’ll cap off the corners. If using trim, you’ll need a miter saw to get the look right. But we didn’t have to worry about that because the door frames helped us out!
STEP 2: AFFIX THE 1×4 TO THE WALL
We were working with a plaster wall so my hubby used special screws intended just for that purpose. Whatever is right for your wall, make sure you sink your screws so that you can come back later and fill over the screw head with wood filler. Will also popped a few nails in the 1×4 using his finish nailer for good measure.
STEP 3: AFFIX THE DECORATIVE TRIM
We chose this particular trim because we thought it echoed the patterns in the iron hooks. You could choose just about anything that is intended to help finish off an edge. The best thing to do is to hold it up against your 1×4 while you are still at the store and see how it looks. You’ll use the finish nailer to attach this trim. This is an important step. You don’t want to use a regular old hammer and nails for this task because you will dent the design in your decorative wood. Not cool! So rent or borrow the finish nailer if you don’t have one and enjoy the rush of using a pneumatic power tool!
STEP 4: SINK YOUR NAILS
Now you’ll want to go along and sink any of the nails that the finish nailer didn’t sink, so that the heads are just below the surface of the wood.
STEP 5: FILL, PUTTY AND CAULK
Get your wood filler and fill in the holes where the screws were installed. If you see any funky knots in the wood, you’ll want to fill those with wood filler too. Next you want to use some painter’s putty to fill in the tiny holes where the nails are The smother you can get the surface, the more professional and like-it’s-always-been-there your coat rack will look. Finally, use your caulk and caulk gun to fill in any cracks between the 1×4 and the trim or between the new rack and the door frame.
STEP 6: SAND SMOOTH
Once everything has dried, come behind and gently sand to make sure everything is smooth.
STEP 7: TAPE, PRIME & PAINT
Next you’ll want to tape off the wall around your wood installation and apply a coat of primer. Kilz is good for making sure that any knots in your wood don’t show up later as dark spots. Once that’s dry, apply 2 coats of paint. We chose the same color as our trim but the possibilities there are really endless.
STEP 8: INSTALL THE HOOKS
We found our hooks on eBay. I think we paid $20 for all 4. But there are lots of hooks out there if you get to looking. The web is a great place (but make sure you comparison shop) as is the flea market. Nashvillians, there is a vendor at our monthly flea market that has every kind of iron hook you can imagine – from kid-appropriate to ranch-appropriate to more Victorian like ours. We chose 4 and spaced them equally apart on the board. Will pre-drilled the holes and then just screwed them right in with some brown screws (due to the stellar price, the screws were not included so we just picked those up at Home Depot.
And ta-daaaaaa! A great place to hang coats and wrangle general clutter. How do you like our fancy coat rack, inspired by the much simpler one that greeted us when we bought our house? Those comments make me feel loved, ya know!
Ashblue, a fabulous locally-owned gift shop here in Nashville, sent me a postcard week before last inviting me to check out their annual egg decorating party (thanks, Mary-Michael & Marrah!). But this event far-exceeded the typical egg-dying party for three reasons:
1) the blank canvasses we were handed were OSTRICH eggs
2) the decorating supplies went way beyond the usual dyes and stickers
3) Faith Hill and her daughter were there bedazzling with us!
My mom, mother-in-law and I all attended last Saturday afternoon. We thought we would spend an hour or so … but two and a half hours later we were finally paying our bill and walking out with our prized creations. There were young kids, older kids (some who were serious artists and really making some amazing things), and adult kids like us. All were having an excellent time.
I made this which I was really quite pleased with …
Rubber bands created the curved lines in the center when stretched around a naked egg. I used blue painters tape to tape off the ends while I dyed the center pink. After a trip under the hairdryer and removal of the tape and rubber bands, I found that some of the pink had seeped though to the ends. Although it wasn’t what I was going for, I decided to embrace the marbleized look and I taped off the entire pink center band and used highly-concentrated dye and a paintbrush to accentuate my previous “mistakes”. After some more time under the hair dryer I decided to go a little glam and I added the gold paint and jewels.
My mother in law, Karen, made this …
Since she was flying back to Savannah after her Nashville visit, she assumed that the ostrich egg would not make the trip so she dedicated it to my husband and I with a monogram. The monogram and fun pattern on the back were made with crayon. Here’s the back:
Then she dyed the whole egg in yellow. Next she added some clear glitter that makes the monogram look almost frosted. Then she glued all of those cool little flat, glass pellets into each circle on her crayon’d pattern. Pretty cute huh?
My mom made one too but I don’t have any pics. In bright greens, pinks, and yellows, we decided it was Lily Pulitzer inspired. She’s using it as the centerpiece of her breakfast room table for the Easter season.
I think these are both going to be heirlooms someday. Can’t you just hear future generations fighting over the ostrich eggs that grandma and the great-grandmas painted??
I have NO idea how you might source your own ostrich egg if you wanted to replicate this project for yourself. But Nashvillians, if you are interested, Ashblue has offered this fun activity for the last 5 years. It’s $32 per egg and it’s a ball. You need to reserve your egg in advance … but don’t worry, I’ll remind you next year. And even though Easter is over for 2010, you should run on into Ashblue anyway because they have some great looking stuff. My favorite is probably the DIY succulent gardens … so cute. Get on over there and hoping you and yours had an eggcelent Easter!!
This post isn’t about stealing any ideas or providing a tutorial on every detail of a fun, new project. It’s about carpet and what a difference carpet of the fresh variety can make. I can’t even believe I’m about to post these before photos because they are so completely embarrassing but I’m so pleased with the results that I just must share.
THE STAIRS
When we moved into our home almost exactly a year ago, we planned to purchase new carpet for the stairs and our master bedroom as a month 2 expense. Month 1 was devoted to paint, carpentry, plumbing, tile work, a new deck … you know, all of the stuff that comes after moving into a house that an elderly lady has been living in for over a decade. But when month 2 came around, my husband lost his job. So, we moved into conservation mode and just sucked it up. Here’s what we’ve been living with for a year in on our staircase:
Anytime we entertained, we felt compelled to tell the story of the timing of the losing of the job and yadda yadda. So needless to say, we are both thrilled about this:
Do you love it? We do! It’s called French Wreath and it’s 100% wool. Atlanta and Nashville friends, you can get it at Myers Carpet. The manufacturer is Godfrey Hirst and I’m sure you can get it lots of places. Which I would recommend. Lovely, soft stuff. Makes a great area rug too.
THE MASTER BEDROOM
Just after we closed on our house, we invited a fantastic crew of workers from Atlanta to come live in our master bedroom and work on things, namely, aforementioned paint, carpentry, plumbing, tile work, and a new deck. They were short on work due to the economy and we were happy to have them up. We told them not to worry about the carpet in the master bedroom – paint on it, track in gunk, whatever! It won’t matter since we were planning to replace it the following month. And then conservation mode hit. So this is what we’ve been living with:
See what I mean? Embarrassing. But hey, that’s life and we dealt with it. Check out the replacement. Nothing fancy … but clean and fresh. Glory be!
Ohhhhh for love of fresh carpet. I’ve never loved carpet so much. Yay!
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