Complete Setting

This is a picture the left hand built-in. You can see a house with an egg and a raven on it, behind that is a raven siting on an eight-ball. These are pieces that I picked up last year to commemorate our new home and family. They are very simplistic shapes that speak volumes about the silhouette and lines of real ravens. The work is done by Mark Orr at his Michigan studio, Scavenger Art.

I had the great fortune of meeting Mark at the American Craft Council’s Baltimore show. Mark is very friendly and has a great sense of humor. This sense of humor really reflects in the pieces that he creates. Like the birds on most of his pieces, much of his larger pieces are made with unique and interesting finds.

There is one murder of ravens very near our house and we get the occasional visitor to our house. The ravens and crows are actually all over SF and so I thought Mark’s work was perfect for our new house.

Next to these pieces is an earthenware plate, that I made myself, filled with a collection of pine-cones. The real ones are from walks with my son. Exploring our new neighborhood, he would always find a pine cone and want to carry it. They started to pile up and the more they did, the more I liked the look of them. I added silvered glass pine-cones that I found at Target. The silver is a duller antiqued look and I love the way it picks up soft light amongst the wood. There are also a few metal pine-cones that I found at a great design shop in the Castro. Given is not only a cute shop but it also happens to be the site of Harvey Milk’s camera shop. The photo in the back was taken by my partner. He has a great eye for shadow and form. I thought that a picture of a pine tree was a perfect back drop for this display.

I wanted to show you some of the other projects we are working on, while not working on the bathroom. The majority of our projects this year are not really glamorous. We will be replacing the roof and sky light sometime during the summer. We haven’t had any leaks anywhere yet but we do know that they are more than a decade old.

The other big project we have is to replace all of the stucco on the front of the house. If you have ever been to San Francisco, you know that we have a sea of stucco. There isn’t a wall that we haven’t improved with the monotony of stucco finishes. We texture it, color it and pile it high. Can you see where I’m going with this. Stucco is not the same as adobe. Adobe is a specific finish that is appropriate to a specific style.

San Francisco’s love affair has been around for years and in all fairness there is a valid reason to use. When a house shakes down on you wood and plaster are much better than brick or stone. I know, the things we sacrifice for safety. Unfortunately decades ago when our house was built nobody realized that stucco absorbed moisture but didn’t always dry out completely. Moisture + plaster = rot. We’re going to add some features to the house when we do the replastering: new light fixtures, handrail for the stairs, and resealing the steps, outlet for decorations. Yes we have priorities. Halloween is coming and we have big plans!

Here is a picture of the living room when we moved in. The color was drab and unfortunately there were holes in the walls from screws and bolts. I couldn’t live with this room so it got a coat of paint. I’m not married to this shade, it may have to change to match something other feature, but it is really a comfortable color for me. I love being in this room now. We’re going to use this room to entertain in and to show off our slowly growing art collection. I like things that are in contrast so why not create a gallery space that is very inviting and relaxing. LOL

Here is the chair that I was looking at but once we saw it we realized that the scale was all wrong. We are looking for chairs that are about 25″ - 28″ wide to keep a good flow around the room.

Jennifer asked for some close ups of the mirror and here they are.

Only because I posted before I read the comments. Jennifer over at DesignHole asked about changing out the hardware on the cabinet.  I don’t want to confuse anyone so we’ll do the hardware next Jennifer. I promise! If you haven’t read her blog, go check it out now.  Full of great decorating ideas and tons of fabulous chairs.

Ok the holidays are over and the decorations are put away.  There are no more excuses to not finishing the bathroom.

We still need to decide on wall color.  Here are some shots from the room and for those who have pantone books I’ve matched up some of the shades of blue.  There are 4 shades in this room and surprisingly they work fairly well.

Tiles and sink= pantone 290C for the lighter color and the closest I could get for the darker speckles is 284C.

The blue in the showercurtain is almost exact on Pantone 644C.

The stripes in the towell are a bit grayer than 644C.

What are your ideas of color in this room?  Should I keep it white?  Paint it blue?  Paint it yellow?  Blue & yellow stripes?  Polk-a-dots or plaid?  Although if plaid  wins someone owes me a big bottle of Gin.  That’s the only way I can imagine painting plaid without going crazy.

There is also the attached frame around the mirror to consider.  It is currently the same white as the walls.  Is it a feature or a distraction?  I have no idea how it is attached, only that it is tight.

Let me know if you want pictures or close ups of anything.  Give me your ideas this coming week and then we’ll take a vote. Pose questions to each other?  Get the dialogue going.

Finally after the many trips to the local stores and finally ordering it online, the accesories have arrived! They are actually cute.  Here is a picture of the room as of now.  I’m waiting for the towels, another challenge to aquire, but they should be here soon.  Is it personal or does everything get discontinued as soon as you want it?

I know that I am way behind and haven’t been good at posting.  Thank you for keeping with me.  Here is a picture of the room sans towels.  Tell me what you think and what colors you suggest for the walls.

Well not exactly lost but it has been crazy with house guests, one is gone and a new one is on the way. I’ve not even had a chance to decorate for christmas and our party is 6 days away! I didn’t mean to ignore this or anything else but by the end of the day I just didn’t have any brain left to write. Of course it doesn’t help when I do things like this window ledge. It started out as a simple job of scraping a spot about 2 inches and sanding it so that I could paint it. Needless to say it didn’t end up there.

We have new windows in two of the rooms and I absolutely love them. They are what started me on this scraping process. I was just going to paint the raw wood on the window trim but it is turning into a much bigger project. The wood underneath is in good shape but not attractive enough to leave raw. We had really hoped it was beautiful redwood so that we could peel the entire room and get a strong arts and craft look in there. The white trim is beautiful and we’ll be happy with it but would have loved the raw wood. There is plenty of wood in the house and even one more spot for a happy surprise which I’ll save for another post.

I need to do some trim work in Little Man’s room but here is the color of his walls. I’m doing a Monkey theme or to be more exact “No More Monkeys Jumping On The Bed.” I need to either stencil or have an artist paint that phrase on the wall over his bed. I have plans to make a hanging sculpture for over the bed with stuffed monkeys on coils. We’ll see how that goes and I’ll post pictures if it comes out. For now I just need to get curtains up. I have the fabric for valances with monkeys on vines but I need to find some nice heavy blue and white fabric for the curtains. I want something heavy to keep the light out in the mornings. It means an extra 15 minutes of sleep! LOL

Alright the voting is closed, a little late but hey this house won’t paint itself.  It was a heated race between Shimmer Blue and Grand Stripe but the Stripes won out by one vote.  For those of you concerned we wash our towels every week and we use Oxy stuff to keep them white.  Besides I have to get the white in while Little Man is still small enough, once he is a teenager there won’t be white towels for a long time.

I think that I should order the towels after we decide the room color. It would probably look best if the stripe were either a contrast or a match to the wall color so I’ll need to see what you decide to do here.

Thanks for all of the great comments.  Now I need to work on the wall colors.  Maybe I should ask everyone who has an idea to write a guest post describing what they think I should do: color, patterns, treatments, decals, etc.. whatever your idea is.  Then afterwards we can vote on the ideas.  Are there enough people interested in writing their ideas?  With the Thanksgiving tomorrow I won’t be doing anything this weekend but if you can let me know if you’d be interested in writing an idea let me know before Tuesday.  It doesn’t have to be anything long, just a paragraph or two describing what you think the walls should look like. Don’t worry about exact colors if you want it matched to something in the room already for example to match it to the yellow of the ducks in the curtains, then I can do that.

I got some great ideas from a couple of readers so now is the time for you to chose. Again give me some feedback. The old towels that we have will be donated to either our local SPCA or to one of the local organizations working on the Bay oil spill. They definitely won’t go to waste.

I’d like to make this blog more enjoyable and increase my readership. What would you like to hear about? Does anyone want to do guest blogging about decorating, crafts, etc…?

Without further ado here are your nominations.

Andrea Blue

Chromatic Stripe

Duckies

Grand Stripe

Prince

Tommy Blue

Shimmer Blue

Classic

Sea Shells

Tommy Yellow

Blue Polk Dots

Turkish White & Blue

Jacquard Dots

Those are your nominees. Give me your vote and your feedback on the selections. I’m working on some photographs for the wall. Keep your fingers crossed.

OK the blue ducks have it.  Although barely and I’m not sure what to do about a cup.  Yondalla suggested dixie cups but I’m not sure I can do it.  Lots of paper that ends up in the composting bin.  I already have a trash can and recycling container under the sink.

I’ll be ordering the tooth brush holder, the soap dispenser and the tissue box.  I don’t have room for a trash can out on the floor and we don’t use bar soap.

Next week we need to get towels. In order to get more input I’m asking you my faithful readers, yes all six of you, to submit a suggestion for a towel.  They can be plain, embellished, patterned, whatever you think will look best.  I only ask that you consider that they will be used.  We don’t have things that we don’t use.  The other is no velour.  No offense to those who like it but ugg.  That is definitely not the feeling for me.  Submit a picture (or link), where I can buy it from and what you like about it by an email.  Don’t put it in the comments because I won’t attach names on the voting post.

Maybe I should have a prize for the person who suggested the winning towels?  Anyone want to win a baby blue clam shell sink?  LOL