What's going on around MS&R

What's going on around MS&R's headquarters:
We (I) did a quick, guerrilla style make-over of the worlds grossest bathroom (my opinion, not verified by Guinness). The post is in progress and is almost as long as War and Peace. I guess it needs some editing.

We're (I'm) selling again on Ebay. Right now I have some of my Grandpa's fishing gear, offered in lots. I managed to grab it from my Uncles' barn the last time I visited, & am selling it on his behalf. I made the fishing montage for the auction listing and is quite the timeline.

The Etsy shop should reopen soon as well.

Whitewashed

I love the look of exposed beams, but sometimes (such as when you have 7 foot ceilings)  a coat of whitewash is preferred.

Here are some of my favorite examples:

here

here

herehttp://www.dustjacket-attic.com/2012/05/apartment-in-madrid.html

here

A slight detour

We are adding to the fold. When my dad died in 2012, Mom wasn't sure where she wanted to live. She is less than two miles away in a condo they had purchased only two years before he died, but it doesn't feel like home and she is lonely there. Two miles might be too close for some mothers and adult daughters, but for us  it is too far when the satellite remote isn't working, the toilet is leaking, or someone has locked themselves out. My house is too small & we considered selling both homes to buy something together, but there is nothing suitable in our area. Plus, we really love the house and neighborhood. Instead, we've decided to sell her condo, and then launch a remaking of this little abode.

One of the greatest challenges will be creating a comfortable, accessible, space for Mom to live while maintaining the charm of an antique cape. It's a big challenge, but I think we can do this. 

We now return to the regularly scheduled program

No posts for  a year!

Not because I haven’t done anything—I've been busy with project after project and fall into bed exhausted every night. It’s because in my world of flexible design, projects seem to morph and mutate and few come to a solid, photograph-able, post-worthy end.

Do your projects ever do that?

At least there were two projects that made the cut: Terrariums for Christmas presents

 In case you're wondering, I meant to put Frodo and Gandalf outside Sam's house, because everyone knows Bilbos' door is green, Sam's is yellow. Duh.  Also, apparently moss doesn't require a lot of soil, so the 4 inches of base was a bit redundant. I should know that, but plants don't survive long in my care.

Garden inspiration

My favorite gardens feel natural and wild, filled with lush greenery, moss, aged and weathered stones, and have little to mow.

this is my neighbor's front yard

source

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and more, on Pintrest

on ice

We are having a couple of days of thunderstorms so are staying in and snuggling on the sofa. This dog is super high strung but every so often she lets herself chill.  

Digging a hole 2.0

We dug up the remainder of the bricks and underneath found what is most likely an old well that had been filled in and used as a rubbish dump. The curved blocks are granite and would be quite attractive in the yard. I'm tempted to keep digging, but we are preparing to leave soon for a lengthy summer adventure and it would be unwise to leave an unattended, gaping hole. For now we will fill it in and wait for the right time.

Digging a hole

We tried to garden today, just Olive and I. I haven’t gardened in a few years and need to re-assert dominance over the invasive plants currently having a party in the back yard.  Gardening as someone with SLE has a couple of challenges. First, we are all basically allergic to sun exposure.  That means wearing 100 SPF, long sleeves and big floppy hats. It also helps to work in the early morning or late afternoon, to avoid the strongest rays.  The other challenge is stamina so projects need to broken into 1hour pieces. 

This short work window means cutting the project list to the most essential, so here are my top 3:

• Build stone or brick pathways and a patio area large enough to set out the Brown Jordan furniture inherited when my parents moved.
•  Plant lots of native plants and flowers to create a wild meadow look—and minimize the need to mow.
• Put out containers to grow some veggies. I’m hoping I can move them with the sun and maybe have tomatoes by late summer.

We started to dig a deep hole in order to bury the huge pile of dandelion carcasses pulled up this week.  The plan was to bury them too deep to germinate and then to transplant day lilies on top of that mess, because daylilies seem be able to grow anywhere. But around here, plans have a way of morphing into never ending projects. I picked a spot where the leaves have piled up and nothing seems to grow there but bumblebees and nightshade.  Digging is Olive’s favorite sport. If you could see her face you would see she is grinning gleefully.

Just a few shovelfuls and we hit brick.  This is the second house I’ve lived where a previous owner has buried bricks in the yard. I suspect our missing chimneys are buried out here somewhere and thought I had found part of one but these aren’t chimney bricks, plus they’re stacked five high, and form a circle.

Aren't they lovely? I wonder how many other people have a patio buried in their yard?

I don’t write about my personal style, because I don’t have any. Wait, someone who loves clothing as much as I surely must put time and effort into dressing to thrill, right? No. In fact getting dressed is such a challenge I once showed up for work wearing two different shoes. My first job in sales was at Bonwit Teller and the store would organize fashion shows to demonstrate how we should dress to properly represent the Bonwit image. These shows were like a live “Glamour Do” and “Glamour Don’t” page with both girls on the cat walk at the same time. Sort of like Goofus and Gallant of the runway. The employees were the models and once I was asked to participate. I was picked to wear a nice pastel skirt suit, and my “don’t” counterpart wore one of my typical outfits—including a pair of self made oversized earrings they had borrowed from me, and that I considered part of my ‘look’.What? You thought girl bullying stopped at graduation? You thought wrong.

I thought there was something wrong with me, until I found this post on Fashion Incubator.

“You don’t know this yet so I may as well tell you; I don’t like clothes. For the most part. Actually, I don’t like going through the bother of acquiring them via shopping or sewing. I’d rather prefer that they grew on bushes and one could snag what’s needed in passing. The clothing I like best are items that miraculously appear. A friend mailed me a pair of cover-alls that he found in his dumpster and I wore them for years. Anyway, while my views are extreme, you’ll find that garment industry people largely do not care about clothes. We are the first to cheerfully agree that we are the worst dressers. There is a reason (!) that some design houses semi-dictate the wearing of either all white or all black. It’s because the designer knows we’re such losers taste-wise, that we need some sort of fashion guidance. I swear. All of the garment industry people are laughing themselves sick at this point because they can’t believe I had the nerve to say that. I wish you could hear them.”

I read this, laughed out loud, and felt a bit less like a misfit. 

The vortex:

 The search function in Ancestry.com is a quick way to save source citations to your tree, but the system is not designed for quick and easy browsing, or in-depth reading of histories. Plus, the search results are often hit and miss. Luckily, many of the databases on Ancestry are compiled using books available in the public domain and can be found online.  One of my favorite places to find research materials is the internet archive: Archive.org. 

I usually end up at the Archive after getting frustrated with the slow loading images on Ancestry, so I look first for the specific title in the texts section.  That way I can search the document text, or download a copy to browse through later. I also browse other books with the same subject, author or publisher, just in case. I also recommend searching various related key words, and exploring titles by subject. Searches for the state and county are a good place to start. If that brings too many results, add the name of the town. If your ancestor was involved in one of the early wars, there are many books of muster rolls, regimental histories, and even books of miscellaneous records and memos.  Other records can be found in probate records, abstracts of wills, registers of birth, and passenger lists. All available on the Archive.

At this point you may realize you have 20 tabs open and you've downloaded 4 gigabytes of DAR journals.You're hooked. Since your day is already shot you may as well give up any pretense of work and dive into the Military service records, and pension applications. All 5269 books of them.  And stop by the moving images section to watch some early health or marketing films, Lego stop motion movies, even the first kiss ever filmed. Or stream the ever popular Grateful Dead bootleg concert recordings. Whatever piques your interest, there will be something for you to enjoy. Best of all, the site is free, and more stuff is constantly being added, so there is always something new to read or look at.