I am surprised I haven’t written about this before, but I love practical Christmas gifts. While some might open a present of socks and groan, I’m like, “Socks? Sign me up!” Here is the funky pair of Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation socks Eldest Son and his partner got me this year for Christmas. They picked this particular pair because they know of my penchant for circles. What makes a gift practical in my eyes is…
Other than painting the walls of rooms, I haven’t done any fine art painting in ages, probably decades. Prior to Christmas, at a work party, staff had the opportunity to paint a winter scene on a bottle. While I’ve been aware of these commercial group painting sessions, I’ve never taken part in any of them. Art classes in high school and college don’t count here because students all work on their own projects. In these…
Painting in the new house continues. A couple of weekends ago, we decided to erase the gray in the small first-floor bathroom, which is just a half-bath. You could call it a powder room if anyone used powder in there, but we don’t. There’s white wainscoting in the bathroom and a white cabinet, which we quite liked. We wanted to cheer up the bathroom, so we picked a bright yellow. Because the bathroom is so…
I recently returned from a family vacation to Grand Marais, Minnesota. Grand Marais is one of the small towns on what is affectionately known as the “North Shore,” which runs along the northwestern edge of Lake Superior. Daughter had reserved a couple of cabins at the Croftville Road Cottages just north of Grand Marais, which served as our base camp during our stay. The cabins were directly above the shore, with paths down to the…
Hubby and I put the (almost) finishing touches on the dining room yesterday. All the walls were gray, gray, gray, and the floor was a darker gray. We wanted to carry our blue theme from the living room into the dining room without making it matchy-matchy. When we were searching for a house, we knew we needed a couple of large walls, one for a giant mid-century room divider and one for a giant iceberg.…