Looking Forward to a New Year

Love and Best Wishes to You All  ♥

The Third Day of the Year

'A tranquil but determined start to the new year here.  I had a good bit of time off from work these past few weeks, and I used a lot of it to get some things organized and reorganized in this little apartment.  I have long thought of home-care and decorating and what I call puttering around--fluffing up the throw pillows, changing out the tablecloth, adding the fresh flowers to canning jars, hanging the new-old paintings and embroidered pieces sooner rather than later, refolding the granny square afghans on the backs of the chairs, taking oranges out of their mesh bag and adding them to the green stoneware bowl, even just putting the dishes back where they belong and arranging them neatly on their shelves--as hobbies or pastimes or interests, but I have realized this past month that for me, these little activities are actually a form of self-care.  Eureka!  When we see a woman who has made the extra effort to dress especially nicely, paint her nails, look out for her health and fitness, or [insert-your-own-examples], we think "There is someone who values herself and makes the time to take good care of herself," and I realize now that similarly, when my home is orderly and sweet and cheerful, I feel those things about myself.  When my home is orderly and sweet and cheerful, I feel those things about myself.  Ahhhh!  All the little "puttering around" tasks, then, aren't really chores at all, then, just as I would no longer think of them as one of my hobbies either.  I see now that they're more vital for me than that.  These are ways I take care of myself, I have just learned at 40-and-a-half-years-old:  I go for long walks, I take my vitamins, I try to eat and drink well, I use sunscreen year-round, I pray, I read, I cuddle with Stuffed, I show my love to my loves ones, I slather on lotion, I rest when needed, and I keep an organized and inviting home.  

On that front, I have tackled the bathroom cupboard--and after almost seven years of living here, have wrestled it into submission.  It is about seven feet tall and its three shelves are two feet deep but only twelve inches wide.  Without the shelves, it would be the perfectly-proportioned space to store a broom and mop, but . . .I think I've finally figured it out.  And now hanging vertically on the inside of its door are three narrow cork bulletin boards, my work-schedule, a list of that month's birthdays and other need-to-send-a-card-or-otherwise-mark-a-special-day occasions, a small pink dry-erase board I'm using as my weekly food diary, a basket for pens and dry-erase markers, Stuffed's litter-scoop, a dust pan and broom, and a six-inch-wide calendar I use to record my daily walks.  'A good use now, and better late than never, of that seven-foot tall-but-only-twelve-inch-wide door too.  Take that, Ill-Proportioned Closet.  That alone has made home and life feel so much tidier.  It's What-I-Need-to-Remember Central, and it's a breath of fresh air for this lifelong list-maker:  I have it all in one spot now but tucked away on the back of the door so it doesn't "read" as clutter.  That's been just one improvement lately.  And now that I actually like the cupboard, I want to doll it up even more by papering the small wall-spaces inside the cupboard. . .give it a little more love.  Just like that, it's become a time-saver, a better use of space, and features a door I actually enjoy opening and seeing what's behind.  I myself feel so much more on top of things even with this one project, is the point.  And now that I have a better perspective on it all, I look forward to taking on everything else that's on my around-the-apartment to-do list.  Those to-do items no longer feel like problems or chores ahead of me, but instead opportunities and possibilities.  How good this all feels after watching everything fall apart around here the first seven months with this new job and new work schedule!  Ohhhhh, I love learning.  I love figuring it out.  Life already feels so much better, and 2018 is looking so much brighter.  ♥

Today's Pre-Christmas-Tree Project: Patchwork Walls

After being bothered year after year by the bare wall behind-and-beside the mantel--and that is always behind our Christmas tree in pictures--I finally figured out what I wanted to do with it:  patchwork, of course--and set to work.  

I went back and forth about it for awhile this morning but decided just to use dabs of hot glue to hang the fabric pieces since I've already told the apartment's building manager I'll fix up the walls with a fresh coat of paint whenever the day comes to move out.  If I have to spackle/patch a few more spots before repainting, I'll live.  Scrap by scrap this morning, then, the narrow strip to at least one side of the mantel was transformed.  The rest will have to wait until tomorrow, but ooh la la, even this much just SENDS me.  :)

Below is what it looked like pre-Christmas tree last year. 

The green floral wall is only about three feet wide, and the formerly-bare one a little over two feet.  After Christmas, this tiny corner will become my writing corner.  I've already chosen a (black) corner-desk, since the two desks I've inherited from grandparents are both still at my parents' house and neither would fit into this little apartment anyway, and I have a few other things tucked away in the bedroom closet to add to my writing spot once it's all set up.  Before that, though, it'll be the corner for the tree. 

By tomorrow. . . !

And between this and the patchwork lampshade I dolled-up in September, I'll have used almost my entire stash of saved fabric pieces, which is a most satisfying little accomplishment.  It annoys me to have bags of things like that sitting around or squirreled away, especially in such a small home.  Stuffed approves. 

Ah, home! 

Love, love, love!  And soon, there will be a Christmas tree and twinkling lights in this picture--All the better.  ♥

Stop the World

Ah!  I woke up wishing I could stay home today instead of trudging off to work, and the feeling hasn't eased-up as the day's progressed.  I'm off the next two days, though, so here's to hanging in there this evening--and to having a job in the first place.  Tomorrow and Thursday will find me--when I'm not outside admiring leaves, at least--in this chair with this cat, so help me!     
 

Mantel Skirt

A year after finding the right paint color for the mantel, I've finished dolling it up by attaching a skirt to the bottom.  The pink gingham-with-roses fabric is a curtain valance I found at Goodwill about six years ago for a dollar and bought knowing I'd find a use for it someday.  Someday arrived a few weeks ago when I realized this would make the perfect finishing touch for the mantel.  Since I couldn't bear to cut into the material, I just slipped a tension rod through the opening at the top and am letting the extra length drape onto the floor at the bottom.  I now keep my boxes of note cards, holiday cards, stationery, and stickers in the space behind the curtain.  (The Cat in the Hat is the school's next surprise delivery.  He was finally packed away yesterday afternoon.)  The pink skirt ties the white wood and the pink wall together better, and the mantel looks cozier now than it did pre-skirt in the two pictures below. 

And the roses in the skirt match the wooden rose applique above it.  ♥

 And I am much happier now that that's all figured-out.  The "mantel project" still requires--in my mind--some twinkle lights and a hooked rug, and I want to add a  red heart here somewhere too, and I'm thinking about extending the fabric "wallpaper" (in another pattern) to either side of the pink yardstick "borders" so the bare wall won't be showing at all, BUT the skirt, at least, gets me one step closer to the vision I have for this little wall. 

Ah!  The pure contentment of simply puttering around one's home like this!  ♥

Home Sweet Apartment ~ in Pink

Since bringing back from my parents' house the mantel my dad built for me and Mike last April, I've been painting it and fixing up the things that will surround it.  My treasured old "Home Sweet Apartment" needlepoint is the first piece I've revamped for the mantel-wall.  It was one of my very first eBay finds back in 2001, that most-miserable of years, and even though--or maybe especially because--I was unexpectedly living with my parents again at the time, I was thrilled when mine was the winning bid:  This vintage sampler, like a Field of Dreams-type "If-you-find-the-decorations-for-it-the-new-home-will-come" talisman,  gave me something concrete to work toward as a frustrated twenty-four-year-old.  

In the summer of 2002 when I finally had my first all-to-myself-with-no-roommates apartment, I delighted in unpacking the needlepoint and dolling it up, and what a year before had arrived pine green and maroon with an unfinished wooden frame became pink and aqua to match the little dining nook in my new place.  

"Home Sweet Apartment" behind me as I would sit in the corner seat under it there and work on school work for my second Masters program.  "Home Sweet Apartment" beside my newly-ex-boyfriend and I as we sat across from each other at this vintage tablecloth-clad table eating bowls of my homemade soup and awkwardly figuring out our post-breakup friendship.  "Home Sweet Apartment" above me as I bawled my heart out in this pink-dotted chair the following New Year's night after realizing we weren't ready to be "just friends" just yet and that we might never be able to in this lifetime.  The sampler over me and my mom when she showed up on a whim with two chocolate muffins from the bakery and listened as I made us tea and told her all about it.  The sampler over a whole bunch of us when I hosted both my first family dinner and first birthday party and relearned that as long as I had love to give--and gave it--I wasn't down for the count.  Before I moved out of this first "all mine" apartment, a former professor joined me for cookies and lemonade under the needlepoint and commented that I was good at making people feel welcome.  "Hospitality is your thing, isn't it," he thoughtfully noted.  And that's when "Home Sweet Apartment" really clicked for me:  I really had created a home here, not just filled and decorated a rented space. 

The pink and aqua needlepoint became a more subdued and not-very-Val-like red and yellow in 2007, so as not to overwhelm Mike with my pink-and-rainbow-loving tendencies.  Our studio apartment was so tiny, it was hard to do any real decorating in it at all, so the yellow and red actually didn't bother me too much.  When you can roll out of bed in your home-sweet-apartment and land on the kitchen floor, or open the bathroom door while sitting at the dinner table, the color combination of a sampler's matte and frame isn't your biggest homemaking concern.  Besides, the sweet sampler watched over me and Mike, this time hanging from the apartment's built-in mantel, during all our goings-on for four years the same as it had when it had been pink and aqua for me before.  Home was still love-filled and our favorite place.  Be it ever so humble, you know.   

Today it became pink again, though, and I don't see it changing after this.  It finally looks just right to me.  I covered the yellow matte with the dotted pink upholstery fabric that I had used to cover the captain chairs in my little circa-2002 pink and aqua corner.  I repainted the red frame black.  And I removed the glass-front since I don't trust this apartment's wall to hold its weight.  While I continue painting the mantel and fixing up the wall around it, at least this much is done.  That I figured out a way to incorporate the old chair fabric makes me especially happy.  

"Lighten up, Val--It's a sampler," I know, but when I look at it, I remember the journey it's accompanied me on and think of it as a witness to the past twelve years.  When Mike and I eventually move on from renting, I will pass it on to its next owners with a prayer for their own resilience and contented refuge in home.  

Sweet, indeed.  ♥