My Bathroom--Finally A REAL Picture

Here it is.  My black and white bathroom.  My walk in shower.  My very expensive shower head etc. The black granite counter tops and my cute faucet.  The orchid in the pot is fake but I may put one of the real ones in here on a rotating basis.  But their pots are larger and the space is rather tight.

You can just get a glimpse of the shelf at the bottom (it goes all the way across) where we store folded white towels.  That shelf and the legs that go above the floor made the vanity quite expensive. that's another word for "custom".  And you just see the glass door handle at the far right edge.  The bath is small and I may have to shimmy myself in behind the toilet to get more in the picture.

This is a picture of my master bedroom.  Real time.  This is what I walk thru to get to that shiny bright bathroom.  The closets have doors and they are already holding our clothing.  So, we have to walk around all the paint cans etc to go in and get the day's clothing.  You can see the little black hinges.  And the details of the new doors.  Next time I take pictures, it will be off the inside shelving.

This is a picture of my front entrance hall.  Lights on this morning because we are overcast and still rather cold this morning.  That's the hall bath vanity.  And the light shining into the hall is from the  window beside the new front door.  That's one of the hall closets.  The arched entry into the living room has always been here.  I love the arches.  And you can see the black tile floor (and the painter's paper and tape peeking out of the closets).  Same as in the bathrooms.  I wish there was more light but I am still learning how to take pictures!.  The room to the right is the living room.  The walls are painted (by me, long ago) a distressed Tuscan yellow.

Well, that was exciting.  I pressed the "take a picture" button too hard and too long and got ten or twenty of each.  Then had to delete.  Then forgot how to send them.  It's a learning curve thing. The pictures will get better (they can't get worse) and all can be clicked on to see larger--at least I think they can be.

Now I am going into my picture file and deleting all the pictures that I don't need anymore.  Because now I can just make NEW ones myself!!!!

My Daily Sewing Project With Do It Myself Pictures.

I started with strips of fabric.  Whatever was at hand--no going looking for stuff up in the attic storage area where my fabric is in containers.  Whatever was in the plastic tub.  And whatever Connie sends me.  And now Deb is sending me stuff I order from her Frankenworks Dye Deck.

I wove the strips into a square with loose edges.  Then stitched with floss from the floss nest in the basket.  Then added more strips, more embroidery stitches.  And then, the other night I started cutting up the big 18 by 18 inch square into rectangles and smaller squares.  Then adding borders.  See that blue Connie?  It's all about you!

The embroidery thread nest is still pretty much full.  I buy little baggies of thread at Goodwill.  I think it's from kits no longer wanted or just comes in a knot and then the people at Goodwill stuff a baggie full and paste on a dollar sticker.  I like the bags with mostly blue or pink thread, but there's some dark side colors at the bottom.

And for my newest project?  I took these pictures with my iPhone (the one I don't have a clue how to use) and sent them to myself and here they are.  Know what that means?  Real pictures of my reno.  Coming your way--not from websites or pinterest or anywhere.  Right from here at my house.

This may not sound Earth Shattering To YOU.  But it is for me.  It's been a very long time since the update on my camera downloading program got too technical for me.  Long time since my own pictures were actually "fun".  But these two were FUN!!!  

It's raining today and much, much cooler than it's been in weeks.  No workmen.  No painter.  No tile guy.  Nothing happening except for the double recipe of granola for my daughter.  Oats, coconut, almonds, maple syrup, coconut oil and finished with mini chocolate chips.  There's a small amount of cinnamon and vanilla as well.  The ingredients are in the order of the volume.  So more oats than coconut.  More coconut than almonds.  All toasted together till fragrant.  Well, not the chocolate chips.  They go in when it's all cold (room temp on a cool day)

Finished The Alphabet House.  If "life" hadn't intruded--I would have read it right thru from beginning to end.  One day.  It was that good.

Another Sunday- Plus My Opinions On LLBean Clothing

All these photos are from a very late night visit to someone's Pinterest file on black and white room designs.  Hundreds.  Thousands.  Of Pictures.

Today I made a list of things "to do".   I watered the plants on the back stoop and the large planters in front of the house.  The pale yellow petunias are re-growing after being "pruned" by passing deer. I now have the planters covered up with almost invisible deer netting.  It would seem that the nocturnal  pruning of the petunias by the deer was a "good thing" and now they are thicker, more flower buds and happier.  Who knew?

I did my watering before 10am.  By 11 am, it's too hot and humid for me out there.  Breathing is harder.  My next opportunity for outdoor things will be around 4 pm.  I have things to plant in the garden.  To say it's been a difficult summer so far.......well, that's an understatement.

I am reading a real "page turner" right now.  The Alphabet House by Jussi Adler-Olsen.  He has also written the Department Q novels which begin with the Keeper Of Lost Causes.  Alphabet House is a dark thriller.  The Dept Q books have some hilarity to them and of course a murder to solve with Carl, Assad and Rose in the basement of the police building next to the boiler room.  Alphabet House is set near the end of WW2 in a Nazi mental hospital, where two British pilots are pretending to be crazy while trying to find a way to escape.

I also found a few more jars of expired foods in the pantry closet.  One item from 2009.  A can of chocolate fudge cake frosting.  I am sure it's still "good enough" to eat.  But we won't.  Some things have too many chemical components to ever go bad.

I have been embroidering on a woven piece for a few weeks now.  Having no plans for it but needing something to do during the long days of not being able to go outside.  A few nights ago, I started cutting it up, then adding borders to the cut portion.  I intend to find out how to take pictures with my phone and send them to myself and then move the pictures from email to my picture file.  Then I can show you things.  Like my floors.  Like my bathroom.  Like my embroidery.

I did sew the new "old" buttons to my shirt.  I also removed the labels and tags from the neckline. I then removed the extra button from one Flax shirt and used it on another Flax shirt that had lost two of it's buttons (they cracked in half).  Does Flax even exist anymore?  Flax used "natural" buttons on it's clothing.  Mostly Flax clothes are linen and after a few years of machine washing are soft and really lovely to wear.  I now dry them in the dryer or let them dry on hangers.  I refuse to iron linen anymore. I wear it wrinkled.  Because who cares anymore????

The new Perfect Pants Cropped pant from Bean is perfect.  Some of the pants I would try on at the store had legs in different lengths etc.  And even in one size--all different kinds of fit.  Too big, too small, too long, too short, too wide, too narrow etc.  At the time (many many years ago 2006?) I had wanted to buy two pair of the cropped style pant.  Tried on every pair in the store in my size.  Only ONE fit me properly.  So I had only the one. As Fate would have it.....this new (from Goodwill) cropped pant fits exactly like the 2006 one.  It's like a miracle.

When I worked at Bean ( remember that?) I purchased all the Perfect Black Pants in the employee store in my size for 20 cents each.  Figuring I would keep the ones that fit me and give the others away.  Guess how many pair fit me??  Zero.  I had better luck with the corduroy pants.  About 25% of them fit me correctly.  The many linen camp shirts I bought cost me $2 and 50% of them were given away or sent off to Goodwill because they didn't fit.  Sleeves too tight, body of the shirt too skimpy, sleeve cut too short etc. and then there were the darts.

Camp shirts aren't supposed to have darts. Anyway, the darts were rarely in places a woman of my age would need the darts to be.  For awhile there, I tried to unsew the darts and resew the side seams.  But the new (cheap) linen shredded easily and once I knew how transparent the new linen was....I gave up buying any newly made shirts.  Now I only buy the ones without darts.  Antique ones. At Goodwill.  Really hard to find in XL or 1X.  But once every two or three years, I find one.

The other really amazing thing about that first pair of Cropped Perfect Pant is that I have worn those  XL (reg) cropped pants when I weighed my maximum, my minimum and all the weights inbetween from the early 2000's to 2017.  And they always fit exactly the same.  Perfectly.  Of course they are no longer black.  And they have holes and bleach spots on them.  But I love them.

If....I Had Grandchildren

I love everything about this room.  The carpet is gorgeous--the star of the shop so to speak.

I went out for the first time today......to the grocery store at around 4pm.  The dog and I stayed home together all day.  G had a 4 hour mowing job and the painter and the drywall guy were here and I couldn't leave the dog here with them.  Riley has these panic attacks.  Ringing the bell on the back door (it's way too hot and humid--he wouldn't be able to breathe if we let him out) and he pants and whimpers and acts so odd. I give him Benadryl and turn on the tv and talk.  And eventually (just like G) the dog falls asleep.

The grocery was fun.  Bagels, yogurt, milk, cereal, potato chips and ham, turkey and swiss cheese for G to roll up into a bread-less lunch.  I didn't buy anything extra.  And I saw a very cute three month old baby.  Giggling because he had burped.  Very amused by himself.  Fat cheeks, big smile and bare feet with little toes like kernels of corn.  I missed having grand babies.

I had intended to sew new buttons onto my shirt.  Blouse.  Whatever it is called these days.  New, antique buttons.  With embroidery floss.  The buttons are very odd little bone colored discs with two very large unevenly shaped holes.  They came out of an old canning jar filled with odd, old buttons. Looks like I may have purchased it at an antiques show.  When I did that sort of thing.

I  am thinking of cutting a foot or more off two long dresses and hemming them to make dresses that end just under the knee.  Wondering if I can manage to do that.  In the summer I think a dress would be very cool and breezy to wear.  I looked at Goodwill.  No pretty summer dresses in my size.
I see everyone wearing pretty summer dresses and want to stop them and ask "where did you buy that?"  But I don't.

Well, it's time to go get ice cream.