Foo and Poo's Book Club

I just had to put this in print (or pixels) since we had such a struggle making a decision. My friend (Poo) and I are starting our own little book club and our first reading will be George Orwell's 1949 novel,  '1984'.

We've only been talking about it for the past couple of months, so it's about time we committed to something. Other choices on the table were, The Count of Monte Cristo, Great Expectations, Sanditon (Jane Austen's last incomplete novel), or Our Mutual Friend. We kept nixing each other's choices for various reasons and finally settled on this one. It was something that both of us have wanted to read anyway. Now we definitely can't change our minds again. It's written in stone!....or pixels, or bytes.

Wide Open Spaces

Square footage. It's a hot commodity and I finally feel like I'm luxuriating in it. 

You see, I moved from a very small place. I mean S-M-ALLLLL. A 1920's townhouse in a little historic village.  Very charming, but less than 750 sq ft. Depending on where you live in the world, that could be considered livin' large or downright claustrophobic. To me? It became claustrophobic in the past couple years.

Moving into my new place, I have only gained a little over 100 square feet of space, but it is a better layout, so I feel like I've gained one thousand square feet! In my old place, I could literally stand in the middle of my living room, stretch my arms out and that would be the approximate floor space between my couch and the fire place...and I have about a 5 foot 6 inch wing span. Not very conducive to  exercise videos, that's for sure. There was no "grapevine" going on there. 

But now? I come home from work and sprawl out on all that acreage and it feels a-mazing.

Look at all that emptiness.

I love it.

I will say, though, that I don't have a lot of wall space, so I went with the gallery style of late in the living room.

All the artwork on the wall is painted, cross stitched or photographed by me, except the painting on the top row directly in the middle (thrift store acquisition) and the lithograph directly to it's left (gift from my big sister by the amazing artist, Lebadang).

Now, let me go lay on that big empty space and watch some T.V.

Vintage Finds

Here are just a few things I've found while antiquing this year.

I never had space for a china cabinet in my old place (more on that in a later post) so I was excited to shop for one for my new place.

It's actually got a stamp on the back, "R.R. Jones", which is a local furniture store that has been around here since long before I was even born. I love this cabinet. It's just the right size. I actually like this finish and don't want to paint the outside but I am considering whether or not I would like to paint the inside. We'll see.

(Oh, and pay no attention to that dining chair. My Dad bought those when I was a little kid, put them together himself and stained them. See, I told you he loved stain. Well, I have four of those chairs and three of them I painted a rich burgundy color years ago [you can just see a bit of one in the bottom right corner]. Then I ran out of steam and never painted this last one. Just another job to add to my list.)

My Mom bought this cute little wicker/bamboo tray for me at an antique fair we went to this weekend in Williamsburg, VA. Thanks, Mom! It makes me very happy to see it with all my tchotchkes (yes, I looked up that spelling) on it. Oh! And I got that pretty embroidered linen underneath it at another antique store a few months ago.

I bought myself these last two pretty in pinks at the same fair:

Of course, I provided my own succulents. Hopefully I won't kill them since they don't need to be watered regularly. Fingers crossed on that.

And this last blue scalloped pretty is made by Hull Pottery. I have one other find from them, an aqua gravy boat (minus its bottom dish) that I found last year or so. I love there stuff!

And last and completely unrelated, I leave you with this nice westward view outside my office window as I typed this last night. I never could see much out my office window in my old place, so this is yet another little thing that makes me happy. It really doesn't take much, though.

sigh.....

My Blue Heaven

Remember this bookcase my Pop was making for me?

Check it out now:

sorry, these last two photos are from my crappy cell phone.

These are stained, not painted. Dad has a physical and psychological aversion to painted wood. He loves stain, though, so this made us both happy. He can still see his lovely wood grain and I have COLOR!

Thanks Dad!!