hellooo ~ this & that

Hello and happy July! I recently finished repainting the little table on the porch. I've this table for at least 30 years - a cast off from a neighbor. It's been several colors. The last few years it was yellow and it was fading and peeling. I was tired of the yellow anyway.

The Chicago area has been hit hard with the smoke from the Canada wildfires. I took this photo last week, when the sun was trying to peek out through the haze right before sunset. That was the day we had the worst air quality in the world.

My little veggie garden is doing great. There's two tomato plants on the left, then red onions, and purple beauty bell pepper. 

Exciting to see the first fruits.

This beautiful purple flowered perennial has turned out to be one of my favorites. It's in the geranium family (geranium pratense); more commonly known as Meadow Cranesbill. I purchased this plant at least 25 years ago with my then next-door neighbor, Thanam. She had recently moved here from Malaysia and didn't have a car. I took her to the garden center with me and we each bought one of these plants. For some reason, she thought the name of this plant was Heavenly Death. That's what she always called it. Did it have that name on the plant tag? I don't remember. I've Googled to see if any variety of Meadow Cranesbill has this name and don't come up with anything. But to this day, I still call this plant Heavenly Death because of Thanam. It reminds me of her. (She moved back to Malaysia 20 years ago.) 

Another interesting thing about this perennial is that it's been moved several times and has always done well. It loves where it is now, nestled in-between coral bells. It gets a nice mixture of sun and shade.

Our new(ish) next door neighbor never did cut down the mulberry tree like he told us he was going to. We even left him a nice note on his gate last month, offering once again to help him pay for having the tree cut down and to let us know if he needed any help finding a tree trimming service. We left our phone numbers and also told him he was welcome to stop by and talk to us. Never heard from him. *sigh*  

So, you guessed it, we're once again having to deal with millions of mushy mulberries falling all over our patio, in the hostas, and all the other plants that run along the privacy fence ~ not to mention the walking path to the patio and in all the fresh mulch we lay down in the spring. We haven't been able to use our patio in for three weeks, so far. And when the mulberries are done falling, Brian will then have to power wash the patio to get all the stains off. Have I ever said how much I hate this tree? 😜

INDOORS:

I got tired of looking at this squished space in "my" room. (I never know what to call this space. I have several names for it: Phil's room {used to be my son, Phil's bedroom}, the guest room, my room, my office.) 

I cleared the space out, including the bookcase so I could move it.

I started by moving the bookcase underneath the mirror. Clementine immediately took up residency on the chair moved to the side. I stashed my yoga and exercise equipment into a basket in the corner.

In this view, you can see the opening to the room, as well as how the wall next to the door juts out, creating a little nook next to the bookcase. 

I decided I didn't like the basket of exercise equipment in the corner. The corner needed some height. So I moved the exercise stuff into a smaller basket, tucked the yoga mat and bolster next to the other side of the bookcase (as seen in photo above), and put a stool with a plant on it in the corner.

Took the framed cat art print from the kitchen and moved it to this wall. 

I think this space looks much better now. Less cramped.

The white chair got moved into the living room across from the couch. The chair has become Clementine's new favorite napping spot. Funny, because she rarely napped on it when it was in "my" room.

For those of you in the US, have a happy and safe 4th of July. (Clementine doesn't like fireworks ~ and neither do I.)

getting the guest room put back together

I managed to sneak in a photo of the guest room just starting to be painted while the painters went outside for a break. Here you can see they had already painted the window trim white and were starting on the yellow walls.

 When the painters were done and had left, I vacuumed and mopped the floors. We had to leave the windows open even though it was hot because they used Zinsser primer on the window frames which smells really bad. Running the AC made things worse because it carried the odor throughout the entire house.

At first I thought maybe the painters only put on one coat of paint, because the walls still looked light yellow to me. Also, I had a few people ask me about the flooring. It's Bruce engineered hardwood from Home Depot. We have it throughout the entire first floor (kitchen, living room, hallway and three bedrooms) of our house. We had the kitchen done first, about 20 years ago. And it still looks great. The only downside to these floors is that they do dent and scratch easily. So I would imagine if you had dogs, this flooring wouldn't be a good choice because of their nails.

 The next day when the paint had settled down a bit and the light wasn't shining directly on the walls, I could see that they were indeed a cream color. This color of paint does have some yellow undertones, but we knew that before we bought it. It's the same color we have in our kitchen and Brian's office.

We spent all day moving furniture back into the room, hanging a few pictures on the walls, washing blinds and getting those hung up. 

I wanted to arrange the furniture differently in the room this time, and we tried about five different arrangements and none of them worked. So back to the way it was. I'm really liking the cream colored walls instead of yellow ones. And what a difference white window trim makes instead of brown! The whole room looks so much cleaner. I washed the curtains for the windows and ordered some curtain clips from Amazon to keep them cinched in the middle. Those just came in the mail today, so I'll be hanging the curtains tomorrow.

I'm still deciding what to put on the walls in this area. I had Phil's memory shelf above the bookcase before. Now I'm thinking of hanging a large mirror (that used to be in the living room) above the bookcase instead and making the top of the bookcase the memorial area. I'd like to get some new prints of Phil made and then find some beautiful frames.

 Lest you think I'm organized and have everything in place...take a look at the closet! It's mostly my scrapbooking and art journal stuff, as well as boxes of photos and my bulletin board. I need to find some pretty Contact paper for the shelf and paint the closet rod. I didn't want to put everything back into place until that was done.

We've been having weather in the 90's with heat indexes of 100, so indoor projects are a good thing to get done right now.

Have a good week!

💗

a little rearranging and reorganizing

It's been hot, muggy and stormy here in Illinois these past few days. Thunderstorms woke me up way too early this morning. I'm also "recovering" from getting a crown at the dentist yesterday. This was my fifth crown and for whatever reason, this one was the worst. Maybe because it was the back bottom molar. My gums and jaw are still a little sore today. I'm eating soft foods...healthy smoothies, scrambled eggs, soup; rinsing with warm salt water; and taking healing supplements ~ which is part of my normal routine, anyway. Then in three weeks, I get to go back to the dentist, have more injections (the dentist told me this was the hardest spot for a dentist to have to inject numbing medication ~ thanks a lot for making my dental phobia even worse, Dr. T!), the temporary crown removed, and the  permanent one put on. Oh well, at least the worst of it is over.

On to better things...our spare bedroom - what used to be Phil's room - is used for my yoga room, a quiet reading spot, doing paperwork, holding extra clothes (in a dresser and in the closet), and corralling my scrapbooking and art journaling supplies. I never liked the look of the plastic storage bins under Phil's memory shelf and the clutter of my yoga supplies in the corner. 

I wanted the plastic bins to go and perhaps put a small dresser underneath Phil's memory shelf instead. I was going to organize the scrapbooking and art supplies in the dresser drawers. But I didn't have a small dresser, so I shopped the house to figure out what else I could do.

This black IKEA cube was in the basement. It used to be in Tim's room when he was away at college, but when he moved back home, he didn't want it in his room. At first, I put this cube in the spare bedroom closet. I thought I could organize some of the art supplies and yoga gear in here.

After moving the cube into the closet (and by this time, I had a lot of things organized in the cube, too), I realized it didn't leave enough room to get into the other side of the closet. And I needed to store the vacuum cleaner in this closet. That would mean having to lift the vacuum cleaner up and over the cube every time I needed to vacuum. Not such a good idea.

I took all the stuff back out of the cube and moved it underneath the memory shelf. Much better! I also removed the garland of heart lights that were hanging from the shelf, which gave this area a neater look. Brian's Crosley record player was also in the basement, so now there's room for that on top of the cube. 

I still have yoga mats and a bolster, and now a basket of my purses in the corner, but once Tim moves into his own apartment (which should be soon), we'll have his bedroom and closet for more storage space.

The plastic bins went into the closet. We don't have doors on this closet, but when the bedroom door is open, it covers the opening to the closet, so you can't see the inside.

And now I have enough room for the vacuum cleaner! (As well as more art supplies and boxes of photos.)

Next organizing project is to clean out my files in the desk drawer, which is the perfect project to work on while I don't feel like going anywhere and it's too hot and humid to work outside.

Have a great week!