By Any Other Name

Tim has been spending a lot of time outside again (between the rainstorms) to re-do the small gardens by the driveway. When we first moved in there had been a bed to the right of the driveway with what looked to be newly planted rosebushes. The problem was that the bed was under a couple trees. Last week Tim moved them to the other side of the driveway. That side of the driveway gets a lot more sun and they should do better there. Hopefully I'll have some beautiful pictures of roses on here for you by the end of the summer!

We still have the huge mound of dirt by our driveway. Well, now it's a completely weed-covered mound, so it's all-the-more attractive... Tim's been s-l-o-w-l-y moving it to the back of the house. One of the things I may do this week is buy a bunch of VERY LARGE planters for the back patio/hearth area to create a barrier between the edge of the patio and the drop-off. I'll fill them with that dirt, then wheel them back to the patio. Trying to figure out what plants to fill the planters with should be interesting, since it's almost all shaded. I'll get pictures up of those once they're finished, too.

Since I don't have pictures of pretty roses (yet) and I don't have pictures of pretty planters (yet), I'll post a picture of the two hanging baskets in my driveway.

Persian Rugs

We have been pretty busy around here! At the end of May our local fabric store went out of business. I was very sad. It was one of the few true sewing stores that catered to "dressmakers", not just quilters and crafters. It was privately owned and she hand-selected her fabrics. I took advantage of her final sales, but can't believe that there is now nothing of quality nearby for those of us who sew clothing. (There may be other stores like it, but I haven't found them yet.) I could go on a rant about the big box stores not really understanding anything other than crafts, but I won't.

As a result of my two shopping sprees, I have yards and yards of fabrics, new patterns, thread... whew! - a lot! I had been trying to figure out what to do with my sewing room anyhow, so this just moved that process along. I finally figured out how to make it all fit into our dressing room, and have been cleaning and moving.

The last thing I need to do in the old office is move the big desk. I have to take some measurements, but I think I want to move it down into the den. It will change the look of the den into more of a basement rec room, but while the kids are living here, I'm okay with that. As soon they go, they'll take these desks with them and we can convert the den back into a den.

Last week I was shopping downtown Kennett Square and saw that Holly Peters Oriental Rugs had reopened after what I believe was some remodeling. I lucked into a great sale on Persian runners and ended up bringing six of them home. I kept four of them: two for the north wing guest suite, one for the upstairs center hall and one for the downstairs back foyer. Here is a picture of the one downstairs:

We are still unable to do the bathrooms because we can't get anybody to call us back!! We are hosting this HUGE weekend-long party in August and it looks like I'll have two toilets and one shower. I feel a little bit like the woman in the book Under the Tuscan Sun, when she was surprised at how little everybody stuck to a schedule in Italy. So, we're frantically scrambling to see what we can get done by August.

The kids are finishing up school and heading to camp. Our daughter is going to a camp through the Delaware Nature Society, which is an awesome organization. My son is going to a fishing camp through Penn State University. They are both pretty excited. It gives Tim and me a week at home to ourselves. I should be able to get a lot done!

So, we're moving, cleaning, decorating and panicking - all at the same time. I'm looking forward to a highly productive summer!

Slow Moving

While looking out my bedroom window this afternoon, I saw what looked to be a large turtle on the side lawn, so I went outside to check (keeping the dog inside, of course). It was, in fact, a turtle with a shell that was probably about 10" across and a tail that was about 7" long with ridges on the top of it.

We called friends of ours who are very good at identifying various forms of nature (trees, birds, animals... all of it) and by our description we were told that it is a snapping turtle. We were concerned because we thought snapping turtles needed to be in the shade and near water. This one was in the sun and about 1/2 mile from the pond. Mark told us that snapping turtles will go quite a long ways from their homes, across fields to find a pile of fresh dirt to lay their eggs in. He also said to stay about 3 feet away from it, because within that range, they can actually move fairly quickly. He said to take the opportunity to watch it though, because they are cool. She was very cool to watch.

At one point she got up and turned herself around, even though we kept a respectful distance. Once she realized that we weren't a threat, she picked herself up and went back toward the woods. I ran inside to get my camera and by the time I came back out, she was gone. Yes, Mark was right, they can move quickly! We aren't sure which direction she was headed, so we hope we didn't scare her back the way she came.

We still have the large dirt pile by the driveway, which Tim has been slowly moving over the last month. If we find the eggs in there, that will put an end to the dirt pile being moved - or at least that part of the pile. I'm hoping we can find the eggs and watch them (again - staying a respectful distance).

Onto house things - the contractor was supposed to get back to us yesterday with the quotes for the bathrooms. We really want to get them started!!! With this being the end of the school year and Tim entrenched in a big project at work, we haven't been able to do much around the house. Our local fabric store went out of business, so I bought a whole bunch of fabric and patterns. Since we're waiting for the bathrooms, I may be able to get through my stash of fabric and related projects - and actually figure out where I want to finally put my sewing room!

Spring Cleaning

This past weekend I got the spring cleaning bug. It doesn't happen very often. I don't think the rest of the family likes it when I get the spring cleaning bug, because I tend to start expecting everybody to get it at the same time.

For a variety of reasons that I won't go into here, I have sheets made up for each room that contain the checklists on how to clean that room STEP BY STEP. The kids and I sit down with the checklists and dole them out randomly. This way, the house can get a pretty darn good cleaning within a day. It doesn't hit every room, but it hits the most used rooms and the public rooms. The rooms that are skipped are ones that aren't being used right now and will take me no time at all to clean when they're needed again. Not everything on the lists got done, but a big enough dent was put into it all that I am not feeling so overwhelmed.

Yesterday I got out the ironing board and pressed the newly washed Battenberg Lace curtains in the... YORKTOWN ROOM!! (Like it?? Huh?) They look so much fresher now that they've been washed and pressed and they make the room appear to be brighter.

I realized while I was ironing that, you know - I really never iron. So, while the ironing board made its rare appearance, I took advantage and taught my son how to iron. Picture this: one day he's getting ready for a job interview and only has wrinkled suit shirts. He'll have no idea what to do so will have ask somebody around him to do it OR he'll go to the interview with a wrinkled shirt (more likely). In either case, I've just failed him as a mother for not teaching him how to iron. Whew. I can check THAT motherly guilt feeling off my list.

I also started (and I mean "started") to attack the "what am I going to do with my office and sewing room" problem. I cleared out the room behind the Yorktown Room a little, but not as much as I'd like. Having the clutter from these two areas not yet in a "place" is keeping me from doing other things.

We are still waiting to hear from our contractor on our two bathrooms and I have to admit I'm a bit in panic mode. It's been three weeks... and we need those bathrooms finished by the end of July. It will only add one toilet and one shower, but that will make a huge difference. I'm okay if the master bathroom isn't done by then, although if it was, that would be great.

Getting the house cleaned this week is good. This coming weekend is the annual Chaddsford Winery Blues Festival and, once again, we have several friends coming in from out of town for it. I blogged about it briefly last year. but didn't really talk about it afterwards. We had a great time as usual and fully expect to do this year. It's one of the highlights of our social year. More toilets would be nice for this weekend, too.

Room Naming

As Tim and I set up more guest rooms, our conversations are beginning to go like this:

Tim: "Which bedroom?"
Me: "The back bedroom in the north wing."
Tim: "You mean the wing on the left or the right?"
Me: "I don't know, the wing that is on the north side of the house."
Tim: "That's the left."
Me: "Okay."
Tim: "Which back bedroom? Our son's?"
Me: "No, the other side, that's the south wing."
Tim: "You mean our daughter's old one?"
Me: "Yes."
Tim: "The one with the bathroom without a tub or shower?"
Me: "Yes, the back bedroom in the north wing."
Tim: "Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?"

We need to name these rooms just for the sake of convenience. We've had several suggestions, including:

1. Using a literary theme (suggested by our friend, Chris and fully supported by my mother... both of whom are or have been high school English teachers.) The problem with this theme is - where DO we begin?? Do we stick with a genre? An era? Authors? Do we have to decorate around the theme? So many questions!

2. Using street names where Tim and I have lived. Those would be, in order: the Letchworth Room, the Lindenhouse Room, the Yorktown Room and the Thompson Room. We need one more name and are thinking the Asbury Room, just for old time's sake.

3. Town names of where we have lived. Admittedly, this is not one of our favorites.

4. There's always the "basic black" of room-namings: #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5. Yawwwnnn...

In earlier polling of our friends, the literary names are taking the lead, but nothing is striking us with that "YES!!! THAT'S IT!!" If you have any suggestions, we will be more than welcome to entertain them.

Room names became a problem this weekend again because I finally set-up the back bedroom in the north wing ( OR our daughter's old room on the left side of the house with the bathroom that doesn't have a tub or shower... -- See how cumbersome this can get!!??). Here are some pictures of the set-up. The light back there is dim because it's not a sunny day and I took these on my flashless cellphone camera. Also - if you remember from before, this is the room that our daughter got her friends to start stripping the wallpaper in, then decided to change rooms. As you can see, we still need to finish stripping the wallpaper and add a hearth to the fireplace.





A couple weekends ago I set-up the other guest room in the south wing. Here is a picture of the antique dresser with the mirror on it. It is such a pretty set.



That's a total of three guest rooms set-up and ready for use, but not yet remodeled. Now, when our guests come to visit, we only have one question... "Would you rather have a bathroom without a toilet or without a tub/shower?"

“There is that in the glance of a flower....”

“...which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.” ~ John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, author and naturalist.

When Tim and I bought our first home in our early 20s, we had 1/7th of an acre, an older home built in the 1940s and absolutely no knowledge of landscaping. The house needed some serious landscaping help and we were overwhelmed by the few small flower beds that were already in existence. We knew nothing.

Two moves later, into our NJ house on an acre with LOTS of beds and landscaping that had become overgrown through neglect, I ended up with a neighbor who really helped me get over the "Oh no - what if it dies" attitude. With a lot to move around and transplant and her sage advice we just dug in and gave it a try. Overall - not too bad!

We have the same landscaping situation here as we had in NJ, and with the knowledge gleaned from our time there, Tim is just itching to go outside and put it all to rights. Here's the problem...

In NJ Tim had no idea where to put things or what to do with them. We spent many weekends with Tim saying, "this shrub needs be trashed", while I would say, "this shrub has not been doing well here, but would do much better over there...". He could tell where things DIDN'T belong, but not where they did belong. His answer was to rip out perfectly good landscaping and replace it with new. My little naturalist (and cheap) mind rebelled against that, so the REST of the weekends were spent with my saying, "just take this and move it to there". It was a plan we both seemed to be happy with.

Last summer, when we started working on the landscaping here in PA, I spent the time outside to further direct him in fear I'd never seen certain plants ever again. Because of the projects inside the house, not a lot got done outside other than raking about 10 years' accumulation of leaves and cutting back shrubs. This year Tim has told me that he has a "master plan" for the landscaping and no longer needs my help to know what to save/move and throw away.

I'm a bit wary. Is this his way of saying, "LEAVE ME ALONE, WOMAN!" or has he truly gained an appreciation for the appeal of appropriate landscaping? Did he learn as much as I did in NJ or was he just being my lackey and grumbling, "I'll get her" under his breath the whole time? I'm worried that he's just tired of me and really plans to sneak unsuspecting azaleas into the compost bin when I'm not looking, even if it's just for spite...

I've decided to give up control. (No,really... what??? You didn't know I could sometimes be a control freak??!!) I'm going to offer him a few suggestions for what I would personally like to see (limited suggestions, of course), then trust him. He always has had an artistic eye, has appreciated beauty and is very creative.

Who knows? I may be pleasantly surprised.

Refresher Course

It's been about 1-1/2 years since I started this blog when we first had the bid on this house accepted. As happens over the course of time, details tend to get fuzzy or lost in the many words. One of my college friends reminded me of that, asking me a lot of questions about the house we were living in versus the B&B and such. I realized that lately I've been getting a lot of questions of this sort. It probably does get a bit confusing! As a result, I'm going to summarize our situation. If you are on top of things and know what's going on, this may be a post you want to skip! If you still wonder why you can't find the number to make reservations, you may want to keep reading...

We are currently living in the house we are renovating so that eventually - hopefully within two or three years - we can open it as a bed and breakfast. There is no bed and breakfast, yet. The house just isn't ready!

Living in a house while renovating it can be a chore, but, as the renovation blog roll to the left indicates, it's done all the time. My aforementioned friend does it as a single mother of five children! (You won't see her blog... not with five children, which includes twin toddlers!) Our situation is slightly unique (although not entirely, as our friends at Finger Lakes Notes will tell you) because we're remodeling it while keeping the B&B and living here both in mind. It just seems to be taking us a lot longer than others. I'm not sure if that's because there's so much to do or for other reasons!

So... we're raising a family, working at other jobs, volunteering for the things that are important to us, enjoying a social life AND remodeling the house to eventually be a B&B. Are we having fun yet?

ABSOLUTELY yes.