Sunday Snapshot: Lights in the Greenhouse

You know that I'm all about doing projects with as much of what I already have as possible.  Adding lights to the greenhouse last week is another example of this.

Two strings of icicle Christmas lights hung on cup hooks along the top of the south wall.  It's so cute!

I already had the cup hooks and lights.  All I had to buy was a remote wall switch to control them.

This is the handiest thing ever for adding a light switch anywhere you need one.

You can find it HERE.

The greenhouse itself is a mess, with lots of stored building materials and project items taking up most of the 12' x 20' space.  I have cleared a bit of sanity space on the south bench to over-winter the baby roses that I rooted last summer, and I'm doing what I can to make order out of the rest of the space ... sorting, purging, and figuring out what to do with items I really love and will use.

This will be a great space to work in during the winter, as the temperature in the building on a sunny day is easily twenty or more degrees above the outside temperature.  It can be cold and wintry outside, shirt-sleeve weather inside ... just what my little sunshine-loving self needs!

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Sunday Snapshots are posts devoted to moments in time that represent glimpses into real, everyday life in Hartwood, or wherever else I happen to be at the time. 

April Photo Dump

As rose season approaches, I have a lot of stuff to do outdoors and my blogging time has to yield to allow for this.  I spend as much time as I can in the garden getting the roses ready for their big show at the end of the month, and less time online.  

I haven't been writing blog posts very often, but I have been doing stuff and taking lots of photos.  Some of the photos get filed into my blog folder to use in future posts.  My infrequent blogging results in a glut of photos in that file ... which means that it's time for another Photo Dump!!

1.  I'm no floral designer, but I love to bring small bunches of flowers indoors.  The other day, I picked some of Lily of the Valley and a stem of Hellebore, and I dropped them into a vintage Farmer's Creamery bottle.  

2.  For the past two weeks, I spent my early mornings at the sewing machine making collars to beef up the inventory for events with Greyhounds Rock Fredericksburg ... one of which was Greyhounds in Gettysburg last weekend.  A couple of hours of effort over a period of time really adds up, because I was able to assemble 85 new collars!  (Each collar sells for $20, and all $20 is donated to GRF to benefit canine cancer research and support.)  Volunteers who worked the booth in Gettysburg told me that business was brisk and a LOT of lucky hounds are now sporting my snazzy collars.

Sugar Skull designs continue to be popular.

Alice appears to be doing a thorough quality control inspection on the heap of collars.

3.  In the middle of the collar-sewing period, my mom and I jetted to Charleston, South Carolina, for the 2016 annual meeting of the Southern Garden History Society ... a long weekend of touring gardens and plantations, listening to interesting speakers, eating fabulous food, and meeting new friends with like interests.  I took 700 photos during the trip, which I hope to distill into a blog post soon.

I love looking at clouds from above!

That blurry blob in the center of the frame at the horizon is Fort Sumter, as seen from the window of our hotel room.

4.  It was obvious that Winnie missed me while I was away.  She's not usually a lap dog, but she was for the first couple of days that I was home.  She just needed some mama time.

5.  I love sports, and I particularly love hockey.  Since the 1980s, I have been a fan of our home team, the Washington Capitals, through ups and downs, coaching and player changes, winning seasons and depressing losing seasons.  They are in the play-offs now, and my husband and I spend many an evening eating dinner on the sofa in front of a hockey game on TV.  Last week, we treated ourselves to take-out steak and cheese sandwiches.  At one point, I looked up from my plate and away from the TV and I saw this face.

Notice the drop of drool on her chin.

6.  I'm still working to donate unused/unwanted things that we don't need and to find places for other stuff in storage that I want to keep.  As I was staring into the living room the other morning, contemplating a new arrangement for the furniture, I took this photo.  I reminds me of a scene from an abandoned house or, as a FB friend remarked, a Van Gogh painting.  Either way, I think it's a pretty awesome image.  (My Donation Box is just out of the frame on the right.  It's getting full again, which means that it's almost time to make another run to the thrift shop.)

7.  Finally, we have this scene from the other morning, which is NOT the breakfast of champions ... a left-over piece of Red Velvet Cheesecake (courtesy of our daughter) and coffee in the mug that I bought at St. Paul's Cathedral in London two years ago.

This year, in addition to all of the normal spring things on our spring To Do list, stuff that we do every year to shake off winter, my husband and I are hosting the Stafford County Historical Society on May 21.  The garden will be ready as always, but we have to tidy and declutter the inside of the house, too.  A little over a week after this is Memorial Day, which is the day of this year's public Open Garden ... mark your calendar.

It's been cool and rainy for the past few days ... perfect conditions for pulling a LOT of weeds ... which is what I'm heading out to do right now.

Two Master Bedroom Projects, Using Things I Already Had

Part of my ongoing quest to downsize and declutter involves sifting through the hoard of things that are stored in my sewing room.  I cannot overstate the horror that exists in that room (and, no, I'm not going to show it to you.  Don't even ask.)  Fabric, craft supplies, half-finished projects, notions, hardware, yarn ... you get the idea.

One of the things I discovered in the stash was a 9-foot by 12-foot canvas drop cloth.  That turned out to be the exact right amount of fabric to make a new bed skirt for our king-sized bed.

No fancy styling here ... our comforter was straight of the dryer, and I decided that wrinkles are real life.

Here is what it looked like before ... a sweet, two-tiered, ruffly, 1990s edition bed skirt ... that was too short because it was measured and made for our previous house when our bed sat on wall-to-wall carpet instead of wood floor.

This isn't your usual type of bed skirt.  Years ago, our bed was one of those soft-side water beds ... unbelievably heavy and impossible to simply lift up to remove/change/wash the bed skirt, so I designed an alternative.  The foundation portion of the bed skirt stays in place between the mattress and the box spring, and the skirt part is attached to it with snap tape!  It's a simple matter to unsnap the skirt, wash, dry, and iron it, and snap it back into place.

The skirt is made in three pieces, one for each side of the bed.  A king-sized bed is 78-inches wide and 80-inches long.  With the drop cloth cut into quarters lengthwise, and one of the strips cut into thirds and pieced onto the other strips, this allowed for three pieces of fabric that were almost exactly twice the measurement of each side of the bed.  Perfect proportion and no waste!

21-1/4 inches from the floor to the top of the snap tape.

Separate pieces for each side, to split the corners and allow for the bed posts.

I recycled the snap tape from the original skirt onto the new skirt.  The new skirt has pleats instead of gathers ... more to my current taste, and WAY easier to do.

It took a few hours, but none of the construction was too taxing.  Three LONG rectangles, hemmed on all sides, measure and fold the pleats, with snap tape applied to the top edge.  I installed each panel as I finished it, to feed my need to see progress.

By the end of the afternoon, it was finished ... and what a difference!!  (The remains of old bed skirt could still be useful to someone who wants a LOT of white polished cotton fabric, so I folded it and dropped it into to Donate Box.)

The second Master Bedroom project was a set of drapes.  I bought a package of turquoise velvet drapery panels at Ikea years ago, because I loved the color and I figured that I would hold onto them to use the fabric for something one day. 

Ikea photo

I have wanted some sort of curtains for our bedroom for a long time, but we had a not-so-small issue to overcome.  Our bedroom has two windows, one on each outside wall.  The best place in the room for our bed is in front of one of the windows.  We need that window for light (otherwise the room would be like a cave).  What type of window treatments would work for both of these windows?

North window, behind the bed.

West window.

Bedroom floor plan.  With all the doors and windows in this room, the only logical place for the bed IS in front of the north window.

Earlier this week, while I was working in the sewing room and came across that package of velvet drapes, I had a brainstorm ... would it look right if I totally ignore the window behind the bed and make drapes only for the west window?  I decided to give it a go.

Grommet-top drapes aren't my style ... so I cut off the grommets, added a strip of white canvas lining to finish the top of the panel and to form a rod pocket.  (The panels weren't long enough to allow me to fold over the top to make the rod pocket, that's why I had to add the extra fabric.  It's hidden, so no one knows it there but me.)

It only took a few minutes and four screws to install the curtain rod (which I also had on hand).

The chair?  I moved that up here over Christmas, when we had to clear out the living room for the ceiling demolition.  It's a little tight there in that corner, but I like how it looks and it gives us a place to sit to put on socks and stuff.  The pillow was a bargain buy at a barn sale last month.  The last name on it is the same as one of my ancestors, so you know I had to bring it home.

There you have it ... two sewing projects, using only materials that I already had.  Total additional cost, $2.49 for a spool of thread.  

Downsizing ... Slow, Steady Progress

I made only one resolution for 2015.  At the beginning of the year, I set a goal to remove one item from our house for every day of the year.  Sounds like a lofty dream ... but it turned out to be much easier to do that I thought it would be.

Donation made in October.  Those gold lamps are the ones that were on our dresser before I found THESE lamps to replace them.

I keep a large moving box, that we call The Donation Box, in an out-of-the-way corner of our living room.  Any time I move something, put away laundry, rearrange a cupboard or closet, I subject the items to a simple test ... Is this item useful and does it bring me joy?  Answer "Yes", and the item is kept, put to use, or stored away till it's time to use it.  Answer "No", and it get dropped into The Donation Box.

When The Donation Box is full, I catalog the items, load them up, and take them away.  My most favorite place to donate things is to Re-Tail, a thrift shop on the other side of town, whose proceeds benefit an all-breed animal sanctuary.  

This is what The Donation Box looks like right now.

Today is New Year's Eve, the 365th day of 2015.  Without including the items that are currently in The Donation Box, which will probably go to the thrift store next week or later, 374 items left our house and went to outlets that support causes that benefit people and animals in our community!  374 isn't a huge number, considering how much extra stuff we still have to deal with.  But, it's a start ... and that lofty goal that I set for for 2015 has led to a habit and a system that will allow us to continue to make progress toward living with WAY less stuff in the future.