Let There Be Industrial Lights

I was really pleased to get the latest Rejuvenation catalog and see gutsy industrial lights like this. Love it! But it unfortunately doesn't fit anywhere in my house. Believe me, I've tried to think of a place. Actually, it would be pretty cool to have some of these hanging in the garage! Instead of the four bare boring lightbulbs out there now.

As we re-do our sunroom over the next year, we'll need three sconces out there to replace the current lights that look like mason jars screwed in a socket. We already have lights from Rejuvenation in other rooms and I've always been happy with their service. I like customizing the lights on their web site to get exactly what we want. When we changed our minds about the sconces for our bathroom renovation, Rejuvenation was great about exchanges. So they're now my go-to source for lights.

In the sunroom, we're installing 18" square porcelain tiles that look like faux slate with shades of bluish, browns, beiges, rusty-coppery colors. I might install a contrast ring of metallic copper tiles -- not perfect shiny but with verdigris and variation like they've been exposed to chemicals. This Rejuvenation sconce has a slight touch of industrial and the three punches of copper high up on the walls would look nice with the new floor. I would just switch the shade to something stronger.

Sorry So Selfish

I've been holding out on giving back to the online community that I've learned so much from. I've taken what I've learned and had fun making things but kept it all to myself! Actually I've been busy living life. Although the internet can do so much for us, it can also completely take over us. That's my belief. Stickin' to it. Learned from experience. So I've needed to put the internet back in its rightful place in life. I never did nor never will do Facebook or Twitter (and I'm comfortable enough to violate "never say never") -- keeping up with email, web sites, blogs and discussion boards is enough. I just don't understand how people can have enough to talk about, without having time to live offline enough to have something to talk about online. ??? Am I missing something? Or am I just lame? Can't juggle it all? Whatever, we all make our choices. I live online here, in some discussion boards, and I share trips my husband and I take in our plane on another blog. That's enough for me.

What ignited instant obsession and drove me back here is this chair from Anthropologie:

One of these would sit by my marble table, the one that was once my single woman's tiny apartment dining table, but is now a perfect garden table, tucked among plants that tower over both table and chair, hidden.

Only one chair, though. Two would lessen the uniqueness.

I'm growing more gardens. Since spring, been building a raised bed behind our sunroom that will someday cradle a patio in its own outdoor room between walls of foliage and flowers and the windows of our sunroom. Where our cats will probably be sitting, inside but longing to be out, meowing and whining. Thus marring the peaceful gardeny ambiance. Of course I will get up from the Anthropologie flower chair and let them out, but they must roam, and as I follow them, I'll soon be out of sight of the flower chair and my coffee on the marble table will go cold. But I love my cats and I'm happy when they're happy, and I can always return to the flower chair which will sit waiting for me, surrounded by a garden of brilliant color in the summer, but really designed to glow in waves of burnished red, orange, yellow, purple, and brown in the fall, and stay standing all winter. I love autumn gardens.

Beautiful autumn gardens don't just happen, they have to be planned that way. My shade beds look barren after the hosta leaves go mushy. They're not so wonderful to look at then. But the garden outside the sunroom must be beautiful over four seasons. It will be unavoidable to see from the sunroom, close to the house. So someday we can drink morning coffee out there in December and see snow sitting on little brown puffballs and fluffs of grasses swaying. I love the strong shapes of plants like millet. I might install witch hazel, so in January and February we get the promises of spring even before the daffodils.