I think we're getting there...

(Please note: The new header does not actually display the colors of the rooms accurately, at least it is not accurately displayed on my computer!)

Busy days around the ranch house. All this activity gives me hope!

The tile is being set in the upstairs bathroom for one thing. Don't you love the contractor's message system? Just shove a note in the bathroom window!

Here's a close up of the wall tile. It is pretty basic, plain white four inch squares like typical 1950 style bathrooms, but we have jazzed it up a bit with two courses of the floor tile, a pattern called Pinwheel. The floor will be heated...hurray! The downstairs bath doesn't have that luxury, and I have found cold tootsies on the bathroom floor to be no fun at all.

On Friday and Saturday the original oak floors were being sanded, stained and sealed. Bernie nailed a temporary door at the top of the basement stairs to prevents the cat from bolting upstairs and tracking across the newly finished floors.

Talk about an odd feeling...being closed up in the basement....with a door nail shut...creepy....

We decided to get away from the sanding noises and go check out a few things around SLC.

The Cactus and Tropicals garden center was open, and it was gorgeous sunny day. Lots of folks had a touch of spring fever and were buying a pretty or two for their gardens.

I was interested in this flower, with the Seuss-like red and blue fanciful design.

And did I remember to get the name of the flower?

Noooo....

I think the construction must really be getting to me if I forget something like that.

We've made countless trips to various shops to select new fitting for our sinks. I was waiting for the sales rep to print out the particulars on an insta-hot faucet, and decided to snap a picture of this model bathroom.

Guess which item is the toilet?

(No we are not getting that set. I am keeping my downstairs "flushes an ocean" style toilet with an August 1954 tank lid date stamp, and getting a new "tall" toilet for upstairs. The extra height is easier on aging knees I've heard, and seeing as how my knees seem to be aging along with the rest of me, that seemed like a pretty good option.)

I find myself zooming through contemporary furniture stores, dumbfounded that I am actually interested in the only style of furniture that I have always disdained.

Well, the sink that we ordered for the kitchen came in totally different, and the next time the manufacturer can ship that style will be months from now. We picked a different style and color.

(Darn it...I really liked Kohlers' Cane Sugar finish single sink!)

Now the faucet that we selected for the first sink might not work...

We still have to see a sample of the kitchen cabinet doors to see if they will be as we expect them to be.

After running around all day, we returned home only to find that the odor of the floor stain just about rendered us unconscious within minutes of entering the house.

The cats look even more deranged than usual. We opened all the windows downstairs and the cats glued themselves to the screens, sucking in air like crazy.

What the heck...they have nine lives...they will be fine.

We turned up the electric blanket for them, filled their food bowls, and told them we'd be back in the morning. Then we split to the local Marriott hotel for the night.

The lobby chandelier was a blown glass creation in green and dusty lavender, created by a cohort of Dale Chihuly.

The delicate creation was enormous!

Our heads had cleared from the fumes, but a drink was just the thing to take the edge off arriving at a nice hotel wearing Saturday junky clothes and carrying basically our pajamas and a toothbrush.

I've been bumped from enough planes and spent the night with the just the clothes on my back, so this wasn't really a first time trauma. We selected the in room movie "Marley and Me" (my review: people should train their dogs. Period. And how on earth did they afford to replace THAT many couches anyway?) and zonked out at 10 pm.

At least we got a nice breakfast the next morning instead of our usual cold cereal and juice routine that we have fallen into "back at the ranch"

Yes, life is still pretty challenging as we go about the renovation, but occasionally I see something, like shelf liners, and I think some day this will all be over, and my home will be a homey haven again.

These are the (cat) people in our neighborhood...

So far Bernie and I have met the two cats next door: there is a grey striped tall cat and a black and white cat.
The cats saunter through the yard, down the side of the house and along the fence. Snow doesn't even phase them.
There is a brown mackerel tabby too that muscles his way through the snow out back.

When we see him and call, he splits immediately. I think he thought no one lives here.

The grey and the black ones are our neighbor Bob's cats.
Bob's cats seem very interested in us.

Hart thinks they are interesting too.

We can always tell when Bob's cats are passing by just by watching our cats react.

I think eventually they all might become very good friends.

Baptisms, Snow and Rock and Roll

The days had gotten warmer the last few weeks and all the snow was melted in the neighborhood.
Yesterday you could see all the grass in the front yard for the first time since November.

This morning...

A wintery view again.
I LOVE waking up to a view of winter wonderlands first thing in the morning.
And views with cats too, of course.

Such a new experience for me.

I wonder if I will eventually take it for granted.

I've never been one to not make a picture in my heart and mind of wonderful things every chance I get.

Snow is a wonder for today.

Another wonder is seeing family on Youtube.

Our son's baptism for one.

It is a pretty long video, but you can see and hear Jeff talk about his faith (at the 1 min. 26 second mark) see Rachel and him arriving (at 9 min 13 sec.) and see him go under the water and come up again (at 11 mins.) , along with others who partook of that sacrament on that Sunday afternoon.

The other is revisiting a happy memory from long ago...from a time when MTV was a brand new channel on television.

It was 1983.

The kids were 3 and 5, and I did NOT want them to be watching bands like Alice Cooper and Kiss rocking out.

But...

suddenly...

their Uncle Mark was playing drums on a video that was on rotation on the channel.

It was a pretty darn cute video too.

We let the kids watch their Uncle's band, of course.

And turned channels immediately afterwards.

The video is now on Youtube, and seeing it again brought back SO many funny memories.

You see, lil' bro Mark was a serious professional drummer for years before becoming a Radiology Therapist. He played with several bands and was cited in Rolling Stone magazine as one very hot drummer.

Drummer praise doesn't come from a source higher than that!

During the years that the incredibly talented and handsome Mark was on percussion, his big bro Bernie was juggling being an electrician, going to school at night, and being a daddy to two little kids.

Once, during that season of life, when we were over at Mark and Bernie's parents house, my MIL turned to Bernie and asked him if he had had a chance to go see Mark performing in some local venue.

I can still remember how hard it was not to laugh when Bernie dryly replied:

"When Mark comes to watch me at my work, then I'll be going to see Mark at his work."

(I'm pretty sure Mark never did make it out to watch Bernie at his construction site...)

By way of updating those who wonder how Mark is doing...he is home now, and struggling to recover from the massive abdominal surgery he had two weeks ago. Several organs were removed, but they were not able to get all the cancer...he will begin intense radiation and chemo as soon as they can identify exactly the kind of cancer he has.

We think about Mark all the time...sometimes with worry, sometimes with fear, and sometimes...well, you know some 50 plus years of being a big brother is hard to let go.

As soon as Mark came out of surgery and we knew that he was OK, I mentioned that he must have a massive abdominal scar, similar to the one that I sport on my low belly.

Recalling the inquires I faced after my surgery, I voiced a similar concern to Bernie:

"Do you think Mark will still be able to wear a bikini style swim suit?"

(like he EVER did...)

To which B. replied without missing a beat:

"No, he doesn't have the guts for it anymore."

Somethings in life, like capping on your little brother, just never change.

Color My World...

My husband and son both pointed out to me that having a dirty car in snow country is not the same as having a dusty car in tornado country. There are chemicals on the roads here that melt the ice and the resulting filth needs to be washed off regularly.

Where I grew up and raised my kids in San Diego I found it refreshing to wash my own car in the driveway; the weather there is always perfect 365 days a year.

No kidding.

But here in SLC it has been too cold outside to do that; my car could be a block of ice if I gave that a shot. Knowing that fact meant I had to go and try to find a car wash some where in my area.

Part of being new in town is that you can't remember where you have seen a car wash...and when you do see one, it is inevitably on the wrong side of the road or the wrong kind of carwash.

The wrong kind of car wash for me is one where you put change in a machine and wrangle a sprayer all by yourself. The "right" kind for me is the kind that has all kinds of whirling brushes and flapping strips.

I do know some people blanch at the thought of going through one of those kinds of car washes.(Hi Terry! Happy Anniversary!) They insist (correctly) that such car wash treatments leaves swirl marks in the car's gloss coat.

For awhile I worried about that too...and used the "touchless" car wash systems, only to discover that touchless systems are designed to wash the dirt and leave it neatly in place.

Well, to appease my menfolk, I made a reckless U turn when I saw an available car wash the other day. As I steered my car into the wash bay, fond memories came flooding back to me of another place and time.

Back to when I was a mother of two rambunctious and often quarrelsome children, and friends with women who were likewise deep in the process of child rearing.

Across town (a ten minute drive in little La Mesa suburb) there was a place where you could fill up with gas, and for about a dollar more, you could go through the brush and flap kind of car wash.

Sometimes when the kids were just about to drive me wild, I would simply ask: "Who wants to go through the car wash?" and it was just like I had announced a trip to Disneyland.

The kids would pile into the car, and as the water sprayed on the windows and the brushes whirled closer and closer, the sounds of the car wash would blend perfectly with the screams and squeals of the kids.

Sometimes, when I was really, REAALLY needing a break, I would pay for us to go through twice. And sometimes...I just remembered this...I would get out of the car and let them go through the wash without me!

Salt Lake City is one kid friendly kind of town.

Proof: At the car wash here, the sprayed on soapy lather slopped on in rainbow colors.

It was lovely.

And if it hadn't cost so very much more than a car wash used to, I think I would have gone through it again.

Not screaming...just smiling a bit before heading back to my busy day.

Seriously...

A 1950's GE pink oven going on Ebay for $200 right now.
Shipping is also $200.
If they would throw in the range top over to the side...and those cool retro tiles, I think I could go right over the edge and buy into 1950's the pink kitchen thing.

I'm thinking if America's financial picture is going to be as awful as I'm thinking it is going to be, then I think we all are going to need a big dose of 50's style (including maybe pink kitchens and baths!) to survive.

Let's look at what it would mean to head back to the 1950's.

(Pictured above: the 50's light diffuser that won on ebay and that is now installed up in our blue guest room's ceiling, just for fun. Loving that little girl with a blue hair clip jumping rope and scattered ball and jacks on the bottom. It takes me right back to the 50's just looking at it up there!)

Back to when Ike was in charge. Under President Dwight Eisenhower the gross national product grew by over 25 percent and inflation averaged 1.4 percent.

Not bad statistics...not bad at all.

The idea of retreating to the 50's has been fully embraced by one blogging woman.

She has decided to go live in the year 1955, and to post about her experiences on her blog called My 1955 Year

She reads publications from the time, wears the clothes, cooks, cleans, the whole nine yards, each day of her life as if it was 1955.

And get this: she is discovering how WONDERFUL it was to live back then. She even makes me long for Pinesol cleaner again!

She posted two days ago about "household drudgery" and was astonished to report that housekeeping in 1955 was ecologically sound and not nearly as time consuming as our modern efforts are, with better results! And yes, she does go about her housewifely life in a girdle when she isn't scrubbing up things in jeans and loafers.

I've added her to my sidebar if you wish to following her life this year. She doesn't have a pink kitchen, but as far as using the '50s as an escape from our current trauma, I think overall she will do.

Bowled Over

Quote of the Day:

How much will each American family pay, on average, to bail out the beleagured insurance giant American International Group (AIG)?

Answer:

Try more than $1,400.

Source: ABC news

Picture above taken at the bowling alley two block from my house.

Millinery: Brown Felt from Paris

Paris France brown felt hat body, millinery design by Frances Walter Nelkin, modeled on a Thursday afternoon in Salt Lake City Utah.

Kellie rocks the full face veil.
Jill experiments with artistic photo editing...

The felt hat is trimmed in brown grosgrain belting with coppery multi-faceted scattered bead work, and a line trim of picot beading.

The veil is removable. It is held in place via two pins at the back of the hat.
Like who wouldn't want to wear the veil on the hat when it looks that great?

Answer: People who are afraid other people would look at them. They think blending in better.

I say: Blending in is BORE-ING!
Especially when looking confident in a retro style is so much more interesting!

Yes, Kellie did just happened to be wearing a vintage black silk skirt on Thursday when I asked her if she'd model again.

Just another day at the office.

(I think she could blow away the crowd at Fashion Week, don't you?)

(((help))))

The mood swings around here are pretty dramatic these days.
Being civil takes extra effort, and every ordinary function like making coffee or getting dressed takes some determined effort.
(Not a window in the house currently has a shred of drapery for privacy...)

The kitchen cabinets are in...but not the floor, or doors or counter tops or sink.

Every light switch and outlet is without a plate cover.
(And how did they decide to use EVERY possible switch color and style in one row?)

The kitchen appliances still grace the living room, with lawn chair, bar stool and $5 teak chair find at the thrift store.

Oddly, guests are still welcomed when they drop by. And they do...we are meeting the neighbors one by one.

(You can still see the kitchen's original color in this shot in the book case in the background.)

The office is painted...baseboards still to go.

And the floor will be sanded and refinished too.

Master bedroom color has been decided via sample flat coat painting of a peachy coral.
Now a "real" layer in eggshell finish will be done.
And of course the floors and baseboard work, outlet covers,closet clothes pole etc...need to be done too

It took some doing to find the pink I wanted that would still be acceptable by my hubbie.

Lots of tries...and a swing through blue as well.

Upstairs bath: Needs the floor tile, doors, sink, toilet, tiles, light fixture, and of course, baseboard paint.

Guestroom: Atmospheric blue is a winner here. It feels like being in a tree house in there.
Sand/finish floor, baseboard, plates, light diffuser...still to go.

Stairs to the basement. Recap the treads and center carpet? Money/time is all we need.

Bob at least is still laughing. He is a good sport, the cat litter box and cat food stink in the unventilated room is no fun.

He will stay until after the 220 moving boxes arrive and get unloaded into this room.

Meanwhile I will need to find closet space for the boxes already here.

Too bad the closets are all being worked on right now..

Not even going to try to make the only completed living space look good.
The table under the window is our coffee pot area. The cereal and cups/spoons are in the cold storage area at the other end of the room, the milk and OJ are upstairs and out in the refrigerator in the garage.
Just getting coffee, juice and cereal pulled together each morning is quite a journey.

My eventual sewing room. Outside they (former owners) merrily piled up dirt against the unsealed wall. Naturally damp seeped in, and the paint blistered off the wall. It will take a special fix..not just a once over easy with Spackle affair.

The bathroom has a frosted window...good to change in. Right now the shower drips, and the cats like to drink water from in there. The drips also splash on the tile floor. Grrr...

The laundry room which is now simple a large sink that B. put in so we could wash paint brushes and cups and spoons and so forth. A folding clothes drying rack holds anything that needs to dry.

Some day...it will be a cute room.

Some day.

Our 220 boxes arrive in 12 days.

(...help....)

I sure hope the contractor can pull all this stuff together before then and I can finish all the painting.

Boy do I ever sympathize with those folks who live in disaster areas long term.

And boy oh boy do I ever hope no one murders us in our sleep.

I would just die if the newspaper showed pictures of our house looking like this!

People would think we were crazy slobs or something.

Well, at least they would have the crazy part right.

Remodeling...renovation.

Crazy.

Just plain old crazy all the time.

Cocktails Anyone???

I have a dream...that once the 50's house is all pulled together, I can host a cocktail party there one evening.
You know the kind of cocktail party that I am talking about: one where the women all wear kicka** cocktail hats and everyone makes witty conversation over drinks.
(Non-alcoholic drinks would be made available for those who abstain from liquor, extra wittiness will be required from them however.)

For this event I see myself providing a nice selection of my cocktail hats to be worn by those who have never thought to acquire such a delightful item for themselves before.

In an effort to add a little reality to this vision, I recently added *yet another* such hat to my collection.

My usual model "Joan" is in storage right now, but real human person Kellie, our campus receptionist was game to model the hat for me.

Kellie is a treat to work with: she wears vintage designer fashions with such grace and confidence that most people just think that she has found fabulous modern items. She couldn't fool me though. You can't get that kind of style except in clothing from the past.
She's in her junior year at the University of Utah, and will become a commercial airline pilot.
Answer phones and taking messages is just a temporary gig...

The dark navy hat with the well known millinery label "Amy" has navy bead work that glow with rainbow irridescence and similar colored sequins that are wrapped with a bias silk strip is held on with two velvet covered side V shaped clips.

The veil is in perfect condition, and can be untied for full face coverage or just pushed back. Kellie found full face to be a bit claustrophobic. It is an option that takes some gutty determination to wear for long.

The Hat Diva sent me a link to see a vast collection of vintage hats...if this one hat leaves you wanting to see more, click here and here!

If it leaves you wanting to own one yourself, get moving to your local antique shop or ebay website.

They are out there, and I got this one for only $20!

(PS: I wore the hat just for fun at work for a moment. Put it on with a ski vest and slacks and turtleneck and headed down the hall to a full to the brim break room with probably 50 students roaming around. NO ONE even blinked an eye. And to think that people say they would feel self conscious in a hat!)

Ohhh too cute!

Another adorable ceiling light diffuser:

Bidding...crossing my fingers....

Baby Central

It seemed to me that years had gone by since anyone I knew had become pregnant.

Then suddenly, every time I turned around, someone else was talking morning sickness and due dates.
Right now wife of the guy in the next office is carrying, the co-worker two offices over is expecting, two women in our church fellowship group are pregnant, plus two of my friends are expecting fresh supplies of grand kids, one blogging friend is expecting grandkid #1, and three bloggers that I don't know personally but read daily are also preggers.
Count 'em...that's ten babies on the way.

(This just in within the hour: make it 11...another friend just called with good news!)

Babies on the way in despite the trying times we live in.

(No surprise there, when the economy tanks, it is easier to just stay home and go to bed early, if you get my drift...)

I'm excited for all of them. Only two (make that three) of these kids in the making are going to be first borns. One is a third, one is a fourth.
The mom of the fourth born is so cool about it.

When I was talking about all the fuss and bother that was generated over first babies (with blog postings along the lines of: I felt the baby move 9 times today. I just praise the Lord for this little one, and ponder how he or she will be used to further His kingdom. I read Scripture aloud to my tummy so he can hear it daily! He is already one and a quarter inches long according to my pregnancy book, and I can't believe I only have 252 more days to go! This is just happening so fast! I also have decided to use Winnie the Pooh classic wall trim instead of the new WTP design, and to show a picture of my bare pregnant tummy each and every week on my blog...) while later, Baby #2 only gets mentioned in passing between further reports of Baby #1 becoming "a little man" (at age 18 months and shaving already presumably) and that he is now able to sit on a trike ALL BY HIMSELF (with five pictures following to document...)

Mom expecting #4 comment: Yeah, that was SOOO three babies ago....

Each baby is miraculous; especially if they are a first born. Subsequent babies, while quite miraculous also, are also rather boring after awhile. They sleep, they eat, they get runny noses, they poo... while that earlier edition baby in the house is tearing up the tracks with all kinds of new tricks.

I don't think I have ever read a blog post about baby #2 that managed to record the wonder of a filled diaper that had nearly the same zeal as the prior blog post about baby #1 grunts and digestive outcome.
It is hard to understand how such amazing events just don't continue to fire up one's interest after awhile.

The kid I grew up with had his first kid a few years back, and being several states away from his mom at the time, he video taped "Baby Margaret" for hours and hours and hours at a time.
Serious...HOURS.

His mom, (who had became a first time mom herself at 40) admitted to me that watching her ONLY child's first born baby sleeping on video just didn't hold her attention for more than a few minutes.

Ditto just about everything else that the 10 day old grandchild did...especially since it was the same stuff Margaret did as a 9 day old grand child, and an 8 day old grandchild etc etc..

Two years later Baby #2 "Thomas" apparently was not quite as interesting...his naps went completely unrecorded. Hopefully Thomas will never find out about the large UStoreIt unit that was rented to hold all the "Baby Margaret" tapes...

Naomi Wolf had an interesting experience with being pregnant the first time.
(You remember her don't you? No? She is a third wave feminist writer with a stunning inability to do decent documentation. I trust, dear reader, that you have managed to keep up with the defining differences between first, second and third wave feminism. If not...perhaps you should. It will make for far more interesting conversation at the next baby shower you attend than sharing exactly where you were when your water broke.)

Yale graduate and Oxford University Rhode scholar Naomi wrote a book called "Misconceptions."

In brief:

Misconceptions examines the modern problems surrounding pregnancy and childbirth. Most of the book is told through the prism of Wolf's personal experience of her first pregnancy. She describes the "vacuous impassivity" of the ultrasound technician who gives her the first glimpse of her new baby. Wolf both laments and rages against the doctor who performed her C-section, (I'm with you there Naomi...) and advocates a return to more personally attached practices akin to midwifery.

Ah yes...when you are a first time mom, naturally every single detail of your pregnancy is so awe inspiring that it is just unfathomable that a person who does something like 16 ultrasounds a day just couldn't work up a giddy over seeing *yet another* jelly bean with a heart beat.

How callous. How sad! How unfair!!!

Following the birth of her children, Naomi made a stunning connection: Abortions kill children.

More stunningly, she also connected the second wave feminism of "women have the right to abort" with the concept that abortion kills a woman's child. She managed a third wave spin on this dilemma: Women must, sadly, sometime make the decision to kill their unborn children, and because that is a sad decision, abortion clinics should be surrounded by women and medical personnel who will grieve and mourn those children while being supportative of the moms.

Naomi lost me there.

Now if she wanted to talk about the fact that sometimes a woman feels she must make the decision to kill her surly teenage, I could probably get on board with that. There's a reason why God included the passage about stoning rebellious children in the Old Testament. God knew parent of teens usually don't have the energy to go collect enough stones to get the job done, but it does give them something to dream about.

I made an interesting discovery over my three decades of parenting:

Everyone blab blab blabs the baby years. Pictures abound!

Everyone brags brags brags the school years. A few pictures are taken!

Everyone drops names of where first born is going to college. A zillion senior pictures get taken!

Everyone get really quiet after that...even if the kid graduates and gets a job.

Everyone is totally silent if the kid drops out of college and doesn't get a job.

Everyone starts talking again once a wedding is in the works. Thousand of wedding pictures!

And then it is back to step one all over again.

My mom has been in a prayer group since I was about ten years old. The ladies have prayed their way through their kids, and have just about finished up praying their grandkids to adulthood.

Those grandbabies were just so precious!

And ultimately they were just as messy as teens as their parents had been, if not more.

(Shaking head...prayer meetings are confidential you know.)

The great grand kids?

Oy vey. Maybe the less said the better!

Wonder what Naomi would feel about all that?
Can't wait until she becomes a grandmother!

Constant Cooker Takes a Day off...

I've got another gift for her, but if the mail would allow me to, I would be sending her this for her Golden birthday.

Because I don't think anyone else would think of it.

Shouldn't every birthday have some gifts that are a total surprise?

It is golden colored after all...

Have a BLAST today, my friend!