Tag Archives: Furniture

Memories Hodgepodge

 

borsch-snoqualmie-001

It’s Wednesday and that means Jo From This Side of the Pond is asking questions for us to answer. Thank you Joyce!

1. What’s something that makes you feel stressed? How do you cope? 

Confrontation makes me stressed. If I can I walk away, I do. One of my coping mechanisms is to avoid it altogether. That’s okay unless I’m the cause for the need of the confrontation. Asking for forgiveness is a good solution. There are other situations where being a peacemaker is the solution.

2. What’s a food you eat that evokes a memory? Explain. 

Borsch (Borscht) evokes lots of memories of growing up. I hated it when I was little. The cabbage was not a pleasant texture to my palate. Having to sit at the table until I finished my bowl is not a good memory. I sat there for what seems hours after everyone else left the table. My solution was rebellious and I suffered for it by the reprimanding from my mom. While I was alone in the kitchen I decided the solution to my problem was to pour my bowl back in the pot. This would have worked except for the fact that I had soaked lots of bread in the bowl of soup. It was clear to my mom that I dumped my bowl of soup back in the pot. Oye, was I in trouble!

I love borsch now! Here’s our mom’s recipe.

3. This week’s Hodgepodge lands on National Visit Your Relatives Day. Will you celebrate by visiting a relative? If so is travel involved? Geographically, who is your nearest relative (not counting those living in your own house)?

No, I will not be visiting a relative. Our nearest relatives live 8 miles away from us. They are enjoying sunshine elsewhere right now. I will travel to their property to water the garden and maybe check the chicken coop for eggs. Our other relatives (children, siblings, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins) live in Western Washington, California, Colorado, Texas, North Carolina, New York, Illinois, Florida and Israel. Dear and my parents, grandparents, uncles and all but one aunt are deceased.

I will see some of our California relatives and friends when I travel to Southern California for a Memorial Service in June.

4. What’s your most frequently used emoji?

Probably a heart or smiley face.

Do you make more phone calls, send more emails, or mainly text to communicate with friends and family? 

It used to be phone calls and emails but now it’s mainly text. Phone calls are few and far between because our country connections are dismal.

5. Tell us the story behind a favorite piece of furniture. 

We have an eclectic collection of furniture with lots of stories behind them but one of our newer purchases of an old piece is my current favorite. I wrote about it here.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

It’s Ice Cream weather for these two! Love seeing their faces via texts!

Bungalow Updates

We’ve been on the lookout for a coffee table with no sharp corners. This nifty old Ethan Allen piece became available at a second hand store here in Colville. It has 2 drop leafs and will work perfectly for those over sized jigsaw puzzles. It’s also sturdy enough to put your feet up on. We are pleased with this addition to the living room and how it fills in the room.

We found this sturdy bench with a shelf at a antique/thrift store in Chewelah. It’s sturdy enough for Jaymison’s car seat and for people to sit on to take off or put on their shoes. After we added this bench the wall pieces seemed too small for the space.

We ordered this piece from Hobby Lobby. It arrived in bad shape with glass broken in the frames and all the frames had fallen off the back board. We got our money back and were told not to ship it back. We went to a glass shop and had new glass made to fit. We bought some super duper glue and glued the frame borders back on and voila for about $6 we had a new shelf.

We are pleased and once we have our family photo shoot (a present from our kids to me) in March I’ll order photos to fit the spaces. I did find temporary photos that are working well for now.

Our Master bath is getting a face lift. Dear is busy priming the cabinets and getting the walls ready for paint.

We’ve changed out the vanity lights and are pleased with the new fixtures in appearance and in the light they deliver.

Top photo are the new ones. Bottom photo are the old. Our bathroom is a mess right now with cabinet doors off and priming in the process.

The cabinets will be white and the walls will be grey.

It’s about time for me to remove all our Christmas cards and pack them away. Someone suggested instead of just tucking them away to put them in a notebook and take time in the new year to pray for each family or individual we received cards from. I think that is a very good idea.

This would be a good prayer to pray from Paul in Ephesians:

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Ephesians 1:15-23

Amen.

And for my unbelieving friends I would pray that God would have mercy on them and that He would open their hearts and minds to the truth about who He is and what He has done for them through our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is snowing here in Colville. We are predicted to get 6-8 inches. We are driving to friends later in the afternoon. Hope the roads aren’t too slippery for us!

Happy Friday to you!

Transformed…

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…and ready to support our family and friends for many more years!

 

Heading out the door to the upholstery shop. Poor chairs were pretty sad looking after over 30 years of service at family dinners, many birthday parties and other celebrations.

 

Home again with more support, covered with leather and decorated with lots of upholstery nails.

This one is to prove the sunshine came out on Friday after we picked up the chairs! As I look back over this post I see the sun was shining brightly on the day we took them to the shop also!

We’re happy with the new look and the new feeling of comfy support and soft leather.

We had a very good experience and would recommend Doran Patrick’s Custom Upholstery LLC in Seattle on Lake City Way!

After we brought our chairs home we went out to celebrate the sunshine and the chairs. Here are some sunlit scenes we saw on our way home from dinner. It was a lot brighter on the way to dinner…

Hope the weekend is going well. I’ll be watching that big game soon are you/did you watch, too? Mostly I’m interested in seeing the commercials! As I type that I find it ironic that the commercials are usually what I fast forward through on any other show we watch…

I’m linking to:

Sunlit Sunday at My Little Home and Garden

Mosaic Monday at Little Red House

Photobucket is holding many of my photos hostage with their mark across my originals. It will take me a long time to remedy this. 

The Final 20 & My New Cabinet!

In which she cheats and puts things on the final 20 list that happened before they appeared on the list and she knows will happen in the near future!

#22 was… Buy a Welsh Sideboard. I’ve wanted one for years. This isn’t a Welsh Sideboard but it fulfills it’s purpose and fits in my space well. It’s an Indonesian solid wood piece and we are pleased with it’s function.

Now here are the final 20 of my list of 60 things to do in my 60th year!

41. Take a ride in a limousine with people she loves. Completed on my birthday March 14th with our sons, DIL, and Dear.

42. Treat people for her birthday. Bought drinks for all our season ticket neighbors at the opening game which was the day after my 60th birthday.

43. Find a purse that will accommodate my stuff plus my camera with a long enough strap to fit over my shoulder.

44. Meet bloggy friends in person that she has never met in person before.

45. Reorganize cabinets and purge some Chotskies.

46. Make those every so many year appointments you dread but need to do.

47. Write a Psalm to God.

48. Find a dress for our daughter’s wedding.

50. Learn to put the flagpole up and take it down.

51. Back up the files on my computer.

52. Create some photo books.

53. Mail a box of goodies to Katie’s Andrew while he is deployed.

54. Order a DVR

55. Get a new modem that might actually make her internet work well.

56. Send flowers to some unsuspecting person.

57. Detail my car.

58. Write poetic tribute of my history as seen on Debora’s blog.

59. Take a canoe ride on Lake Washington this summer with Dear. Him rowing, me taking photos.

60. Do a blog tribute to some of my favorite blog posts on other people’s blogs.

Coming up with 60 things was not an easy task. Maybe there will be some modifications along the way. It was a good exercise and I’ve already enjoyed the benefits of completing many of the 60.

Photobucket replaced all my photos with ugly black and grey boxes and they are holding my photos hostage until I pay them lots of money. I’m slowly going through all my posts and trying to clean them up and replacing some photos. Such a bother.

 

From Flowers to Reality T.V. Friday’s Fave Five…

Whoa…where has the week gone? It’s time to look back and pick some favorites. There is so much to choose from. Susanne has room for you to join in if you’d like to post your Five Favorites from the past week. Click over to Living to Tell the Story to join on in or see some Favorites.

One of my favorites are these new bookcases that Dear put together and I filled in our Living Area. We are really enjoying the new look this achieved and I’m enjoying seeing some of my pretties out from their hiding places.

 

My next favorite is being surrounded by live flowers this week. We bought a few Gerber Daisies at the Farmer’s Market and then on Valentine’s Day our kids sent us the beautiful bouquet of Lilies. (Of course that bouquet is my very favorite because they came unexpectedly from our kids) Then I got 2 dozen free roses from the little Thrift store I frequent. I think that God is so good to us to have created flowers of so many colors and varieties for us to enjoy. Don’t flowers just make you smile??

Call my next favorite a confession of my not so secret obsession. I love Reality TV. Not all Reality mind you just Biggest Loser, American Idol, Top Chef, Amazing Race, Project Runway, and Survivor. Can you still be my friend after I’ve made this confession? Good thing we have DVR so I don’t have to be home every night to watch these shows! For those of you who watch Top Chef, Fabio’s restaurant in Moorpark is not that far from us so Dear and I plan to go soon…

 

Onward and Upward…my next favorite was weather in Southern California this past week. Look at the contrast over a 24 hour period in Southern California. Tuesday Evening we had those great clouds that had brought rain earlier in the day and then the next afternoon not a cloud in the sky. It’s been cooler, too, which is a nice change for us in Southern Cal.

Last for this week are Willow and my walks and the fact that Dear and I continue to work out on the Bowflex and try to get our walking in too. We are starting to see and feel some results which are motivating us to continue. Us older folk need to keep our muscle tone up… Willow and I took photos of each other this week on a fun little path behind her neighborhood. We promised each other not to take photos of our behinds going up the path and steps. Little favors go a long way with body self esteem :0)

Maybe next week I’ll be brave enough for Dear to take a photo of me grimmacing on the Bowflex!

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage unless I pay them a lot of money. I’m slowly cleaning up many posts from this time period and deleting their ugly grey and black boxes with a ransom request. Such a time consuming bother.

Metamorphosis Monday With Blue ~

For this weeks Monday Posts I’m combining Met with Blue. Susan at Between Naps on the Porch and Sally at Smiling Sally are the hostesses of these two weekly events. Met Monday is all about transformations, before and afters. Blue Monday is anything Blue.

We have been on the lookout for some bookcases to replace a small folding one we’ve been using between our living room and dining room. We wanted to add some width and height to the space. On Valentine’s day we found the bookcases at Target and Dear put them together.

 

 

 

Both Dear and I think this space has a more “grown-up” look now instead of college dorm.

 

 

Some closer shots of the shelves where I can put some of my china, too. See the blue :0)?

 

The photos in this frame got a “Met” job too. I purchased mats and shuffled the photos. These are our children. I really like the transformation with the added black mats.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today. Have a great week.

For more Metamorphosis Monday visit Susan here.  For more Blue Monday visit Sally here.

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage unless I pay them a lot of money. I’m slowly cleaning up many posts from this time period and deleting their ugly grey and black boxes with a ransom request. Such a time consuming bother.

Ruby Tuesday ~ My Ruby Living Room

My living room in my home in Washington has a lot of Ruby/Burgundy accents.

It always cracks me up when I try to describe our style. Kind of an old lady, vintage, modern, eclectic, traditional mish mosh of stuff we’ve gotten stuck with inherited and purchased over the years.

Some of our Books

Kipling, Browning, and Favorite Poems ~ all very old with ruby covers!

For more Ruby Tuesday visit Maryt at Work of the Poet. You can join in any time, too!

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage on their site and have replaced my photos with black and grey boxes of ugliness. I’m slowly deleting those boxes from my blog and trying to update so many posts, very frustrating.