dining room with painted hutch or wall of photos?

So, suppose you had a dining room that had room for your long-anticipated wall of photos that you have been lusting after ever since India Hicks did it in her house in Domino?  But there was only room for a wall of photos, OR a fabulous painted hutch, but not both? Which would you do?

A wall of photos, because holla, awesome!

(I will add that I will never have a rug in my dining room till my children are grown and left the house, but I dig this rug, not that its big enough for a dining room, but you get the idea, yes?)

Or a beautifully painted hutch, because holla, awesome!

Or would you dither in indecision for months?  (I would.)

Light fixture (via this image, I don't have a source for the fixture, I'm sure its to the trade, but I WANT)
Boerum dining table
Marais A chair in gunmetal
Rug 
Campaign dresser via Natty By Design Shop
India Hicks's dining room

George and Weezy redux

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of when the Mister and I got on a plane to California to find a place to live.  The Mister stayed here in California and started working while I went back to New Jersey to pack up our lives. Moving to California was our ninth move in ten years.

I am tired of moving.  I want to buy a house. I want to stay in that house for a period longer than a year.

Its more than a house. I want to be home. I want to set down roots that won't be ripped up in 18 months. I want to have friends that I won't leave soon after getting to know them. I want to have a place we belong.

I don't feel like we belong here, really, yet.  I don't really feel like we belong in New Jersey anymore, either.  On our last few trips back to New Jersey I have had a weird sense of unreality--I used to belong here, but I don't anymore.  I don't belong anywhere, at the moment.  As my friend Linda once told me, "I'm just passing through here...for the past thirteen years."   

We have started house shopping.  I am simultaneously thrilled and terrified.  Thrilled because holla, new house, new decorating, of course.  Having something that is mine.  Building equity rather than paying a gazillion dollars a year in rent into someone else's pocket.  Terrified because the last time we owned a house we sold it at a significant loss and had to come to the table with a really large check to get rid of it.

The cost of housing where we live is INSANE.  Like, one billion dollars for a three bedroom house.  And prices are rising, if you can believe that.  There is so little inventory here that houses are selling for many thousands of dollars over asking price.  Every house we looked at last weekend was in escrow on Tuesday.  We are looking in four towns and there are less than ten houses in our price range.  We looked at a house that had twenty-three offers over asking and is currently in escrow for $30,000 over the list price.

This may take a while.  

Rugs to go with Ikea Janette curtains

Recently I got a question about what sort of rug would one put with the Ikea Janette curtains that are (no longer) hanging in my dining room.

Because the curtains are a very large multi-colored floral pattern, I would stick to a simple graphic rug, such as stripes or chevron (or even a solid), and probably not more than two colors in the rug.  This is a personal preference of mine--I like bold, large-scale patterns in my curtains paired with fairly simple rugs.

The Janette curtains have a very greeny-yellow citron as the dominant color, and then black, navy, teal, white, and pale mint as the complimentary colors, so there is a wealth of colors to pull from. The citron green is a very intense, acidic color, so I wouldn't try to match it or even stay in that color family.  Depending on the furniture in the room I'd probably concentrate on finding a black and white or a navy and white rug to ground that bright citron green. If you like more color, I think a blue-ish teal would be a great match.

Here are eight rugs that I think would look good.

moroccan tile / chevron / striped Rand / greek key / herringbone chevron / teal soho / blue white dot / blue trellis

Like so:

My favorite is the black and white herringbone stripe--its a fresh take on the ubiquitous black and white Ikea Rand/Madeline Weinrib rug that is everywhere these days (yes, including my own living room).  What would you put with those curtains?

the boys' room refreshed

In the winter I add heavier quilts to the boys' beds.  These are quilts I picked up at Target about five years ago.  In fact, I liked the quilt so much I bought one for Greg, and then a week later went back and bought one for Peter, who wasn't even conceived yet.  (Very forward thinking of me, no? I contemplated buying the pink version too, but didn't.)

Uncle Mark gave the boys a new gazelle head for Christmas, which we added over the dresser between the beds.  (Don't ask how I got that pointy thing through airport security. It involved a lot of socks and shoes.)  We moved the bookshelf that used to be in the room into the garage, and then put the Mister's former bedside table in the boys' room.

The two small square frames hold tiny Chinese renderings of the boys' names.  But they may come down, I think there is too much stuff up there.  Maybe just the heads right next to each other?

As a part of January's Fix All the Things month, I added a plug-in swag pendant.  There are no overhead lights or hardwired fixtures in any of the bedrooms of this house, and the single lamp did not provide enough light for the room.  (We also added this pendant in the playroom as well.)

January recap: Fix It Month

I designated January as the month I was going to fix all the things in my house that were broken, in need of repair, or just didn't work as they were.  It was a big list.

Some of my problems were fixed by simply moving the furniture around, like the living room.  Other problems were fixed by replacing the offending item, such as the pair of kitchen shears with broken handles, or replacing the all the green playroom bins I didn't like with navy blue ones.  I bought new lamps, new art, new bedspreads, new rugs, new curtains and new dining chairs. I have yet to share most of these new things with you, but I will soon.

The big Fix It project, though, was the garage.  I do not have a head-on picture of the insanely packed garage, only this one taken from the doorway into the house the day we moved in:

It was packed floor to ceiling, front to back.  Sooooooo much stuff.

I purged and purged and purged.  So many rounds of purging.  (See them here, here, here, here and here).

You know, I got rid of an unbelievable amount of stuff.  I didn't take that many pictures, and my "after" pictures are not nicely staged or beautifully organized.  You might look at my garage and think, you know, there's still kind of a lot of stuff in there.

(Ignore the red armchair; that usually lives in my living room but I dragged it out to the garage so that Princess could prop up her leg and watch the ipad while I walked on the treadmill.)

Yes, there is still a lot of stuff in there.  Hand me down children's clothing, Christmas stuff, a sewing machine, my craft closet, an air mattress, four bicycles, two scooters, ten folding chairs, four laundry baskets, a tool shelf, art supplies, the shoe cubbies, the filing cabinet, the printer, the treadmill, two bookshelves....I could outfit a new family with most of the basic necessities.

BUT.  When I started?  I could have outfitted and furnished AN ENTIRE VILLAGE of families.  It has taken me the better part of a year, but I have gotten rid of a garage, an attic, and a basement worth of stuff.

This is the first time in ten years that I don't have an attic, a basement and a garage full of stuff.  When we move out of here, this will be the first place where the moving estimator doesn't say "this won't be too expensive...oh wait...you have a storage unit and a basement and garage full of stuff I haven't seen yet?"

I'm not done yet.  There's more to be done, and I'm working on it, bit by little bit.

I have plans for February, too.  February is the Spend No Money Month.  In January I spent quite a bit Fixing All the Things.  Since its really difficult to take a three year old with a broken leg shopping, it seems like the stay-at-home-with-broken-leg month will coincide nicely with a spending moratorium.

Fixing All The Things: homemade bread and roasted tomato soup

I've designated January as the Month of Fix All The Things.  If an item or situation doesn't work, I am either getting rid of it or fixing it or replacing it so that it works.  This is a William Morris post in itself, but today I will just tell about one fix-it endeavor: the immersion blender.

My kids are adamant about not eating lumpy soup, whether the lumps be beans or chicken or vegetables or any other delicious thing one might put in a soup.  Thus I have blended soups in our tiny, 2 cup Cuisinart food processor.  This tiny processor was great for making small batches of pesto, but not so great for pureeing large batches of soup.

Last month I broke the tiny Cuisinart by dropping it on the ground. I bought a slightly larger, 3 cup Kitchenaid food processor.  It pureed more soup, but still, not a lot.  And then, a light bulb went off over my head--why don't I get an immersion blender?

Yes, I pureed large batches of soup in a 2 cup food processor for seven years before it occurred to me to get an immersion blender.

So I perused the internets, which offered up this fancy and awesome immersion blender.  Last night I pureed soup in less than a minute with no mess or spilling of boiling liquids.  Hallelujah!  The technology that mankind can come up with these days!

I'm pretty sure we got an immersion blender as a wedding gift ten years ago but I think I donated it because I didn't willingly cook before I had children.

Since I now have the power to blend soup without mess (what superpower did you get?), I made a delicious roasted tomato soup, loosely based on this recipe from Ina Garten.  But I didn't have four cups of basil sitting around and I added a bunch of other stuff, so....thanks Ina Garten for giving me the recipe to build on.

Roasted Tomato Soup
10 plum tomatoes (you could use more, but 10 plum tomatoes is how many fits in my baking pan)
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (that's according to Ina, I just toss in a whole bunch)
1 tablespoon salt (I never measure, I just salt till it tastes good. A tablespoon is the bare minimum. .)
1 tsp black pepper
1 large onion, chopped
1 head of garlic
1 zucchini, grated
1 package pureed butternut squash
2 tablespoons butter
1 28-oz. can of whole peeled tomatoes
1 32-oz box of chicken stock
1 tsp dried basil (use way more if you like. I would use at least a cup of fresh basil if I had it.)
1 tsp crushed rosemary

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.  Slice the plum tomatoes in half, spread in one layer on baking sheet, and drizzle them with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Cut off the top of the head of garlic, drizzle the exposed garlic with olive oil, and place on the baking sheet exposed garlic side up.  Roast for 45 minutes.

2. If your pureed butternut squash is frozen, defrost it in the microwave. (You could also roast fresh cut up butternut squash while you are roasting the tomatoes.  I used roasted squash last time I made it, since they were leftovers in the fridge.  This time I only had frozen stuff, so that's what we used.)

3.  In a large pot, saute the onions and grated zucchini in 1/4 cup of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of butter, until onions turn translucent.

4. Add the canned tomatoes, chicken stock, butternut squash, basil and and rosemary. Add the roasted tomatoes, including the liquid in the baking sheet.  Scrape out the roasted garlic from the husks and put in the pot.

4. Bring to a boil, then simmer uncovered for 40 minutes. Add some more salt, if you think it needs it. (I do. I salt it till it tastes good.)

5. Use your fancy new immersion blender to puree the hot soup.

I think this soup would take very well to having pureed carrots and celery in it, if you were so inclined.

Homemade Bread!
Peter and Princess love this soup.  I think they really love it because I serve it with a fresh loaf of homemade bread for dipping.  We have been using this recipe from Mark Bittman.  It is incredibly easy--its flour, yeast, water and salt mixed in a bowl and walk away.  Its incredibly delicious, as long as you don't mind the fact that you have to start making it 20 hours before you eat it.

My notes on the bread--if you don't have an oven-safe dish with a lid, we have simply been making it in a pyrex ceramic pan covered with tin foil, and it has come out fine.  A bit dense, probably because the tin foil is not providing quite enough trapping of heat, but its still tasty and quite good.  We just ordered a pan with a lid since we make this bread so frequently.

I don't dust it with cornmeal or bran as the recipe suggests. Also, rather than flipping the dough onto a towel, as suggested, I just take the dough out of the bowl, flour it up, flip it, put more flour in the bowl, and put it back in.  It is much easier to clean a floured bowl than a floury towel.  It can be a juggling maneuver to take it out and then put it back in the original bowl, though, so you could easily start by flouring a second bowl and tossing it in there, rather than one-handedly flouring up with original bowl.

Mark Bittman put out a video with Jim Lehey (the guy who came up with the original bread recipe that Mark Bittman published in his NY Times column) noting that you could add a 1/4 tsp of red wine vinegar and use very warm water and decrease your rise time from 12 hours to 4 hours, which would mean you could make this in the morning and still have it in time for dinner.  The video is unclear as to whether you need to flip the bread over and rise for an additional two hours, like in the original recipe.  I tried it (with the flip over) and it came out very wet and dense (sigh), so we have been sticking to the original recipe.

We make the mix at night before going to bed, usually around 10 pm.  I flip the dough the next day around 2 pm, and put it in the oven around 4, so we can eat it around 5.  Obviously this is not a great recipe if you are not around in the middle of the day.  My inlaws make two batches on the weekend, and eat it during the week; it keeps well if tightly wrapped.

We have a lot of after-school commitments lately, so I've been on the hunt for recipes that are either short or are soups I can make in a crockpot.  Share your favorite soup recipe, if you are so inclined?


I'm linking up to Pancakes and French Fries William Morris Project.

vintage art prints over the nightstands

I've been taking the master bedroom in a blue and white direction.  I hung the Ikea Stockholm Blad curtains in blue and white, switched out our very heavy brown winter comforter for a plain white all-season one, put a blue duvet cover across the bottom of the bed, and painted the mirror over the dresser cobalt blue.

I also bought two vintage art prints for over the bedside tables.  The Mister and I love vintage art, so it was easy to find a few prints that we liked. One is a vintage advertisement, one is a vintage travel poster. Art.com has a decent amount of 20 x 28 vintage prints, which is the perfect size for the Ikea 20 x 28 Ribba frame.  (I love the Ribba frame, but since they don't follow American standard sizes, finding the right size art can be difficult. Also, although the largest Ribba frame says that the interior is matted to 19 x 27, the posters were juuuuust a smidge too short for that frame.)

It was difficult to capture a picture of the art without glare, so here are the images from Art.com:

via 

via

Almost done with this room! The only thing left to do is fix the lamps.