A Few Of My Favorite Things #3: Aunt Bee’s Portrait

The things you love make a house a home.

At the age of three, our son became curious about the pictures of people hanging on our walls. He’d point and ask who they were. Most were relatives or friends. However, there was one painted portrait of a woman hanging in our bedroom that I had bought at a yard sale for $3 that was no relation. So, I told him I didn’t know who she was and I thought we should name her. Even though there’s no resemblance at all, I said, “How about Aunt Bee?” (after the character in The Andy Griffith Show). He agreed. For nine years now we’ve had her hanging proudly in our house.

‘Aunt Bee‘ on a wall of vintage fabric above a McCoy pottery vase.
(If anyone recognizes her, let us know so we can call her by her real name! :-)

(Photo- Martha B.)

A Few Of My Favorite Things #2: Kitchen Table

The things you love make a house a home.

My design mentor and friend Al has a very full basement. He runs his business from it and stores everything imaginable there- from tools, furniture, magazines, books, and dozens of boxes of who-knows-what. In the midst of renovating our house, Al would periodically stop by to check our progress. One day he asked about my plans for a kitchen table. I told him I had an oak one that I wasn’t too thrilled with. And that’s when he suggested a vintage Formica table that he had in his basement. In all the years I had worked for Al, I had never noticed such a thing. He said it was hidden underneath some stuff- that was his way of saying that it was buried somewhere! It would be quite a job to get it out, but he was willing. Days passed. Weeks passed. No table. I finally figured that if I wanted it, I’d have be obnoxiously assertive. So I called him and said I’d be over in fifteen minutes to pick it up in a borrowed truck. As I pulled up to his huge Victorian house, there he was lugging the table out through the basement door!

And I love how it looks in our kitchen! Thanks, Al!

(Photo- Martha B. and Andy H.)

Then&Now: My Old Kitchen Hoosier

A while back Rachel at Black*Eiffel posted glimpses into some bloggers’ kitchens including a peak into my kitchen hoosier. If you missed it, here it is-

Then- By the 1900′s a hoosier cabinet was a prominent fixture in American kitchens. Designed and made by the Hoosier Co. in Indiana, these free standing kitchen cabinets were an answer to the lack of storage space. They had built-in bins for flour and sugar, shelves and racks for boxes and canned goods. Some even had a grinder attached for meat. An enamel tray could slide out for a work space. And best of all when it wasn’t being used a tambour door concealed everything from view.

Now- I found our 1930′s hoosier in upstate New York. It fits perfectly in our kitchen. What’s inside you ask?

The hoosier is full of cereal, canned soups, Crazy Richard’s Peanut Butter, and jars of tomato sauce. In the drawers are paper napkins, pens, pencils and stuff for our dog Jasper. On the bottom shelf is our coffee maker and paper towel supply.

(Photos- Hoosier Manufacturing Co., Martha B.)

Garden Note #14: Pumpkin Inspiration

Can a photograph of a pumpkin patch be inspirational?

It was for me. I kept looking at this picture (above) and wondering if I should give it a shot. After all, our back yard had been all torn up from working on our house and the weeds were pretty bad and taking over. I reasoned that a pumpkin patch would fill in the yard and keep the weeds at bay. So my son Curt and I pulled out as many of the weeds as we could, raked in some topsoil and compost, built up six mounds with more compost, and put in some heirloom pumpkin seeds. Within two weeks sprouts came!

It was so exciting to watch our backyard fill with pumpkin vines…

…and here’s the harvest of three different kinds of heirloom pumpkins we planted- Musquee de Provence, Rouge vif d’Etampes (left) and Long Island Cheese ( right and below.) Interested? Check here for seeds.

(First photo-House Beautiful. All other photos – Martha B.)

KidFile #4: Making A Child’s Room Their Own

When we were new parents, we couldn’t wait to design Curt’s bedroom. Finding just the right crib, paint colors, fabric, and rug was fun. I could pick out the pictures and the accessories that I wanted to use in his room. Then about the age of five, he started to let me know he wanted his room his way. It started with wallpaper-a stripe in muted colors. Curt would have nothing to do with it.

“I’ll hate that paper. Every time I see it I’ll hate it more.”

The more I tried to convince him that he’d like it, the more he resisted. While I was visiting a designer-friend Al, I shared my frustration over this. Al told me to let Curt do his room himself. I gasped. I was picturing Star Wars sheets and posters everywhere. How could I let my son do his own room? Al suggested letting Curt be in on the planning just like I would with a client. So I did. I interviewed my son asking what he liked about his room, what he didn’t like, favorite colors, furniture styles, pictures, and things he wanted to display. We worked together.

Here’s what we did- a chalkboard-paint border around the room about eighteen inches down from the ceiling, cork strips just below the chalkboard border, a large rag rug from Ikea, an antique Eastlake bed, and a retro chest-of-drawers that he chose. No, his room does not look like a Pottery Barn room, but maybe that’s the whole point. It reflects his personality through the furniture, collections, drawings, and his perpetual scattering of books.

The antique bed Curt chose for his bedroom. The clip-on light and storage basket are from Ikea. The camp blanket is from Land of Nod.

We picked up this old school desk at a local shop in town. The top lifts up for more storage. An original Boby art cart holds supplies like crayons and markers. The ten year old chair was from Pottery Barn.

On Curt’s vintage Haywood-Wakefield chest of drawers is a display of his present interest- owls.

Note- I love the book Cool Kids’ Rooms by Hisashi Tokuyoshi. Most of the bedrooms are in small Parisian apartments. These are real kids’ rooms, not staged sets. I think you’ll find the book inspiring.

(Photos- Martha B.)

You Can Never Have Too Many Books!

I can’t imagine life without books. I remember when I was a teenager, I babysat for a family that had no books anywhere in the house-it didn’t feel like a home! I found out later they didn’t like to read. On the other hand our family had enough to start our own small town library. My parents both had books from their childhoods, their colleges, and their graduate schools. Then came thirty years worth of National Geographic and the books of three children. I’ve carried on the same tradition. My husband and I each came into our marriage with books and we’ve gotten many more. We’ve given our son books for birthdays, for Christmases and for the tooth fairy. This past summer we had to put a larger bookcase in his bedroom to accommodate them all. My husband and I designed bookcases for other parts of our home as well. In the attic we installed some under the eaves. We also built them in our living room and floor to ceiling shelves in our home office. What will happen when we run out of space in our bookshelves? I’m not sure. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

The photograph above shows the shelves in our living room while it was under construction. These shelves are on both sides of the french doors to create an intimate place for reading and doing puzzles. We painted them and they now hold our collection of hardcover books. The library table is an Arts & Crafts antique from the Madison-Bouckville, N.Y. Antique Show held every August.

(Photos- Martha B.)