House & Garden

Color My World

/ Ally Bean / 20 Comments

“All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.”
~ Marc Chagall

Now that the evil ragweed season is upon us and the outside weather makes my eyes itch, I’ve found myself spending more time inside the house than normal.

As a way of entertaining myself, I’ve been researching color as it pertains to home decor + walls + artwork.  It’s a topic that I’m interested in knowing more about plus it makes me feel productive as I sit here muttering about that sneaky pollen out there.

So here’s what I’ve found.  Fun stuff.  Good information.  Often interactive.  Pollen-free.

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9 Designer Color Palettes.  This article is from Better Homes & Gardens.  I like how it made me rethink some of the ways in which I put color together.  Good ideas, as usual, from BHG.

Chip It! by Sherwin-Williams.  I uploaded a photo of the hollyhocks in our backyard and this is what I received back from Sherwin-Williams.  Neato, huh?

32 Paint Chip Projects.  This blog post has links to lots of ideas about how to use paint chips as art.  Admittedly I have yet to do try any of them, but if the weather continues to keep me trapped inside I’m going to give a few of the projects a whirl.  No time like the present, eh?

Design Seeds.  I don’t know when I first found this site, but I have to believe that it was one of the best days of my life.  Really.  If you adore color this is the place for you.  Design Seeds is filled with examples of color palettes created from photos of nature &/or household objects.  ‘Tis a wonderful place to visit, I tell you.

Benjamin Moore on Pinterest.  This Pinterest page is filled with a variety of boards.  Some are dedicated to specific colors while others are about decorating ideas.  There is even one board with photos from the Brimfield Antique Show.  Check it out.  It’s cool.

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What am I missing here?  Any other color websites that I need to know about?  Ragweed season goes on for a few more weeks, so I’ve got the time to look them over at my leisure.  😉

 

The Tale Of The Potted Pothos In The Pretty Pot On The Porch

/ Ally Bean / 17 Comments

ONCE UPON A TIME ON A FINE SPRING DAY… the lady of the house went to the store and bought a small pothos.  She brought it home and planted the pothos in a beautiful terra-cotta pot that featured smiles & dots on its rim.

The lady of the house was very happy with how her new pothos looked in her favorite pot, so she put the potted pothos in the screened-in porch of her home.  There, the lady of the house was certain, the potted pothos would thrive.

 And it did.

WHEN SUMMER CAME UPON THE LAND… the lady of the house decided to take her early morning mug of coffee onto the screened-in porch, sit in her favorite wicker chair, sip her java and gaze upon her potted pothos in the pretty pot on the porch.

And all was well in the land.

UNTIL ONE MORNING… the lady of the house realized that there was something new & different about her pothos.  That during the previous hot, humid night the potted pothos had changed in a very weird way.

At first the lady of the house did not like this transformation.  In fact, the man of the house suggested that she get a paper towel and immediately remove the strangeness from her favorite potted pothos.  [Please note that the man of the house was not put out enough by the strangeness of the potted pothos transformation to do anything about it.  He merely suggested to the lady of the house that she should do this.]

But the lady of the house ignored the man of the house’s advice and decided to look very carefully at the mushrooms that had formed on her favorite potted pothos.  As she did this she realized that the mushrooms were a pretty shade of yellow that just happened to match the tiny yellow stripe on the pillows in the screened-in porch.  Such attention to detail delighted the lady of the house.  Yes, the mushrooms were an interesting development to be sure.

And suddenly the lady of the house had an idea.

FEELING THAT THERE MUST BE AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS TURN OF EVENTS… the lady of the house found a link to a webpage that explained exactly what was going on with her potted pothos in the pretty pot on the porch.  She discovered that her beloved potted pothos had a fungus called Leucocoprinus birnbaumii, aka Lepiota lutea, the yellow houseplant mushroom.  Further she learned that this fungus, which had created these yellow mushrooms, was harmless as long as it was not ingested.

And there was learning in the land.

AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE… the lady of the house had absolutely no intention of eating these mushrooms.  Or of letting her precious morning mug of coffee come in contact with them.  The lady of the house had common sense– and then some.

So she let the yellow mushrooms be & allowed them to go through their 48 hour [more or less] life cycle.  During which time she enjoyed the unexpected, color-coordinated bit of beauty that they added to her potted pothos in the pretty pot on the porch.

And once again there was peace in the land.

THE END


We Caved

/ Ally Bean / 22 Comments

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Remember two weeks ago when I told you that I had absolutely nothing planned for the week?  That I was going to spend my days in quiet contemplation with a book or writing or just being?  I was in a very good mood when I wrote that.  Possibility awaited me.

Well, that didn’t happen.  Practicality showed up instead.

You see, without any advanced warning, workers from the sprinkler installation company arrived– and began installing a sprinkler system in our front  & back yards.  A sprinkler system that we’ve tried to do without for all 13 years that we’ve lived here.  A sprinkler system that we reluctantly decided to buy.

A sprinkler system that says to the world: yes, we’ve been assimilated.  We are… suburban.

I remember when we first moved to this area we surprised our friends & relatives by voluntarily living like this.  Suburban, that is.  We’d always lived within walking distances of restaurants and grocery stores and parks.  We’d been in high-rise apartment buildings and historic preservation districts and old-fashioned city suburbs.  But never in exurbia, outside the ebb & flow of a city.

However, be that as it may, for the most part this has been a good way to live.  I’ll admit that.  Having space within your home and quiet outside your house is delightful.  And Z-D loves to come back home from his workplace in the city to an area that is nothing like the city.

So if having a sprinkler system is part and parcel of this choice, then I guess I need to accept that caving on this subject might not be the worst idea ever.  In fact, I suspect that come mid-August I’m going to think that a sprinkler system is the most brilliant thing that we’ve ever done around here.

Having come to the mature realization that: Resistance was futile.