




Me, drinking red wine on Lavenderchick's sofa: (note need for Botox, which I hope to become addicted to in 2009)
See me trying to grow a plant in the desert. Most people will see this and think 'how pitiful.' But I'm here to tell you this mini century plant is thriving in its little rock circle! Note the nice dry dirt and not a hint of mud. When you are from West Texas, mud is a problem.
5. Learning. I love to learn stuff. I love my smart friends who also like to learn stuff and are therefore smart. I like people who are not smart only if they are interesting and I can therefore marvel at their flawed nature or twisted upbringing. Being from West Texas, I can say I know a lot of smart people and probably just as many who are flawed, twisted and interesting. I pledge never to reveal who is who.
And here's a pic of me and my two best friends, who just happen to be smart and are from West Texas!
In this photo, I now notice I must have been having a hot flash. Compared to everyone else in this photo, I appear quite exposed.
That's it for me and My Fabulous Blog Award. To share the love, I'm nominating the following super cool bloggers I follow. Some of them may already have received this award and I just don't know it.
1.Joni at Cote de Texas. Since I am addicted to learning, I love Joni's blog because I learn about design and see beautiful things. And, I have a sneaking suspicion that she's more addicted to coffee than me. She is way too famous and cool to respond to this chain letter award, but I love her and am nominating her all the same.
2. Lucchese to Louis Vuitton. I just discovered this West Texas girl so go check her out. Her blog right now is serenading me with "Silver Wings." Must be a girl I need to get to know.
3. Design-Block. I just love Design Block when she blogs, but she's busy and not as prolific as I'd like. But when she does say something, it's good.
4. Laura U. A darling young designer in Houston. She's got a great shop on Westheimer, Laura U Collection, and is creating some beautiful interiors that recently won some ASID awards. I love her website as well, www.laurau.com
5. Cheap Chic and Lizzy Webb. Another new blog discovery for me. I already love her. One of my favorite things is clicking on to blogs that my favorite bloggers follow. Lizzy appears to be Joni's daughter and although I am old enough to be her mother, she is darling and I love her fashion sense and the way she writes. Again, I don't care who I learn from, as long as I'm learning. If I lose my mind, I think I'll refer my daughter Mary over to her blog.
This home is new construction, on a deer ranch. So right now it's looking a little fresh from the furniture store but that's all going to work itself out as the totally cool family that lives here makes their mark and keeps on putting their personal stamp on the place. And I was also thinking if it was my house, I would turn my kids loose in here to warm it up and wear it out and make it look a bit more lived in. After the holidays and deer season, this family has probably already accomplished all that.
So here's to 2009. Informal polling among Smart People Who Sami Knows and Saw Over the Holidays forecasts a much better year than 2008. To a person, all my smart friends were glad 2008 was over and are looking forward to rerides in 2009.
I just love the crisp white against the warm tan, and the black sets it all off so nicely. Is it too formal for the Marathon setting?
This is how it looked the day we went to do the inspection. The evaporative cooler is out of the window and it has a new tin roof. The storm screen doors are off. And there are a few plants trying to grow in the yard. But other than that, it's still aching for some curb appeal. A new porch is planned to jazz up the front entry, and a little overhang is going over the back door, but those will have to wait until people can qualify for home mortgages again. (Shameless plug: www.accessmortgageplanners.com.)
The former option for this quaint little West Texas diamond in the rough was Sherwin Williams Crater Gray, which Ryan loves. I love the color, too, It's a gray/green/bluey color and quite masculine and cool. We first saw it on a beautiful house in Castroville. The difference that gives me pause is the Castrovile house sits in the shade, surrounded by beautiful green trees. This house sits out in the arid plains, set against tan, dry desert mountains. I do not want it to stick out like a turd in a punch bowl, as someone really influential in my life named Bob used to say and probably still does.
So what do you think? If you're one of those sneaky people who reads this blog and doesn't comment, please break that trend today and tell me what you really think!
So this year when I dared to bring it up, my darling husband declared I must be suffering from multiple personality disorder, or something. Later this afternoon we caved and decided to throw a big bash at our house. One of my brothers is hosting his new girlfriend we like to call Miss Alaska, and he needs somewhere respectable to bring her to introduce her to the family, after all.
Just like every holiday, everyone will offer to bring something. And then I'll fret that we'll run out of food, which we actually did one Easter. I was horrified, given that I come from a long line of cooks and eaters who take great pride in cooking delicious food in copious quantities. We strive to create the best dish everyone raves about on any given holiday. But in recent years, I have discovered not every family is like mine, which can be good and bad, depending on how you look at it.
In recent years, I swear I have eaten fake mashed potatoes on Christmas (Jesus would not be happy about this, I know) and one year at Easter, someone brought a dozen boiled eggs, undecorated, with some chips. I promptly made deviled eggs, in a feeble attempt to fill everybody up.
It occurs to me that not everybody views a holiday gathering like my family does. Average, normal people don't realize you need to cook 10 pounds of potatoes or 5 pounds of green beans even though you're only one person. They don't know you can't bring a two-person serving to a 30-person gathering, or one dish if you've got five, big-eating kids.
Then there was the year everybody brought their dishes stone-cold and were all vying for stove and microwave space while patient old people and kids sat around, glassy-eyed and starving. Good times. The next year we employed subtle suggestions to at least bring the food at room temperature or in a crock pot or warmer. My father-in-law, who is the most precious man ever, always arrives just in the nick of time, takes over the kitchen and makes gravy. I've learned to just glide on outside for pre-dinner glass of wine.
How can people look at the same issue and see it so completely differently? It's baffling. I've thought about this a lot in the past few months, during the past election, when millions of voters did not share my insightful view. How can I be so right and they're just so blatantly, blindly wrong ? And how can they think the same thing about me when I'm so obviously right?
And then there was the time when I lovingly interjected there would be 30 people at the Thanksgiving gathering. And the invitee replied "well the recipe makes a 9x13 pan." End of discussion.
All of it is just fascinating. And here we go again.
And finally, here's my little Catherine. These are older pictures, but they're my favorites because they totally "capture" her thoughtful side. I love her deep-thinking nature, and that she'll wear pearls and take her poodle to church.
Could our twins be any more different? Catherine is so girly girl. I took the picture below at her second birthday party. That's just about the time her hair really began to grow.
While life is so good for me, I just can't get thoughts of those less fortunate out of my mind. My best friend's Uncle Bo died this week in a plane crash in West Texas while surveying flooding on the Rio Grande from the air. The Texas Gulf Coast is in serious distress. My brother and his kids can't go home to Beaumont. The markets are a mess. Two very important people in my past life have really scary cancer. I wonder whether that beautiful Galveston beach house that Joni of Cote de Texas blogged about earlier this summer even exits anymore.
The really simple and realistic girl in me loved this house from the Joni's post. I could see myself lurking on this porch, incognito, watching tourists meander by. I wonder how it fared when Ike attacked?
We don't get to pick the trials that make us stronger and form us into really tough old ladies who retain their good manners, snazzy good looks and charm. I guess if there' s any lesson to learn, that's it.
My only role on this job was trying to fix what had been done by someone else they mistakenly let paint and "antique" the cabinets. The paint scuffed everytime you touched it and they not only have two big teenager kids but also a huge, ferocious dog that barked and growled at me (while I was trying to be in my groove ...)
These cabinets are now luxuriously beautiful if you ask me. My antiquing process sealed in the paint, whatever it was and whatever its problem was. Who could say? That painter flew the coop.
Here the paint looks a little orange, but it's really just my flash washing it out. I love the use of drawers under the stovetop. People just don't usually have enough drawers in a kitchen. Lower cabinets, if they don't have pull-outs, are just a hassle.
The lesson here -- painted cabinets are just cool. And see how much more beautiful and fun they can be when they are red? Mine are the color of cardboard but they have been done with this same technique.
I am helping a builder friend pick some colors for a spec house -- that really cool one on the lake Lavenderchick told you about. I asked about cabinets and they told me: "We'll probably do a stained, oak cabinet ...."
When I got together with the interior decorators they use for selects, we promptly vetoed that bad, bad idea right away. Not in a lake house. Not with travertine. As my daughter Mary would say, "it's just not correct."
Isn't she seriously cute?
Here's Rooster with his baby sister. She makes him look like a Big Boy. He loves her so much. But he does like to pounce on her and roll her around like a bouncy ball.
OK, enough of this. I swear I have fascinating decorative painting pics to share. I haven't given it all up for puppy raising.
Oh and one more thing. Guess what the big lesson was, as I struggled to make it through those first two tragic weeks of puppy crate/potty training?
I do have enough love to go around. My new key word, which I should get tatooed somewhere important, is .... perseverance.