Excuse me while I rant

Now no one take offense, but I must rant about Mexican furniture, which is being overused in epidemic proportions. It's everywhere. Don't get me wrong. I like it. I own it. But please, please, for the love of God (as Lauren would say), do not fill every room in your home with it.


The reason this came up is one of my wonderful friends and clients is building a ranch house and she needs a ton of furniture. So I have been helping her look for some and she's been looking herself. There are entire stores in San Antonio that can fulfill her every need and blank wall. And it would be really easy to go in and fill up the house at a nice store like The Rustic Gallery or Catrina's at the Ranch or any other "Hill Country," "Rustic," or "Old World" way-overpriced-and built-by-underpaid-and-probably-starving Indians-and/or-Mexicans furniture store. But to do this ranch house justice, and for it to be a reflection of her very cool self, it's going to be so much harder to do what I want her to do: pick and choose really great pieces from all over the place.


In my quest to help her find the first critical piece, something to act as the powder room vanity, this is just a taste of what I've encountered. I know, egads:




Stars are cool and we live in the Lone Star State, but let's just say my eyes are bleeding. Must we have stars on every single thing? I'm surprised I don't see stars stamped on my butter.

These tables below are apparently from India, masquerading as rustic Mexicans.
Not all of it is bad. The Rustic Gallery in San Antonio might suck your very last penny out of your pocket, but it has some very nice pieces. It's just difficult to snag pictures from their website. So to see that I know what I'm talking about, go check out http://www.therusticgallery.com/

I also like http://www.elpasoimportco.com/. They're very PC and don't stick to just Mexico or India. I've seen Polish and Russian stuff in there. Who knew?

This piece below I actually do own. We used it as the bathroom vanity in the Marathon house. It's the perfect height, the perfect width because it took the place of the dwarf's tub and shower (about 48 inches) and it looks really cute with towels rolled up on the shelves. This piece does not offend me, I'm sure you're so glad to know.

I thought this little table below would make a great vanity for the powder room, especially after I jazzed it up a bit. She doesn't have the space for the vanity above. We each had been searching and searching and then one night when my husband woke me up in the middle of the night for no good reason and then I couldn't go back to sleep, I realized that this little piece lonely down in my garage/studio was probably the exact right size. I wanted to go downstairs in the dark to measure it but I waited until the next morning. Sure enough, it was perfect in size.

My client's concern is it doesn't have anything to hide the plumbing. Her builder is one of the best so I'm sure they can figure it out. And, I've never been one to worry about the details. Once I do my thing to transform this little lonely table and then the builder's plumber installs the fabulous sink from http://www.mexicansinkconcepts.com/ onto it, there's no doubt it would be fabulous. Still, a cabinet of some sort would be the best bet.

This armoire is actually pretty. I think it's from The Rustic Gallery:



Here's why I think we need to venture into and then out of the rustic Mexican import stores. I've been to one or two houses on ranches in my life. And in all my travels, large landowners that I have known, in their houses on actual ranches with real live cows and assorted other animals, not one single one has been decorated completely rustic or western for that matter. I double-checked this with Dr. Debi Duke, and she backed me up. What you will see are lovely and well-worn antiques and even primitive pieces from the old days when maybe times weren't quite so good that are being held onto because they're fabulous and remind the home's inhabitants from where the come and what's important, hopefully. And there are feminine touches in these houses because shockingly enough, real, live women live in them.

And there are very nice, traditional pieces that are comfortable and serve a purpose. Then, there will be beautiful western art and it seems right at home there. These homes are not themed like a Parade of Homes house, as in this is our ranch house (yee-haw!) and this is our lake house (welcome to the lake!), and this is our doggy-themed laundry room. Even Elizabeth Taylor redecorated that god-awful house in the movie Giant (after her sister-in-law passed on and she made it clear who was the woman of the home).

Next post will include photos from my scouting trip to Houston, inspired by one of Cote de Texas' blogs.

In Marathon, Life is Good

the church next door

Just home from a leisurely dinner at the Gage, which would have been perfect if not for the smokers who got seated on the patio next to us. I know it was outdoors, and I really hate to be a smoker nazi ... however their air was mixing with mine. As my dear father always says, there's nothing worse than a reformed smoker and something about a redeemed hooker.

So anyway, if I have a card reader I'll share photos from this most fabulous locale. The weather is wonderful. The air is clear. It wasn't windy today, although Dara said we had horrible wind for the last two days, which completely dried out my sweet little Vitex tree that I'm planning to plant tomorrow. My little vitex looks like my dried out crusty West Texas menopause skin, actually.

Kuhny and I had the most fabulous day driving out here. No rush. Many stops. I read a book to him on the way. He got a ticket for driving 87 miles per hour, which I predicted because I have psychic skills.

Now it's early and in the words of my favorite cousin and the world's second-best mortgage babe Vicky, it's "time to make night-night."

Iron Mountain at dusk

To Update You Before I Run Away

I'm running away to West Texas this weekend to bask in the peace and love of quiet isolation with my husband sans kids. We're really excited that we'll be able to converse without interruptions and mostly just lounge about. I can hardly wait.

I promised that I would bring you up to date on my recent endeavors so please forgive me if there is no rhyme or reason to this blog. It may be kind of like cleaning out the fridge and calling it dinner.

This is a kitchen island I am currently destroying, I mean transforming. It's going to be antiqued red and black when I'm finished. Mostly black, with just some sexy metallic red peeking through.

Get a load of this dramatic powder room. Isn't that just a special potty? What I like about this bathroom is that the homeowner rediscovered that painting in a guest bedroom or somewhere she never saw it because it was hidden by a door. My clients mother redecorated her bedroom when she was a girl and bought this painting at that time, 30 years ago or so. If I had seen that painting and used it for inspiration it couldn't have been a better match. There's a lot of gold on the walls that you can't really see.

Here's the sexy sink in the powder room. I wish my camera took better pictures of my walls. Trust me that they look better than this. It's a combination of Faux Effects Lusterstone and Faux Stone Pull-off.

OK, this is my top pick for cool powder rooms. First, how could it not be with that absolutely fabulous light fixture? And then, see the very subtle stencil applied in metallic silver ever so often around the room? I may have shown you this before, but I just love it. And it wasn't even my idea, by the way. That's why I'm raving about how cool it is. The subtle use of stencils is one of my current obsessions.

Here's an artsy shot of the light fixture over my dining room table. Too bad my finger found its way into the picture. This was free because it used to be shiny brass and ugly. Not any more. I would like to get some really wild chandelier shades. If you know where I should look, do tell.

And finally, here's a shot of my dear husband leading our sweet little Caroline to the car after my cousin Neal's wedding. Is that not the most beautiful picture? She's got her little bean bag puppy in one hand and her Daddy's hand in the other. We got there somewhat late and had to sit on the back row, where she flirted with her little friend Cade the entire ceremony.

Just to be fair, I'd better show you how beautiful Mary and Catherine looked that day:

Catherine is all about doing what will "make my hair grow long." Sometimes it's taking a bath, sometimes drinking water. It's a big motivating factor because even though she was born with more hair than her sister, it took her hair longer to get going. Once Caroline's bald head kicked into gear it grew really fast, into blonde ringlets. Catherine's hair really getting long, isn't it? Her hair reminds me of my grandmother's which was dark and curly to show off her really light skin. Catherine's middle name is Mae, after my grandmother, so that's just one of the reasons we think her "really long hair" is special.

Mary and her beautiful cousin Elyse. Mary's on the left. They were best little cousin friends when they were babies. However I just noticed they're not babies anymore.

My Time in Blogland Time-Out

I suppose a few of you have noticed I've been absent from blogland for a few weeks. Gosh, time flies when you're losing your mind. I knew I'd be back eventually, I was just taking a little time out.

I made some really big, much-needed changes in my life, but my life and all its commitments didn't get the memo. My life and all the commitments are still expecting the same results as before, which means I've been busy trying to get rid of the commitments so I can never make the mistake of volunteering for this or that ever again. You would think I was a well-heeled philanthropist without a job or kids the way I have been working for good causes. Frankly, it has to stop! I'm sick of being a do-gooder.

What was my big change? Well first, I got the message that I needed to spend a little more time around my house, you know, doing important things like taking care of my children. Let me tell you, that was a shocking message to receive and comprehend. And the reason I knew it was probably someone important like God implying that my children needed me more, was because I really didn't want to hear that message. I was busy. I had commitments and responsibilities. My kids were being expensively well-taken taken care of, but it wasn't by me. And that became a problem. I finally heard the message loud and clear one day when my friend Cristin relayed something Jamie told her in a conversation about somebody else: "Sometimes what's best for everybody else isn't always what's best for you." That one sentence was just part of a random conversation, but it resonated in my head like a bullhorn:


"Hey Sami !!!!! Yeah, you. What's best for your family might not be what you would dream up in fantasyland!! Yes, I'm talking about your kids and your home. Maybe even that neglected husband of yours."


So what I did was cut back on the work week by two days, Monday and Friday. That gives me four days in a row with the darlings and then every night and that's certainly enough for any 42-year-old basket case with 3-year-old twins and a beginning teenager. I got the message but let's not get carried away. I'm not quitting my job and becoming a home-schooler, even though that's very admirable if you are wired that way but I can assure you, I am not.

All three of them when Catherine and Caroline turned three

The new arrangement has forced me to cram a lot of work into naptime, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. One Thursday I worked from 9 a.m to 4:30 without taking a break because I didn't have the heart to postpone the renovation of a lovely powder room over the weekend and until the next Tuesday. I wasn't about to explain my freakish schedule to my client. This weekend I managed to work Saturday morning while my amazingly hands-on husband took the girls to visit his grandmother.

Catherine modeling her new pink tutu skirt. Caroline agreed to wear the new pink shoes



So far it's working. My kids don't cry and hang on my leg when I leave. They still fight and whine try to eat carbs and sugar for every meal, but I think that's normal. There seems to be a little more peace and love flowing through our air.

Barefooted and burning up at Gruene Hall a few years ago. You can tell because they have no hair.

I promise to get back to blogland soon to reveal all the fun stuff I've been working on. And, amazingly enough, I have pictures!!!