Tag Archives: Mrs. B at Home

Flannel and Forgetfulness

January 7, 2011UncategorizedMrs. B at HomeMrs. Blandings

I think I may have caught through the keyboard what Meg and Maxminimus had. Some kind of creepy bug that I’d thought I’d weathered the worst of when, yesterday, I found myself forgetting to offer a visiting friend food or drink. An additional warning sign should have been my willingness (enthusiasm, really) to wear my slippers to afternoon carpool. A regretful decision when I realized I needed to go to Office Max for the long-and-oft-promised replacement lunch box. Still, in that neighborhood, I don’t think anyone noticed.

An exchange that I had had with Courtney Barnes at Style Court about white walls sort of bounced around in my foggy head all day.

She mentioned Michael Bastian’s apartment which, she noted, has “flair to spare,” and I had to agree with its unpedigreed chic.

So as I guzzled the cough medicine that Mr. Blandings picked up “for me” (after mentioning the productivity of my cough while he knows that I hate any conversation concerning bodily function of any kind) I tucked myself in knowing that White Walls and I can make a go of it. “There is a place for us!” I declared as the waves crashed against the rocks. Or maybe that was just the ringing in my ears.

All images Domino, September, 2008; photography Melanie Acevedo.

Shock and Awe

January 4, 2011UncategorizedMrs. B at Home, ProductMrs. Blandings

I can give or take orange most days. I know, there are folks who are devoted followers and I like it just fine. In fact, there’s not a color I really don’t like except purple. Orange seems to scream for attention in a way regal red does not. “Look at me! Look at me!” waving its arms and jumping up and down. Or maybe it’s the heavy association with Halloween, a holiday which I’ve grown to fiercely abhor. Still, when this clipping of Charlotte’s Locks from Farrow & Ball slid from the envelope into my hand, well, I crushed. It’s rich, it’s bright, it’s bouncy. Orange you glad they did? (Couldn’t help it.)

Oh. And the purple I don’t really like? Well, it’s not these purples. Not these smoky, complex purples that might be right for reading poetry on a quiet day. Brassica, top, from the “family of vegetables” (do get back to me on that as I will forget to google it) and Calluna, its paler, breathier cousin, are both new colors from Farrow & Ball as well. There are six others, but I won’t spoil your fun – click here to see the rest when the collection is launched.

Why is she posting about paint? What happened to the white wall wonderland?

In my own F&B news, I sent off for a few pots of samples myself. Yes, yes, I know, I said white. And I meant it. Butmaybenoteveryroom. I think I told you that I painted the boys’ rooms. In addition, Mr. Blandings’s study is a tiny room. A dark room. Hardly a room at all, in fact, it’s smaller than a Manhattan socialite’s closet. So, light to make it bigger? Nonsense. Dark, dark green to make it better.

Walls, ceiling and trim. Most likely Calke, though Card Room has a fan.

“I put up paint samples today, what do you think?” “I like the lighter.” “Oh?” “You don’t.” “I didn’t say that. But I think with a little time you might find you like the darker.”

Don’t worry about Mr. Blandings. He knows better. He’s used to me.

Last, But Not Least

December 30, 2010UncategorizedMrs. B at Home, Musings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

The new house is a story-and-a-half. We’re down; they’re up. One room is just at the top of the stairs and the other is around the corner down this terrifying – terrifying – hallway. (It is actually not the door that you see, which is to the attic, but rather just at the end to the left. It is doubly terrifying because the door to the attic is right there. I think.)

With the light on is only slightly, well, worse. Eerier somehow. I practically skip down it. None of the boys have mentioned that they think it is scary, but I very nearly had to medicate the night I painted the room by myself while the house was still empty.

And while they haven’t seen The Shining,

they have seen Harry Potter and, goodness knows, nothing good every happens in a long stretch of hallway like this. At least in the movies.

And, to finish off this series (and you have been incredibly game this week) here is my kitchen sink. It’s lovely. The entire kitchen is lovely, if not exactly as I would have designed it, really lovely. Nothing to complain about. Yet, I never fully realized how much I need, and love (yes, love) my sprayer until I didn’t have one.

Now, I can see myself as the kind of girl who would say, “I’d rather have a clean counter. No sprayer. They’re silly.”

But what I’m finding during clean-up is that I am chasing things around this increasingly large bowl.

The flow of the faucet and the slope of the sink are insufficiently corralling the ick (the same stuff that was delicious just five minutes before) and I am left chasing it around with cups of water. Pouring and sloshing first this side, then that side. For what seems like minutes, at least.

Hmmm..? Use my hand? Well, yes, I could, but, you see, I don’t like to get my hands messy (maybe this is why I don’t like to cook or garden) and, I hate to get wet.

Go ahead, Dr. Freud, and draw all the conclusions you want. Harken back to the shower post if you must, but these are just the facts, Jack.

My list of the things I love about this house (wait until you hear about the microwave) will play out over the next year. These things are minor. Tics. We’re just getting acquainted.

In the Closet

December 29, 2010UncategorizedMrs. B at Home, Musings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

We are long on closets, lucky with closets, lousy with closets. Not only are they numerous, plentiful and many, they are big. Cavernous, yawning, monumental. Two, here in the entry.

Another in the family room.

This one in the den. And they are all, perhaps, within five to ten giant steps of one another. Kissing cousins.

Our closet, too, to the left, is ample. It’s a complete and total disaster (they all are, which is why they are being so dodgy with the paparazzi) but I think it will suit us just fine.

So, my beef? My bitch? My befuddlement? No linen closet. Nothing. Nada. Nowhere.

And here is where you will think I am bizarro and not the house. This stackable washer/dryer hook-up to the right of the master closet? Yeah, I think I’ll skip that. Who needs that hovering nag there every day just as I get home from work-out and coffee? Why be confronted with constant guilt before I am out the door for lunch and a hc/hilite? How could I enjoy a pre-carpool cocktail haunted by the thought that I could so easily be doing laundry?

Shelves is the answer. A respectable linen closet to save these wayward sheets and tablecloths. Washer and dryer firmly knowing their place in the basement. Visitation on Sundays. As it should be.

Blank Slate

November 15, 2010UncategorizedMrs. B at Home, Musings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

Living Room

I am a big believer in the jinx. Absolutely a knocker of wood, a thrower of salt and I’d be a over-the-shoulder spitter, too, if I thought I’d miss my jacket.

Dining Room

Let’s just say that, in theory, this is where I could be living mid-December.

Kitchen

If it isn’t hit by a meteor, lightening or an earthquake. Which could happen. Well, it could. I plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Family Room

I like the dark floors. I like the white walls. The light fixtures and fans? Not so much, which has the boys up in arms and they are lobbying heavily to keep their ceiling fans, “No one will see them but us!” Silly, young, naive things that they are, they think they have a chance. They do not.

Sun Porch (which will be my office)

I’m pushing furniture around in my head, of course, but sometimes I realize I’ve used the same chest twice or factored in tables that are mine only in fantasy.

Master Bedroom

Mr. Blandings has asked more than once, “Where will the Christmas tree go?” but that is too real, less dollhouse playing, so I just keep responding with, “Hmm…we’ll see.”

Master Bath

When we packed for the “in-between house” I told the boys to pack like they were going on a two-week vacation. Given these parameters Mr. Blandings stood, puzzled, looking at the stuff I was taking. “What’s all this?” “A dark dress in case there’s a funeral. A cocktail dress in case there’s a party. Three pairs of cowboy boots. Essentials.” He didn’t bother to ask about the file boxes of tear sheets.