Tag Archives: Musings from the Dream House

Cut and Paste

February 2, 2012Uncategorizeddesign books, Musings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

Over the last couple of years I’ve noticed an increasing number of decorating books being organized by room. This results in a parade of entry halls, living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and on. It comes off as a sort of scrap book, disjointed images of a common theme cobbled together on large pages. Like printed Pinterest.

I am confounded. I have a few books that are organized by color and I have found these handy when casting about for inspiration or stumped by combination. Southern Accents on Color comes to mind and I still refer to it nine years after I bought it. Others, focusing on one object or another – chairs, wallpaper, curtains – serve as handy reference books.

But finding a catalogue of living rooms leaves me cold. Worse still if I know that all the rooms of the house are, indeed, included, leaving me flipping back and forth trying to piece the puzzle together. It’s like meeting someone at a cocktail party and visiting for ten minutes, “Well, she seems nice.” A fleeting impression, but no depth, no perspective, no relation.

Seeing the house as a whole allows me to see it better. Seeing how each room relates to another shows me how the decorator tackled the challenges that the space presented, shows me where and why he chose to make a statement and where he chose to take a breath and demur. Having the house portioned out creates that often jarring experience one has at show houses; no common thread.

Beyond that, it shifts the focus from home to things. Perhaps this is the crux of the matter and it matters only to me. I think homes tell stories. True, some tell sad and neglected stories and some tell desperate and pretentious stories and some tell heartfelt and lasting stories; they all speak to me. When there is no narrative, when we don’t know that that particular African mask was brought back from the bachelor’s grandfather’s grand tour or if it was uncovered at a Paris flea market or simply received a good sanding after its purchase at Pier One, it is just a thing. It tells us nothing.

I look to all this stuff, the books, the magazines, the style sections and sites to open my eyes to how to do it better. Not just decorate, but create a home for my family and friends. When I see those rooms all lined up like shoebox dioramas on a schoolroom shelf, it makes me want to open my scissor and drag the blade along the fold; to set the house in order.

Image, Pablo Picasso, Studio with Plaster Head, 1925.

Hit and Run

January 20, 2012UncategorizedMusings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

My first real friend, my first chosen friend, was Phillip
Kent. He lived across the street
from me in Atlanta and was the youngest of four boys. His brothers were high school aged and older when we were
in third grade. His mother liked
to say he was a “blessing.” I
agreed.

We moved from “the apartment” to the house across the street
from the Kents and Phillip introduced me to the joy and wonder of the
creek. The creek was a small
stream that ran behind his house bordered by banks about a foot high. In the spring it was full of pinchy
crawdads and tadpoles as big as Tootsie Pops. We would kneel on the side and scoop the life out of it,
capturing wonder in Mason jars.
When the weather grew warmer we would stand bare legged, water half way
up our shins and watch critters swim under the water and rest on top.

My mother would rant and rail against the Georgia clay ground into my clothes on my adventures with Phillip. “Stay out of that creek!” she would
shout, though we both knew it was for not. Before there was Phillip I had
hosted tea parties and taught school with a legion of stuffed animals. I can’t imagine now what I had to offer
him, though he would take a place at the tea table on occasion. Besides the creek and all it had to
offer he tutored me in kick ball and won us a place in a pack of older kids who
roamed the neighborhood.

Phillip and I planned rock concerts for our parents, who sat
politely in folding chairs while we showed them treasures from our rock
collections. We spent the night at
each other’s houses to the delight of his older brothers who hoped we were
setting precedent. Near the end of
the third grade we were allowed to walk home from school together.

It was a few blocks, five at most, made longer by having to
cross at the light and come around “the long way.” It was a hard-won battle and we were sworn to cross with the
guard at the busy street. Mostly
we did, but on days that we lingered on the playground after school, we would
walk the winding road that led to a path through a wooded area that backed up
to our street. The shortcut
covered our naughtiness.

On a day without a cloud in the sky we decided to take the
shorter route. We ambled along the
empty road until it spit us out at the edge of the busy street. This side street was just over a crest
in a hill and we sprinted across, exuberant in our deception.

I was just in front of Phillip so I cannot explain the clear
image that I hold in my head of his body as it flew over ten feet in the air after
being hit by the car. I have no
memory of the sound of the wheels as they skidded to stop or the impact of the
car when it hit him. I cannot
remember a single detail about the car or the woman who was driving it. I did turn back to see the papers from
his notebook raining down around him.

I do remember the woods and the trees, some no larger than
sticks, as they blurred by in my peripheral vision. I remember the pounding of my heart and the stitch in my
side as I ran across the lawns of our neighbors, home, to tell my mother that
Phillip was hurt.

I burst through the front door screaming, “Mom, Mom! Phillip was hit by a car – you have to
come!” She did not say a word,
but grabbed her keys and drove right to the spot, the spot that she must have
worried over the dozens of times we walked home uneventfully.

In the few minutes that it took us to drive there, neither
of us spoke a word. Just as we
arrived one of Phillip’s brothers came running down the street, his arms held
wide, screaming his name. There
was a crowd and then there was the ambulance.

He was in the hospital for months. A ruptured spleen, countless broken bones, a collapsed
lung. He would miss the rest of
the school year, but he would live.
“I heard she was driving too fast.” “The children weren’t supposed to be walking home that
way.” “I heard she swerved to miss
Trish.” The women of the neighborhood
whispered in clusters on the curbs of our street.

At the beginning of summer vacation my mother took me on
a trip to see one of our friends.
On the day we bought matching clogs she told me that my parents were
getting a divorce and that it was not my fault.

Phillip was not out of the hospital before we moved. I did not see him again until I was in
college, back in Atlanta for a visit. He was a man I did not recognize
and some of the old neighbors said he never really recovered after the
accident. He was my first friend
and that day in the woods I am not sure if I was chasing it or if it was
chasing me, but that was the first time I felt death in my presence and we were
there both breathing hard.

A Happy Tune

January 17, 2012UncategorizedMusings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

I went to the symphony last weekend. It’s not on my usual list of weekend events: basketball, school project supplies, laundry.

It was an amazing treat. Mozart was lovely, but it was Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 that delighted my ear and captured my heart.

It is such a happy piece and I was struck with wonder at the ability to create something, anything, so beautiful.

Here I sit surrounded by projects undone. An astrologer scribbled three stars next to the date “February 15,” underlined it, circled it, then added a bracket for emphasis. The point of which was, “Get off your duff and do something.” My stars are aligning.

So I was thinking (wasn’t the point to stop thinking and “do?”) that music might move things along.

Would you send other suggestions? Classical music that will uplift, inspire, delight. Brooding I pretty much have covered. I’d love your recommendations.

I intended to illustrate this post with busts of composers, but once I hit 1st dibs I was enchanted by the variety there. So, these are irrelevant, except that I like them.

Anon – thanks, my mistake. You can see why I need the education.

The Morning After

January 16, 2012UncategorizedMrs. B at Home, Musings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

The dinner turned out just fine with no major mishaps. The stand-out dish without a doubt was the Triple-Layer Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting which you can find here. I did, as the recipe says, grate the carrots on the smallest side of a box grater. I did not have a comparable attachment for my food processor and I believe that it made all the difference. The consistency of the carrots post-grating was similar to canned pumpkin, so the cake was incredibly smooth and rich. The recipe says that 1lb. of carrots will equal about three cups. This is a complete and total bold faced lie, or was in my case; I needed 2lbs. Carrot cake in my book is only a vehicle for cream cheese frosting anyway, so the extra layer made it a total home run. I had it for breakfast the next day.

We copied the Brussels sprout salad from a dish that we had at the Mixx here in Kansas City. You can vary it to your taste, sprouts, arugula, cranberries, almonds, bacon*, shaved parmesan with honey mustard dressing. The Brussels sprouts are raw. Yep, raw and delicious. Trim the bottom and separate so they are basically leaves. Bill did julienne (right?) them a little. I’d be careful with the sprout/arugula ratio as ours seemed a little arugula heavy. Better yet, eat in or carry out from the Mixx.

*Mr. Sulzberger, you are welcome to order yours without bacon.

A Happy Book

January 9, 2012UncategorizedMusings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

And so we are off. The boys are back at school and I am home again in the quite with only the rustle and woofing of the dogs to disturb me.

I received an email, the subject line of which was “Be Well in 2012” and I originally thought the sender was “The Universe.” Ominous, once opened it turned out to be from The University of Kansas. Nice, but less profound.

I could use a little profundity as I have had a few projects come to an end and rather than feeling relieved, I feel adrift. Two volunteer projects sit on my desk like bags of snakes. They twist and curl, slither and hiss just here at my left elbow; I keep thinking I have their sacks firmly tied, but they make me anxious just the same.

And, our new year feels more like mourning than morning. Over the holidays we were seeped in death, dipped again and again and again. It did not diminish the joy of the carols, but often made them seem a little too loud.

As joyous as the season is, and as much as it touts beginnings, it is the end of things as well.

To shake off the snakes and escape the gloom of my musings, I set out to see the world. A great find came, as great finds often do, on a dusty shelf in a thrift shop. It was waiting there for me, without its wrap (and not needing one as our weather has been fine), knowing that I would find it and its meaning in good time.

Ludwig Bemelmans’s The Best of Times is a compilation of his articles for Holiday magazine recounting his travels through Europe following World War II. Mr. Bemelmans took his title from Dickens, and, indeed, it is not always a rosy view. But to me it said, “Go. Don’t wait. You never know.”

All images by Ludwig Bemelmans from The Best of Times, Simon and Schuster, 1948. The title is taken from the introduction. “I set out to write a happy book. The mood was somber, then as it is now, but I disagreed with the opinion that was screamed at us from the radio and the front pages…”