Tag Archives: Musings from the Dream House

A Dog Year

Uncategorized

“We’re celebrating our twentieth anniversary this year, what about you guys?”

He: Eighteen
“Oh, that’s great. I can’t believe it’s been eighteen years.”
She: (aside) Is that right? Are you sure?
He: You’re hilarious. 1992.
She: Blank stare. A blink. She loathes math.
He: That’s eighteen years. In October.
She: What? Not eighteen until this October? It seems longer. It seems nineteen at least.
He: Well, the last year has been like a dog year.
And she took solace in the fact that he still made her laugh every day of how ever many years it had been, even though she hoped when they looked back on this last one they would find it was among the worst.
rssrss      FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

What Gives, Bud?

Uncategorized

I’ve had good teachers and bad teachers. Most of the good teachers I remember were English teachers or history teachers or journalism teachers. Maybe it wasn’t the teachers who were good or bad, but my affinity for their subjects. On the other hand, my high school biology teacher was whispered to have had a fling with a senior and my high school chemistry teacher (also the cheerleading sponsor) spent our hours together monotonously reading aloud from the textbook. She might as well have been reading Greek. So maybe the teachers’ skills played as large a part as mine.
Regardless, the little science experiment that has been playing out on my kitchen counter has proved both amusing and frustrating. The tables for Dining by Design (and I am sorry if you are bored of the subject – it is likely to continue all week) are not allowed to have open flame. I like tapers. It’s not that I don’t like votives, I do, and hurricanes have their place, but I really like a tall, elegant taper.
Enter the bud vase from Nell Hill’s. When I spied it I am quite sure the women around me could hear a bell go off. “I can put a taper in there. It will not be an open flame. It will be a perfectly stylish slender hurricane and I am a genius.”
So, tra la, tra la, to the register I head with my basket. Nell Hill’s manager, who was a manager of mine long ago, cautioned only that as the bud vase was not meant to hold a candle the heat might cause it to break. Good thinking. I’d check it out.
Drip, drip, drip a few drops of wax in the bottom to hold the taper steady, light the wick and wait. I was fixing dinner and helping with homework when the eldest Blandings boy said, “Oh, Mom, the candle went out.” “Did someone blow it out?” “Nope.” Huh.
I tried again. And again. With different sized candles. Out of drafts. Each and every time, regardless of the variables, the flame went out when the candle reached about two full inches from the top of the slender, genius hurricane. The boys, including Mr. Blandings, thought this was the most interesting thing I had done for a long time.
I get that the candle is not getting enough oxygen; I just don’t get why. I mean, people survive for days buried in rubble from earthquakes, it just seems that oxygen would travel a couple of inches to ensure that I have a pretty table. It’s the least oxygen could do.
I’ve asked the eldest to ask his science teacher, Mrs. T, why this would be. Mrs. T is an excellent teacher. If Mrs. T had been my science teacher I would be a modern day Curie. With stylish slender tapers to light my lab.
rssrss      FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Floored

Uncategorized,

“Could you help me carry a few things in from the garage?”

“What is this?”
“Well. Well, I thought the Dining by Design table needed a rug. You know, to define the space a little better.”
“Uh huh. Where did you get these things?”
“Lowe’s. Jimenez told me about it.”
“How did you get them in your car?”
“Oh, there was the nicest man there; he loaded them up for me.”
“And they fit?”
“Well, not exactly. They had to go up over my headrest.”
“So, they were basically on your head for the ride home. And you couldn’t see out the back.”
“Basically.”
“And why are we taking them into the living room?”
“I just can’t quite figure out what I’m going to paint on them and I can’t get a sense of the scale until they are all together.”
“You’re going to paint them.”
“Right.”
“But not in the living room? In the garage. Or how about the basement?”
“Huh.”
But he knew from the start that I was going to paint them in the living room, just as the nice man at Lowe’s knew that I was not going to come back with a bigger car, but was going to figure out how to take these three four-by-eight pieces of laminate home right then.
I hate math, it’s such an inconvenience, but I measured a little then got out the yardstick. I was off, of course, and things had to be reconnoitered. I hate that. So I ignored the incorrectly measured part and went ahead and painted the border. I wanted to paint; I did not want to measure. When I finished the border, I stood back admiring my work, grateful for creative friends and low-priced home goods stores. Painting the floor in the living room was fine, bother Mr. Blandings and his concern.
Then I felt a nudge. Not of conscience or of sense. A nose nudge. About mid-thigh. It’s a common experience as it is Rosie’s usual way of letting me know I have forgotten her walk or her food or fetch. As I looked down into her amber eyes I realized that I had not quite accounted for keeping the dog off of the “rug.” She does not follow verbal instructions as well as the boys, which frankly is not all that well either.
So for a week Mr. Blandings and the boys have said nothing as half of the downstairs is blocked off with chairs and tables as they all work around me.
rssrss      FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Hindsight

Uncategorized


I’ve wanted glasses since my first eye test at school in third grade. Glasses held such an allure. I talk with my hands and I could imagine, even then, taking them off, chewing on the end of the arm while considering Bomb Pop or Push Up. I could imagine wildly gesturing with them as I made my case for one more episode of Scooby Doo. I could imagine them as the unspoken explanation of why I was reading Nancy Drew instead of playing kick ball. Alas, it was not to be. Worse, 20/10.

On Saturday, after a little running around in the morning, I came home to read in bed. I had about an hour before the next soccer game and I banned the boys from the room so I could sit and relax. I lay in the quiet and cool and read the just-arrived issue of Vogue. When it was time to go I put the magazine down on the bed and placed my glasses on top. With that gesture I realized that I have finally become the age that I have felt that I was since I was nine years old.
rssrss      FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Results Oriented

Uncategorized

I know that many of you click on that little “comments” link at the bottom of the posts, but many more do not. As there were a lot of interesting responses to Friday’s post, I thought I’d sum them up here. Readers overwhelmingly declared that one of the most significant developments in the last twenty years was expansion of the the availability of good design at all price points. Retailers like Target, IKEA and Pottery Barn and designers like Martha Stewart and Thomas O’Brien have provided stylish products at affordable prices; beyond providing the stuff, they have been an interesting influence on design awareness.


Design television. Love it or hate it (or both), television programming has given the average viewer the sense that they can, in fact, do it themselves. Sometimes in a day and under $200. While this can often complicate the expectations between client and designer, I would imagine it has liberated a few folks to give it a go. That’s not altogether a bad thing.

I am lumping these major influencers together. Apple and the internet. Many people cited the iMac, iPhone and iPad as significant forces in design. The internet has basically blown the thing wide open. The “democratization of design” has allowed anyone in a developed country to search for inspiration, product and pricing on everything from towels and toothbrushes to Titian and T. H. Robsjohn Gibbings. And, like it or not, that genie is not going back in the bottle. Designers, antique dealers and shop owners have to adjust.

Philippe Starck’s Ghost Chair was mentioned more than any other single thing. The marriage of traditional design with a modern composition set it apart as an icon of the turn of the century. (In this little poll, anyway.) This mix of high and low, old and new, was also noted as a significant movement of the last twenty years.

Oh, Tom. You were on my list, of course, but as it turns out there were a few others who could feel your, um, impact. Ford’s influence at Gucci as well as Calvin Klein’s 90’s minimalism and Alexander McQueen’s maximalism have made us see all design differently in the last twenty years.

Takashi Murakami and his low-culture/high-art Superflat style came up again and again.

And many of us have gone green. Sustainability in product, architecture, landscaping and design is everywhere so environmental responsibility does not mean you are limited to a 1970’s crunchy granola aesthetic.

Readers extolled the work of Frank Gehry, I.M. Pei, Richard Meier and Zaha Hadid in architecture.


And, since this is a Kansas City-based blog, the Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins came up as well. Thanks to all of you who took the time to comment or email; I had a blast reading your responses.
Images via Target, HGTV, everymac.com, DWR, the Fashionisto, the Gothamist, the Guggenheim and the Nelson.
rssrss      FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail