"[He] lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.) Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out." The Nine Billion Names of God. Arthur C. Clark.
The first time I read a vintage Sci-Fi novel I was sixteen, working as the manager of the book department in a quirky little fandom shop, and the genre came at the recommendation of boy I was desperate to impress. I began with Dandelion Wine and The Illustrated Man both by Ray Bradbury and followed those up with Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. The boy was never impressed with me and that relationship went no where, but my love affair with classic science fiction endures to this day.
I've just started watching a show called Pluribus (from the creator of Breaking Bad) and am truly enjoying this modern alien invasion show, but it has stirred up a hankering to return to some of my favorites from the past. So, I have borrowed a quote from science-fiction legend, Arthur C. Clark for today's post. It's a short story, like many of the sci-fi greats, but it conveys so much in its few words. The outfit and the theme for the post don't really go together, but why do they have to anyway?
Temperatures have plummeted into the single digits and all our work on the house has ground to halt. Our plan was to save all the inside work for the cold weather and the outside work for the warm weather. It's a good plan, we just didn't count on how hard it is to get motivated when the house is chilly and the fire is warm. I also didn't want to sacrifice being able to be generous and give freely during the holidays, so we stopped allocating funds to construction and focused on Christmas instead, so our construction fund depleted and we have to spend some time rebuilding it before we move on. We've had a dusting of snow, nothing awe-inspiring, and definitely not enough to make me feel like going out for photos, so I'm all out of outfit pics for the time being. To be perfectly honest, I'm not much interested in outfit photos in any weather at the moment. I'm completely wrapped up in getting my house finished, but I know that construction = house; decoration = home. The love and care you put into how you decorate your home is where the love and personality shine forth. To that end, on days when we can't rally ourselves to be too far from the fireside, I have a special project that I began a few months ago and has been perfect for keeping me feeling accomplished during the worst of winter.
In the late spring, my 90-year-old great-aunt passed away. Our family spent weeks going through her things and as it turns out the woman was an avid collector of lamps. Walking into the house for the first time, I commented that I would take the green lamps because I thought they would match my decor. I was duly given every. single. green. lamp. I have at least a dozen now, plus several antique floor lamps that needed rewiring. Many of them had shades that were crumbling to the touch; some had no shades at all. I started researching options for buying Victorian style shades or simply recovering the ones that came with the lamps. Somewhere in all that searching, I came across The Lampshade Lady. Ms. Mary has been running this small business for decades. She provides the lampshade frames which are reproductions of Victorian styles, and the supplies as well. You can also buy kits and a tutorial video to get you started, which is exactly what I did. There are plenty of tutorials out there, and Ace of Shades is a great source of inspiration, but Mary's seemed like the whole package, plus you get personal customer service from her if you need help.
I finished the first shade and put it on this Art Nouveau style white floor lamp. So pleased with the results, I contacted Ms. Mary and ordered three more frames and some replenishing supplies and have now covered all three of those plus an additional three that came with lamps. I haven't started applying the fabric and trim yet. I'm sort of waiting to see how the construction goes so that I can try to match the shades to the vibe of the rooms as they are completed, but I have enjoyed working at this task, keeping my hands busy on these long days indoors.
Today's post is a departure from our usual fare. Reader, it's cold outside, down in the negative double digits, so I'm not even going to pretend that I want to go out for photos. I'm currently wearing three layers and still a little chilly in my home. So, let's talk about something different today: ceramic collectibles.
I'm always on the lookout for interesting pieces to put in my home. Nothing sad, greige or minimalist about my home. Following in the footsteps of my two favorite design eras-the Victorians and the 1950s/60s, I want color, patterns, prints, textures, colliding into a feast for the eyes. While designing my home during all these renovations, I often look back to the things I loved in other people's homes when I was a child.
The house I grew up was very much a product of the late 70s. Everything was olive green or burnt orange and all the walls and ceilings were bare and white for the longest time. It had a very tiny rectangular kitchen with rows of orange cabinets running parallel down the walls. On top of these cabinets was just enough space for my mom to showcase all the ceramics she had inherited from family members over the years. I wasn't allowed to touch anything, under the premise that these were valuable things. As an adult I have run across many of those same pieces in flea markets and antique stores and I can tell you with all certainty that much of the value was sentimental, but I get it.
Among the pieces displayed there, I spent a lot of time admiring a set of blue smiling cats. They were lovely and I wanted more than anything to take them down and play with them. But, I was not allowed. Last year while wandering through a flea market, I saw an entire collection of these same blue cats and got a little curious what happened to those proudly displayed pieces which had disappeared years ago from my mom's collection when my parents moved to a new house and mom wanted a new look.
Originally, I believe there was this tray/ salt shaker and a sugar bowl or could have been a grease bowl. After some digging through boxes and bags at the back of her closet, we managed to locate the two remaining pieces of this collection.
As her junior year came to an end, my youngest daughter was debating leaving school early. As she weighed the pros and cons, she often asked for advice. As someone who actually did leave high school two years early in order to start university ahead of my peers, I can only give her the advice that my parents gave me when I was faced with this same decision. 1. Every path you take will involve sacrifice. This may be the wisest thing my folks ever said to me, because it gave me a sense of reality about the future. Nothing will ever work out perfectly. There is no such thing as a decision with only benefits. Everything you choose means you will miss out on something else. It's unfortunate and often creates difficulty, but the good news is...
2. When it's time to leave, and you know it in your heart, nothing will stop you. I have done my fair share of hemming and hawing when faced with tough choices, but when I left high school, I knew the things I would be missing out on, like prom, graduation, the senior trip, and I was a little bit sad about it, but I had outgrown my school and my friends and I felt like I was suffocating in that world. Nothing I was giving up was enough to stop me from leaving. The benefits outweighed the losses; I knew what I was giving up and I just didn't care. When everyone else in my class was walking to get their diplomas, I was walking across campus taking night classes. When they were on their senior trip, I was working 60 hours a week and taking classes on my lunch break. When they were getting their first cars, I was moving out of my first apartment and across the world to another country. It was lonely, it was difficult, it was exhilarating and challenging. I didn't choose an easy path, but it was the only one I could live with. Whether it's a job, a school, or a relationship, when you're ready to go, nothing will stop you.
In the end, my daughter has decided that she wanted to stay in school and graduate with her friends. Given how much she was on the fence, this seemed to be the right decision for her. As much as she wanted to do something new, she wasn't willing to give up all the milestones. And what that tells me, is that leaving wasn't right for her. If or when she's ready to walk away from the beaten path, nothing will stop her.
Somewhat along the lines of today's topic, I thought this Either Oar dress would be a fitting 'fit. Plus, I love red for the chilly months. This was a thrifted ModCloth piece with the lovely pun names we all miss so much from OG ModCloth. The name reminds me of a personal mantra about the decisions we all must make. I decided long ago that the choices between right and wrong aren't the difficult ones. The decisions that are really tough are Right and Left. Either this path Or that. Both will have benefits and pitfalls. Both come with sacrifices and opportunities. Weigh out what matters most, what sacrifice you can accept. Make your choice. Live your life and try not to look back.
In 2025 my posts have been confined to a single location: My home. Different spots around the farm of course, but ultimately, all within walking distance of my front door. The reason is two fold: 1. I have become rather lazy about getting up early in the morning to take photos, much preferring to lounge in my robe until after sunrise when I change into my old work clothes to start my farm chores. 2. We have spent every possible free moment in construction. On the nice days we built with wood; on the not so nice days we built with concrete; on the bad days, well if it was too nasty out to work it was certainly too nasty to go out for photos. I tried at the end of summer to schedule a location session for some great new pieces I acquired for my birthday, but in the end we just had too much good weather and loads of work to do to spare a whole morning.
We intended all this work to give more space to our family in this tiny house, but before we could get it done, our oldest grew up and moved out. At the rate things are going, I'm afraid our youngest may be moved out too before we are all done, but we tried our best.
Almost every inch of this construction was done by my husband and myself. Let me emphasize that: Every. Single. Inch. Squaring dirt walls by hand, hauling out fill, bringing back fill, pouring concrete, hefting cinder blocks, hoisting walls: we've done it all ourselves. I grew up on a functioning farm, not the glorified petting zoos that most people call farms now, but an actual working farm, and I can safely say this has been the most labor intensive work of my life and yet the most rewarding as well.
There is an indescribable satisfaction that comes from making something new or restoring something old, especially something like this, which was in the home that dad grew up in and it has been rescued and moved to a home that, God willing, my grandchildren will one day spend many happy days in.
I spent years obsessing over this idea of a cream lace dress. Years. If there's one thing I have loved, it's obsessing, and this ...
