Lavender Laundry Sachet from Dreamy Whites

“Between the garage and the beech hedge was her drying-green.  She had done a wash this morning, and a line of laundry stirred in the rising breeze.  Wooden tubs, planted with pink hydrangeas the colour of blotting paper, flanked the entrance to the house, and a hedge of lavender grew close to its walls.”

from September by Rosamunde Pilcher

   

Now that it’s autumn, the days of drying laundry outdoors are going as quickly as the light in evening. 

Using one of Dreamy Whites' organic lavender sachets in the dryer does a great job making up for summer winds.  The fabric is a soft cotton tied with a bit of butcher’s twine.  So simple, so natural, so touchable I find myself holding them to my face before I toss them in the dryer.

  

Until next time, stay shabby!

Sharing with:

White Wednesday at Faded Charm 

Meeting Rachel Ashwell

Photo: Daria DeBuono

Glorious spaces.  

Fresh.  Bold.  Soulful.

Photo: Daria DeBuono

Right Photo: Daria DeBuono;  

Left Photo Lamp: Simply Shabby Chic Lamp at Target

For the party, every detail in the store was so pretty and thoughtful.  

So Rachel.

Right Photo: Daria DeBuono

If you don't live near a store, you're in luck...

It’s no secret Rachel’s Shabby Chic style has heavily influenced me.  Imagine my shock when one of her assistants contacted me to ask if I’d agree to be in her latest book Rachel Ashwell’s Shabby Chic Inspirations and Beautiful Spaces.  I received my complimentary copy the day before her October 20^th Manhattan book signing, and after work read my chapter on the LIRR train en route to New York. 

In her lovely shop of treasures (velvet pumpkins and votives to herald the season—plus one box of Christmas ornaments—wait till she puts them on her website, you’ll die), her staff and customers gushed over my studio.  My dear friend Daria DeBuono (thanks for the pics, hon!) teasingly called me a celebrity.  (Me: “Oh stop!”)

When the line moved close enough, Rachel caught sight of me and said in her British accent, “Do I see Sandy over there?!”  She jumped up and hugged me, then we enjoyed a long chat while she signed my books. 

I’m moved she was moved by my humble little studio. 

I am so bashful looking at the pictures and book I’ve only looked at them twice.  It’s pretty surreal to see my name on the dedication page right next to Sharon Osbourne.  I don’t know many designers that would include the glittering L.A. home of Sharon and my shack in the same book.  But that’s Rachel.

She offers luxury, she offers value.  She feels both have merit, she proves it.

I relayed the one most important thing I wanted to say (but forgot) on her Facebook post expressing gratitude over the event: how proud I was of her.   She replied the same to me.

Until next time, stay shabby!

Sharing with:

White Wednesday at Faded Charm 
Wow Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style
Favorite Things Thursday at Katherine's Corner
Feathered Nest Friday at The French Country Cottage 

Giveaway at DustyLu
Win a signed copy of
Rachel Ashwell's Inspirations and Beautiful Spaces!
Ends 28 October 2011
(Don't win Lu's?  Don't worry.
I'm giving a signed copy away on my annual December giveway, too.)

Gifts from Roberta Comeau: Whispers From The Past

Roberta Comeau, an artist residing in the Catskills of New York, has gifted me with a bouquet of fabric roses she created.  You may remember the sachet I bought from her here.  

And then there's the Gianna Rose Maltese gift soap shaped like a Maltese show dog...now that's CUTE!  I love pink and cocoa...great fall colors on my daughter Zuzu.   

It was great hearing from you Roberta, and I hope to get together with you Upstate in the new year after my schedule lets up!

Belle 

1999 - 2011

I'm saddened to inform you I had to put my adopted daughter Belle down.

Her joints had degenerated to the point where she could barely walk,

glaucoma was setting in...but she's at the Rainbow Bridge now

and everything's OK.   Except I miss her.

Until next time, stay shabby!

Sharing with:
White Wednesday at Faded Charm
Thursday Favorite Things at Katherine's Corner

Fall Wildflowers: Asters Native to the Catskills

Vintage wasp catcher from France, $60 - Dreamy Whites

Summer passed

firefly-fast

Now dancing asters

have a blast

as golden roadsides

roll in shawls

of fuzzy faces

soft and small

Violet

fireflake

snowworks call

Love now

We will not last

It's fall

Asters by Amy LV

Daintily branched all the way down the stem, and covered with tiny starry flowers with violet eyes, these beauties grace dry meadows and roadsides in late September.  The Small White-Flowered Aster and Calico Aster (Symphyotrichum racemosa & Symphyotrichum lateriflorum) are known to inbreed readily, so it’s not uncommon to see variations.   I transplanted a few plants from the side of the road two years ago and I’m rewarded with bloom without further fuss.

What is your favorite aster?

Until next time, stay shabby!

Sharing with:

White Wednesday at Faded Charm

Cottage Flora Thursdays at Fishtail Cottage

Thursday Favorite Things at Katherine's Corner

Hard Black Wire, Soft White Interior

On acres of the seeded grasses

The changing burnish heaves;

Or marshalled under moons of harvest

Stand still all night the sheaves;

Or beeches strip in storms for winter

And stain the wind with leaves.

--from Tell Me Not Here, It Needs Not Saying by A.E. Housman

Picture 1: Light bulb cover (.50 cents at a yard sale) and Edison ‘squirrel cage’ filament antique style bulb. 

Picture 2:

Upcycled yard sale jewelry tree into a church candelabra with shabbos candles held in with tacky wax (in the candlemaking section of your craft store).

Picture 3: Chandeliers stripped of white paint, patinated with Jax antiquing polish and small smears of black Rustoleum paint.

Picture 4: Angel wings fashioned from heavy gauge baling wire and oxidized with Jax antiquing polish.

I love using vintage accessories to show off the contrast between black and white.   Industrial and hard vs. romantic and soft is elegant, practical, and leavens when your shabby romantic interior feels too “puffy and ruffly”.

Until next time, stay shabby!

Sharing with:

White Wednesday at Faded Charm 

White Baby Boo Pumpkins

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines the round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells.

from To Autumn by John Keats

I had trouble finding these cuties last year.   One needs to be fast, visiting local farm stands in September before they’re sold out.  

Pumpkins and gourds are easy to grow, so I bought seed in hope of saving money, and I did.  For $7 I purchased seed from Harris Seeds (about $3 for 25 seeds plus shipping & handling) and sowed them in an indoor seed starting tray in late May, then my husband kindly transferred them outdoors in early July (way after danger of cold--the vines die easily).   

By mid-September I have so many!   Harvest early so they don’t turn yellow. This big wire basket displays an amount that would cost about $10 - $20 at a farmstand or lifestyle shop.   There are many more coming – if you happen to be in Upstate New York contact me and I’ll give you some!  

PS: Maria Carr is hosting a Cabbages & Roses giveaway at Dreamy Whites!

Until next time, stay shabby!

Sharing with:
White Wednesday at Faded Charm
Thursday Favorite Things at Katherine's Corner

'Louis Philippetize' A Square Mirror

As imperceptibly as grief

The summer lapsed away, --

Too imperceptible, at last,

To seem like perfidy.

A quietness distilled,

As twilight long begun,

Or Nature, spending with herself

Sequestered afternoon.

The dusk drew earlier in,

The morning foreign shone, --

A courteous, yet harrowing grace,

As guest who would be gone.

And thus, without a wing,

Or service of a keel,

Our summer made her light escape

Into the beautiful.

--As Imperceptibly as Grief  by Emily Dickinson

Love those French 19^th century Louis Philippe mirrors but can’t find or afford them?  

Here’s how I turned a pair of common square yard sale mirrors into rounded corner Louis Philippeish versions.

Remove glass and clamp your work to a work table with wood clamps.  

Mark a curve in pencil.

Don gloves and safety goggles.

Use a scroll saw with a 3/8" wood cutting blade and round it off.

It takes 10 minutes.

You don't have to be a guy to do this.  

Trust me.

Smoosh putty or craft clay into the top two corners.

Round off with a kitchen knife, sand when dry.

I put a line in to mimic the joint.

I didn't care for the blue paint on this $2 mirror so I repainted it white 

and rubbed on antiquing glaze (Valspar, Lowe's, $12).  

The crazing pops right back up when you do this.

Keep a bottle of glaze in your craft kit if you redo yard sale finds...unbeatable stuff.

I'm loco over the patina of the glass resembling 19th century foxed mercury glass.  This mirror was left outdoors, possibly for years.

I can't believe my luck at finding it for $2 at a yard sale selling hunting gear and man things.

I'll refinish the other (newer) mirror like this and share with you.

Until next time, stay shabby!

 Between Naps on the Porch for Metamorphosis Monday

 Cottage Instincts for Make it for Monday

Wow Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style

White Wednesday at Faded Charm 

Feathered Nest Friday at The French Country Cottage 

P.S. - Big weekend getaway giveaway over at the Na-Da Farm!

A Visit From My Swedish Friends Emma & Petra

 Me flanked by Stockholm photographer/journalists 

Emma Mattsson and Petra Kjellström

Emma & Zuzu by the stream

Hihi! (pronounced hey hey) 

At long last, my dear journalist/stylist/photographer friends Emma Mattsson and Petra Kjellström arrived back in New York for another trip to the Catskills and Manhattan for “reportage” (pronounced re-port-TAGE) in Swedish newspapers and magazines.

The story they did last October on my studio for Sweden’s Skona Hem (Beautiful Home) magazine should be out next month and they’ll send me a copy.  I promise to share that when I receive it.  

I swore I'd never post pictures 'Skickat från min iPhone' on my blog, but how else does one capture the little moments in life?

Here I am picking the girls up at JFK, sitting on the Cross Bronx Expressway for 1 1/2 hours (they thought I was joking when I informed them they should go to sleep), and the next morning in the Roses Brook Valley in Roxbury, NY.

I felt guilty the whole weekend because I made them cross the creek at 9 p.m. (3 a.m. to them) and trudge up a post-hurricane hillside in pitch dark after an 8 hour flight and 5 hour drive.  The girls were very sneaky about paying for my meals as I always refused, happy enough they were here.  When I dropped them back in Manhattan they actually tossed cash on the car seat when I wasn’t looking.

We started the day with breakfast at The Cross Roads Café in Delhi (blueberry pancakes piled with raspberries, chocolate chips, and whipped cream), drove across the Askokan Reservoir and down to The Mohonk Mountain House, and ended with a Middle Eastern dinner at The Falafel King in New Paltz.

They brought a wonderful set of gifts; a heart shaped pan, a gag gift of the royal family in tea bags (last year I wasn’t aware there was Swedish royalty), and my favorite: soft gum drops.  I shared them with the girls but couldn’t save any to shoot they were so good.  The flavor and color is natural and fruity ligonberry.

Photo: High Falls Mercantile

Old friends Jeff & Larry and their 5 dogs & cats of the much-celebrated High Falls Mercantile unfortunately haven't had power at their home for a week.  They opened their sophisticated lifestyle store when I lived near High Falls in my big old farmhouse, and I miss stopping in.  Flawless taste, sort of a masculine industrial farmhouse with lots of Jeanne d'Arc Living things like mannequins and French wire.  No bargains, but you'll find the dream version of whatever you're looking for.  Emma & Petra particularly loved the Italian soaps.

But it was The Barking Dog that ensnared Emma’s heart.  An excellent antiques & collectibles fixture in quaint High Falls for nearly 30 years, that fact alone would make it newsworthy.  But octogenarian owner Sue, hard of hearing, offerer of jelly beans, mother to dog Daisy and cat Ginger who blithely sleeps in the middle of the quiet street, is a character. 

Photo: The Turquoise Barn

The next day we visited my friend artist/raw food guru Michelle Premura at The Turquoise Barn (you will hear a lot about her in the near future here and in national press), and the funky-elegant Roxbury Hotel.  You have to see this place to believe it.  The ceiling of one room resembles a cream pie.  It’s Las Vegas only tasteful (yes the cream pie ceiling was somehow tasteful, even artful), elegant, wholesome, and affordable.

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

from Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

Friday, the girls took my car to Woodstock, and of course everyone suggested they hit Sweet Sue’s in Phoenicia for pancakes and great shots of the line waiting to get in on Saturday morning.  Sadly, they found the entire main street closed from Hurricane Irene’s rainfall causing the Esopus River to flood the poor little village. 

Main Street, Arkville, NY flood damage

caused by the heavy rainfall from Hurricane Irene

I've never seen the results of a natural disaster in real life.

It's horrifying.  Many homeowners near rivers own their homes outright due to inheritance.  They cannot get flood insurance for them either because no carrier will sell it to them or they cannot afford it.  Something like this happens...and what's to be done?  They can't sell, they can't get money to repair their home, and in the meantime they need to find a place to live.


When I got back to my cottage I hugged and kissed one of the porch columns.  

Emma and Petra said the most touching thing, though; they were moved by all the community fundraisers and outpouring of help to those in need.

Thanks again to those who asked about how I weathered the storm.  I was very lucky. 

I’ve been scarce in blogland, and I apologize.  It’s an extremely busy month with two photo shoots at my cottage.  October will be the next Vintage Video, so stay tuned.  I think pumpkins will be a good theme!

Tills nästa gång, stanna shabby!

PS - Some of you have asked ‘what happened to my story in the October issue of Romantic Homes’?  The answer: I have no idea!  I guess it’ll appear eventually.