WEEK ENDNOTES: 7 days of self-discovery

While March winds whistled outside this week, my usual trolling of design blogs turned up some unexpected insight into myself. For instance, I’ve always thought I was a devout maximalist, as this photo, which I adore, would attest.

Elle Decor used it as the “neutral” example in an article on paint color trends (synopsis: look for greens, moody blues, violets, rose and neutrals). I never make my choices based on that type of article, but I always check out the photos, which are bound to be stunning. That cabinet and the chair in front are on my to-die-for list.

No surprise there, but here ARE a few surprising things I learned about maximalist me this last week…

1. In the case of kitchens, I could be a minimalist

Stunning, isn’t it? All made from birch-veneered plywood. I do think kitchens should be clean-looking and uncluttered, like this one. I’m not much for a lot of molding, and I can’t stand a cluttered countertop.

I love the interesting use of space here as well. For instance, the tucked-away utility room/pantry on the left, the bookshelves in the middle photo, and the herb garden on the right. The rest of the home is filled with similar built-ins, and it all looks so sleek and fun!

Particularly the terrazzo floor, which I found on more places than the floor, spicing up another minimalist kitchen I would kill for:

The blue-backgrounded terrazzo ticks my boho color box, the stairstepped wood and terrazzo on the island tick my boho funky box, and the connection to outside and the terrazzo-topped planting bench tick my boho master-gardener box.

Terrazzo stairs, terrazzo counters, terrazzo floors, terrazzo everywhere! I love it!

2. Mirrors just may have a place in kitchens

This kitchen is more cluttered than I prefer, but I do like the dark gray with white accents, which help calm the confusion. However, it was the framed mirrors that particularly caught my eye.

Now typically I would say nay to mirrors in kitchens. After all, who wants to look at themselves eat? But these are too high to reflect that activity. I found myself thinking, I could do something like that in my kitchen. Above my cabinets, mirrors could reflect my pottery collection, displayed on top.

This house is also cool how rectangles used throughout unify the interior, from the framed mirrors in the kitchen to these folding panels in the dining/sitting area…

…as well as the many photo groupings with rectangles arranged into rectangles. But, as the photo at right shows, there’s so much more outside-the-box to this English country manor. You absolutely will want to take the full tour.

2. I don’t care if I ever see the Eiffel Tower

As long as I visit Paris design shows with hotelier/designer Kit Kemp & Co., who thankfully gave us a peek at two:

I found the colors in these bottles and jugs, encased in woven baskets of all colors and patterns, mesmerizing.

I also loved these wooden fish posed as if swimming in a shoal. What a cool installation that would be in garden or home.

What Eiffel Tower?

3. I am occasionally high-maintenance

Or particular–however you want to look at it. At least when it comes to gardening gloves. The woman’s garden gloves you find in the home improvement centers are cheap junk. The men’s gloves aren’t carried in anything smaller than large.

But this brand is made for us girls–us very PARTICULAR girl gardeners.

Interestingly, the brand is called “Womanswork,” which is, as we all know, never done. I’m hoping that’s the case with these gloves. At $19.95 a pair, they have the highest durability, comfort and fit ratings on the Internet.

I spend about $20 for three pair of the work gloves I usually buy, which are all mostly worn through after one growing season of use. I have higher hopes for these–the colors are certainly prettier!.

To unlock free shipping, I invested in three pair in teal with the thought that if one glove wears out the remaining one will still match the others. That is, if I don’t always wear out the left or the right, LOL.

4. I’ll go the extra mile to re-teach an old cat her old tricks

My almost 10-year-old Maisie used to play with large dot magnets on a noteboard by my desk. I put them up and she’d knock them off just as fast. She eventually chewed the edges up. So when I got rid of the noteboard, I tossed the magnets. since as she aged she played with them less and less.

Well, I found a new set and have stuck them around on the appliances in the kitchen and laundry room, hoping to get Maisie moving more.

I showed them to her when I opened the package, and she looked for all the world like she remembered. She even followed me out to the kitchen and watched me stick them up. But so far, she hasn’t taken any down. We’re working on it, though.

5. Sometimes dreams are just dreams

HomeGoods offered a “Dream Vibes” quiz on its website starting this week. Tell them a dream, and they’ll tell you how to decorate accordingly, with products found at HomeGoods, of course.

I’ll pass on sharing my dream, which I think my dream maker cooked up to make fun of this quiz, but here are my results:

Totally off the mark. The colors are ones I like and decorate with now, but they have no attachment to fear and sadness, nor did my dream. It was a weird dream, that’s all, which is almost redundant, right?

I took the quiz three times, using the same dream but slightly different answers to the followup questions. I got three different results and color palettes, none of which made sense. And when I clicked through to “shop” according to my dream vibe, all the products were the same.

Take it from me, Carl Jung had no part in this one. Take the quiz if you like, but don’t spend any money based on the results.

6. I’m not above asking hubs to bring me flowers & specifying the kind

It was, after all, an extremely dreary, cold and wet end-of-March week. I needed these bright yellow daffodils, potted not cut. I was VERY specific. They did the trick and cheered me up quite nicely. Thanks, Chris!

7. April Fools Day still makes my heart go pitapat

When Emily Henderson launched her new furniture and rug collection on her blog yesterday, I was buying into it (though I thought it looked cheesy) until I got to the part where she said the dresser would retail for $87,000 and have a 13-year lead time.

April Fools!!

Which reminded me of another April Fools Day, some 34 years ago, when my hubs, who wasn’t my hubs or even my boyfriend then, played a joke on me. We worked at the same place–him in IT and me in corp comm. We were serving on an events committee together, and he was supposed to get some mail-merge workshop-assignment letters printed for me.

He had them delivered printed backwards. I nearly had a meltdown. They HAD to be in the mail that day. I rushed down to his work area–I’m sure red-checked and short of breath. He stood there calmly while I nearly cried. When I finally stopped babbling, he smiled and said quietly, “April Fools,” handing me a big stack of correctly printed letters.

I knew then he liked me as much as I liked him. Some jokes are the stuff of love.

We were married about a year later, on a day in May as cold, rainy and dreary as this week was. But okay anyway because I spent it with my best friend.

Best wishes on your own journey of self-discovery.

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