Fact-O-Rama: Doing battle with the Ice

The first ice storm always catches me off guard, as it did today. In order to get from my house to the driveway I must navigate a slippery path-actually a path of solid, treacherous, ice. I haven't loaded up on sand yet so what's a country girl to do when there's no sand on hand? Kitty Litter is a suitable alternative, hopefully you have the unscented variety ( much less objectionable) or use the cold ashes from the wood stove. 

The downside: The kitty-litter is great outside but you want to avoid tracking it into the house, same for the ash. But in an emergency it's better to deal with a little dirt then to be calling out to neighbors "help I've fallen and I can't get up". 

-toolshed- Floral 2.0

How delicious is this Hewlett-Packard Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam edition? Even the keyboard is petal-red. And an in-body webcam and mic make for some stylish Skype-ing.

Hay Seeds: Something warm

Bad cold. Bad, bad, cold. The floorboards are chilled though the woodstove is on, and I can feel it through my heaviest socks. No amount of Dayquil is lifting the feeling that someone stuffed my Eustachian tubes full of steel wool.

I'm thinking about knitting. (By thinking, I mean just surfing for amazing hand-spun yarn. Not, you know, actually casting anything on.)

~Hay seeds: Chartreuse, I heart you

The flowers from Thanksgiving are looking less than vibrant these days, and that runner was caked in mushroom gravy when I moved the bouquet this morning, so it's off now, too. But wow, if I wouldn't like a fall sweater in each of these colors.

Hold the stuff.

There is absolutely nothing about living off the roads mostly traveled that keeps you from amassing stuff. That is, just because the options for walking by and purchasing things are fewer out here than, say, if you lived in downtown Chicago or Park Slope or even in the East Village of Des Moines, it just isn't true that country folk acquire or collect or hold on to less things. Ahem.

Sometimes, the mess is contained and, ok, hardly an eyesore. (Really, City Farm Girl!)

And others ... well, who doesn't appreciate a serious barn sale?

I don't know if wider, less populated spaces seem to excuse amassings of stuff more, or if out in the woods--with less visual noise to compete with it--an abundance of things just isn't as oppressive as it is, say, in a 500-sq-ft apartment in a major metropolis. (The "houses out here are bigger" argument just doesn't sell me; I've lived in apartments larger than my home here in the woods.)

All of this stuff-thinking stems from this incredible documentary video I watched yesterday (confession: while cleaning my milk glass compote collection) that absolutely warrants 21 minutes of your time, oh, now:

- the state of the lake - 1

Not frozen yet. Sure does make flannel sheets appealing, though.

Moons over my yammy.

They've begun to amass by the milk crate in our laundry room, the only unfinished room in our itsy house, which thusly makes it the coldest nook. Ten, twenty five, forty orangey tubers that just look us in the face each time we go to nab a pair of clean socks from the dryer.

Sweet potatoes, whatever are we to do with you?!

Current pang-inducing tater meals:

• Sweet Potato Souffle (this recipe terrifies me, with its rising and inevitable falling)
• Poached Egg with Hollandaise Sauce on Sweet Potato Hash (mmm, saucy. A coworker says she now fixes this thrice weekly for dinner. And it's from Supper in Stereo, a seriously yum cooking blog)
• Sweet-tater Fries! (These appeared at Thanksgiving. I will not say that I disliked them. I will say they certainly were not a casserole full of mashed orangey starch with butter and marshmellows. There is always next year.)
  

Gifts, Take No. 373654

City friends are getting these embroidery hoop hangings by Jenny Krauss this year:

Beyonce tears apart my woods

Full disclosure: I did a full-on, post-Thanksgiving-maelstrom cleanup (including the removal of approx. seven million pine needles that'd snuck indoors) while this wailed in the background:



Ms. Sasha Fierce would be pret-ty chilly wearing that here right now ...

The Daily Decorator

On a recent trip to L'Isle Sur La Sorgue, known as the antiques capital of France, I fell in love with this French Miss and her new twist on the old (left). She fashions antique linens and textiles into fresh accessories for the home using old-fashioned rickrack and swooping monograms to embellish her designs for pillows, tablecloths and aprons.

Economizing? Visit the Wisteria catalog instead for this look-alike apron:

Throwing on an extra layer.

It's slush city today, which makes for chilly linoleum, filthy Wellies, and a happy border collie. I'm taking solace in all things sweater-y:

Seats recovered in wooly remnants. WholeLiving.com makes it seem easy ...

Ahh, recycled sweaters underfoot, from Viva Terra. Could I make one of these, cotton-loop-potholder style? Someone shout if they have easy steps to recreate...

A make-your-own-nap kit. (Thanks, BHG.com!)

I'm not *quite* about to join the Made from Recycled Sweaters group on Flickr, but I sure will peep there a while this morning.

Country Essentials #472

We've had bats in the parlor, chipmunks in the bathroom, birds in the kitchen and mice in the living room. Whadayagonna do? Reach for your trusty butterfly net. No country house should be without one. When not corralling critters you can take to tiptoeing through the tulips with net in hand.

Mail Call

Hoodlum neighbor-kids got you down? Pesky posts just won't stay up?

Plant your mailbox in a tree. Hmm.

Oil Lamp

Oil Lamp, Zhen Hua Lu

Dogsitting for my neighbor's terriers and saw this gem on the wall. It was just a poster, but made the room so ... still. And inviting. Lovely.

bye bye Ranger

One of the inevitable purchases all country dwellers consider is the truck. It's easy to justify---weekly trips to the dump, hauling dirt and mulch, carting dogs back home after a mud-season outing, and honestly it does look good in the driveway.

So I succumbed. I'd always said that if I could find a truck for less than say $500 I would buy it. My neighbors found one on the side of the road "$450 Or Best Offer". True to my word, it was found for less than $500, I bought it and all that came with it: a cap, 5 speeds that sort of worked, and lots of duck-tape to cover the rust.

Well it's a year later and I just had to let it go to another country dweller who needs it for parts.

By my calculations each trip to the dump cost about $78.00 (accounting for the needed repairs over the last year + the purchase price). So another country experience crossed off the list.

Wipe your feet!

Now that we've entered The Month of Pine Pitch, I'm running our kitchen throwrug through the wash weekly (an exponential increase, trust me), and looking for stand-ins. Just found these beauties from Hooked on Vermont, which I'd be just terrified to see smeared with pitch:

They've a sale section from which my Mom-in-law may receive that Song Bird rug for Christmas...

I like an excuse to cook. Sometimes my neighbors and I join forces, share ingredients, and make dinner together- that was Wednesday Night. And sometimes, today, I cook in return for favors. A friend is coming to reattach the ice coils to my roof. Hence the menu for this morning.

Wednesday Dinner 

Lamb Stew (lamb from the farm next door)

Baby Lettuce and Frissee salad with avocado and blue cheese

Fresh baked French Bread

Pear Calfoute

on the menu today

Oatmeal Walnut Cookies

Corn Chowder

recipes to follow

Boot Debacle

While Carol's putting together her hit list of Best Boots, I'm aching over these:

Which I find equal parts awesome, functional, and ugly. The lining is redeeming ... maybe?

They're certainly more practical, at least, than these (El Naturalista Organico N051 and Earth Juniper Vegan, respectively) which also are tugging away:

(A friend turned me on to planetshoes.com, which seem to have more gravel-driveway-appropriate footwear than Zappos.)

Is There an Aerialist in the House?

So, I'm standing in line at my favorite cafe in Hadley, MA, Esselon, studying the pastry case when I ease drop on a conversation the barrista is having with a long, lanky fellow (LLF) wearing a knit cap pulled way down over his head.

Says LLF, "Four lattes to go. They're for a meeting I'm having with a group of circus performers."

"Oh," says barrista as he tops off the espresso with steamed milk.

"Yeah, just what they need, more caffine," adds LLF. "It's not like they're not flying off the walls or anything. See ya later."

Next day, having lunch at a cute, crunchy deli cum bakery cum bistro, Amy's Bakery Arts Cafe in Brattleboro, VT, I overhear:

"I know you. We met at my gallery opening. You're the trapeze artist!"

Just another day in the country with circus performers. Is there a lion tamer in the house?

See ya, Cottage Living

I live in a little house on an equally small lake.

It once was someone's summer home, loved so that the owners winterized it, threw on a few wonky extra rooms, and then finished the basement.

Today, Cottage Living magazine folded, which is a bummer for folks like me. Cottage Living was one of those magazines that I could flip through that had, page after page, rooms that I could nab ideas from: Rooms that were scuffed and colorful and loved, and weren't always 20x20 with echoey ceilings or sprawling, manicured lawns.

I could go on for pixels about how crappy it is that another great interiors glossy has died, but that makes me itchy and nervous. Instead, some of CH's sweet homes:

Makes me want a pergola real bad.

Funky fireplace. Wish this pic could bet bigger so I could get a better look at the coffee table...

Love the punchy red table ... sets off the gingham (my personal horror).

See, I never think I can do anything too classic in our house, but this makes me think it wouldn't look overly stately. Have a hard time with bare walls, but could sure find something to throw up there--botanical posters, maybe, or a gaudy faux renaissance with a scruffy frame.

Here's to hoping they don't take down their home plans ... gal's gotta dream.

Gave Me Lemons

In a neck of the woods with a completely different clime, fall's given way to some serious fruit:

These are ripe for the pickin' ... and it only takes a swing out to Scottsdale.

(Ahem: Don't people know how mean it is to send photos of their gorgeous, temperate worlds when we're layering another sweater over our Cuddle Duds?)

So, some lemonade...

Keep table, need new chairs

I am hoping to reconstruct my kitchen. But a friend told me I need to get rid of my kitchen table. Which is not possible. 1. because it is one of my most favorite pieces of furniture and 2. because I think I'm finally going to pull the trigger on these chairs.

photo from baileys home and garden

If the Boot Fits, Buy It!

To live in the country is to have a shoe wardrobe. This is great news if like me you believe there's no such thing as too many pairs. The bad news is that your killer stilettos are now going to be used to dig holes for your bulbs.

My first year of country living was all about the wrong shoes. Once my smooth leather-soled Prada kitten heels came in contact with our icy driveway the result was hazardous to my health. However, not being ready for steel-toed work boots, I made it my mission to find shoes that looked good and kept me upright (This is BC Yak Tracks--website TK)

This year, I found possibly the best boot ever. Beautiful, comfortable, faux-fur-lined, these leather boots are absolutely New York chic. They're by Camper (camper.com), the impossibly eco-trendy Spanish shoe company whose Barcelona (??) headquarters store combines foot fetish with food fetish (a shoe store and an organic cafe). Camper, by the way, is no ordinary shoe company. It is "...a Mediterranean dream that stands for a way of doing, a way of living, a way of feeling..." I can tell you, I feel good about these boots. Get this, this boot lets me be in contact with the earth energies. As the boot tag states: "'Contact earth' is a system which allows the electrostatic energy accumulated throughout the day to discharge and at the same time allows you to be in contact with the earth energies." Who knew?!

Any way, back to my boots, they have cool lace ties which give them a very bohemian flair but best of all, their heavy-duty, rubber tread soles assure I will not be found face down in a snowbank this winter.

$225, Black Parrot, Rockland, ME (website TK)

--carolbrf

TK:
Woodsie Guide to Scaling Shoe Mountain
(here our picks and pans for best boots/shoes)

Kitties in the House

So, we're having a little dinner party, you know, a nice one with cloth napkins and sauce made from scratch. Conversation is animated and Obama-laden. Lots of wine. Mid-fork I see something scurry by. Welcome to the country where men are real and so are the rodents.

So what's a girl to do?

Bring home the kittens! Our girls are rescue kitties from Mississippi (vet website here), sassy little felines who had us from first meow. They're 12 weeks old, weigh 2.6 pounds each and whether or not they ever catch a mouse they've made mousse out of us.

Franny, top; Zooey, bottom (cuteness all around)

Design+Library = Love (minus country, of course)

Very cool: Design*Sponge (yummy design hints daily) teamed up with the NY Public Library to showcase some smart young designers' work as inspired by the book behemoth.



Note to self: We've got smartie designers hidden in these hills ... must unearth and unleash them on our townie libraries and see what unfolds.

Bag Wise.

I'm having a purse dilemma. In my mind's eye, I can see that out there in the great retail abyss somewhere, there's a lavender-grey handbag fashioned after vintage snap-top change purses. It has a moderate shoulder strap, maybe some rouching on one side; there's no loud hardware or shiny patent details. It is large enough to hold a paperback book and a magazine (though maybe not W), but doesn't look like a feedbag. It's made of leather so soft that my new boots are jealous, and it looks vintage without smelling like someone else's basement.

This bag--my marvelous bag--does not exist.

Still, because I live at least a couple hours away from anyplace that might have Dream Bag in ready supply, I spend an impressive number of hours on Etsy, poring over the Colors Tool, seeing if somewhere out there someone is picking up what I'm telekinetically putting down, bag-wise. And that is how I came across this bag, which has set off my purse search in a completely new direction:

Because though this bag is the wrong color (I'm looking for lighter and purplier) and less structured than I'm looking for (ahem, gorgeous), it is striking in its material: recycled leather.

Now, last I heard, we weren't in a cow hide shortage. And I don't mean that in any crass way: I've not eaten meat in 10 years (save for last Christmas' fried turkey incident, which we shouldn't discuss), and I've tried on my share of veg-tan "leather" footwear, only to be certain that they'd fall apart three dog walks into the muddy season.

I don't feel particularly strong about wearing leather at all, but the idea of having a fab bag made of something that once was headed for either the landfill or one of enormous shipments of secondhand clothes shipped overseas and then shirked is, well, appealing in this time of RECYCLE (OR ELSE!). Additionally, if repurposing leather means less jackets like this and this are taunting Goodwill-goers, yahtzee.

And I'm a-mazed by the great used-leather bags I've found, though none have yet struck me as The One:

So, the search continues. Though I *might* have just been convinced to sate this repurposed leather craving with one of these envelope totes ...