New Year, New Ideas

When we moved into our house, this 80's style "Hollywood" light fixture, was on the CEILING over the bar in our kitchen! It looked quite silly and out of place. Since our renovations are being done on a shoestring, I had Jeff move the fixture to the main bath. It had a fluorescent light strip that was no longer working. It's not a light I would pick out, it will have to do for now.

In the kitchen, he hung track lighting that we had bought for the kitchen in the log cabin. It was a big improvement.

Of course one thing always leads to another. Once the track light was up, we started talking about pendant lights. Jeff knew right away he could make shades from porcelain.

Here is his first prototype:

On the next round he plans to have the carving consistently thinner, so that it is more translucent from top to bottom. This style pendant can hang from our track. We will just remove the small spot lights, and hang three pendants. Ideally, I would like them hard wired individually, but this works for us right now, and it's affordable.
These would look great glazed in celadon, but that might clash with our aqua wall. I think we might stick with the white.

Jeff's plan is to add these shades to his line of work and be ready to offer them at the League of NH Craftsmen's Fair in August. It won't be long before we will be doing the home show circuit with vessel sinks and lighting, and foregoing the craft shows!

Kitchen Facelift

Jeff had one day to recover from jet lag and then it was back to house renovations. The kitchen is our top priority before we move in completely. First order was to remove all the cabinet doors. No easy task, since all of the hinges had been painted over. It was a chore to get them off and when we paint and replace them, they will get all new hinges... never to be painted again.

 The interiors of the cabinets are three different colors, pink, green, and off-white. They are absolutely disgusting, inside and out. We made the decision to replace the countertop, sink, and cooktop. Last month we bought a dishwasher on sale, and that has already been delivered, just not installed. The countertop will be something inexpensive that will coordinate with the island. It's not financially possible for us to do it all right now. At this point we are just looking for clean and neat.

This house has a large living room and a good size den. We only had a chair for the den which was going to make it a rather sparsely furnished room. A neighbor potter is moving and she had a sofa for sale at a great price, so we snatched it up!

It's a sofa-bed and was a b!tch to move! It had to come down a short flight of stairs at her house. Thankfully at our house it only had to be moved through the carport and into the first room. A few new pillows from IKEA and the sofa looks great. This is the room with the lovely wagon wheel light...

That light really has to go. I am just not into the wild west decor.

The tree limb project

Last winter when I was visiting Danielle in Connecticut, we visited a gallery in the Yale shopping district that used painted tree limbs throughout the gallery. Theirs were painted light blue, but immediately I thought limbs painted white would look cool hanging from the rafters of our pottery gallery. The rafters are dark and we have white lights strung on them to create some interest and tree limbs would lighten it up even more. 

Last week I finally got around to executing my plan. Jeff did some pruning and saved the limbs for me. They had little berries and pods on them, and I was really happy with how they turned out. On the down side, I bought the cheapest spray paint out there and my fingers were killing me after emptying 6 cans of paint onto those limbs. Of course when I was done, my facebook friends let me know that there is an attachment to put on top of the cans to make it more comfortable. I am definitely going to get one of those gadgets.

Jeff helped me get them into the rafters and trim whatever was looking too crazy. It was hard to photograph, but I think you get the idea...

I didn't waste a thing. I used the clippings to do some funky stick arrangements in vases...

I need to paint a couple more limbs to fill in some bare spots in the rafters, but I think I will wait until my fingers feel better!

50/50

Have any of you seen this movie? I was hesitant to watch it because the subject matter deals with cancer and I try to avoid those kinds of movies. Even before going through it with Jz, I didn't care to see depressing movies about illness and death. I chose to rent this from Netflix after listening to an interview on NPR with the writer, whose real life story this is based on. It's a comedy... yes, a comedy about cancer. It's not slapstick and there is a serious side. I am happy to report that I laughed more than I cried. 

Jz and I tried our best to keep our humor throughout his diagnosis and treatment. We even managed to find humor in his need for a feeding tube... it took two of us to figure out how to make it work and not before making a big mess with it. Laughing and trying to get liquids into a feeding tube don't go well together. Humor was the only way to keep our sanity! 

For what it's worth, that's my movie recommendation of the day, 50/50. Now available on Netflix (and probably from the red box vending machine thing at your local grocer).

and now back to pottery...

It took me way longer than it should have to finish this round of bowls. I think after a few going into the scrap bucket I only ended up with a total of nine. I decorated them late yesterday. I thought it would go quickly and I sat at the short stool in front of my wheel to do the carving. BIG mistake. My hip was aching last night and I think it was from sitting in one position for too long. Usually when I decorate I sit on a higher stool and stand for awhile too. Lessoned learned. Thank goodness for ibuprofen.