bohemian hellhole

Moving on, Moving in.

When we left Seattle, it felt a little like dying. To leave behind nearly everyone I knew, loved, spent time with, cried with, leave behind graves and babies, it was like closing the door on my life and jumping into the abyss. That abyss was Portland. I knew I was slowly disappearing from people's lives, fading a day at a time. I knew it, because they were fading from mine. After nearly two years here, the darkness is lifting bit by bit. The deep trench of life has glimmers of hope ahead. Right about the time that I started feeling like I might be ok here {temporarily, of course} I received news that some of our new and dear Portland friends were packing  up and leaving town. 'One more reason to road trip', I told myself. 'Another family to visit in CA', I would reason with my sadness. In the back of my mind, I was never planning on staying here anyway, right? My house in Seattle is still there, the renters are taking good care of it, and we spent our tax return on a spankin' new sewer line. All ready to move home. Then, I found out that my BFF neighbor in Seattle was moving away to the eastside. WHAT? Now, my little block family is broken. {did I mention that we moved away first?} Everything was supposed to stay the same, like a room at home after you go away to college. It's not supposed to be your mom's scrapbook room, or the workout/fitness/yoga studio. My home was meant to be waiting for me when I returned.

But, what if I never return? There are days when it seems we are on the road to nowhere, that the future is unwritten. I bet Portland is like some sort of holding tank, and we are circling the drain. At the same time, the friendships that I have made here are beginning to stick {at least it feels that way}, the house we live in is slowly taking shape as home, even though I have no idea how long we will be in it. Each new piece of furniture, each new friend, is waging war against my refusal to actually live in Portland. 'You DO live here', they say. My friends moving away would have happened regardless of my city of residence. My neighbor moving up to a bigger house was only a matter of time. It still breaks my heart, but maybe now there's room for something new. If all this change is inevitable, shouldn't I be making the most of where I am?

I am trying to move on {not from the people, just the idea of living in the past.}, and trying to move in. To inhabit a place and make it home. To live here on purpose.

Hoping that the newest chair I am picking up today isn't a pile, Alice

 

Ask Alice: How can I preserve my Skull?

Dear Alice, I have a set of deer antlers and  skull that I have hanging in my yard. I am wondering if there is any way to weather proof the skull, and protect it from mold, or bugs? Thank you! Jane

via Vintage Printables

Dear Jane,

I have a longhorn skull on my porch, and I have been wondering the same thing, it has been exposed to the elements for years and is starting to show some age.
via Etsy

After reading up quite a bit on the subject, the easiest and most common method would be to coat it with polyurethane or lacquer. This shouldn't darken the skull or change it's color much, unless you got a poly that had tint in it. {interesting maybe?} Glue in any loose teeth, and coat with a few coats of finish. I would suggest checking in on it each summer and touching up any places where the finish has worn thin through the winter.

via Montana Skullworks

Another cool idea I read about was bronzing. Remember baby shoes? I might have to figure out how to bronze mine...Immediately!

Sewing curtains, Alice

*If you need instructions on preparing a raw skull, read this, or this. {I like the beetle method of de-fleshing as opposed to boiling. I imagine it would be less stinky.}

The William Morris Project: Tool Free Pantry Shelf

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."  Welcome to the William Morris Project*, happening again, in 2013.

*Pancakes & French Fries started this whole business a while ago, and I have been trying to keep up ever since!

Even the most serene cabinet exteriors can house a black hole of grocery rubble. This is that cabinet. It seemed certain that the biggest kitchen I have ever had would also contain more storage than ever before. Maybe that is technically true, but on a practical level, this cupboard was falling short in the useful department.
Yes, it holds food and supplies, but the space is merely containing a pile. {not to mention the scummy contact paper beneath!}
Now, perhaps I have read one too many issues of Country Living, or it could be my woodworking father's influence on my formative years, but I almost left the wood as I found it. Then I touched it, and it was sticky. Tacky with that oily contact paper residue that instantly attracts all forms of dead bugs and sand particles. The Laura Ashley shelf paper my mom gave me came to the rescue!


After all the bubbles were squeezed out, and the leftover bubbles were ignored, I set about putting together my tool free shelf. The rebuilding center had {and probably still has} a big pile of funny orphaned drawers on one of my visits. My first instinct was to go all Rupert Blanchard on them, but sadly they have just collected dust in the basement. So, I took two and set one on either side of the cabinet space. They just happened to be almost exactly the same depth! I love it when that happens.

Next, I took two Ikea shelves that were also collecting dust in the basement, and which also happened to be just the right size, and laid them across the tops of the drawers. Voila! Usefulness achieved!


Now I can array my Costco purchases with pride. {and find things without digging!}

I suppose the same type of structure would work in almost any closet or cupboard, with the right shelves and drawers. You could also tack a few nails in for good measure just for kicks.

Making smoothies, Alice

Painting Restoration Update: studio progress

To recap for those of you who just dropped in on my painting restoration posts and wonder, "what are all these boring and almost identical photos of a dirty old picture all about anyway?", I am documenting the slow restoration of a nearly 100 year old oil painting, frame and all. {you could also read this.}

Welcome to my basement! The photo above will give you a little insight into how the whole place looked when we first toured the house. I was really hoping to avoid it, but as it turns out the basement is the only suitable place for any sort of studio or workshop, and it really isn't that bad, now that I put in some lights.

Last week I made a few goals for myself, and I truly thought I could finish them all, but I am one giant standing easel short of completing them. {I think getting a wisdom tooth pulled yesterday but a bit of a halt on my plans...}

A good friend and craftsman who owns The Woodsman Shop is skipping town and moving to San Francisco, and generously gave me a whole pile of pallet wood. You know what this means? No scavenging the backsides of warehouses and grocery stores! Hooray! I have enough to build myself a nice second worktable to add some much needed surface area to the studio.

It was fun getting a start on organizing my tools and projects, I have a bad habit of being terribly distracted when I am supposed to be cleaning. I stop and look at every little thing that I unpack, I might as well be five. There are enough little framing and restoration patients in my workspace to keep me busy for quite a while!

Look at that wonderful laundry sink! I love it. I have plans for this area....in my imagination.

This picture was one of the only things to break in the move. It is actually a good thing, since I drew his hip bones more like a tool belt...he needs some work.

After all this time I finally found my dry iron with NO HOLES! And it was only $3. My stinginess paid off. Plus, this one has a cool name, the Franzus.

My dad's tobacco pipe. I just like to look at it.

Ok, what is the update? I set up a table, put the frame on it, and collected some wood to make another table. Then I got a tooth pulled and slept. Hey, it's better than nothing! I'll take it.

Taking vicodin, Alice

Ten things Alice taught me, #2

via this post

via this post

#2: Your bedroom is a secret haven

Alice's bedroom {my great-grandmother} was always dark and off limits, or at least that is how I remember it. I can imagine walking down her tiny hallway, the bathroom on the right, the guest room on the left, and her door, partly open, straight ahead. There was enough light to see that it was lovely, well ordered, full of self administered hospitality. The dresser was appointed with perfume, jewelry, hairbrushes and combs, the kind of thing that gets photographed and pinned these days. Back then, only a few ever really examined the contents of her bedroom. It was beautiful, with a private quality to it that made it intimidating. Her room felt like a place I would need to be invited in, otherwise it was just for her. She had a bedside table, a lamp, a well made bed, and a tidy closet. It was always clean.

Now, I recognize that life pulls from one million directions in a different way than it did then, but truly, I can't say that we are so dissimilar that our bedrooms should be as they are, day and night. Mine at the moment, is a heap of unknown laundry and leftover ice cream bowls. I know where my phone charger and the tv remote are, but as for any matching pairs of earrings? No hope. I had a bed sheet tacked to one window until earlier today when a small person pulled it down, and in the other window? Half a curtain stuffed into the tracks of the window to sort of keep it in place. Half a curtain isn't nearly enough to block the lights from Monday Funday, I am sorry to say. The bottom line is that my room is a sorry mess. What I have learned from Alice is that it doesn't have to be.

My room can {and probably should} be a secret haven. A place to retreat at the end of an exhausting day that only promises to be followed by a morning at the dentist's office. The one room of the house that is set aside and prepared, for rest. Its easy to put off working on my own room when there are so many other things begging for attention, but I have been taking steps.

*Today I found a hefty bag full of donations today under the mystery clothes pile. {I took it out of my room!}

*I have been making a point of making my bed, even if the room is a wreck, because it is so comforting to get into a bed where the sheets are flat,  the blankets are heavy, and everything smells like Bounce.

Alice had many years to perfect her bedroom haven, so I will cut myself some slack, and soldier on through the years of small people pulling down my curtains tacked up sheets.

Clearly, my goal for the week should be to find some suitable drapes, or blinds, or something, and clean up the laundry pile.

Eating my Mother's Day Payday, because I won't be able to chew for a week after tomorrow morning, Alice

 

 

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Ten things Alice taught me, #1

Happy Mother's Day!

via Straight from the Garden
I hope all the mothers out there have a lovely and stress free day! In order to avoid awful crowds and public meltdowns, we are making lunch at home...big salads and smoothies! This is the menu I picked yesterday when I was totally overheated, and of course when I woke up I wished we were making brunch...oh well. There's always dinner.

Opening a gift of Delft pottery from my mom, Alice

The William Morris Project: A free solution to an ugly porchlight

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."  Welcome to the William Morris Project*, happening again, in 2013.

*Pancakes & French Fries started this whole business a while ago, and I have been trying to keep up ever since! Who out there likes a bare buggy compact fluorescent porch light bulb? Not I. At first, I was confident that I could just switch out the bulb and find a new glass shade for the fixture, until I realized that it was a really {really} odd piece of metal, and there is no identifiable way to put a new shade on it. A closeup of the strange fixture. {Please excuse my blurry phone photo!} You can see that the wood underneath the paint is lovely, and it makes me want to immediately start stripping the ceiling, but it is so huge, and expansive that I know I would never finish it. Sigh.

I was stumped, and still am. A totally new porch light isn't in the budget right now, and even if I found a screaming deal at the rebuilding center, I honestly don't know if I have available bandwidth for dealing with the weirdness out there on the porch. So, I went back to my younger self and asked 'what did you do in 1997 with your first porch when you had no money, but wanted it to look fun?'**. Simple! Big Christmas lights.
Don't worry, those planters will have plants in them soon!

Actually this solved two problems, a) new look for the porch, and b) the lights were in a gross hefty bag on the basement floor and using them meant cleaning that mess up! There are a few dead bulbs, but I plan on replacing them one at a time with round white ones so that they look a little more {ahem} all-season.
Regardless, I am totally pleased with the result, even if I got a wondering eye from people walking by as I hung Christmas lights on my porch mid-May, in my pjs at 8am. I like to keep my neighbors guessing.

Making banana muffins, Alice

**I will try to dig out a photo of that for y'all!

Painting Restoration Update!

I received this email yesterday, and was so thankful to have an excuse to post an update.

'Hi, I am so enjoying your blog. I've been following your experience in restoring the old painting. I have one that a friend has asked me to restore and I am afraid of messing it up. I am wondering if you stopped your project or will continue as I can't find "the end" of your project. Have I missed something or have you just been busy with other things? Thanks SO much! Linda'

To recap for those of you who just dropped in on my painting restoration posts and wonder, "what are all these boring and almost identical photos of a dirty old picture all about anyway?", I am documenting the slow restoration of a nearly 100 year old oil painting, frame and all. {you could also read this.}

Hello Linda!  have not stopped my project, it has just been paused. We moved in {cough} February, and I have had the hardest time getting my act together in the area of setting up a workspace. In our old house the garage was right off the kitchen, and was really easy to use. I could run out and work a few minutes here and there without feeling like I was really separated from the rest of the family or house. In our new house, I have a large basement to use, but, it's not terribly enjoyable to be down there. This is mostly because I hadn't set up a space for myself yet. Over the last few weeks I have worked on carving out a work area, moving cabinets and tables, hanging up a chalkboard to make notes on, organizing tools, and things like that. I gave up my good work table for use as a kitchen table when we moved, so I am still on the hunt for a large sturdy work surface. I think I may make a few of these and set them up end to end. {its free!} The biggest piece of the problem was that the painting and frame themselves were still in storage, waiting for their new restoration studio. I realized that I was putting things off, because I didn't want to drive out to get them from storage, or have to go down in the basement to finish my studio area. So, I went and got them two days ago. Wild thoughts were running through my head as I drove up. I was certain that the painting had peeled off the canvas, that the frame had crumbled to bits, that it was actually all smaller and uglier and more destroyed than could ever be remedied...Basically that I had ruined a worthless project. But, it was like seeing old friends when I opened the storage room door, the frame was not rubble, but in a state of mid-restoration showing little glimpses of gilding and hope along the edges. The painting was much smoother than I remembered it, and had not peeled off the canvas. The little boats were still sailing on some unknown Oregon body of water. It felt exciting to see them, and motivating to move forward. It is Gilding Season, after all.

Goals this week: organize my tools and tables downstairs, and build a standing easel for the painting. Oh, also, I need to add some more task lighting.

Researching make-do burnishers, Alice

 

Ten things Alice taught me, #1

My great-grandmother was named Alice. I 'borrowed' her name a long time ago for a totally different enterprise {a greeting card company}, but it stuck around, and here we are. Alice Almighty. The almighty part of the name is not a flippant suggestion that I am all powerful or even able to do much at all, but more that I imagined my grandmother was able to do anything. I never saw her build anything, but I don't doubt that she did. I never saw her lift a giant piece of furniture, but I am sure she got the job done. She was never in pyjamas, or swallowed up by clutter, and her garden was always amazing. I think about her quite a bit, since there are so many things I have learned from her, even by accident.

#1: 15 minutes a day.

I must have mentioned this several times before but seriously, its the best advice. There are things I never want to do, like carry laundry all the way to the basement six times a day, or wash everyone else's dirty cups over and over again, or weed the yard, or most of all, get ready for the day. I'll be honest, most days I have a really bad attitude and can't convince myself of a good reason to look like I haven't just woken up. I don't really want to do anything at all, especially when everything has piled up and I am behind. Today, I thought, just fifteen minutes. What can it hurt, to put on makeup and pull my hair back, if it only takes 15 minutes? What about cleaning? Gardening? Writing to someone who I have been putting off for way too long? It made the biggest difference, not that I looked amazing or got all my jobs done, but I did get way more done than normal...most things don't even take that long. So, that's one piece of my grandmother's counsel, simple and pretty old news, but sometimes that's what my life is lacking. Basic skills.

Listening to dodgeball over at 'Monday Funday', Alice

Fit to Eat: Wheat free Carrot Crepes

For some reason, I have had a hankering for crepes lately. Perhaps it is because I keep driving by little Creperies along Hawthorne Boulevard, or because it has been a long time since I made them. Either way, today was the day that I decided to make them. A few years ago,  I distinctly remember using a strange crepe recipe involving carrots, soy flour and a blender. They sounded awful, but tasted great. After about forty-five minutes of googling that resulted in nothing that even came close to carrots in a blender, the only option was to experiment and use my foggy memories. Most of the crepe recipes I read today called for about equal parts flour and milk, and anywhere from one to four eggs, sweetener, salt, and sometimes some spices. Here is what I ended up with.

1 cup rolled oats {you could substitute another flour here, but I can't stand by the 1 C measurement...you may have to play with the amount.}

1 cup whole milk

3 eggs

3 whole carrots {I suppose you could use about 3/4 of a cup of baby carrots}

2 T Demerara sugar {or sweetener of your choice, this is just the only thing I had on hand}

1/8 tsp salt

*Optional, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, or vanilla {or any spices you like, actually}

Coconut oil {for the pan} Put all the ingredients in a blender, and blend on high until smooth {it took about two minutes in my very underpowered, cheap blender} Heat an iron skillet over medium heat, once hot,  add in some coconut oil. Pour in crepe batter, tipping the pan to make a thin disc, as large as you feel comfortable flipping. The first one is almost always a throw away, so don't be disheartened if it falls apart and looks gummy. Toss it. I like to use a super thin all metal spatula with no holes in it. I got it at the goodwill, and I pick them up whenever I find them because it seems they are scarce. Spatulas are all giant and silicone these days, or else they are 'man sized' for grilling. Yuck. Once the crepe has little bubbles all over it, you can flip it. The cooking should go really quick, maybe a minute per side. Add a little oil in between crepes so that they don't stick. We ate ours today with homemade apple preserves from a friend, but they are also delicious with honey and yogurt, fresh berries, jam or even just butter, cinnamon, and sugar. This recipe makes 8-10 seven inch crepes. In our case, it served one very excited 5 year old.

Thinking of Rita, as the weather is hot and I am unmotivated to do anything at all today, Alice