Test blog post

Fiddling around with Windows Live Writer. Here’s to hoping it makes blogging easier…and more frequent!

Sneak peek at what I’m planning to post on next.

Floors. Grates. Floor grates. Hold on to your panties, because it’s about to get crazy!

Monogrammed Pillows

The thing about having a dedicated crafting space is that all of my craft supplies are corralled together. So when I enter that part of the house, the amassed craft goodies are able to call out to me to unison. “Use us!” “You don’t need to vacuum right now!” “We could make something pretty together!”

It’s like a birthday check sitting in your pocket. Burning a hole. An itch begging to be scratched.

So one quiet evening, I scratched that itch.

These small plaid pillows came with the caned chairs that are in my dining room. After making covers for the seat cushions, I also made covers for these little throw pillows.

The throw pillow covers were made of drop cloth fabric. Here is a shot of how they looked together with the seat covers, with cat-approval kindly granted by Arabella.

The throw pillow covers seemed a little plain, so I went into my craft stash for a way to perk them up.

I used a black thin-tip fabric marker to trace a stencil of the letter P. The stencil is part of an alphabet pack from the hardware store.

P is for Pam!

Notice that the stencil has connectors for the loopy part of the P. After tracing the stencil, I just drew straight lines with the marker to close off the gaps.

Then I filled in the letter with black fabric paint. Using a square-ended paint brush really helped with getting the paint right up to the line made by the fabric marker.

The process photos were taken at night with my iPhone. Sorry for the blurriness.

The second throw pillow was marked with a different letter: A for Aaron (aka The Husband).

One coat with the fabric paint provided decent coverage, but I added a second coat for a really dense-looking letter.

The fabric paint didn’t bleed at all, even with the nubby texture of the drop cloth fabric. I ended up with a nice, crisp monogram.

I’m so happy with the final result. The monogrammed pillows look great with the black pattern on the seat cushions. I think they lighten up what could otherwise be a very formal and unfriendly room.

And did you notice I moved the booze box from the kitchen and into the dining room? It fits so perfectly on this marble-topped table.

The throw pillows continue to be cat-approved, even with the added monograms.Arabella sleeps in this chair about 16 hours each day. We finally had to put a sheepskin mat over the seat cushion. Because in the Battle of Cat Hair, humans always loose.

It’s funny; Arabella always chooses to sit in this particular chair, never the one with the P pillow. Maybe A isn’t for Aaron after all. A for Arabella?

Darn cat.

Our House in the 1940 Census

Detailed U.S. Census records from 1940 were released to the public a couple of weeks ago. The data release is not indexed by person name (not yet anyway) but by location; more specifically, by enumeration district, which is how the census divvied up geographic areas.

Raise your hand if you love demography! Two hands up if you love statistics! Hey, I have both my hands in the air! I love the U.S. Census because I find population statistics completely fascinating. Since I love the census, and I love my old house, it was a given that I would snoop around the archives to see who lived here in 1940. The house was built in 1885, and St. Louis’s massive depopulation didn’t start until the 1950s, so there was a good chance that the house was inhabited in 1940.

After spending an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out which enumeration district the house was in, I saw that someone had posted this link to our neighborhood Facebook page. So much faster and easier! A few minutes later, I found my house.

And I have to say, I was surprised by what I found.

A family of four elderly and unmarried siblings lived here together: Walter, Elizabeth, Otto, and Frances Borgstede. They were 71, 77, 75, and 67 years-old, respectively. Walter was listed as the head-of-household, and Frances the one interviewed by the census worker (denoted by the circled X by her name). All four were born in Missouri. The house was estimated to be worth $3,000.

Walter was the only one of the four siblings to work outside of the home. He was a secretary treasurer at a stove foundry. His annual salary was $5,000.

The information about the Borgstedes’ neighbors was also interesting. The neighborhood was full of  middle-class working families: truck drivers and loaders, policy officers, laundry workers, and — unspecified but implied — a lot of housewives.

I couldn’t help but wonder at the elderly Borgstede siblings, living in a house full of stairs and surrounded by young families with children. They were the oldest people listed on this census page. Most of the others were in their 20s and 30s, and 14 of the 39 people on this page were children. Walter Borgstede made more each year than the house was worth, and more than double what his neighbor (a police officer) made each year. Why did they live here? Did they grow up in this house? Did they decide to stay when it became clear that none were going to marry or strike out on their own?

My imagination went wild creating backstories for the Borgstede siblings. Indulge me if you will…Otto and Elizabeth both left school after 8th grade to help out with the family business. The business was successful enough to allow Walter to go to college and get a good job. He repaid their sacrifice by taking care of them in their old age and promising they would never have to work again. Frances had recently returned to St. Louis after four slightly scandalous decades in Europe. The neighborhood kids knew them as the kindly old people who would give out really fancy candy at Halloween. Otto made wooden toys in the basement and would secretly leave them at the bus stop for children to discover. Elizabeth baked cookies during the day and threw elegant cocktail parties at night. When Frances was interviewed by the census worker, she was wearing a purple turban and smoking a cigarette through a 15-inch holder made out of carved ivory.

Okay, okay, back to reality. Have any of you checked out the 1940 census records? I’m curious to hear what others have discovered.

From the Bottom Up

After I a bit of a sweep, scrub, and sort, the new kitchen floor was finally photographed. I adore it and am so glad I finally took the plunge and pulled up that old nasty tile. Now that it’s done, I am pleased to report that it completely meets all of my criteria.

Protects the plywood subflor? Check.

Cheap cheap cheap? Check. I bought six boxes of the the new tile (three boxes of each color) for $129, and I still have almost an entire box of each color remaining.

Can do it myself (DIM)? Check. Easily installed? Check. Easily removed when it’s time to renovate the whole kitchen in a few years? Check.

Fun? CHECK! It is so crisp and graphic. I feel like I’m walking into a cartoon every time I go in the kitchen. And I mean that in a good way.

This old red bench really pops against the black and white floors now.

The above photos have the kitchen table moved aside for a better view of the floor. Here are a few shots with the table and and chairs back in place.

 

As a reminder, here is what the kitchen looked like on move-in day about 18 months ago…

…and a close up of the old grody tile.

Looking at the old tile makes me shudder. It was a tripping hazard, an offense to the eye, and a hygiene nightmare all wrapped into one.

The one bad thing about this new flooring is that it makes the rest of the kitchen look dingier than before. The weirdly flesh-colored walls seem even weirder and fleshy-looking now. Imagine the color of a Band-Aid up on your kitchen walls. Makes you want to cook and eat, right? Yeah, I’ll be painting those the same white as the rest of the walls on the first floor ASAP.

The cabinets and green laminate countertop always looked liked crap, so it’s no surprise that they still do. The cabinets and countertops do have one redeeming quality, though, in that they are still in solid condition. So compared to the old floors, they’re actually ahead of the game.

I did take the flooring change as an opportunity to remove the cabinets on the east wall of the kitchen. They were only 12 inches deep and not very functional as storage or countertop space. The pantry cabinet is still there for now — it’s the tall cabinet on the right in the picture below. The white parts of the wall are where the old cabinets and floating countertop used to be.

Those cabinets and all of the stuff that was in them have been moved to the basement. We kept the rice cooker and toaster up in the kitchen, We Hipps love us some carbohydrates. The rice cooker and toaster have made a temporary and precarious home on top of the microwave.

The microwave cart also holds spice bottles and a basket for dishtowels and potholders. Pet necessities (baskets of toys, food bowls, a lidded pail for the dog kibble) are sitting on the floor between the microwave cart and pantry cabinets until I figure out something better. This jumbled situation is good motivation for getting a move on resolving this corner of the kitchen.

But first, white paint on the walls, and lots of it.

Playing Away the Weekend

Instead of taking photos of the kitchen floor like I had planned, we spent the weekend playing. It was bright and gorgeous this weekend — chilly on Saturday, but luxuriously warm today. We turned off the furnace and opened the windows for the first time in weeks. I think I say this about every season, but this may be my favorite time of year. I love when Winter just begins to turn toward Spring; when the promise of warmer temperatures, blooming flowers, and more hours of daylight makes me look forward to each new day.

Friday night was spent listening to Lynne Rosetto Kasper give a talk and sign her cookbooks. It was fun meeting her in person during the book signing, but I have to say that listening to her in person really wasn’t that different from listening to her on the radio. The snacks were delicious (of course) so that made up for it.

On Saturday we had a run/walk through nearby Lafayette Park. The Lafayette Square neighborhood is full of head-turning old houses, so running/walking past them ends up being as much exercise for my neck as my legs. I didn’t snap photos while trotting along, of course, but do have a few that I took during the neighborhood holiday parlor tour in December.

On Saturday afternoon I went to Fabric Nosherie in Webster Groves with a friend who is as obsessed with fabric as I am. It was fun to see some of the fancy designer craft fabric that I usually only see on the internet in real life. We spent over an hour there and left with our brains buzzing with ideas.

Saturday night was spent at Franco with friends. The one other time we’ve eaten there was a Monday night and it was d-e-a-d, but it was hopping on Saturday night. Their French fries make me cry, but in a good way. It doesn’t even bother me that they call them “pomme frites” instead of fries.

On Sunday morning we headed south to help with the set up of Perennial’s store front. My husband is on their board so we were sort of obligated to go, but after today I am genuinely excited about what will happen in the space. We were tasked with adding the shelves to this unit that they had already Frankensteined together from pieces of discarded furniture:

 

We were also asked to figure out a way to add additional storage to the side, so I rigged up something with an old drawer and a couple of leather belts.

It ended up being surprisingly sturdy and can probably hold a lot more than the plastic telephone that we stuck in it for fun. I would love to try this at home but I have no idea where it would work. Kind of hard to strap leather belts to brick walls.

And now we are on the sofa, cuddled with the animals and enjoying the Oscars on television. I didn’t get those kitchen floor photos taken, but it was a good weekend anyway.