china shepherdess

Country Kitchen no more!

I've made a bit of progress with the kitchen. The top layer of wallpaper has been removed and the country kitchen curtains are down. I'm saving the curtains because I think it would be fun to make a vintage-style apron out of some of the fabric. I collect vintage aprons and the apron will be a nice memento of the people who lived in the house before me.There's more than enough fabric for the apron, so if anyone wants a Sound of Music-style romper made out of the remainders, just let me know.

Here are two photos of the kitchen as it was when I bought the house. 

And one showing the dining area with the top layer of wallpaper removed.

There's a lot of work to go, but for now, I'm re-focusing my attention on the main bedroom. I decided it would be best to get that room in order first.

I love Jonathan Adler, but really...

My sister and I went to Macy's yesterday so that she could help me decide which color of sofa I'm eventually going to order. We cleverly went to the downtown location so as to avoid a Black Friday nightmare. It was still kind of a nightmare because we both forgot to do a little thing like eat, but anyway...

I am SO excited to finally be purchasing a sofa. I haven't had one for about a year and my booty is a bit sick of sitting on Eames shell chairs all the live long day. The sofa I've settled on is the well-rated and inexpensive Corona. It fits within the small budget I've set for my living room (thank you first-time home buyer's credit). The only hitch is that, while it comes in lots of colors I like, there are none that I completely love. My sister is less timid than I am when it comes to color, so I knew she'd give me good advice. After we checked out the sofa and swatches we wandered through the clearance area where I fell in love in love with this.

Blue is not usually a color I go for, but this chair is amazing. It will coordinate perfectly with the blue and green vinyl upholstered Scandinavian Modern chairs I purchased at the Minneapolis Public Library sale a few years ago. With all this color I'll go a bit more neutral with the sofa, which is the direction I was thinking in the first place. The last thing I wanted to do was be stuck with a color scheme just because of one piece of large furniture. I'll be ordering the Corona sofa in Stone when pre-sales start for Friends and Family next week.

Also on clearance at Macy's was this, um, interesting piece by Jonathan Adler.

Yes, those well-formed protrusions are what you think they are. I LOVE Jonathan Adler (and his husband Simon Doonan) but this piece is just too too, at least for this chica. I was trying to think of the sort of room where it would work. Perhaps a baby nursery?

My first big purchase

I made my first big purchase (besides the house of course) and ordered this bed I've been eyeing from CB2.I love the integrated angled headboard -- perfect for reading in bed.

It's important to me that I get the bedroom in order as soon as possible so that I can move in and have an oasis from any other projects that are going on around the house. I still haven't made up my mind about color, but the bed's white frame will work with whatever palette I end up using.

My sister and I are heading off to Hirshfield's this morning so that she can buy paint for her place and I can grab a bunch of paint chips. I'm leaning toward painting the bedroom a nice restful light grey, and then bringing in color with the duvet and other accessories.

Grey has been one of my favorite colors for a long time and it happens to be trendy right now, so it's easy to find lots of inspiration pics. Here's a slideshow with examples on CasaSugar.

It's official!

Music to Sign My Life Away By

I've been stretching out my wrists this morning in anticipation of my appointment to close on my first home. If someone had told me a year ago that this is what I'd be doing today, I would have laughed in their face. But here I am, getting ready to sign my life away and start this new adventure.

My first chore of the day is loading up one of my iPods with music. 20 GB really doesn't go all that far, so there were tough decisions to make. I'm guessing that Johnny Cash and J-Pop will keep me more in the mood to work than Joy Division.  I WISH I was ready to start painting like the dreamy couple on the album cover pictured above, but first I have an appointment with some less than charming wallpaper in my kitchen. That might require me to break out the Suicide Commandos.

What's with the name?

China Shepherdess?

I'm not the dainty china figurine type. Sure some tchotchkes slip in here and there, but a finely crafted statuette of a lovely lass shepherding her flock isn't generally my cup of tea, much less something to name my blog after. But in this case, there's a story. To get it, you'll have to go back to a little house in the big woods, on the prairie, on the banks of Plum Creek, by the shores of Silver Lake, and so on. 

The last thing, Pa hung the bracket on the wall by the front window, and Ma stood the little china shepherdess on it.

In the "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pa moves the family from place to place trying to find that perfect homestead. In each place they settle, the house isn't a home until Ma sets the little china shepherdess on the shelf. When I decided to start a blog to document this adventure of buying my first home the name China Shepherdess just seemed to fit.

If you get to know me you'll find that I'm much more partial to shelf clutter of the Jonathan Adler variety, but somehow this twee little china shepherdess figurine from the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society ended up in my shopping cart this evening. I close on my very first place tomorrow morning (knock wood) and I can't wait to make my own little house into a home and find a good spot where my little china shepherdess can perch.

 

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