Out WIth the Old and In With the New: The Art on our Walls

I am happy to say that Aaron's been selling quite a few paintings as of late.

I am sad to say that I miss them when they go.

To see him making his art, the things that are inside him and who he is, and to know that people get it and like it, well, it's wonderful.

Making art makes Aaron happy.

Making art that people enjoy makes Aaron happy.

All of this makes me happy, too.

I guess it's just that even when it's for a good reason, it's still always hard to say good-bye.

The first big painting he did for us, one that hung on our walls through James' first 3 years of life, and then sold to a friend, is still missed.

It was a pair of giant Converse high tops.  (see it here)

James learned what a star was from that painting while it hung in our living room.

He still talks about it sometimes.

Then there was this painting that Aaron sold a while back.

James actually cried when he found out Aaron sold it.

We recently said goodbye to our trailer, Bambi.

Many of our friends expressed dismay that it was for sale.

"It is so you!' they said, "you can't sell it."

But Aaron took it off our walls.

Still, when Aaron got the call that it had sold, he said he felt just a little bit sick to his stomach.

It was a real favorite.

That's the hard thing about the art on our walls--it becomes a part of us, and thus, it is hard to say good-bye.

It's exciting to watch Aaron's paintings sell, and to know that people love them like we do.

But I won't say we don't miss them.

The above painting, "I Like Eich" is Aaron's newest.

I love it so much.

So, so, much.

If you are at all a fan of mid-century architecture, then you are probably familiar with the name, Joseph Eichler.

You know his houses.

And, if you are like me, you wouldn't mind living in one some day.

This painting celebrates the classic Eichler houses.

The windows, the roof lines, and the clean, modern look that makes them so special.

Eichler was not the architect, but the developer of the communities that bear his name.

But because he had an penchant for modern design, his houses all share a similar design sense.

It's one that Aaron and I, and many other people, like very much.

Aaron designed the painting and it is all painted free hand.

He is amazing like that.

It's perfect for someone who really Likes Eich!

Right now, there is only one painting, but he hopes to make prints like it soon.

Which is good news to me, because he took this painting off my kitchen wall this morning and took it to sell at Just Modern in Palm Springs.

Hopefully I'll at least get a print, right?

If you've been reading my blogs for any amount of time, you might remember some of the other paintings that we've had hanging in the house.

First there was ICE.

I loved ICE and we had it for a couple of years before Aaron thought of selling it.

He sold it ast week.

Getting this note from the new owner helped:

"Just wanted to let you know that I'm the new owner of "ICE" - just purchased it today from a shop in Palm Springs.  From the second I saw it, I loved it! "

That's the kind of thing that makes an artist's heart happy.

And his wife's heart swell with pride.

After ICE was gone, Aaron made the Bear, which he titled Promised Land.
I also loved this one.
We didn't have him up for too long.
He sold at Aaron's recent show.

I suppose the reason we love these paintings so much, aside from the fact that Aaron made them and we're his biggest fans and think everything he does is great, is that they are just a part of our life in our home.

We do a lot of living with these paintings.

See?

And now that Eich is gone, the wall in the kitchen looks awfully bare.

Good thing I know an artist who can fill it back up again.

At least for a while.

You know what they say, the cobbler's children never have shoes, the doctor's children are always sick, and the artist's home always has bare walls.

Perhaps it's time for me to commission my artist for my very own piece.
The kids want their own paintings too.
We all thought it high time Aaron make each of the kids their very own painting to keep for always.
He was going to do it for Christmas.
But in the hustle and bustle of it all, we both forgot.
I think some birthday paintings are in order.
I guess I'm going to be keeping my painter busy for a while.
That is the fun part about all this, I do love seeing what he's going to come up with next.
It's always such a good surprise.

If you're still bothering to read this blog, thanks!
I'm hopeful there will be more regular posts in the new year.
The new year is nothing but full of good hopes, right?
So, I hope I'll be seeing you soon!

Love from,

Greta

PS.  Aaron is working on getting a website up and running where he can show some of his hand carved, linoleum block prints, paintings and hopefully silk screened and giclee prints as well.  

I'll let you know when it's operational.

Meet Our Vintage Fridge

When you buy a vintage car, people think it's very cool.

When you get excited about vintage office supplies, people think you are a bit odd, but they let it slide.

When you use vintage enamelware for cooking, they love it.

When you score a vintage paint by number for a $1, and then transform it, they are stoked for you.

But when you tell people you want to buy a vintage fridge, people suddenly turn into naysayers.

Here's what the naysayers said: you'll have to defrost it, old fridges are too small, the seals don't work anymore, they're impossible to get repaired, and the most popular,  it will cost a fortune to run.

Oh, there were a few loyal supporters out there.

But most everyone else thought we were crazy.

After all, it's one thing to say "life's too short to be practical", but it's an all together different thing when you want to be impractical about a fridge.

But we didn't care.

Instead, Aaron kept searching Craig's List (for months), and after seeing lots of amazing fridges but none that were quite right, meeting up with someone who tried to rip us off, contemplating a wild goose chase down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere for a free, vintage fridge, and borrowing our wonderful, friend Paul's truck 3 times, we finally found The One.

I have long admired (loved, longed for, coveted) this line of fridges from Big Chill.
I especially love the Retropolitin.
It is vintage without looking too kitchy.
You may be laughing at this point, but I don't want my kitchen to look kitchy--no Ruby's diner for me.
I know, I know, I have boomerang counter tops, but you won't see a single vintage coca cola sign in my kitchen.
Anyway.
Back to the fridge.
So the fridge I really wanted for our kitchen remodel was a Big Chill.
But we didn't have an extra $3000 laying around.
And. let's face it, any new fridge, even if we could afford a really nice one, just doesn't have the look we love.
You might not have noticed, but we're not on board with the whole stainless steel thing.
That's when Aaron decided to look for a vintage fridge.
There were so many beautiful vintage fridges out there, and they were the expensive ones.
There were so many trashed fridges out there, and they were too far gone to save.
I loved all the beautiful, curvy, 1950s fridges, and there were lots of those.
The 1960s fridges with the more modern lines were harder to find.
But Aaron didn't give up.
We've learned that if you just keep looking, and if you're willing to be patient, you'll find the thing you are looking for.
We so did!
And we love her, and think she's just beautiful.

She fits in perfectly with our kitchen.
Our old fridge was more squat and stodgy, and stuck out a few more inches.
This one is taller and more slender, and let me tell you, those 3 or 4 inches gained in my kitchen make a huge difference.
This fridge just looks like it was made for this space.
To make the deal even sweeter, this fridge was in mint condition.
Take a look.
I hardly had to clean it.
It's more than 50 years old, people!

I love the adjustable, wire shelving.
Those crisper drawers on the bottom are enameled.
And they're turquoise!
They aren't flimsy plastic that will crack--they're solid.
And, it's full of all kinds of beautiful, modern details.
Coolest butter door ever?
Yes.

Light, spinning temperature dial and cool font--in turquoise!

More turquoise!

The kids favorite part is the door and it's space for 2 dozen eggs.
My favorite part of the door is that it is a pale turquoise.
Love it!

The freezer is on the bottom, which I like so much.
It is all fancy smancy with an automatic ice maker (still haven't used it).

I love that the original ice bucket is still in the freezer--in perfect shape, of course.

Aaron really liked the handles on the fridge and how well they go with the original hardware on our original kitchen cabinets.
Look at those curvy lines.
Gorgeous.
Side note.  Our old fridge had plastic handles that were impossible to keep, and then get, clean.
This fridge wipes down like a dream.

Even the grill at the bottom of the fridge is a beautiful design.
All the details were considered.

We've had the fridge for a few weeks now and it is a dream.
Our previous fridge, only about 5 years old, was a nightmare.
It was a complete wreck, the seals didn't work, the crisper drawers were cracked, it was impossible to clean, and the worst part was that it leaked like mad.
At one point Aaron built a sort of support brace out of Legos to help hold up the pan in the back of the fridge to keep the water from pouring out while we were gone for a few days.
It was a joke.
Even though it wasn't an expensive, top of the line fridge, it was not old enough to be in such bad shape.
Our new, vintage fridge however, is American made at a time when things were made to last.
It has so far.
And I'm feeling pretty good about it lasting a while longer.
When I filled up the fridge with our food, Aaron said, "we need more Pyrex for this fridge.  That's it, you can buy as much Pyrex as you want for the new fridge."
You heard it here folks!
I'm going estate sale shopping tomorrow!

And for all you naysayers out there, here are the stats: we don't have to defrost this fridge, it's far bigger than our old fridge--it's huge, in fact, the seals work great, and our fridge repairman said these old fridges run forever.
The only thing we don't know about yet is the energy usage.
The first bill should be arriving any day.
I'll let you know if you were right on that one.
So I won't stick my tongue out at you.
Yet.
And, yes, I promise to be honest.
I owe it to my fellow impracticals.
You might want an old fridge of your own one day and you need to know all the details.
In the end, I like the way our fridge looks so much better than the Big Chill.
The price tag is much better too--$400 instead of $3000.
I think we scored.
Love from,
Greta

Easter Colors

Easter has the best colors.

And oh how I love color!

Sometimes I don't realize how color saturated our house is until I am in another home, like this one.

And then I come home and I look around and I think, "wow.  Our house is bright."

We have a turquoise front door.

We have a red kitchen floor.

And turquoise counter tops.

Our living room has a bright green wall and orange chairs.

There are turquoise frames on the walls.

We have a bright yellow lamp.

And an orange one.

We love color.

Our house probably makes some people nervous.

But I wouldn't have it any other way

Because all the color in my home makes me happy.

It energizes me.

It inspires me.

I suppose it could also feel chaotic and overwhelming.

Perhaps that is why I am so careful about clutter.

I balance the bright colors in our home by keeping clutter to a minimum.

I think without that balance I would not find my home a place that felt relaxing.

But it is.
I love walking in the door and feeling that sense of calm wash over me.
I'm home.
If every surface is covered in clutter, then I don't feel that way.
And I don't just mean that pile of junk mail that needs sorting. (I actually sort it the moment it comes in the house and chuck it right away.  Cause I'm serious about clutter like that)
That kind of clutter makes anyone nervous.
I'm talking about visual clutter.
I edit down the items atop my shelves and dressers often.
Too many things, even the things you love best, can be too much.

Besides controlling the visual clutter, another way we've used color in a controlled way is with our wall color.
Most of the walls in the house are paler versions of the bright colors we use as accents everywhere else.
We used a very pale green in the public rooms and hallways.
In the bedrooms we used a slightly brighter turquoise.
Those 2 colors are used often in the rest of the house.
So the backdrop of those same colors, in a less bright version, makes sense.
I know every design article says you should have white walls and just add shots of color with your accessories.
But I'm here to tell you that you can have color on your walls and color on your things.
You just have to be smart about it.

All these bright Easter pictures got me thinking about color.
These are some of my favorite pictures from the myriad I took at Easter
You can see the rest and read all the stories on my other blog, Lilly and the Brothers.
My kids got an insane amount of candy.
And they organized it all.
They are so my kids.

So, what colors are your favorites?
Do you find color to be overwhelming or invigorating?
And speaking of color, this is one of my favorite color blogs.
Mr. Bazaar really understands the power of color.
He always inspires me.
I know it's a bit late, but Happy Easter!
Love from,
Greta
PS. I just redid my Facebook page for this blog.  I'd love it if you head over there and give it a like.
Also, if you want to see all the colors in our house, take our house tour.  You can find it here.
Thanks!

A Sticks and String Mobile

James is working on his art pin for Cub Scouts.
It's a pretty big deal.
He has 6 different art projects to complete.
One of the choices was a mobile.
We decided to make one of sticks and string.

James wanted to use sticks and as we were pondering ways to make the sticks colorful, (you know me and color!) I thought of colored string.
So we went to the craft store and picked out some embroidery thread.
Next we gathered sticks from the back yard.
Those are all the supplies you need to create this mobile.

James chose his own colors.
We did have a little color palette talk as he chose.
First he chose  a bunch of colors he liked and then we narrowed down the choices by separating them into distinct color palettes.
In the end, he decided he liked the brighter colors better than the pastels.

It took a few minutes for James to get the hang of wrapping the string around the stick.
I started it for him by tying the end around the stick.
Then we tested out different techniques for wrapping until we found the one that suited him best.

He liked holding the stick in his left hand and twirling it slowly, while holding the sting taut in his right hand and wrapping it around the stick as it twirled.
For the first few minutes it was a little frustrating.
He was impatient.
But then he found a rhythm.

And after he'd been doing it for a bit, he told me he liked it because it was so quiet and he could just think while he was wrapping the string.
He's right.
It is a very meditative activity.
And after a short while he'd done his first stick.

Before he started wrapping, he had a design in mind.
He chose his sticks and laid them out on the table.
He chose what color or colors would go on each stick.

I wasn't planning that far ahead.
I would have just randomly wrapped my sticks and then decided how they'd fit together.
But James had a vision.

He found it difficult to make the string lie flat over the bumps and knots on the sticks.
And since he didn't like the bumpy look, he opted to leave the knots uncovered.
That is an aesthetic decision left up to the artist.

James worked on wrapping his sticks at 2 different sittings.
When he was done, he laid them out and I helped him tie them together.
He wanted them tied with white string.
It was a big of a trick to get them to balance just right.
That was part of the design process--figuring out the weight of the sticks and how they would balance each other.
He did a pretty good job of it.

And he was proud of how it turned out.
It's a real mobile!

I like the juxtaposition of the brown sticks and bright colored string.
Aaron likes it because it looks "boy scouty".

But mostly I like it because I like working on art projects with my boy.
Ones that are simple and still beautiful.
And you can bet I'll be wrapping some sticks of my own real soon.

Here's a funny thing about this project.

I really thought it was original.

Not that I was the only person who had thought of wrapping string around twigs,  but I really hadn't seen it anywhere else.

It was a new idea to me.

But then, like the next day, I saw this, on a friend's Pinterest board.

There was this one too.

And I had to laugh.

Guess it wasn't such a new idea after all.

But we're still very happy with our mobile.

Next we're tackling collage.

We'll be studying it and creating it in the form of mosaic.

I can't wait!

I have some amazing garage sale finds to show you from this weekend.

I haven't been garage saling in ages, but decided to try one that sounded good.

It was.

Oh my, how good it was.

Check back sooon to see my treasures.

Love from,

Greta

Dreaming of Ronni Kappos Jewelry and a New Dresser to Put It In

I missed Day 24 of the February Photo Challenge.

It was "Inside Your Bathroom Cabinet".

We don't have cabinets in our bathroom.

We have a small, double sink with 4 drawers under it.

All our towels and such we keep in the hall closet next to the bathroom.

Aaron and I each have a drawer on top, and the lower ones hold various bathroom necessities.

In my drawer I keep my "creams and lotions" (name that movie), makeup, Lilly and I's hair accessories, my jewelry, scarves and whatnot.

I try to keep it clean, but it gets messy fast.
Nothing is very easy to find because it is all kept in a tight space.
It works, but I dream of a better set up one day.
For example, keeping my jewelry some other way than in a bunch of little bags, getting tangled together and lost all the time.
I mean, I don't have a lot of jewelry, but I have some.
Like this, my most favorite necklace ever.

I wear this beauty all the time.
In fact, if you hang out with me at all, you might think it's my only one.
It isn't.  It's just my favorite.
It has so much going for it.
It's classic shape--like a string of pearls.
But it's more casual and fun than pearls and therefore easier to wear.
It's so colorful.
It goes with almost any outfit I put on.
And to seal the deal for me, it's made of vintage, glass beads from Germany.
How cool is that?


The necklace is by my favorite jewelry designer, (OK, I only know 2) Ronni Kappos.
I fell in love with her jewelry a few years ago when I saw this bracelet at the OCMA.

Aaron bought it for me for Christmas that year and my collection began.
He added the necklace last Christmas.
And I am happily composing a list of other pieces I love in case he ever decides to get me more.
I like this.
This
This.
This.
These.
And these.
I told you she was my fave.
(see more of her designs on her site)


And if I'm going to have all that fabulous jewelry (ha!) then I need a better place to put it, right?
So I'm dreaming of a new dresser.
When Davy moves into the big kids' room, we'll have that whole wall currently occupied by his crib.
I can't wait to put a dresser there (Drawers for my clothes!  Imagine that!) and make part of it into a little vanity station.
Although I love the idea of a vanity like this one, I think a dresser or credenza will be more practical.

(source)

I am thinking something more along the lines of this.

With a cool lamp on top, and instead of shelves above it, a mirror to look at when I put on my jewels.

(source)

I really love the lines of mid century credenzas like this one below.
But I also think a full set of drawers would be better than shelves.

(source)

I am also in love with painted furniture.

I found these 3 painted dressers here and I am so smitten.
These are my absolute favorites.

Aren't those colors so great?
I want to copy them exactly in my house somewhere.

This one is beautiful.
Such calm colors.

I even love this one.
I like the idea of pairing a patterns with solids.

Although it feels like Davy will be in our room for a while yet, the boy is almost 9 months old.

I think he'll be moving this summer.

It's definitely not too early to daydream of redecorating.

All that from a Photo Challenge promt!

March's list starts tomorrow.

I can't wait!

Love from,

Greta