Yesterday and today have been cleaning days. I sorted totes and totes of resale items, pricing, deciding which booth they will go in (I am still working on plans to open a second booth) and then cajoling Larry into carrying all the sorted totes to the garage. I don’t like my set-up for this business at all. I don’t have space in the house to work on it and the garage is a good step away and not enclosed enough. But I’m doing the best I can with what I have to work with, and hopefully soon I’ll develop a better system. Step one in that plan is to sort, clean, price, list and pack immediately after I buy. The backlog of items to be processed is huge and I am seeing the error of my ways! Live and learn.

Today I tackled the linen closet, which was threatening to explode, and the scary under-the-sink region. I have way too many table linens and find it hard to part with any of them. I did sort out a few, along with some curtains, sheets, and other things I am sure I will never use again. The closet looks better–and while I was at it I got another couple of cupboards in the bathroom re-organized.

Under the sink–whew. How does that area get so messy? I’m trying something new. I moved the trash cans under there, and that meant a lot of stuff had to go. I mean, do we really need 6 stainless travel mugs? I don’t think so. I kept 3, still more than we probably need. I ended up with some items that will need to go someplace else, and that means I have to sort another cabinet to make room for them. Ah, me. I remember simpler days when we owned so little we only needed two closets. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those times, but then I remember how it was to not have what I needed to cook and do other things, and I don’t want to be back in that situation either.

So cleaning continues. It does feel good to reclaim the space and reorganize so that I can actually find things. I even found the broken piece of wing that goes to one of my yard angels, so now she can be repaired.

We’ve been working outside too. We put manure along each row of my early garden and already I can see a difference in the plants. We cleaned up the raspberries and blackberries and transplanted a row of small raspberry plants to double the size of that patch. Larry extended the electric fence so that the new garden, made where the old equipment shed was, is now also enclosed. Removing the building probably removed our resident wild rabbits who were a headache in the early garden because they could hide under the stuff stored in there, and they could also get under the big evergreens to safety. Now the area is exposed and not nearly as handy for them.

It has been cold all day today, and there were even a few flurries flying around earlier. I am worried about tonight; if it doesn’t stay cloudy, or if the wind is still, we could be in for a freeze or at least a frost. With everything so leafed out, it will be devastating if that happens. We covered the strawberries, the small mulberry and my hydrangea the other night but there was no danger then; tonight, we might be in for it.

We’ll be back outside this afternoon, transplanting blackberry plants–those thornless plants can get huge!–and planting some tiny trees from the Arbor Day people. I might get the rest of the broccoli planted too. This year’s garden goal is to grow more of the things we eat most: carrots, broccoli, onions, celery, and lettuce. I think I can put up less if we grow a smarter garden, one that we can from fresh for more of the year. We’ll see how that plan goes.

Back to work. I hope your day is a good one, and warmer where you are than it is here.

The old bed: a good one, I’ll admit, and one that served well for, let me see…43 years?

So here’s the new bed:

No my bedroom isn’t THAT crooked–it was just difficult to get a good angle with the camera! But don’t you love this old bed? I think it’s from the 1930′s; that’s what the lady I got it from said. I bought it at a yard sale and I’m just in love with it. Best point? It doesn’t squeak and squonk every time we move! (Now, go wash your mind out with soap–that is NOT the kind of moving I’m talking about!)

What makes a house a home? For most of us the instant response is the people who live there. But beyond the folks you love, what makes your house a home?

Is it the neighborhood, valley, town or ridge where your house is located?

Or is it the house itself, the way it is designed, the way you can live within the space?

Is it the furnishings, the comfort of the couches, beds, and chairs?

Or is it windows that look out on a favorite view, or look into a special space?

 
Is it the little things you’ve added, the pictures and knicknacks and curtains that define what home is to you?

Or is it, as my friend Donna said yesterday, just a place that makes us feel happy?

I think I like Donna’s definition best. Home is the place we can be happy, surrounded by those who love us and the things we’ve grown attached to, a place that provides comfort for the heart and soul as well as the body. I think that is what home means to me.

What makes your place home for you?

Sweet February comes with reminders that spring can’t be far behind. I love that stores are filled with pretty pink and red hearts as well as some spring inspired items! This month I will be getting pretty springtime catalogs and magazines in my mailbox too and that will make the colder days more tolerable.

I have long been a HUGE fan of home decorating magazines and catalogs; they are always a great source of inspiration for me. I enjoy leafing through the pages filled with pretty photos, motivating articles, ideas for do-it-yourself projects and tantalizing recipes. I tend to take an hour or two when they arrive to sit down with a cup of tea and pour over each page.

When I was a young homemaker, I kept my magazine stash in large boot boxes under my sofa and could not think of parting with even one issue. They were my home-keeping lifeline, per se. I did finally give them to a friend when we moved, we just couldn’t take everything and it was time to pass them along. I do still tend to hold on to favorite issues for the  inspiration and I now receive magazines which offer a bit more stylized forms of décor than those early favorites, but I still can’t resist picking up a copy of the latter at my favorite grocery store every now and again.

I have often given advice to clients about creating their own “Home Journals” as we set about to create their ideal home environments. Many times people become mystified by the sheer magnitude of colors, styles and materials available in the market today.

Sometimes it is best to take a step back with a trusty notebook, pen, paper and much-loved magazines to find direction. Putting together a personal home journal in order to define the desired tone of your home is a great way to get started. It can also be a fun way to retain and gather memories and moments in order to pass along the legacy and story of your family home. It would make a wonderful gift to share with children, friends and family. Think about your favorite magazine, blog or journal as an inspiration point to get started.

The first item you might consider purchasing would be an attractive binder, notebook or scrapbook. Include some pretty papers in the most used or favorite colors of your home and family along with this purchase. These will be used as decorative backgrounds as you create your pages. Divide your home journal into sections for favorite recipes, favorite musical selections, special occasions celebrated, authors and poets you enjoy, places you have visited and so on. Include plenty of family photos of special events as well as some of average, ordinary daily life. Don’t forget to include a section for future plans, pretty rooms you dream of creating, recipes you want to try, books you hope to read and places you are dreaming of traveling to. Think of all the special elements which make your home an extra special place for your family and friends.

The items you include in your journal will begin to paint the picture of what your family holds dear so you can go forward in creating your perfect home. Remember, home is a wonderful blend of sights, sounds, tastes, aromas and textures that all come together to stir the emotions of all who dwell within. Make it a family project and make your personal home journal reflect the unique beauty and character of your home sweet home.

You may even want to convert your work into a bound book for gifting by submitting the pages you create to a personal publishing site such as http://www.snapfish.com. Have fun and focus on what is most important to your family. Wishing you a beautiful February, stay cozy!

Visit Charlotte at cozyhomecottage.blogspot.com or email  charlottespears5@aol.com.

Fifteen million dollars will be shelled out this month in a national attempt show our love to each other; stuffed animals, chocolate, perfume, chocolate, flowers…and did I mention chocolate? Oh yes, and cards filled with mushy words…

Please bear with me as I express my words of devotion not to an individual person, but to a place. Even though my love letter is personal and specific to Hacker Valley and Red Gate Farm, I believe it reflects sentiment most West Virginians feel towards their own special place.  (The first line is borrowed from Elizabeth Browning.)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

1.  I love that you don’t get in a hurry. The morning sun takes its time coming down the hill after it tops over the ridge letting the frost linger in the shadows and  fallen leaves that it’s outlined.

2.  I treasure the vivid backdrop you paint for my childhood memories and those of my parents. For example, fifty yards from the front door I can stand in the cool waters of the Holly River and laugh as I imagine my mom and her sister as youngsters involuntarily baptizing all their hens. (As the hens would willingly crouch down for the rooster, mom and auntie would pluck them up, run out the door of the chicken house “of ill repute”, and dunk them under the “cleansing” waters of the Holly.)

3.  I am mesmerized by the wind currents swirling around and through the mountains. Once in the hayfield on Balli Mountain, the clouds, being encouraged along on a blessed breeze, cast shadows that washed over us like waves in the ocean. The only appropriate response was to stop raking and catch my breath only to have it taken away again in awe.

4.  I love the exhilaration of riding dirt bikes in the meadow under a blue sky, or catching spring peepers in the ditch. You enable me, for just a few moments, to step outside my role of housewife and mom and be a kid again.

5.  In addition to the usual flora and fauna like dandelions and black bears, you go the extra mile and give us wine berries, ramps, doodle-bugs, and ferrydiddles. Oh, and there is a marvelous patch of touch-me-knots on Sleepy Pugh Hill that means more to me than a dozen roses.

6.  You are a marvelous teacher who encourages us to think outside the box to fix things, which I’m impressed to say nine times out of ten involve duct tape.

7.  I love to go barefoot and feel the mud between my toes more than a pedicure! And the mudslide behind the house that my ten year old son discovered was marvelous.  He slid down on his belly repeatedly and we had to hose him off with the garden hose.

8.  Thanks for challenging me. There are endless opportunities there to push oneself beyond what you think you can do…cutting briars (filth) with a heavy gas-powered weed eater for five hours till your side bruises…or putting up hay as temperatures soar into the 90’s–physical challenges that when met builds confidence as well as character.

9.  I think it’s cool that a traffic jam is when a tree falls across the road until someone comes along with a chain-saw in their trunk (sooner than you might think).

10.  Night is so truly defined you can’t even see your hand in front of your face. When the moon is full the entire valley is illuminated so barns and trees cast purple shadows. Looking up at the starry sky makes me humble.

After 44 years together, I appreciate you now more than ever. Happy Valentine’s Day to Red Gate Farm and the special people who live there. My heart aches when we are far apart—for it is with you that my heart sings the prettiest love song.

I miss you, Janet

    Janet Fliegel is a WV farmgirl currently surviving in a suburb of Cincinnati. 

It’s that kind of weather: cold, damp, icy, drippy, snowy. The kind where you want to just stay in by the fire, eat starchy food, read books and generally hibernate until the skies clear.

Even this wintry mix has a beauty of its own, however. Like ice-coated pine needles on the little tree in the moss garden on the porch:

and the small tree that huddles in a corner of the deck:

while along Joe’s Run, the water runs beneath ice-laden trees

and sparkle in the morning light,

as do the drops along the porch rail.

Now the sun is shining, the air has warmed to light-jacket temperatures and we got so settled into working inside that we’re missing it! Winter is a capricious season this year. My English granny once wrote to my mother about a time in England when the weather could not seem to make up its mind about what it was doing. Granny wrote, “I wish we could just put up our umbrellas and put on our galoshes and know where we are.” I think that sums up this winter too, doesn’t it?

So we are in the house today; Larry rerouted water lines so the spigots for the washing machine are where they should be. The washing machine wheezed its last on Friday so when we moved it out we decided to get those water lines fixed. Now I’m searching for another (but not new) washer; no luck finding a good used one yet. When he finished with the plumbing work, he moved on stripping the varnish on that couch project we started last February (Shhh! Yes it’s been that long ago). He’s almost finished; next step will be buying some trim wood and figuring out how to make it look right since we kinda got the cart before the horse on some of this project. When he’s done with the stripping today he has a whole BIG bunch of John Wayne movies to watch, thanks to our son Derek. Larry is a huge John Wayne fan so a film festival is in the offing, I believe.

And me, I am slaving away on eBay, getting things listed. It’s slow going. If you have satellite internet you know how slow it can be. Those of you on high-speed, rejoice in your quick internet. But I am working along steadily and should have a good bit done by the time I quit.

Not the most fascinating of days, but not the worst either. Progress is being made, Mountain Stage is on the radio, I have good coffee in my cup and all is right in my world at this moment. And that in itself makes it a good day.

This is the little chair I bought at a yard sale in October for less than a dollar. I had no place to put it until I did the bedroom rearrangement on Monday. Now it has a corner in my bedroom between the new chest and my old dresser, sharing the space with the clothes hamper. The yellow paint doesn’t go with my room at all and I didn’t want to get into painting it yet, so I came up with this quick fix:

First, I added a flowered cushion, then

I used a crocheted bedpillow cover to slip over the back.

I used a placemat (that matches the one I used on top of the dresser yesterday) to toss over the pillow cover, and a sweet little sachet I’ve had for a while to dangle from one corner, and the quick makeover was complete:

The little chair looks right at home in my room, doesn’t it?

We bought this chest of drawers in the summer, thinking to use it in the new log room when we get it built. So the chest was stored out in the garage. The cats found it made a nice perch to view the world and their prints up the sides made me realize the garage wasn’t ideal storage. And we had nowhere else to put it–except inside our already crowded house.

I started rearranging in the bedroom yesterday and I am really happy with the result.

Oddly, it feels like we have more space in the bedroom now. Formerly there was a chair and ottoman in this corner, along with a nightstand. The chair moved to the kitchen and the rocker that was in the kitchen moved to the living room. A small chair and the laundry hamper  are in the corner where the bigger chair was, leaving room for the new chest.

It’s not really new of course. The lady we got it from said her mother bought the chest, a dresser with a mirror and a bed as a set in the 1930′s. She kept the dresser and mirror and I bought the bed and the chest.

I was hooked when I saw these drawers inside the doors:

As you can see, we’ve already put them to use!

I’d like to move the bed in and replace our bed too. I’ve had the same bed, believe it or not, since I was first married in 1968. I am so tired of it–but it’s a perfectly good maple spindle bed so I’ve just kept it even though I have never particularly liked it. I will move it into the new log room–I love the bed that goes with this chest and can’t wait to make the change. Now I just need a new/old dresser to replace the maple one I’ve had for lo these many years.

Here’s how I decorated the top of the dresser:

We found this lamp, and another of a similar design, in the first log cabin we moved. Larry rewired them both.

That, and cleaning up the mess from moving furniture, was part of today’s projects. I’ve also been reorganizing my “eBay room” and have made some progress towards containing that mayhem. I still have a lot to do to get it to the place I’d like it to be, and it may require some major shelf-building, but it’s more manageable now. That project spilled over to closet reorganization–one things always leads to another, doesn’t it?

Tonight is writing night, because writer’s group meets tomorrow. I am working on a story that may become a novel–it seems to be spinning out–and a short story that may become a one-act play. Again, one thing leads to another. In the first story, two people show up at a graveyard and claim to be grandchildren of the deceased. But are they? And if they are not, why do they claim kinship? In the second story, a man gets on an elevator to find it already occupied by a vacuum sweeper with attitude. (That one was suggested by a writing prompt and a Facebook post by a former co-worker.)

So, I’m off now to the land of make-believe.