Decorating A Home Away From Home

I could NOT think of anything to post today - I'm too excited about my camping trip this weekend, which kicks off in only three short hours! 

But what better way to combine vacation and blogging than to talk about my campsite?  LOL.  Seriously, check THIS guy out.  Best Ikea-hack of all time.  OF ALL TIME:




So if I'm ever trapped hungry and freezing in an Ikea store....wait...  that would actually be kind of awesome.  Also, the restaurant has stoves.

But I digress.

I'm actually not kidding about the campsite - this is no out-in-the-woods-with-bears camping, this is another women's festival like I go to in June every year, and we do what we call "Aphrodite Camping"...creature comforts + whatever creative decor we can come up with.

Imagine this: 

this is where I'm going!

 With a circle of tents draped in sarongs and tapestries, with rugs scattered all over the ground, cushions for lounging, low tables draped with fabrics and covered with food, drink, and incense...

something like this...

Now THAT's camping!  We hang ribbons and lanterns and banners in the trees, light candles on the picnic tables, and ring the campfire area with 6' Tiki torches to light the way when the fire's not going, and to illuminate the drum circle that forms around the campfire every night.

hm...did I pack my palm trees?

And, of course, we take it all down afterward, and leave the gorgeous Hill Country site as clean - or cleaner - than we found it. 

I'll post actual pictures of my actual campsite next week when I get back.  Everyone have an awesome weekend!  I know I will!



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This Time of Year

I don't really *do* "Fall decor."  I don't change my color schemes or put brown leaves and things all over my house.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not *me*.

Mostly, it's because Fall in central Texas doesn't mean the same thing as it does to the rest of the country.  None of the regular four seasons do - green Spring, bright Summer, red Fall, snowy Winter...not so much.  We have two seasons:  Hot and Christmas.  In my neck of the woods there's barely even any foliage turn - instead of reds and golds and browns and everything in between, most of our trees go directly from green to dead near the end of October.   Decorating with brown leaves and pumpkins and stuff never seemed to jive with the Fall that I actually experience...it's pretty, but it feels a bit alien, like borrowing traditions based on a natural cycle I've read about in books but never experienced firsthand, so there's no personal meaning in them for me.

ripe seedheads of Cosmos flowers

Fall is more of a Second Spring around here:  vegetables and flowering things put on a vigorous last show. Live Oak trees, which are green year round, grow a new set of leaves for the season and shed the old - the trees look like Spring and Fall at the same time for a couple of weeks while they change, which is really, really neat.  And people take to the streets and parks in droves, trying to squeeze out a few last weeks of enjoyment before the sticking, seeping, gray mess that is Winter sets in.  Bleh. Winter here sucks.

Sweet Autumn Clematis (C. ternifolia) going to seed in September

 So, Fall "decorating," for me, is more of a feel thing.  The season itself is a rejuvenation, a siesta between extremes, though heavily laden with a sense of expectation and excitement that Spring doesn't carry.  This is the time of the year I throw the windows open every chance I get, to air out a house that's been shut tight and shaded against the heat for 7-9 months .  The sheer curtains billow in the breeze (which is why I love them so much), and I have incense and candles going nonstop to scent and freshen and cleanse the house.  And bread baking.  Mmm, homemade bread.

last year's Lavender harvest

One thing I do enjoy in the Fall is bringing that sense of getting back outside for the last few weeks that I'm able to, into the house.  I cut flowering branches from the bushes in my backyard, and herbs from my garden, and scatter them in vases all over the house.  I cut Lavender and Rosemary and Basil to scent drawers and closets (and my truck, tee-hee), and spend as much time as possible on my back porch, separating flowers and seeds and leaves to dry and bring in for my spice and herb collections. 

the amazing flowers of my Mexican Orchid Tree (Bauhinia mexicana)

I guess really, Fall, for me, is not just about bringing the outdoors in, but also going outside.  :)


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The Best Part of Redecorating

...that would be the planning stages, in case you're wondering.  Don't get me wrong, the shopping and the execution are pretty freakin' awesome - but I'm a die-hard list-maker.  I write instructions for myself when I build things, I draw pictures for weeks, even months before I actually begin to work on a room, and I can't function without a to-do list to work from, most of the time.


Yeah, I'm a big dork.  But I'm an organized dork, so :P 

Dining Room Redesign, Part the First: The Table

After hemming and hawing and trying to figure out what to do with my dining room for a couple of years, I finally realized that the main problem was the table.   It was the Wexford table from The Roomstore, which you see here on the right (although mine wasn't counter-height, it was standard dining table height).


I had two of them, actually - the second was used for a while as a coffee table, after I'd taken the legs to Home Depot and had them cut them in half for me (this was years ago, before my adventures with Serious Power Tools began).  Both tables were 2x4' and open up to 4' square, with a built-in leaf that slides under the tabletop when not in use.  Pretty nifty.

And don't get me wrong, I loved my dining room table.  But it was WAY too big for the space that I have now, which is only about 10x11'.  Last week I sold both tables on Craigslist to make room - and money -  for a new one.

 The original plan was to build a copy of this one, which is the "Hemnes" side table from Ikea.  Clean and simple, with a nod to and twist on the traditional - and easy to make out of plywood.  I figured I'd double the thickness of the base pieces for stability, and enlarge the top (the original Ikea piece is only about 27" across). 






Paging through Craigslist ads, however, I managed to find a little round table that was perfect.  It's almost identical to this one (which is World Market's "Charlotte"), but it's black.  It's solid wood, 40" across, which fits my space better.  It's also practically brand-new, as the woman who sold it to me had never actually used it.  Best part?  Fifty bucks!






 

Part the Second:  The Plan

So where does this fit in?

This is what my dining room, up until this week, has looked like:

 
Made with Icovia's Space Planner, found on the website of Lane Furniture.  

I love playing with this thing. 

You can see here what that large, rectangular table was doing to the dining room space:  there's barely enough room to walk around it, to say nothing of actually seating people at it  Almost nothing else fits into the room except for my china hutch (the cabinet-y looking thing at the top next to the dog food bin). 

(Part of the reason the dining room is so small is that it isn't actually a dining room.  According to the people who built my house, this is supposed to be a "breakfast nook", and they intended for me to put my dining room table in my very long living room.  I've never liked that idea, and since I usually eat in the living room in front of a movie or with a craft project spread out on the coffee table, I decided to use the "breakfast nook" as a dining space, since it wouldn't get used much.  I use the "dining room" portion of my living room as an office).

Here it is with the round table I've just purchased - as well as another new addition that I plan to begin working on in the next few weeks: a window seat.  I haven't decided yet whether I'll build one in permanently, or if I'd rather just stick a pretty bench under the bay window.

This is a sketch I did a few weeks ago when I was just sure I'd be building the Ikea table and a full-on window seat.  Here you can see the idea for the rest of the bay window space - ultra-sheer curtains hung across the entire bay, making the bench a little secret place behind the room.  The curtains can be pulled back to use the bench as seating at the back of the dining room table.

I probably should have drawn several cats on the bench, since that's probably who will likely be sitting there more often than not.  Hee.

I'm not entirely sure what that big rectangular thing on the west (left) wall is - a mirror? Large piece of art? At the moment I have a pretty Indian-looking paisley scarf up there on a carved wooden tapestry hanger.  It may or may not stay. 

I'm not sure how quickly this will all take shape.  I'm busy preparing for a six-day camping trip that I'll be going on next week, so I'm certainly not working on it before then.  I have some tweaking to do with my dining room chairs and that big china cabinet; and then there's the window seat and sheer curtains to deal with.  I'll post photos as I go, though, so you can see the progress and final result.  :)