Frosting

No, no no not THAT frosting! I too have cupcakes on my mind, what with the Gardiner Cupcake Festival, FINALLY ready to kick off tomorrow. But today I am thinking about frosting glass. I want to show you a little project I've had in mind for awhile and finally got to last week. It involves one of my favorite products that, I think, can be used in many creative ways around your home. It is frosting spray, available at all the craft and home improvement stores (I got mine at Lowe's).

First, some background. When I moved from my little cottage style apartment in Piermont I realized having ALL the things I love on display might make me feel good but seeing the amount of dust they were capable of accumulating in a very short period of time did not. I decided that in the new place most of it, if it were not going to be put away, would need to be displayed behind glass. So I schlepped my matched pair of giant vintage-Conran glass fronted cabinets with me, added glass doors to my bookcases and eventually bought a couple more armoires with them as well. Fast forward to my latest move, where all these large cabinets got dispersed into various rooms. One of the beech-toned Conran pair took up residence in the dinette where it houses all the overflow platters, silverware, vases, bowls etc. I've lived with it this way for almost 4 years, wondering all the time if I liked it enough to keep it in my long range plans. The jury is till out on that but I decided that while it sits there it needs to function better. That's when I figured out that the can of spray frost I had bought for a picture frame project would serve here as well. So I reorganized all the stuff in the cabinet, concentrating the bar-related bottles and glass ware to just two shelves. I then taped off the glass doors, above and below these shelves. I cleaned the glass really well and got to spraying. And in just moments I scored a great solution to a small storage dilemma.

There's a lot of reflection in this picture so I don't know how well you can see it but the stuff that looked cluttered and utilitarian is now hidden behind the elegant frosted glass and the bar shelves are highlighted behind the remaining clear glass! I love it! I hope ThriftyDecorChick will be proud!

As I mentioned this works well to add another dimension to framed art work. What looks like a blue matte in the photo above is actually the frosted part of the glass, softening the sage green matte behind. Really cool. You can also try this spray to add a little interest to an inexpensive mirror by taping off a 1/2 to 1 inch strip and frosting it for the look of an etched frame. Use your imagination!

Where is Spring?

That seems to be the conversation everywhere I turn this week. Sis and I were wondering today if the pervasive gray and brown all around us will ever go away. My girl at ThriftyDecorChick was determined to find it - so she created some for herself! My own attempt at making it Spring indoors, the mudroom project, is stalled (it's a paint thing). So I decided to pack away the St Pat's, pull out the moss wreath and look for a bigger visual jolt elsewhere. One of the great pleasures in a good life well lived is lazily driving around in hopes of stumbling upon some local treasure. This happened last summer when I was exploring across the river. A little sign off a secondary road announcing Innisfree Gardens lead me to a relatively small, hidden spot on a back road. From their brochure: Innisfree is "a 150-acre public garden in which the ancient art of Chinese landscape design has been reinterpreted to create a unique American garden." Paths lead the visitor "from one three-dimensional picture to another. Streams, waterfalls, terraces, retaining walls, rocks, and plants are used not only to define areas but also to establish tension or motion. The 40-acre lake is glacial, most of the plant material is native, and the rocks have come from the immediate forest." Amazing!

Choices

I was alternately laughing and crying the other day reading one of my favorite bloggers, "Thrifty Decor Chick". She was talking about her momentary distress over the financial state of her home (http://thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-were-not-moving.html). This emotion overcame her she says when:"We looked into refinancing our current mortgage into a 15-year. To do so, we had a realtor come out to the house to give us an idea of the value. The news was not good. When I say not good, I mean…not. good. We were expecting it to be bad, but not that bad." Well I have to admit to some of the same angst right about now. I am at a crossroads. Like my alter ego, "I’ve poured my blood, sweat and tears into this house because I love it, I enjoy it and it’s my passion. But I was hoping my improvements would help the bottom line a little bit too. At least right now, they don’t." Now, as I have eluded to, I have a significant reduction to my income pending and I have a choice to make. Do I stick with my beloved albatross of a home or do I instead invest in the future? This new venture that I have been working toward would give me a lot of the same satisfaction: planning, building, decorating, staging. But can I turn my back on what I've done here - incomplete, imperfect but so loved - to start anew? Had I managed to hang on a bit longer, had this economy cooperated just a little bit, I might have managed both. But alas that will not happen. Can I say goodbye to this my home, my canvas, my avocation, my friend?