January 2017 – PenultimateHome

Fireplace Mantel: 3 Ways

January 12, 2017January 13, 2017Uncategorized9 Comments

After putting away all the Christmas decorations, the house feels blah, bland, a little sad. So my goal this week was to bring a little life back into the beige living room. The fireplace is usually the focal point of the holiday decorations: evergreens, stockings, sparkly stuff. That’s the spot that feels the most barren after Christmas.

However, I also want a little breathing space and more relaxed atmosphere after the lushness of holiday decorating. Another limitation I’m facing is monetary. December brought us the challenges of replacing my car, paying for a funeral, and having to pay for maintenance on our rental home in Maryland because the tenants moved out. So I had to shop my own home for a new look.

I came up with three looks for the fireplace mantel. Each has some positives and negatives.

First up is a simple vintage look. I tried to highlight the turquoise and pink in the painting with the accessories. This mantel makes me feel good because it features my mother’s pink depression glass. She wasn’t a “collector”; she didn’t care what the pattern was or buying any piece she could find. She just liked the pretty pink glass. These pieces and others will soon be going to my daughter who also appreciates their sweet look.

Next is the Winter White mantel. This really looked so much better in real life. It’s main drawback is that doesn’t quite fill the space as much as I would like.

Finally, is the Blue & White mantel. Sorry, the sun was beginning to set as I was taking this last set of pictures and they turned out dark.

I asked my husband if it’s weird to have a portrait of yourself in the living room and of course he said no, cause he loves me. I’m still not sure. There is a lot of sentiment in that painting though. When I was four, my babysitter’s husband George, a fine artist, wanted to improve his portrait skills so he began three portraits: me, his daughter, and his wife.

I knew that if you sat for a portrait you had to sit very still. For a four year old anything over two minutes is torture, but, I was trying to cooperate fully. It’s like not being able to scratch your nose when it itches. Only later did I find out that the painting was based on a photo of me and I was sitting so that he could develop the color palette.

There is a companion painting of his daughter at about the same age, but the paintings are completely different. She was a cute brown haired/brown eyed girl. Unfortunately, George passed away before he could complete the last portrait. I believe his wife kept the initial sketch as he had done it instead of having it completed. This painting hung in my mom’s home most of my life. At her passing, it was one of two things that I especially wanted to protect and keep.

I just searched through the my cabinets for blue & white dishware and added a little faux greenery (come on, it’s January).

So, tell me which of these mantels would you choose: Vintage, Winter White, or Blue & White.

I’d love to hear what you think. If you’re enjoying following along with my posts, please subscribe to the newsletter (look on the right side of the screen).

Thanks for reading along,

Celeste

2017 Aspirations and Goals

January 6, 2017New Years

Have you ever felt like you were trying to drink out of a fire hose?

When I started thinking about what my aspirations and goals are for 2017, I began to have that feeling. I realized I was looking at everything I’d like to change and trying to fit it all in one year. I just can’t. I’ve got to eat this elephant one bite at a time. (Please excuse my sort of mixed metaphors) So, I’m going to focus on a few things in four areas of my life: my home, my blog, my person, my spiritual life.

My Home

Original real estate photo featuring an endless sea of orange oak.

This area is the easiest to measure improvement throughout the year. If I can create a more comfortable, efficient home, I will have succeeded. There are plenty of little things I’d like to accomplish. The big goals are:

Replace the old, nasty living room carpet and kitchen flooring with new wood flooring. This is also not a cheap goal. I keep saving money toward this and something comes up. Tell me you can relate.
Paint the kitchen cabinets and reduce the endless sea of orange oak. We’ve owned this house for three years and planned this from the beginning. Why hasn’t this been accomplished yet? Because we’ve done this before in another house and this isn’t a fast and easy job. Frankly, we keep putting it off. No more procrastinating. 2a. I’d like to replace the counter tops too, but that’s probably not a 2017 goal.
Lastly, my husband wants to finish the remodel of the basement. Technically, this is his goal, but I would like it too!

My Blog

I want to find the balance between dreaming big and being satisfied with reality. I need to learn so much about blogging in general (cue the fire hose). So, I guess my goals are:

Be more adept at blogging skills like editing photos and editing the content errors (yeah, this takes a lot of time).
Learn about building a consistent blog with interesting content. What resonates with readers?
Find a mentor in the blogging world that can help me avoid mistakes.

My Person

I want to keep this simple. My life is too sedentary and I need to move more. I want to walk after work at least 3 times a week. I want to eat healthier and I made some good progress with this in 2016, but I need to step it up.The holidays have been like quicksand to this goal recently. I also want to focus on better time management.

My Spiritual Life

This is the area that I really want to focus on this year. While the other areas may add quality to my life, this is the one that really matters the most. I will be looking for some good devotional books and I want to spend more quiet time in prayer. If you have any suggestions for a good book, please let me know.

Hopefully, I’ll be sharing with you how I’m getting along with these goals throughout the year (and hopefully by next year I’ll be able to report progress in all areas). What are your goals for 2017? Please subscribe to the newsletter on the right side of the post.

Thanks, for reading,

Celeste