Stop That Jumping and Get to Work !

Hope you moms out there enjoyed your day yesterday, because all too soon it's back to business as usual. Today is

Clean Up Your Room Day!

Those naughty kids of yours should be making their beds, not jumping on them. Channel that energy into spring cleaning! Martha's here to help too. Click on her pic to get the Spring Cleaning Checklist from her Homekeeping Handbook. She'll help you turn your little ones into junior cleaning machines.

Click on the photo below and the folks at Real Simple will help you get your cleaning done faster. Make it a game!

Seriously... "clean up your room day"? Who came up with that one? Not surprisingly, its origins are a mystery. Would you admit to creating a "special" day to "celebrate" mopping floors and folding laundry? No, me neither. But housekeeping is necessary and important work so you may as well do it right. Teach your kids to do it right too and you just might get to relax on more than your one designated day a year.

Top photo by Jean Allsop for Coastal Living

Happy Mother's Day

to my mom, to your mom,

to you and to me.

I know you have seen this painting in a variety of forms, probably hundreds of times. Reproduced not only as a print, but on mugs and postcards and magnets. It is one of those images that is so ubiquitous it runs the risk of being looked upon as trite or cliché. To see it in person though, as I have recently, is to have an entirely different experience with it. To see it in person is to understand why it would become one of our most enduring images of mother and child. It is gorgeous and glowing, simple yet profound; quietly speaking volumes about a perfect moment in an ordinary day. I wish you all such an ordinary moment on this perfectly beautiful spring day.

"Breakfast in Bed", 1897, by Mary Cassatt is on permanent display in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries at The Huntington Library.

Another Layered Art Idea

While writing my last post, I searched high and low for other examples of layered framed art so that I could better illustrate the concept for you. Interestingly, the only images I found were these few, all from the same source. First, the one you see above, is from a Pottery Barn catalog. The frames are hung using wires or string, but neither the pic nor the catalog description are clear about what they're hung from. Could be a rod or a picture moulding high on the wall. I like that the casual looseness of the arrangement is brought back together by the use of similar black and white subjects all identically framed.

Next, this salon-style installation in a mix of Pottery Barn frames lit by one of their rail lights. As casual as the first image was, this one is made even more so by the variety of frame styles and their contents. See the curiously "popped out" numbers 5 and 9 in the middle? They led to the discovery of a nifty new-to-me gizmo, also from, well, you know where. Called a "frame riser", it allows you to layer photos, art and mirrors over each other without them having to touch or attach to each other. And, surprisingly, it holds up to 25 lbs, so you can layer pretty much whatever you want...

...and create your own free-form scrapbook wall of memories and inspiration. This image is also from our friends at PB and I find it quite charming; especially for a family room or home office. Follow their lead if you wish, but, please, use your own uniquely special mementos, not the store-bought kind.

Creative Art Idea from the Show House

In this post, the last one about the Pasadena Showcase House (I promise!), I attempt to illustrate a creative DIY art idea I saw on my recent tour...

STEP ONE: Get your hands on a great big oil painting. Three feet wide, at least. This may require a visit to your local flea or antique market. This project works best with a landscape or cityscape, something with a lot going on and multiple small subjects rather than one central subject. Lots of lumpy bumpy paint texture is good too.

STEP TWO: Gather a bunch of random-sized picture frames. 8x10's to 16x20's and anything in between. A variety of sizes and frame styles is most ideal. If you're crafty enough, feel free to cut them up and reassemble your own custom sizes. Carved frames make the biggest impact but toss in a few plain ones to mix it up.

STEP 3: Take that big painting out of its frame. Your plan is to cut it up into several smaller pieces. Your objective is to create something like this popular treatment...

...where a large map is cut into sections, each section framed separately and hung in a tight grid...

...or, like the treatment below which requires a large poster or photo enlargement and those square album cover frames. The only difference is that our disassembled and reassembled oil painting is more random.

STEP 4: After you've cut your painting into pieces based on your frame sizes—or cut and resized your frames to match your painting sections, you decide which approach works best for you—paint all those frames the same color. A single frame color is important. It unifies the many pieces of your installation so that they read as one work of art. In the treatment I saw, the frames were painted a dark grey, a color pulled from the painting's moody streetscape. This is key to the look—that the frame color blends, does not contrast, with the colors in the painting.

STEP 5: Now, get your cut-up painting pieces into those frames. I don't care how you do it—staples, tape, glue, whatever works best for the situation you have. Nobody's going to see the backs anyway so just make it work. Remember, this is a DIY project so I expect you to be a little bit handy before you even attempt it.

Note: If I'd been more stealthy, or less hurried by the surge of lookiloos coming up behind me, I would have thought to snap a forbidden cell phone pic. But I didn't. Instead, I've created this "virtual" version of the finished product...

STEP 6: Hang your new art! As you see in my virtual example above, the designer chose to overlap some of the frames onto the others. He actually used nine separately framed sections for his treatment so I'm sure it took some trial and error to get the layout just right. Please use you imagination to see the frames as all slightly different types and widths. At the show house, the wall behind the art was painted almost the same shade as the frames making the look all about texture and color and mood. The overall size of the arrangement was about 40"x30". If you don't like the overlapped look, try a tightly arranged collage or salon style like this...

This is a pretty ambitious project, but really not so difficult, and I'd never seen anything quite like it before so I thought it worth sharing. If you're looking for a unique way to fill a large space, I think it's a great idea to file away for when the right situation and materials present themselves.

What do you think? Would you try it?

One Show House, Two Kitchens : Part 2

Here's where my last post left us... inside the renovated kitchen of The Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts. I found two new photos to show you. Above is the view looking over the island toward the sink area as if the photographer's back is to the refrigerator. Here you also get a closer look at the copper-colored Metalcrete countertop on the island and the original cabinets, against the walls, some refinished in a dark brown stain, others painted white.


This view, above, takes in the sink area too, as if the photographer has pivoted to the left, and shows the opposite end of the kitchen. See the light coming in from between the cabinets on the right wall? Let's go out that door...


...cross the terrace and turn around. There's the door we just came through. The window to the left of the door and the first one around the corner to the right are the kitchen's only two windows. Don't they look tiny against that imposing brick facade? Now, let's walk forward and to the right a bit, turn around and look back again.

You can see the iron cage of the house's main entry portico in the upper left corner of the photo above. Directly behind us is the area now occupied by the new outdoor kitchen. Before receiving its show house makeover, it looked like this...

...and it appears as if there wasn't really any way to get to it because of the retaining wall and short iron fencing you see in the photo above. That fencing was removed or modified to allow for a set of steps and a handrail leading down onto a new deck. You can just see the handrail at the bottom of the photo below. You also get your first glimpse of the estate's second kitchen.

The outdoor kitchen is tucked into a corner of the house. The brick makes a great backdrop and undoubtedly played a key role in the designer's decision-making process. The cedar-look deck, made of recycled plastic and wood products, has been cut out to accommodate the existing liquidambar tree. In one view here, you'll see the soil area was eventually covered in tumbled aqua glass. The tree provides excellent shade for this area—when the 3-story house itself isn't doing that job.


Some photos show a wrought iron table and chairs set near the kitchen area, another shows a high-top bar type table. Both were present at the time of my visit, pushed into opposite corners to allow for lookiloo traffic.

Inside the kitchen work area, a Wolf grill is positioned beneath a stainless range hood. Guests who wish to interact with the cook can relax at the bar topped with architectural glass made using renewable resources. The designer chose all materials for this kitchen just as carefully claiming everything she used is either recycled, sustainable or recyclable. The cabinetry and countertops are, of course, built to withstand the elements all year round.

In the photo above, you'll notice that the pergola is fitted with canvas shades that extend and retract manually as the cook needs them to further shade the prep area. A good idea that also adds softness and an opportunity for additional color.

I've included the photo above to show you how much space and storage there is between the bar cabinet and grill area. Plenty of room for a cook and a bartender so the steaks won't burn when the grillmaster stops to refresh a guest's drink! The last photo, below, gives an idea of the overall size of the area. It is spacious enough for two or three tables yet feels intimate because of the walls of the house and the enclosing perimeter wall .

Along the wall to the right, you see a small vegetable garden. Behind that is a water feature made using a tall panel of textured glass. It adds visual interest as well as the soothing sound of trickling water. Beyond the fountain, which is set into a circular garden bed of its own, is another small garden that was packed full of edibles such as mint and rosemary and the gorgeous blooms of tall foxgloves in full flower. Behind that garden is a staircase that is considered the home's side entrance and is said to give additional access to the interior kitchen.

Unlike my mixed emotions over the indoor kitchen, I really loved this one. It was so pretty to look at with all that warm red brick and freshly-painted white wood. And I'm sure it would be as comfortable to work in as it would be to hang out in on a weekend afternoon. The size and ideas were not so grand that they couldn't be incorporated into almost any home, my own included. Excuse me while I go have a conversation with my husband...

For more information about the designer and builder of this and other outdoor kitchens, click here.