Happy Holidays!

December 17, 2022: Hi all. I'm still here, just been very busy (who of us is not?) I'm working on updating Maison Newton bit by bit, it's been awhile since I changed things up. Happy Holidays to all, soon the Winter Solstice will arrive and then the days will start to get longer once again, hooray!

Monday, May 21, 2012

Help! Design Paralysis II!

Budget won't allow wholesale buying of all new stuff to put up on the mantle wall; and since right now I feel as if my tastes are in the process of metamorphosing once again, I don't want to make much of an investment, if any.

Feel as if I've got enough stuff somewhere in this house, too, that could be used.  Maybe in combination...

I've had these beautiful embroaidered Chinese silks for probably 35 years -- I bought them at the International Bazaar at the Wisconsin State Fair one summer -- haven't found anything like them since then.  I had them framed when I moved into this house in 1990 and at the time it cost me around $20 each, a total of $60 which I thought was outrageously expensive at the time!  I would have loved some bamboo look painted frames and double or even triple mats but, alas, didn't want to spend the $$.  The sort of orangey-red color of two of the mats don't exactly go with the more wine-colored hues in my living room, but they don't precisely clash either:


Yep, grey carpet, 21 years old this coming August.  Now I've got camel, green and wine sort of paisley-patterned Lawson style furniture in place of the sleek oriental-styled cream color sofa and slipper chair with ottoman I used to have.  Doesn't exactly go together anymore.  The part of the rug you see in this photo beneath the Chinese silks has the colors of the furniture and was selected by an interior designer at Steinhafel's where I bought the new (now not so new) sofa and love seat in 2002 (or 2003). Anyway, carpeting isn't going anywhere and new furniture and new rugs aren't in the budget.  There's that word again!  Sooooo, I had the two "orangey-red" silks hanging on the wall in the dinette and the dark greenish one hanging above the entertainment center in the family room.  Since I'm changing the colors in those areas anyway, they won't exactly "go" once I get around to painting (if I ever do), so maybe these would work above the mantle.

Other oldies but goodies I've had since the 1980's are these Bradford Exchange plates:



They used to be hanging on the wall above the desk.  There are actually four of them framed, and two more stashed away unframed.  They have been used throughout the house during the past 21 years. 

And of course there are the brass Chinese idiograms, etc. that I had hanging above the fireplace before I took it all down:

(This was taken in 2009 while I was decorating the Christmas tree).

Paralyzed. Don't know what to do. I did, however, move the clock from the left side of the big round-top window to the right side of the window on the stair landing.  It works there, although I think I may have hung it too high, and I can't get the pendulum to work!

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