Category Archives: UpWORD (Beauty)

April 14, 2010 · 3:00 AM

Designing Woman: Part Deux

I finally know what the man on the lookout of the Santa Maria meant when he spotted the coast after crossing the Atlantic and shouted:  “Land ho!”

Modern translation:  THANK GOD THERE’S AN END IN SIGHT.  I CAME THIS CLOSE TO KILLING MY CREW.

Therefore, as I made progress on putting the den together, it felt appropriate to yell, “Land ho!” because I could finally see my ship coming in.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am trying to decorate our home so that it appears that actual humans live there.  My every instinct tells me to decorate as classily as possible, to fill the home with tasteful furnishings of modesty and restraint.  My human self, the one with a personality and a sense of humor, tells me to get a sense of style for crying out loud.

So I am pushing myself.  I’m pushing to be a little edgier, a little bit surprising.  When I get nervous or start to question myself, I say nine words aloud,  “You are 26.  You are not 66.  Decorate accordingly.”

With that in mind for the dining room, we decided to add two end chairs that are a departure from the rest of the chairs.  We wanted something to add punch and formality to the space, so we went with two white, full-covered high-backed chairs.  They grab at the white in the baseboards and chandelier and keep the room from being too dark.

Mike has always said that our home is dead if it doesn’t have anything living inside it.  I have repeatedly told him that both he and I are fully operational, living beings, but he still insisted on getting a houseplant.  So while at Ikea, we grabbed a leafy palm that serves as the third living thing in our home.  I told him I am creeped out by the thought of plants bringing bugs as their moving buddies.  I’m convinced that having one houseplant means all the bugs in the world will try to make their home in ours.  I turned out to be right; the plant is now on our patio.

A word about Ikea.  While Mike and I shudder sometimes thinking about the place (I think Fight Club did that for all of us, did it not?), we also can’t deny that it is unmatched in its ability to provide fantastic style at jaw-dropping prices.  Do we decorate entirely in Ikea?  Of course not.  Take our dining room — the table is from Dania, which is much more high-end and better quality than Ikea.  However, we decided to go with Ikea for the chairs since they matched Dania’s exactly but were half the price.  We realize that anything bought from Ikea has a shelf-life of about 3 years max, but we’re OK with that for now.

Only in Ikea do you have your furniture and a houseplant on a hand cart with a picture of Swedish meatballs in the background for $1.99.  But I digress.

Brace yourself…the den.  Before I reveal this, allow me to repeat my favorite nine words, “You are 26.  You are not 66. Decorate accordingly.”  We went Bold with a capital B on this design, and I am absolutely thrilled with the look.

We chose a shocking wallpaper from Daly’s to cover one wall, to give the room pizazz.  We put extra money toward the wallpaper because we wanted a high-quality, pre-glued paper with a dynamo black-and-white design.  It was totally worth the expense to get something better than Home Depot.  It was also totally worth the expense because we got a built-in stress-test for our marriage.

“Dip it in the water — don’t drench it!”

“Stop pulling on the bottom, it’s going to tear!”

“Is your side aligned?  Mine’s aligned.  Is YOURS aligned?”

Please refer to the first paragraph about the killing of the crew.

Since the wallpaper has a traditional print (very 19th century), I found a beautiful lamp to add softer lighting and texture.  We still need to buy a new desk and other shelving/filing unit.   But it’s taking shape.

In the living room, as I’ve said before, it was like the walls were begging for fig leaves just to cover their extreme nakedness.  I finally found something both warm and eclectic, and I’m really happy with how it looks against the chocolate-colored fireplace.  Instead of hanging it as instructed (either vertically or horizontally), we hung it at an angle to create interest.

I spiced up the couch with a punch of red and a touch of pattern.  It might just be me, but it looks like a completely new couch:

I think I am done until summer time, at least, because Mike’s aorta might burst if I ask for one more extension on the decorating budget.

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February 3, 2010 · 3:00 AM

Designing Woman

I’ve always assumed that I have great taste, that picking out paint and a decent piece of furniture would be as natural to me as choosing something appetizing to eat.

It turns out that I can make a previously established space better, but when handed a blank slate I can only think of one statement and one question:  I want to cry.  Would the fetal position be too dramatic?

Perhaps it is this exact reaction that caused the previous owner of our home to do absolutely nothing with the place.  When we took over there was not one speck of paint, not one modification or change from the way the home was built.  It was just endless walls of cream.  In fact, in the three years she owned it, she only lived it in for one and a half years and then it sat empty.  Perhaps she just couldn’t face her own design failure.

It looked like this:

So much white.  I can’t explain the gold star, either.  Perhaps it was a realtor’s attempt to distract from the white-ness of it all.

Endless white.  It’s like one continual yawn.

A year and a half she went to sleep looking at these blank walls.

Before we even moved one piece of furniture in, we painted.  We couldn’t stand the thought of setting up residence with Mr. White-Bread Walls and his wife Mrs. Milk Carton Carpet.

So we painted the fireplace: instant warmth.

We splashed a rusty, reddish brown onto one wall in the entry way to help people make the right choice when they are deciding, “DO I want to come in?”

Finally, after literally nine swatches were painted on the wall for comparison, we painted the dining room.  This is where my commitment-phobia caused Mike to want to have me committed.  Nine swatches?  Of course.  It has to be the right green, after all.

Bye-bye, swatches!

Hello, gorgeous green.  Thank you for giving my guests back their appetite.

After those victories, everything came to a screeching halt.  Christmas, New Years, this excuse, that excuse…and now we’re facing The Den.  The den of wolves.  The den that threatens to be my undoing.

I am the type of person who only wants two choices.  I can (nearly) always make a two-choice decision; anything more than that and I’m immobilized.  For instance, when I’m at the grocery store and I see seventeen brands of toilet paper, the person on the intercom has to call out, “Clean up on aisle four.  We’ve got a commitment-phobe down.  I repeat, commitment-phobe down.”   They always come running with defibrillators.

So here is The Den now:

It’s acting as storage until we make it into a workable space.  And the white, orb-like cone plugged into the wall?  That’s a vacuum cleaner my sweet mother-in-law gave us that I use far more than I ever thought I would.

The idea is for this to be my writing room; the place where my creativity flows and words spill out of my fingertips.

It’s also where I’ll pay the bills.  But that’s not as glamorous as creativity.

I’m dreaming of taking everything out, wallpapering one wall, hanging a cool chandelier, adding an extra chair and an attractive houseplant to liven the place.

But that’s where you come in.  Send me your ideas.  Give me your insight.  Tell me your genius design plan.  I promise to put it all to work and show you the results in a future post.

We’ll see what works, what doesn’t, and what causes me an anxiety attack.  Mostly, we’ll just see if the medics can restart my heart in time for me to make a decision.

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January 6, 2010 · 3:00 AM

Downward-Facing Dog?

I’m staring face-down at a yoga mat, willing my hamstrings to stretch to new lengths.  The hypnotizing chants of Eastern music have done nothing to ease my strain.  I’m trying.  I’m trying very hard.

And that is exactly the problem.  “Abby,” the instructor says in the middle of my pose. “Relax your neck.”

Against my instincts, I drop my head down to within an inch of the mat.  Suddenly my back is stretching instead of my head, and I’m feeling better.

I hate when yoga instructors are right.

In fact, I thought I hated yoga instructors and the yoga they teach.  I have only done yoga one other time, and it was because I wanted to see what all the women from work were getting so excited about as the clock neared 5PM every day.  Unfortunately, it was hot yoga.  So what?  I thought.   I’ll sweat a little.

Not only did I sweat more than Niagara Falls in springtime, I also received the yoga blessing of watching others’ sweat fling over onto my mat.  I smelled acidic perspiration that no human should ever have to inhale.  And when I committed the yoga-sin of reaching for my water bottle after enduring a horrific pose, the instructor actually yelled at me.  A scary, tiny, female, Asian instructor with the fiercest six-pack I have ever seen in my life yelled at me in the middle of class.  I found it ironic that I was paying money to relax while being harassed.

I vowed never to return.

And yet, here I am in the middle of a non-hot yoga class, feeling the stretch.  How did I get here?

In case you haven’t noticed (like here, here, and here), I am an intense individual.  I am a control-freak, and I tend to carry all of my problems between my shoulder blades — right at the base of my neck.  I take nearly everything seriously, usually to my own detriment.

For example, during one of our pre-marriage counseling sessions in 2007, we took a personality test and I rated off the charts in self-discipline.  Guess what I felt when the therapist told me this?  Blushing pride.  I felt like the valedictorian of pre-marriage counseling.  You can imagine my surprise when she looked at Mike with total sincerity and said, “This is going to cause many problems for you.”

What?  Don’t you mean, This is going to solve many problems for him as I take over his life?…oh.  I get it.

It’s been two years since that counseling session and I haven’t made much progress in the way of stress.  And since I never want to be the lady who can only relax after two martinis, I decided to take control.  Wait, there it is again.  Do you see my language?  Amendment:  I decided to release control.

“Abby,” the instructor said quietly again. “Let your head hang.”

Shoot — I’m in a completely different position and yet I’m tense again.  I start to laugh this time, because it is exactly my personality that I would be focusing so hard on doing the yoga correctly that I tense up from the effort and miss the point entirely.

I’m here with my sister-in-law, Rachel, who agreed to give this new excerise a try with me.  We are both long-distance runners, and neither of us has the ability to calm ourselves and sit in peace for five minutes.  So, as skeptical as we were that this had anything to offer athletes like us, we went.

I tend to be of the opinion that yoga is pseudo-excercise, that it’s for people who refuse to admit that they’re not really working out.  All of the breathing and moving of the arms can’t possibly be doing anything except tricking people into believing that they’re burning calories and achieving inner peace.  Plus, as someone who loves the Lord, I’m not into the “emptying of the mind” that so often accompanies this practice.  I’ve learned to fill up with the Spirit, not empty everything out.

It’s about an hour into the class when I realize some of the motions are making my muscles burn like warm embers, the kind of burn where I know I’m building strength.  Then we move into a stretch that I don’t have to think very hard about, and I realize I can make this my own and just pray.  Who needs to empty their mind when there is so much of God to fill it?

Thirty minutes later the instructor tells us to lay on our mats for “everyone’s favorite position.”  She walks around to all five of us and places a bolster under our knees for back support.  As soon as my back hits the mat, I feel the most intense vibrations moving through my body.  It’s the most drug-like state I can imagine, and I cannot explain why I’m feeling this way.

In my mind I am suddenly transferred back to being four years old, and it’s nap time at my preschool.  The only reason any of us kids looked forward to nap time was because all of the nannies would come around and lightly rub our backs to help us fall asleep.  That was the exact feeling I felt as I lay on the mat in yoga, like someone was sitting with me, giving me a tiny massage or playing with my hair.  If you’ve ever let someone play with your hair, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  It’s sublime.

In that moment I had to face the humiliating truth, the admission I never thought I’d make as long as I live: I’m doing yoga — and I like it.

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