florida room details

So, this is the new Florida room:

Here's the entrance from the carport. It's meant to be a mudroom of sorts:

The shelves were built ins. They hold a bowl for keys and generally are full of things we need to take with us when we leave the house. Under the shelves, tw added hooks for bags, jackets, and hats. The bench used to be the coffee table -- I just created a cushion for it. The shoes fit perfectly underneath. We're still looking for the perfect rug.

Heading to the right is the new hanging TV. Our friends Jess & JD bought the wall mount for tw's birthday last year and we finally got it up (I say we, I mean Robb!) 

For now, tw's grandmother's table (usually in the kitchen) is holding all electronic equipment. Eventually, there will be a 60s-ish credenza there for everything to hide in and the wires will be corralled neatly out of sight.

Next is the couch with all new pillows. tw had all the fabric, all I had to do was sew! 

The coffee table was an auction find at least 12 years ago. Both that and the two-tiered "puzzle" table on the side of the couch were found at the same auction house in Ocala - the first auction we ever went to, if I remember correctly.

The chair is a Heywood Wakefield piece we found in Orlando. That door leads to the screened porch. The rug was a phenomenal find from Joss & Main, an online decorator store.

We've added a few things since this was taken, namely the stadium seats tw bought from Shea Stadium before it was torn down. There is LA Dodger art on the wall as well (he's a staunch National League fan, if you can't tell).

Finally, the view from the Florida room into the kitchen. 

We're using my grandmother's garden table for a kitchen table at the moment. And have paint swatches on the wall searching for a tamer green... I'll keep you updated on how that goes. In the end, we really created a great place to relax and are thrilled with the way it turned out!

the florida room transformation

So, I've been a little late with this reveal. So much going on I haven't had time to put a post together. It's not surprising tw wanted to make this room more comfortable since most of our time is spent here. I can't find another picture of the Florida room before its major transformation, mainly because it was not photo-worthy.

Not so good, huh? I promise there were no real furniture pieces you missed. I think the only thing that stayed in the room was the couch. Anyway, here's what eight weeks of work can do for a room:

We started with paint:

Notice the paneling & brick (there's drywall on the back wall too. Fun! Can you tell this was an addition?) Then, tw decided he hated the floor. I really love terrazzo (especially with the Florida heat), but this white-ish terrazzo was stained and we knew from previous experience that no amount of buffing would make the floors look less than dingy white. So we looked at oodles of samples. Tile, wood, carpet. We even considered painting.

Before putting in a floor, I convinced tw to at least ask our carpenter neighbor Robb (contact info upon request. He really was *amazing* to work with) how hard it would be to take out the fake fireplace (yes, it's fake. Notice the non-chimney). Robb came over and estimated it would take three hours. It was out in one and a half, with no real dust to speak of (told you he's amazing).

tw is recycling the fireplace bricks as edging for the new patio he's now working on outside the kitchen. Yay, but now there's a hole in the wall. Just grab more wood, right? Um, not so easy. Since the paneling was original to the 1950s room, it's no longer just milled anywhere. tw searched high and low for this particular pattern (who knew wood had patterns?) until he finally found a mill willing to do enough to replace the wall for a reasonable amount of money. While he researched, found, and waited for it to be shipped from North Carolina, we put in the new floor. Click and lock bamboo. Gorgeous!

We worked for an entire day with Robb to put this in, and he spent the next day cutting the doorframe pieces and placing the trim moulding. Then we prepped for the new wall by ripping out the old one and adding insulation (there was NONE in this room before).

Finally, it came in and he installed it in hours. tw spent the next day painting while I feverishly finished sewing.

We stayed up until 2am putting everything back into the room.

It was a great experience to transform a whole room so completely. Tim & I are looking at houses in St. Pete in need of serious need of renovation, and this project gives me the confidence that I can do this to any house. I'll do a separate post that shows the entire room section by section, since this is already so photo heavy.

organic garden of my dreams

I stayed at the Azalea Inn while in Savannah a few weekends ago, and they had the most amazing organic garden I've ever seen. It was raining most of my time there and the mosquitoes were hungry, but I really could have stayed in that garden all weekend!

My next house will have an amazing garden like this one. Definitely.

kitchen: painted

While it took way longer between coats than we would have liked and there is still some trim work to be done, the kitchen is finally painted. And it is bright.








Results have been mixed amongst friends and family. We weren't so sure ourselves, but it's grown on us tremendously. The color is most beautiful in morning with sunshine streaming in from the kitchen window.

On to the Florida room. Yay!

the accidental jeweler

I visited a great store in Jacksonville's Riverside neighborhood this week. Southern Crossing Antique Mall is one of those rare finds these days, a place whose prices are affordable and appropriate. I was in a bit of a rush so I didn't get to explore the way I wanted to, but I did score a gorgeous mother-of-pearl disk necklace for $5!

I was so excited by my find that I pulled it out of the bag immediately when I got home to put it on -- and the cord promptly snapped, sending disks flying all over the bathroom (note to self: vacuum soon.)

Luckily I had also spent some time in 5 Points' Bead Here Now on my Jax trip, so I already had jewelry making/fixing on my mind. Instead of just stringing the disks back on new thread, I decided to double-knot between each to provide a small space between the disks. This provided the little something extra the necklace had been missing before. Patience was paramount to this process -- I forgot how hard knotting thin thread can be!

The subtle change completely altered the feel of the necklace, making it a bit fancier than I'd normally like. But it also made it just a bit longer so it's now the perfect length for the V-neck shirts I tend to favor.

I was so happy with the result that I spent the rest of the afternoon making and altering other pieces in my collection. More pics to come soon!

fun with beads, part two

My entire point for stopping into Bead Here Now in Jax's 5 Points was to try to find some beads to match this carnelian bracelet I adore.

I've been wanting a necklace to wear with it forever, and finally found the right-shaped beads to make it work. It strung up quickly and is now the perfect match!

The only thing I didn't like about the necklace is its shape -- the wire cord the shopkeeper recommended made the necklace too stiff when I put it on (even leaving room for movement didn't help). I'm going to try to live with it for a little while. If I don't like it, I'll restring it on actual string.

The clear block necklace was a 30th birthday gift from my mom. I love it, but find it's a little short to wear with those V-neck shirts I favor. When contemplating how to lengthen it just a little, I noticed the silver beads between the blocks were chipping so I bought enough sterling silver beads at Bead Here Now to replace them. After the stiffness issue with the carnelian necklace, I opted to restring it with actual string. Since the silver beads are a bit larger than the ones they replaced, I also got about the added length I wanted.

The last fix was the easiest, but the one I worried about the most. The wooden bead earrings match a necklace I bought in Peru that I wear often. I could never wear the earrings because my ears are uber-sensitive and require me to only use hypoallergenic posts. I thought it would be difficult to replace the wire, but it popped off and on rather quickly. I like them so much better now and can't wait to wear them.

Now that I've finished these pieces, I find myself eyeing a few more pieces of jewelry I could change. But since I'm in project mode and there are so many things I'd love to accomplish, I think I'll head for the sewing pile instead.

i am way too proud of this

That is my fantasy baseball draft list of best possible players (bats on the left, arms on the right). Of the 312 total players drafted Sunday night (there were 26 positions to fill for each of 12 teams), I managed to draft all but *one* from my 180 best players list, which was based on league specifications, last year's stats, and plenty of Baseball Prospectus input. Yay, stats!

i built a garden this saturday past

The veggie garden is finished. It currently has yellow peppers and two types of tomatoes, but that will change soon.

While I wanted to build it in the backyard near the kitchen, there just wasn't enough sun. So I took a cue from many of our neighbors and built it in the front yard next to the driveway. tw wasn't too thrilled with this, but you can't argue with a neighborhood full of old-growth trees. It's also gotten us into new conversations with other front-yard gardeners on the street. There have been numerous discussions about planting techniques and plans to swap some plants soon to increase everyone's variety. I love gardeners -- such a friendly bunch. I built this bed closer to the house than the street so if the time comes to expand, there'll be room (foreshadowing, anyone?) I can probably fit another one and a half beds in, if I *had* to.

But that's not all that's going on in the yard. Spring is showing itself everywhere.

The mini roses are blooming and my grandmother's night-blooming orchid has tons of new growth. I added a trellis and pink mandevilla in the planter bed attached to the house. And the real sign that summer is coming soon: the banana plants have shown signs of life! We have grand plans to move these to the fence line this summer and build a deck by the kitchen.

Hopefully, our next front-yard task will involve ripping out the overgrown azalea bushes and planting something smaller and more manageable -- tea olive bushes, maybe? That, and trying to control the dollarweed that's taken over the front lawn. A true gardener's work is never really finished, is it?

organizing writers

Even though the African grant I was working on was submitted early last week, I've still been MIA. I apologize. I've moved from relief efforts to disaster planning.

I've been expanding my company lately, no longer just editing writers' works but now formatting them too. I have to say I am *loving* what is essentially the organization of the written word. There is something about the beauty of style and design, even in the most mundane of things.

My latest client is working on a comprehensive disaster plan for a regional government agency. All the plans were written by different people, so I was tasked with bringing a unity to the overall design. And since many people are not adept at using Word (although it's practically universal, it sure is a quirky program), it's taken a ton of time. Thankfully, unifying is satisfying work.

When in the formatting zone, I barely read what the words on the screen say. But every now and again, things pop up that make you go "oh!' One of the tables I was working on detailed the number of corpses able to be housed by different agencies in case of a disaster, which included surprisingly lower numbers than one would expect. A bizarre statistic I'll never forget.

Have I told you all lately how much I love my job?

business is beautiful

Look what I got in the mail today -- business cards!

I can't believe I waited so long just to get *something* made. I agonized over what my branding would be until I realized I just need something out there. So here they are. I am currently working on my branding label for business cards, letterhead, website, etc., but for now I am totally thrilled. I can finally hand people a card when they ask! :)

the chair that was a couch

This is the latest acquisition for the house. I have to say it's adorable (but unbelievably heavy!) I didn't really love it when it was first introduced, but it's growing on me. I love the avocado green color with gold glitter flecks and especially the lines, but am not so fond of the plastic nature of the chair (this is not one of the cozy, curl-up chairs I favor for working from home.)

For the last few months we have been endlessly discussing how to set up the Florida room, mainly focusing on a new couch since all of the seating in the room is either a) broken, b) uncomfortable, or c) disfunctional. There is no cohesiveness to the space. We entertain there constantly, so it's an area we really needed to focus on. The room is oddly configured with three doors on three separate walls and a non-working fireplace on the fourth wall. It's a design issue I mentioned when tw showed me the house before he bought it. Back then it was just an observation, now that I live here it's become a dilemma.

I'm discovering there is really no stronger dilemma than how to design for a house that you live in but that ultimately isn't yours. I constantly go back and forth on this. I have known tw for 15 years, and our design style is very similar. So far, he's let me rearrange any pieces I want to create a tableau that appeals to both of us. The breakfast nook is a great example of this:

When I moved in, there was a broken table with no chairs we bought 10 years ago sitting in the space. We carted that to the curb on trash day and I rummaged through the house for something usable to take its place. The table belonged to his grandmother and was just refinished by his uncle. I found it under a blanket in the office. The chairs were headed for Goodwill before I snatched them up, the tablecloths are relics from my grandmother's bridge-playing days, and the art is all Florida-focused (posters found at thrift/antique stores, photos taken by tw) which I found in a pile on the office floor. I framed them in frames also found in the office. This was easy since he already owned most of these things and so I knew he liked them.

The Florida room has been a bigger problem because I know exactly what I want to do in there, but I'm just waiting around for tw to jump on board. We were stuck in the "what next" phase for several months while he contemplated a couch. Then the chair showed up one day out of the blue. True, it's no couch, but it's a sign tw's ready to forge ahead with the rest of the space. We have an Ikea date planned and furniture in mind. Hopefully we'll leave there with a clearer picture -- or maybe even furniture!

This isn't my house, so designing for the long-term is hard. But it is my home & workspace for my growing company. And as one of my best friends said to me when I was feeling blue about packing my life into an attic, "It doesn't matter where you live, your home will always be very you." When helping design the spaces in this house, I am often reminded of those words. I have to say that most days I am blessed that it is just that, not mine but very me.

say it ain't sew

For the first time in a long time, I didn't watch the Gator game. I couldn't bear to sit there and feel frustrated for a fourth week in a row. So I took to my sewing machine to work on a few projects Saturday afternoon instead. This is what I created:


It's my newest bag in a long time. And I LOVE it! I usually make my own patterns based on old bags and the things I want a bag to hold. But this time I followed a pattern called buttercup by Made By Rae. It was very easy to make, thanks especially to the pictures provided in the pattern. I am obsessed with this fabric by the talented Amy Butler. My favorite detail is the oh-so-adorable pleats:


Of course I had to personalize it somehow. I added more pockets to the inside to hold my must-get-to items. I'm not really sure I love the interior fabric, but it's hard when the outside fabric is so BOLD:


Note the magnetic closures on the sides above. I'd never used those before and can't believe how easy it was! Another thing I'd never tried was sewing the bag handle on after completing the bag. I usually hide it within the lining when I sew the inner and outer linings together. But I really love the look of this square:

Unfortunately, the bag is a tad small. The pocket I made for my phone was certainly big enough, but when I added my phone and snapped the bag shut it fell out. :( And my wallet * just* squeezes in. I'll have to make another one after I tweak the pattern a bit to make it larger.

Of course I didn't actually give up on the Gators. I listened to Mick Huber on the radio and tuned in and out as the game got exciting. It was much better for my blood pressure to just listen. I did run into the Florida room to watch the game winning kick by punter-turned-placekicker Chas Henry. How exciting!

Happily, my new bag wasn't the only thing I finished yesterday. I also hemmed a few dress which I'll try to get up in the next day or two.

pillowcase transformed

It's been raining for days, and I was starting to go stir crazy. So I dug through my sewing stash and got an idea. It started like this:

And ended up like this:

Yup, a pillowcase dress. I thought it would be pretty simple to do, but it turns out a pillowcase is pretty sack-like unless you add some curves. So I pinned and I sewed, pinned again and sewed again. It took four pins and sews to get it just right -- way longer than I thought. I searched the internets but only found tutorials for how to make pillowcase dresses for little girls, so it was trial and error all the way.

I could have been more ruthless in my pinning/sewing, but my only rule was it had to fit without a zipper (because I was sewing after midnight and there was no way I was running out for a zipper at that hour). It ended up looking pretty good. It's not the best dress in the world, but it fits and works quite nicely as a light summer shift:

I probably ought to go back and line it, but I'm 95% certain that will never happen. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the first dress I've ever sewn. It's still raining, so I may go back into the stash and try something else this afternoon.

how do your test scores grow?

Wow. The Sunday LA Times article on teacher effectiveness using a value-added analysis (consisting of LAUSD 3rd-5th grade teachers' math and language arts standardized test scores over the last seven years) has caused a gigantic ruckus among education policy folks. My ed policy twitter feed has been in flames over this since Sunday morning. Anything about teacher evaluation is guaranteed to provoke these reactions.

But the most interesting part of the article had nothing to do with test scores, it had to do with the reporters' following observations: Teachers who hold their students' attention and push their students to think critically claim higher results than those who don't.

According to the article, teacher Karen Caruso is loved by her principal, students, and parents. They consider her an outstanding teacher who goes above and beyond. However:

During recent classes observed by a reporter, Caruso set clear expectations for her students but seemed reluctant to challenge them. In reviewing new vocabulary, for instance, Caruso asked her third-graders to find the sentence where the word "route" appeared in a story.

"Copy it just like it's written," she instructed the class, most of whom started the year advanced for their grade.

"Some teachers have kids use new words in their own sentences," Caruso explained. "I think that's too difficult."

She dismissed the weekly vocabulary quizzes that other teachers give as "old school."

Of course everyone loved her: She's an easy teacher!! Not surprisingly, her value-added scores were quite low (she ranked in the bottom 10% in boosting student scores). I cannot imagine a more fruitless exercise than copying a sentence out of a text just because it includes a new vocabulary word. When teaching, I had only four hours of instruction time per day. Certainly not enough time to waste on copying. And of course third graders can use a new word in a sentence. If you really think it's too difficult, you follow the basic pattern of teaching: I do, we do, you do. Scaffolding really does work. As do bonus points on essays for using new vocabulary words when writing, team points for noticing said words in other texts and pointing them out to the teacher, or behavior tickets for getting caught using them in everyday conversation. None of those examples are "old school" methods, yet each one tests understanding without using a quiz.

So why don't we start the teacher evaluation conversation with two simple questions: Can you hold students' attention? Can you push them to think critically? As a classroom teacher, those are fair questions to ask. But I can tell you neither of them was on my yearly evaluation (however being on-time and working well with colleagues was!)

love, love, love

When I was working on my undergraduate degree oh so long ago (the mid-'90s seem like yesterday, don't they?), my parents encouraged me to travel for a semester. They were thinking overseas. But since I'd never really left my hometown (at that point I'd barely left the neighborhood -- my first apartment was in the Student Ghetto a mere four blocks from my parents' house), I really wanted to go to New York. They protested, but I insisted. So I applied and was accepted to NYU for the summer of 1997.

It was one of the best summers of my life. I lived in a dorm one block from Washington Square Park. Ate amazing meals. Saw phenomenal bands. Bought tons of records. Met interesting people. Most importantly, I walked almost everywhere I went.

I wanted to SEE the city, so I rarely used the subway if it was somewhere I was going for the first time. Copying most New Yorkers, I began to listen to my Walkman (tape version) everywhere I went. One day I got a package from tw with a mix tape inside titled "Pop Side of the Moon." Its cover was a black & white picture of Rockefeller Center (my obsession with the RC Christmas Tree was already in full bloom), and the bands included such indie greats as Small Factory ("So What About Love"), Incredible Force of Junior ("Blue Cheer"), Air Miami ("Airplane Rider"), and Low ("Over the Ocean"). I listened to it so much that the songs on this mix tape are still, to this day, some of my favorite songs.

However, there was one song that I absolutely hated. It was stupid, atonal, and the lyrics made no sense. But since this was a mix tape and not a mix CD, it was a pain in the ass to fast forward through without missing the song after it, which is one of my undeniably favorite songs of all time, Courtney Love's "Uncrushworthy" (Courtney Love being the early 90s band fronted by Lois Maffeo, not the obnoxious Hole singer). So I suffered through it time after time.

But the hated song would just not go away. Unconsciously, it started to grow on me. I began singing it in my head. It popped up in the shower or when I was trying to fall asleep. Then, I found myself fast forwarding to GET to this song. Finally, I began searching for other songs by this artist, amassing a small collection of dubbed tapes and 7 inches. New York City became the place where I began my love affair with what would become my favorite band of all time, the Mountain Goats.

The stupid, atonal song with the senseless lyrics? "The Monkey Song"

from armoire to office

As many of you know, I've condensed my personal space considerably in the past two months. Instead of a large craft/office space, I'm down to two pieces of furniture to fit everything! I inherited both sets of grandparents' bedroom furniture, and I'm using my paternal grandparents' set as a craft/office space due to its large size (my maternal grandparents' set is smaller and fussier, so I use it as my bedroom furniture).

The first piece I received from my paternal grandparents was a fabulous 40's armoire. I set out to use it for crafting immediately since it has deep, solid drawers. I stored boxes of supplies and other bulky items in the hanging side (the perfect hiding spot!) When I downsized, I decided to use the hanging space as my temporary office. But piling everything inside did not work! A change was in order. This is what I started out with:

I decided to add three simple shelves to hold all of my financial/important papers, as well as craft and work supplies. Eventually I'll stain and varnish the shelves, but I was desperate for some organized space quickly. Not only was it a simple and cheap solution (rails, boards, clips, and screws were around $20!), I actually have more space than I anticipated. Not bad for 2-hours' work!