Bittersweet Musings from VA

Well, it hasn't been a full month yet since I've been here at the blog.  I'm on a roll!

We've been a tad busy since we returned from our summer up north, tending to our Oyster Haven rental house and visiting with my mom and other relatives who still live in the NY town where my husband and I grew up and met in high school.  We've been to some grandkids' soccer games since we got back, helped one of our sons with his basement finishing project, done a bit of babysitting...in a nutshell, we are right back in the swing things.  Such is our life here in VA, and it is a good one.

We stay most of the summer in my husband's childhood home just down the road from Oyster Haven, which he and his seven siblings put into an LLC in 2009 when their mom died (their dad had passed away in 2003).  They all wanted to hang onto it, because not only is it a big, lovely house, but Lake Champlain is right out in the back yard.  The location is almost too good to be true.  And it's such a great meeting place for the far-flung eight siblings.  Well, they used to be far-flung...two of my husband's sisters have houses almost next-door to where they grew up, where they live full-time now; and two other sisters have bought houses in the neighborhood as well, which are mostly vacation homes at present.  But I digress.

Anyway, the idea of keeping a beloved home in the family touches me deeply.  Not one of my husband's siblings can fathom a world wherein someone else owns that house.  (I'm a bit attached to it, too, as I can still remember all the time I spent there as a kid, throughout high school, when I was dating my husband.) It was so worth it to them to keep it in the family that they bought an investment property out in South Bend some years back, to rent out for Notre Dame football weekends, in order to have the extra income needed for the upkeep and taxes at the family homestead in NY. (They recently sold that South Bend property and put all the proceeds into the LLC, and just let me put it this way: that house, which was within walking distance to the football field, was an exceptionally wise investment!)

It's easy to fall in love with a house when it contains so many happy memories and reminds us of the ones we love most every time we walk in the door.  We had such a house in NH, a Colonial beauty where we lived for 26 years and raised our five sons.  Our oldest was only half-way through first grade when we bought it, and our youngest had yet to be born.  It was a "forever home" type of house--not on a lake, but on a quiet cul-de-sac street in a sweet New England town, with deer-filled woods behind it and vast green yards in both front and back.  I loved that house.  We all loved that house.

Okay, looking for the above photo of our NH house (I got out my flash drives to hunt it down!) led me to this oldie-but-goodie, one of the pre-digital age grainy snapshots with which most of my photo albums are filled.  These faces!!  [sob]  If only you could more clearly see how ridiculously cute these boys are.

That picture was taken in the family room just a few years after we moved into that house, on the occasion of son #2's First Holy Communion.  Excuse me...now I need a tissue.  Be right back.

Okay, moving on!

Once our boys all graduated from college and went off into their grown-up lives, we still thought we might hang onto the NH house, that it would be our home base when we weren't traveling to see kids living in different states.  After he got his masters, our second-oldest was living about an hour away, working as a high school math teacher, and he had no plans to relocate; we figured as long as we had even one son close by, we would stay put.  But then he met his future wife at his brother's wedding in 2013 (he was a groomsman; she was a former college classmate and bridesmaid), and before long, he was moving to VA, where his wife grew up.  And where he had two brothers who had also settled in VA, about an hour-and-a-half away from his new home.

So--by 2014, we had three out of five sons living near each other in VA, our oldest married and living out in the Midwest, and our youngest still in college (but planning to go Army active duty and be stationed who-knows-where after graduation), and we had no one (not even any extended family) living in NH.  We were almost always on a plane or on a road trip to visit our boys, and we were hardly ever there.  It didn't seem like the place for us anymore.  Where would we end up?

By happenstance, we stumbled upon our Oyster Haven house when we were up visiting family in NY during the summer of 2015 and saw the "For Sale" sign as we drove by it.  We decided we would buy it and rent it out until my husband retired, and then we'd sell our NH house and that would become our new home base. 

But God had other plans for us... 

Here we are in 2017, after we'd purchased our house in VA--taking a tour of it with two of our boys and their wives, who live about 35-40 minutes away from us and only minutes from each other.  We originally thought we might have to rent this house out until we could sell our beloved NH house; but that same day, we found out that our NH house had sold--without ever having to be listed--for the price we were asking. (Everything was falling into place in the most perfect way!  There's a bit of a long story involved, and I don't want to tell it again; but if you're interested, you can read about it here.)

Anyway, I guess I'm feeling a bit nostalgic today!  The whole reason I started writing this post--before going down a rabbit hole of memories--was to talk about how fast time seems to be flying since we've become Virginians, and how in the seven-and-a-half years we've lived here, so much has changed.  We had seven grandchildren when we moved into our new house; today, we have 22 (with another on the way). I believe our daughter-in-law Braveheart (the one in the brown coat in the above pic) had just recently found out that the baby she was carrying was actually TRIPLETS.  2017 was to be a banner year: we moved, and we also welcomed five new little ones, the triplets plus two others.  It was some year indeed.  And the ones following have been very full of grandchildren and other blessings as well--such as having son #1 move to the area, shortly after we arrived, and live nearby for over four years with his growing family.  (For that stretch, we had four out of five boys here in VA, and all of our grandkids!)  It has been a ride, let me tell you.

Sometimes lately, I find myself having bittersweet feelings; I love seeing our grandchildren grow and mature, yet I want time to slow down a bit!  When we moved here, most of them were available to come to Papa and Grammy's house for frequent playdates and family get-togethers, as they were either homeschooled or too young to be in school yet.  But you know how it is once they reach a certain age: the school year starts, and suddenly there are so many activities: clubs and team sports and weekend birthday parties for classmates and so much more.  It has become challenging trying to get all three families that live nearby to our house at the same time, because they've all got so much going on in their lives.  (Which, don't get me wrong, I know is good!  Believe me, we were there once.) 

So imagine my joy this past Sunday, when all three VA families (three couples and their 14 children) were able to come over for brunch/lunch/early dinner.  I was so excited about it that I spent all day Saturday cooking and baking.

My husband started to warn me that I was going overboard and we were never going to eat it all, but then he said he stopped himself because he could see how happy the process of getting ready for our little party was making me.  (He was right on both counts!  I was happy.  And yes, we didn't eat even half of what I set out; but I filled lots of to-go containers and made everyone take almost all of the leftovers home with them.)

This has gone on too long, I suppose.  So I'll sign off here.  But not before I add a few photos from our sweet Sunday get-together. 

You cannot even imagine how happy it makes me to see these cousins hanging out together at our house!

And to see adorable little peeps like this guy eating at our table.

  

And as always, I love it when our grown-up kids can sometimes take advantage of the opportunity to snag a much-needed cat-nap on our living room couch!

Our VA living room is very small, much smaller than the one in NH.  But it's cozy.

I have a few more things to say about our old house vs. our new one.  But I'm going to save that for another day!  (You're welcome!  Ha ha!)

A “New” Chair for Oyster Haven

Greetings from upstate NY!

After a short stint back home in VA, my husband and I had to make another trip up north to check on our Oyster Haven rental property.  This spring we lost a chunk of our back yard, due to erosion from heavy rains.  We had to have work done to fill it in and shore it up, so that if it happens again we won’t lose our stairs that lead down to the beach.  (They’ve been removed temporarily but will be reinstalled when all is secure.) We waited to get this work started until our busy summer rental season was over.

My husband wanted to see with his own eyes how the construction project on the bank was going; but he had to make a trip back up anyway, because he still had to bring in all the kayaks and the canoe from the lake and get them into winter storage, as well as bring in the buoy and the dock.  Not to mention our pontoon boat, which has to get cleaned up and brought to the marina where it will be housed until next summer.  I was originally going to stay behind, because I’m an incurable homebody and I’ve missed being in my own VA house.  I’ve also missed our kids and grandkids who live nearby.  But the bottom line is that I belong with HIM.  I’m his helpmate first and foremost, and everyone else comes second.  Our boys all have wives now, so they don’t really need their mommy!😊

So another week by the lake it is!  And it’s been absolutely lovely here, weather-wise; it’s so warm and sunny—what we used to call an “Indian Summer.”  Just glorious.  As you can see.

In other Oyster Haven news…

Remember this somewhat recent post about how I re-upholstered my grandmother’s chair?  Well, I have another tale to tell about bringing an old chair back to life, with little more than a scrap of fabric (from where else but my mother-in-law’s attic, which is practically a small JoAnn’s affiliate, no kidding!).  And lots of TLC, of course.

Toward the end of the summer, I was thinking about hitting the secondhand shops or garage sales to look for a chair to put in the upstairs hall at Oyster Haven.  When we bought it in the fall of 2015 and started getting it ready to start renting on VRBO the following summer, we didn't spend a lot of money on furniture, aside from the beds.  We got bedside tables at secondhand stores and accepted a hand-me-down dining room table from my sister-in-law.  We had an awesome tile-topped trestle table that my husband had made for our NH house that didn't really fit in our downsized VA house, and he made a pair of glorious wooden benches to go with it for the kitchen of the rental house.  Some of the dining room chairs, a coffee table and a pair of end tables for the living room, along with a few other random pieces that we didn't have a place for in our VA house anyway, also found a home at Oyster Haven.

We were on a budget in 2015, so I ended up buying an inexpensive, nondescript little padded stool from Home Goods to fill this space in the upstairs hall, and it has been there ever since.

I must have been meant to get a new chair to replace that stool; because one August day my husband and I were driving back to his childhood home, where we stay during the summer, and out by the curb at the entrance to the neighborhood there were two dining room chairs near a pile of trash, obviously being thrown out.  And when we went to look at them more closely, one of them was in great shape, except for the fabric on the seat cushion.  (The other, a matching arm chair, had a hunk of wood broken off of it.)

After it was recovered, and cleaned up a bit, it looked quite lovely.

And I loved how it has transformed that upstairs hall!

(It would have been pretty, no matter the cost; but I especially love it when things are free!)

One quick addendum:I decided to recover the stool and bring it back to use in our VA living room.  It’s a small room, and we have a big family; so any extra seating that we can get—especially seating that takes up very little space—is appreciated.

Have I got enough competing floral patterns in my living room?  (Don't answer that!)

Have a great week!  And happy homemaking!

A Mother's Heart

I found this not-quite-ready post in my archives, and I decided to finish and publish it today.  Because I'm on a roll here!  I go silent for three months...and then, boom! Back-to-back posts.  You never know what you're going to get at this blog!

I have mentioned this before here at the blog, but I just love the writings of Elizabeth Foss.  She is a homeschooling mother of nine, a grandmother, a blogger, an author, and a well-known Catholic "influencer."  Just like I did, she married her high school boyfriend, so I feel a special kinship with her. She's about ten years younger than I and still has a couple of high-school aged daughters.  But otherwise, she's very much in the same phase of life that I am: her children are grown and gone (or in her case, all but the youngest two are); and therefore, like all of us women with grown children, her heart is repeatedly being torn, scarring over, and then tearing again.  Not to put too dramatic a spin on it...but it does happen. Luckily, the heart it a tough organ.  Especially when it’s a mother's heart.

Elizabeth Foss lived in VA for many years, until a relatively recent move to CT.  She still has a column in our diocesan newspaper here in VA, The Catholic Herald.  Hers is the one article that I never fail to read when we get this paper in the mail.  Foss’s piece from the June 13-16 edition was titled "Note to a grad's mom,"* and boy-oh-boy, could I relate.   It's been a while since our last Pearl family graduation (our youngest son was University of Notre Dame, Class of 2015), but the memories of those bittersweet endings are still fresh.

Yes, graduations are not just endings but also beginnings (it's an overused cliche because it's true).  And there is so much to be joyful about, watching your children spread their wings and fly.  But they fly away from you, you see.  And a mother's heart takes a beating when that happens.  It still beats, sure; but oh, it aches.  The pain can be excruciating at times.

That Catholic Herald column of Foss’s that I mentioned above was inspired by witnessing a mom crying on her husband's shoulder after their child's high school graduation ceremony and party.  Foss writes, "The words of encouragement out there for moms of graduates all focus on a job well done and they pivot to look to the opportunities to pursue their own dreams in an empty-nest future.  And of course, those should be addressed.  Raising a child is no small thing. You deserve a hearty pat on the back.  But most moms don't feel like doing a jig.  Instead, they feel like they ran out of time.  There is a nagging feeling that we have so much more we want to give to the grown child."  

Yes, yes, YES!  This is spot-on--which is par for the course when it comes to Elizabeth Foss's eloquently expressed insights on motherhood.  

She continues, "I think that mothering people in their 20s is the most challenging mothering of all...Those are the things no one says.  It's not all over.  Buckle up.  Here comes the wild ride for which everything leading up to this moment has just been preparation."  I would only amend that last quoted section to read "people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s," because I don't even have any children in their 20s anymore.  (What?!  When, and how, did that happen?!)

Foss addresses this topic again in a June 13 post on her blog, In the Heart of My Home. She writes:

As I watch younger moms juggle babies and toddlers and big kids and try to be all the things for all of them, I want to assure them that it gets easier.  But I can't.  

I don't.

Because I don't think it does get easier.  It gets different.  In a lot of ways, it gets more challenging.  It's as if all the challenges of the younger years are designed to get you fit for the ones to come.

I was talking to an older mom yesterday about the choice we make to be peaceful with the way things turned out or to be bitter.  For some people, it is easy to be at peace.  For others, the choice can be the crucible where holiness is forged.

"The crucible where holiness is forged."  Wow.  That is some powerful writing, my friends.  And something to ponder…even for an extraordinarily fortunate mom like me, whose life has been mostly peaceful, whose heaviest cross these days is having to miss beloved grown children (and their children) who live much too far away.  

Because no matter how hard we moms try to be "all the things for all of them," we don't know what the future will hold for our children when they become adults.  As they say, adulting is hard!  Life will throw them so many curveballs.  And seeing them worry or struggle or suffer, when you can no longer make it all better with a Band-Aid and a kiss, is so painful for a mother.  Yet such is life here in the promised Valley of Tears!  Without faith, how does anyone endure it all?

If you can make it through the Mother-Son dance at your boy’s wedding without tears,
you’re a better woman than I!  (This is my baby, son #5.)

Well, I suppose it's time to figure out a way to wrap this all up.   

In a nutshell: yes, it can be scary having all grown children.  Worries don't magically disappear once your kids graduate from diapers, braces, and college; instead, they seem to multiply.

But so do the joys.  Case in point: check out this picture taken in July of our five boys and the five girls whom they married, and with whom they are raising 22 precious children between them (so far!).  These are ten of my favorite people on earth.  And if I hadn't let my boys grow up and leave me, they never would have given me these five sweet daughters to love.

Aren't these kids adorable?  (Rhetorical question, of course.  There can be only one answer!)

And here are a few pics of that high school boyfriend and me, after 44 years of marriage.  I'm so glad we ended up together; those five beautiful couples above wouldn't even be here if we hadn't!  (There are hardly any pictures of us together taken during the years we were dating, from 1973 to our wedding in 1980, because it was a whole different world back then--before the age of digital photography and home computers--and people hardly ever had a camera with them unless it was a big event.  Having these shots of us by the lake at Oyster Haven is very special to me!)

Life is good today.  And every day that I can wake up and say that, I feel blessed.

*That't the print copy title; online, the article is called "Note to the mother of a graduate."

Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog!

Well hey there, readers...all two or three of you who even bother to stop by here anymore!  How was your summer?

Are you surprised to see me here?  I know I am.  This is by far the longest I've been away from this blog since I opened up shop in 2011.  I believe it's been almost three months since I last posted anything.  Yikes, that beats my last AWOL stretch by about two months or so.

I've seriously been considering just closing my doors for good (but enough with the shop references already--sheesh!  Can you tell that I'm about as rusty as they come?!).  Just living life keeps me so busy these days that writing about it seems like a waste of time.

But then I stumble upon an old post in my archives, and I remember why I started this thing in the first place.  So many of my most precious memories--of my marriage, my motherhood, and now my grandmotherhood (if that's a word?  Spell check has underlined it in red for me, so perhaps not!)--are stored here on this site.  Like this oldie-but-goodie, for instance, about when my oldest son (now 40) was a new driver and started giving his younger brothers rides to school.  I read that sweet post again a few weeks ago, when my sister-in-law was talking about how her 16-year-old son was going to get his driver's license soon.  It brought back so many poignant memories!  And that post led me to this other post as well, one that tells about a treasured moment in time from my youngest son's wedding that I am so grateful to have captured.

(If you took the time to click those links and read the old posts, welcome back!)

Anyway, I'm happy for all the years I've spent adding to my online family scrapbook.  I am.  So maybe I should keep at it.  Maybe I'd miss it if I gave it up.  We shall see!

Today, I'm just feeling overwhelmed by how much has happened in the last three months that would be fun to blog about.  I don't know what to write about first. So I guess I'll just go ahead and jump in and see how it goes.

We just got back to VA a week ago, after spending most of July and August in upstate NY, staying at my husband's old childhood home by the lake while managing our Oyster Haven rental house just down the road.  Life was good up there, visiting with my 88-year-old mom and other relatives from both of our families and spending as much time as possible out on our pontoon boat.  But it's just so good to be home!

I don't know where to start, so I guess I'll just post a few pictures from our Pearl family vacation week at Oyster Haven in July (we had a professional photo shoot!  More about that later!); and then a few pictures from this past Sunday, when we had two of our boys and their families over to our house ("where we belong," as one of our precocious little granddaughters here in VA has told us) for a post-Mass brunch.  

How it was going in July (up at Oyster Haven):

Aren't those pictures fun? The photographer got many more clearer, more normal shots (some of which I will be sharing here soon, I hope!).  But these give you an idea of the awesome chaos of our week, with all 34 of us sharing a house that we advertise as "sleeps 13" on VRBO!  Like the photos illustrate, our time together passed in a blur, but it was just wonderful.

How it was going this past Sunday (back home in VA):

We're so happy that Papa and Grammy's basement playroom is open for business once again.  Things were hopping down there on Sunday afternoon, as you can see.  And we're also happy that sometimes, we can give our tired kids a chance to catch a cat-nap while we enjoy spending time with their energetic little ones!

Until next time (which will be much sooner than three months from now--at least that's the plan)...

Garden Decorations (and Special Visitors!)

Seeing as how June is traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (and why it is, of course, such such a special month for us Catholics), we just got a new little flag to hang in the garden on the side of our house, near the patio.  Isn't it a beauty?

Wait…did I just hear someone say, “But what’s with the Bigfoot statue?”  Do you mean to tell me that during June (or anytime, really) every Catholic doesn’t have one of THOSE in their garden, too?!

(Just kidding.  If that hadn’t been my late father’s nickname, I can assure you that we wouldn’t either! LOL!)

I also put a little garden sign out front this morning, because later today our oldest son, his wife, and their seven children will be arriving to spend the week with us.  (They are traveling all the way from WI in their new-to-them 15-seater van!)

Before their move to the Midwest in 2021, this sweet family lived less than 20 minutes away from us here in VA for over four years.  Our daughter-in-law and the four children they had at the time even lived in our house with us for a few months when they first got here, while our son was away in training for his job and they were looking for a house of their own.  So this will be like a homecoming!  

And then after their week here, reconnecting with family and old friends, ALL of us Pearls will be heading to New York for our annual Oyster Haven vacation week at the lake.

Life is good today.  Life is very good.  And our gardens are decorated to show it.

I will not be blogging the next few weeks, because we will be busy with travels and family.  But I have a few drafts ready to publish (someone's been in a writing mood lately!), and I can post those in the meantime. After the kids all head back home from the lake, I'll be sure to report how it went.   (And there will be pictures, I'm sure.  Lots of pictures!)

The Gift of Hospitality

I get such joy from opening up my house up to others.  I think that's actually one of my favorite things in the world to do--to play hostess.

Showing hospitality to others is kind of what I live for...well, that's mostly true, but not totally.  [Gulp.] Time for a reality check.

Opening up my home when I'm just being "Mom" and "Grammy"-- that's what I live for, and that's easy. Playing the more demanding role of plain old "Hostess" is a tad harder for me.

When it comes to hosting family events, I am all in, all the time.  Even when it's our whole gang--five married sons and the 22 kids they have between them--I am never daunted by the idea of having them all descend upon us, though it is undoubtedly chaotic.  I love to cook for them.  I love making pre-party menu lists, setting up the buffet and/or dining table, putting up party decorations if the occasion calls for it, and the whole nine yards.  My husband and I seriously can't ever get enough of watching our grown-up boys interacting with each other, hearing their laughter in the house again (our favorite sound); it's wonderful seeing our girls, who get along so beautifully, swapping mom stories; it's a hoot seeing the little cousins chasing each other around the house or the yard, or playing together in our basement playroom.  It's loud and crazy and so much fun for us.  Being down here in VA, where we live near three of our sons and 14 of our grandkids (and we're actually centrally located, almost exactly midway between the two boys who live south of us and the one who lives north), our house is often the meeting place for Pearl holidays and family get-togethers.

But since moving here in 2017, we haven't played host and hostess to too many non-family members.  We had the pastor of our sweet little parish over once for lunch--and a house blessing--a few years ago.  We had our good friends (whom we met at church--natch!), T and R, over for a nice steak dinner a few months ago.  But as I said, when we're playing host and hostess, the guests are usually named Pearl.

Last week, on a whim one day we decided to invite a nice woman whom we see at daily Mass to come to our house for coffee afterward on Friday.  We chat with her often on our way out of church, but we never see her anywhere else.  This darling lady, who is about 20 years older than we are, has been widowed for many years and lives alone.  We just thought it would be nice to have the opportunity to really get to know her and to make her feel special.  On Thursday night, I was already getting excited about having company the next morning, so of course I got the table all set up in anticipation.  This was going to be a very casual affair, but I still wanted it to be nice.

My initial menu plan was simple: coffee, a bowl of mixed fruit, and some pastries (store-bought mini-muffins, some delectable little caramel-iced cakes from our town's popular local bakery, and some leftover banana bread I'd made for my hubby).

My husband and I drove to church in separate cars, because although we usually stay after Mass to do the Divine Office prayers with some of the other parishioners, I knew I was going to want to go right back home and get things prepared.  Plus, he was the sacristan that day and was going to have to stay to clean up, and our guest had to do some work involving the altar flowers as well. So I went home ahead of them--to fill the cream and sugar dishes, to brew a fresh pot of coffee, to pour a lemon-sugar glaze over the fruit, and to slice the cakes and put out the goodies.   

It was a treat to use my three-tiered dessert tray, a gift from son #2 and his wife, Ginger.  She found the blue-and-white plates (my weakness!) at the thrift, and he drilled the holes in them and added the hardware.  I would love this piece if it was store-bought, but it means so much more to me that it was designed and homemade by two of my favorite people.  Such a thoughtful gift!

I decided at the last minute to make some mini-quiches, stopping on the way home to get some scallions at the grocery store because we were out.  To make these quiches, I flattened slices of white bread with a rolling pin, cut out little circles with a biscuit cutter, buttered the bottoms, and put them in a muffin pan to make the "crusts." Then I added diced scallions and grated Swiss cheese, and finally poured an egg and cream mixture into the muffin cups until they were almost full, and baked at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Luckily I had plenty of time to get them made before my husband and our sweet guest got to the house.

I was able to use another gift from son #2 and his wife for our little after-Mass get-together: a handy thermos coffee pot.  Now that I have a Chemex pour-over coffee maker, I use it pretty much every day.  I used to rely on a Keurig and brew my cups one at a time; now I make a six-cup pot first thing in the morning and transfer the coffee from the glass Chemex carafe to the thermos, where it stays hot for hours. (I don't know about you, but for me, just about any time of day is a good time for a cup of coffee!  #addictedtocoffee)

Our church friend stayed for about two hours, and we just sat at the dining room table talking that whole time. There was not one lull in the conversation!  It was so enjoyable, and I'm now inspired to invite some of the other nice folks we see every day at Mass over for coffee.

I'm a rather shy person--an introvert, a homebody, a reader, a lover of peace and quiet and solitude--and I'm not naturally gifted at making friends.  Being open to sharing my home with others outside my comfortable circle of Pearls (or should I say string of Pearls?!) is not really one of my charisms--that is to say, gifts given to us from God that enable us to live out the Gospel.  If all I had for friends were the members of my beloved family, I would be perfectly content.  But I'm determined to work at developing this charism of hospitality.  

The wonderful book Theology of Home* has a whole chapter devoted to hospitality.  This quote in that chapter spoke to me: "In opening our homes to others, we allow ourselves to detach from our relatively comfortable, safe, orderly ways so that love, which by its nature is not confining or insular, can spread out beyond these walls and these inhabitants."  Also this: "Hospitality is rooted in kindness--not a kindness that is mere politeness (though that is important) but a kindness that actively seeks to fulfill a need of another unprompted."  What lovely sentiments, so eloquently expressed!  And I'm taking them to heart. I'll let you know how it goes!

Have a wonderful weekend, dear readers.  One filled with faith and family--and friends, too.

*I actually have a copy of this book signed by one of the authors, Carrie Gress.  She gave a talk to a group of women at a church hall here in VA a few years back, and I attended the event with my daughter-in-law, Ginger.  (Gress is a phenomenal speaker!)

Grandma's Chair (Before and After)

I've blogged before about my paternal grandmother's Victorian mansion in a small Upstate NY town, where my family lived for about a year-and-a-half when I was a young girl.  The seven of us made a temporary home in one of the upstairs apartments that she rented out.  (We used to joke that our place had once been the servants' quarters; I'm not really even sure if that's true, but it made a good story!)

When Grandma and her second husband (my father's dad died when he was very young) took possession of the mansion, they found and rescued many pieces of antique furniture original to the house and had them refurbished.  There was a giant dining table and matching chairs that took center stage in the extraordinarily beautiful, wood-paneled dining room in the mansion.  When she eventually sold the place, my grandmother kept a few of her favorite items, among which were some marble-topped end tables and coffee tables and several of the ornately carved dining room chairs.  My youngest sister had been given two of the chairs after Grandma died and recently asked all of her siblings if any of us would like to take them, as she no longer had a place for them.  One of my sisters-in-law and I were immediately interested, so we each got one.  I just brought mine home from NY about a few weeks ago after a trip up there to get our VRBO rental house ready for the summer season.

While I was in NY, I "shopped" in my mother-in-law's attic for fabric to recover the chair.  (I've blogged about this before as well--about the treasure trove of fabrics and laces and sewing notions my seamstress M-I-L amassed in her lifetime, which I have been given the green light by her generous daughters to plunder at will!) I not only found some lovely upholstery material for my DIY project, but also some coordinating gimp trim.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let me show you what the chair looked like after years of use, including when my sister used to strap a portable high chair seat onto it and her sweet granddaughter would kick away at the front of the cushion with her little feet.

The fabric on the top of the chair, front and back, had held up fairly well.  But the seat was in bad shape.

I could hardly wait to restore this chair to its former glory! To get started, I removed the gimp binding, which is used to cover up the raw edges of the fabric and the nails (and it's attached with glue, so it's easy to pull off).

Then I removed the fabric pieces, which I used as patterns for the new pieces.  (I was able to remove the upholstery nails, which are short and curved at the tips, and then reuse them).

I almost ordered some new blue gimp to match the lovely fabric I’d chosen, because I wasn't sure if I'd like the shiny gold stuff I'd found in Mom's attic stash...

Out with the old, in with the new!

...but I did like it.  A lot!

Oh wow, heart-eye emojis all over the place!!  I LOVE this look!

I didn't refinish the wood, but I cleaned it, and I also touched up the nicks and scratches with some wood stain I had on hand.  There were small traces of orange-red paint here and there, signs that perhaps some misguided soul had at one time painted over that glorious wood--AAAGGGHHH!  But I didn't remove them.  (I've decided that the flaws in the finish add to the character of the chair.  Yeah, character: that's it!  Ha ha!)

The most challenging part to fix was, of course, the seat.  My biggest roadblock to getting that done was finding the appropriate size and type of foam cushion to replace the old one, which was damaged and disintegrating.  I ordered one from Amazon, but it was 5” high—which was a bit much for this chair.  I ended up finding the perfect thing at our local JoAnn’s.  (There was probably some foam in my M-I-L’s attic, now that I think of it!  But I was too focused on finding fabric to notice!)

I put a new 2" foam cushion on top of the seat's interwoven support bands (or whatever they're called!).  I didn't take a picture, but you probably don't want to see that step anyway.  Just imagine a piece of green foam sitting on top of those strips of burlap.

Once the foam was in place, I set out to cover it with the fabric I'd cut out, using the worn-out old seat cover as a pattern.  I started by anchoring the fabric in place with a nail in the center of the back, the center of the front, and the center of each side, and then I proceeded to stretch the fabric as tightly over the foam as I could as I continued to nail it down all the way around.

The last step was gluing down the gimp trim all around the raw edges of the upholstered seat.

Within about four days of getting the chair home to VA, Grandma's chair was ready to be sat upon. I am thrilled with how it came out.  And I love having this piece that is such an endearing reminder of my grandmother and the wonderful old house she lived in for many years.

I have a lot of colors and patterns going on in my living room: a black and tan Oriental rug; a pink and green floral couch and matching loveseat; and now this chair covered in a blue and white floral print.  (Not mention another antique chair that I rescued and reupholstered many moons ago, using gorgeous brocade fabric in a red and green—strawberries and leaves—pattern.  So there's that, too!)  A professional home decorator would probably shudder to see what I’ve got going on here. Nonetheless, this room makes me very happy.

And in the end, that's all that matters, right?  A house should be a home that makes its owners happy; it need not be a designer’s showcase.

But boy-oh-boy, my grandmother's beautiful chair is a bit of a show-stopper, IMHO...

(So many photos!  Can you tell how excited I am about this chair?!  Moving forward here at the blog, I'll try to keep the photo-sharing under control.)