St. Patty's Day Party (with Pinterest Flair!)

We will be on the road this weekend, flying out to Detroit to meet up with our youngest son and his girlfriend (more to come on this soon...wink wink!). So we won't be hosting a St. Patrick's Day party for our family, like we did last year.  No, on the 17th my husband and I will go to Sunday morning Mass in Michigan and then we'll get on a plane back to DC, so we'll be drinking our green beer in the air.  (We really won't be doing that, but I thought it sounded good.)   I don't even know if we'll be home in time for dinner, so the traditional corned beef and cabbage feast will have to wait.  (And actually, it'll have to wait a while...because we'll only be home for a day, and then, it's off to Rome for a week!  Not that we're jet-setters these days or anything...)

I am actually writing this post ahead of time and leaving it in my "drafts" file, so I can just hit the "publish" button two days from now.  I have suddenly rediscovered my interest in keeping up with this blog.  (You're welcome, sweet husband and baby sister of mine!)

I just thought I'd post some pictures of last year's St. Patty's Day festivities chez Pearl.  I can't believe I never wrote a blog post about it, because I went on Pinterest to find some creative ideas for making our family celebration extra-special, and faith and begorrah, I was pretty proud of myself, dontcha know.

Okay, here's the photo dump.

I used photos of son #5 (the only one not there, stationed in Germany at the time) wearing his second grade saints parade

costume, and my husband's Irish grandfather, who was born in County Cork and came to the US at 19, in the décor.

My oldest son was teasing me about this fruit tray, which I kept filling as people ate from it so it would stay pretty.

  I was definitely not the Pinterest-mom type when he was growing up, knowing that boys care more about 

taste and volume when it comes to food than they do about presentation!

The Irish flag!

I knew I would have trouble finding a tablecloth like this...so I made it myself!

We did not have green beer--but we did have green punch.

I always love to have a good excuse to make a cake.

Some very ugly Irish soda bread (without raisins or seeds or any of that other icky stuff my boys

won't eat in their baked goods!).  It tasted better than it looked (not a hard feat to pull off).

There he is: my favorite Irishman!

This adorable little leprechaun even had gold coins in his pocket! 

Oh my goodness...those shoes. Hats off to son #2 and Ginger for their costume-making prowess!

The triple threat!  

Not to be outdone by my little leprechaun grandson, here are the shoes I wore for our family "hooley" (as Kendra Tierney would call it).

And on that note, good bye!  May the road rise to meet you...and you know the rest!

House Tour, Part III: The Dining Room

In an effort to get back to blogging for the main reason I was so dedicated to it for so many years (before the Instagram bug bit, and bit hard), I'm going to talk about something today at my neglected String of Pearls simply because it's fun for me and it makes me happy.  I doubt many people are even stopping by here anymore, because when they do, they mostly hear the sound of crickets (metaphorically speaking, of course); but if there's anyone reading this and you like a good home décor post (from someone who is most definitely NOT a professional home decorator--let's make that clear from the get-go!), you might enjoy this.  It's the third installment of a house tour I started not long after we moved to our new house (see Part I and Part II here and here; I also did this post about creating a home library).

Not too long ago, one of my daughters-in-law (blog handle "Preciosa," wife of son #3) and I were talking about whether or not a dining room is even necessary or practical anymore in this new age of mostly casual entertaining.  She was trying to decide whether or not to transform her formal dining room into a play room for her three kids who are three-and-under.  She and my son have a roomy eat-in kitchen, and their dining room is a rarely-used space.  It is quite lovely, with a Pottery Barn table-and-chairs set scored on Craisglist, walls painted a deep navy blue above the chair rail, and a gallery wall filled with their eclectic collection of decorative crosses.  But did they perhaps need a play room more?  They have one in the basement, but having one on the main floor would be so much convenient...What to do, what to do?

In the end, my daughter-in-law decided that although my son was more than ready to pull the trigger, she was not ready (yet, anyway) to give up her dining room.  And I totally get that.

I have always loved having a dining room.  The one we had in our old house in NH (where we lived for 26 years before moving to VA in 2017 to be near our kids and grandkids) was enormous.  Even though it had lots of furniture in it--including an antique buffet painted red, an antique reproduction pine pie safe with a punched-tin door, an antique sideboard that matches our oak dining set, and a lighted china cabinet--there was still plenty of room to navigate around the table.  And we're talking about a table that can comfortably seat 10 or 12.  In fact, I once set up two tables for eight in there, for a St. Patty's Day dinner party with neighbors, and it wasn't that tight.

To give you an idea of how much space we had, here are two photos from our Christmas Eve dinner in 2016, when our five boys, our four daughters-in-law, and the seven grandchildren we had at that time all came to NH for one last Christmas before our move.  We had to angle the table and add a smaller one at the end to extend it, but we all fit!

I was a little nervous about how we were going to squeeze all of our beloved dining room furniture into the space we were going to have in our new house.  As you can see from the pictures on the listing, although it is quite lovely, with that dramatic tray ceiling and the pillars, it is not enormous.

I actually considered selling my large antique oak table-and-chairs, which my mom had bought at an estate sale when I was in middle school and had always been in our house when I was growing up.  Mom had bequeathed the set, with its matching antique sideboard, to me when she and Dad downsized to a condo.  My husband and I were about to downsize now, and I thought maybe I should think about getting something smaller, something that would look better in this sort of room.  But I just couldn't do it.

All I can say is that I'm glad the new dining room opens up to the front hallway, because otherwise all of my pieces wouldn't have been able to fit.  We definitely would have had to take a couple of leaves out of the table if there had been a wall there instead of just those two pillars.

The old owners, who took a minimalist approach to this room, might look at what we've done and think it looks mighty crowded, and it kind of is; but I think we've been able to make it work.  The only piece we couldn't use in here is the lighted china cabinet that used to house some of our good china and crystal, which I repurposed as a display case for my porcelain dolls and put in our new master bedroom.

This old table was a hand-me-down from my mother-in-law.  I refinished it and gave the 

beat-up top a painted faux-marble finish years ago.  The pig is from my sister-in-law, 

who recently bought a restaurant and found it left behind. 

(I collect pigs.  Does that make me weird?)

This solidly-built antique buffet is one of my favorite pieces in the whole house.  

I found it a shop in our old NH hometown, where they sold antiques, secondhand items, 

and gifts.  I fell in love with the painted/distressed finish the seller had given it.

As you can see, there's a lot going on in this little room!  But I love a nice dining room, and I'm just so grateful that we have one in this new, smaller home in VA.  I would miss it terribly if we didn't...because I'm an old-school Grammy who likes to set the table with all the fancy stuff for holidays whenever possible.  It made me happy to set our 2017 Thanksgiving table like this.

Our new dining room is smaller than our old one, to be sure, but it feels bigger than it is because it's so open.  This is the view from the dining room table.

When you're having a large gathering at this house, you can be lingering at the table here and interacting with other guests who are sitting in the living room right across the hall.  (I know this because it's happened already!)  While I'm actually more of a fan of houses that have separate rooms and lots of walls on which to hang artwork and family photos,  I do think this house makes the most of its square footage because of its open-concept design.

Okay then, what about you?  Do you think a formal dining room is a necessity?  Do you like open-concept homes, or do you like separate rooms where you can go to escape the noise and the mess every now and then?  Leave me a comment, I'd love to hear from you!

Bonnets, Baskets, & Bunnies Link-Up: Easter 2018

I thought I'd join writer and blogger Carolyn Astfalk for her 2018 Easter link-up, which she's running from Easter through Divine Mercy Sunday.  Carolyn said that anything goes--"spiritual reflections, flower photos, chocolate bunnies, favorite hymns, books, etc."--and I thought that sounded like something I could definitely do, even though I'm not exactly a prolific blogger these days.

I love, love, LOVE Easter; sometimes I think it actually might be my favorite holiday.  (But then Christmas comes, and I show myself to be quite fickle indeed.)

I love to put together baskets for my family.  I love to decorate the house with flowers, eggs, and bunnies.  (And banners, too.)  It's such a happy time of year, and I think my house reflects this.  But I'll let the pictures do most of the talking for me, if you don't mind.

I love my peeps--and I don't mean the marshmallow kind!  (Peeps are some of son #4's favorite Easter treats, but not so much mine.  Give me chocolate, always.)  I'm talking about my PEEPS, you see--that is, my people.  The little ones, especially.

Here are some sweet photos of some of the Pearls on our family string, all dressed up in their Easter Sunday best.

My oldest son and his wife have requested that their girls don't appear in photos on the blog, and I strive to honor their wishes regarding the privacy of their family (even though it kills me not to share my granddaughters' sweet faces with you!).  But here they are, in a recent photo taken on their front porch.

These four girls just found out that theirs will no longer be "an all of a kind family," like their daddy's was; in July, they will welcome a new baby brother!

God bless you this Easter and always.  And Happy Divine Mercy Sunday to you, too!

Now head on over to Carolyn's My Scribbler's Heart blog for more Bonnets, Baskets, & Bunnies!

Happy New Year! (And Is It Too Late to Talk about Christmas Ornaments?)

Happy New Year, dear readers!

It is one of my resolutions for 2018 to give a little more attention to my poor old neglected blog, which must be feeling like the cosseted firstborn child who suddenly has a younger sibling, a baby who seems to be getting a lot more attention.  (That younger sibling being Instagram, of course, where I've been spending most of my online time these days.)

Let's talk about Instagram, though.  It is a downright charming place to visit, I must admit.  There are never any of those Facebook-style vicious political rants in your news feed, just lovely photos with short-but-sweet captions or stories beneath them.  Instagram provides a quick fix for people who would prefer a lengthy novel or a thoughtful blog post, but are just too busy at the moment.  If you don't have time to read a blog post, you almost surely have time to read a few delightful Insta-posts.  Also, I find that there are so many lovely Catholic gals on Instagram who inspire me to grow in my faith, and talented designing women who inspire me to make my house more cozy and beautiful for my family.  And then there are those hashtags, which are sometimes just hilarious.

So I'm liking Instagram a whole lot these days...and unfortunately, I've been ignoring my firstborn baby, my String of Pearls.  But I'm going to try to get back into writing over here more often, because I find I just miss writing for writing's sake.  What is it about putting together words that I find so satisfying?

My twin granddaughters (who are the oldest of our 12 grandchildren, at 6-and-1/2) devour books at an impressive rate, having taught themselves how to read over a year ago.  One of them recently showed me one she'd just finished and commented, "I liked this.  It had nice words."  How I love the way she put that!  "Nice words."  That's all a writer hopes to accomplish for his readers: to not just give them a good story, but one that is told so nicely that it is a joy for them to read the words. Not that I think my words are all that nice, mind you; but that is most definitely the goal.  And String of Pearls has been a great outlet for me for the past six-plus years, a wonderful place for me to do what I like to do--to play with words.  And as a bonus, this blog has put me in contact with a whole bunch of wonderful friends I would never have met otherwise.

So God bless the Catholic blogging world, that's all I have to say.

Okay then, this is my first post of 2018, and it should be about something momentous.  But it won't be.  I find that I wish I'd done some Christmas-themed posts over the past few weeks, but I was so busy being a hands-on Grammy (and traveling to Poland to see my baby boy--now there's a subject for a future post!) that I didn't get around to it.  But luckily, for Catholics the Christmas season doesn't even start until December 25.  So I'm not too late, not too late at all.  And you know what?  I'm going to totally copy one of the ladies I follow on Instagram (Mary of Better Than Eden) and highlight some of the ornaments on my tree.  I enjoyed Mary's Instagram post about her ornaments so much that it inspired me to do one of my own.  So here we go.

Way back in 2013, during the Christmas season I ran a contest here at String of Pearls.  I had readers guess how many ornaments we had on our 9-and-1/2-foot tree, and the prize was a handcrafted painted wooden Santa ornament (holding a string of pearls, of course ;)).  The winner guessed 430 and she was close; we had 439 ornaments on the tree that year. And we've acquired plenty of new ones since then, because I have always been of the opinion that you can NEVER have too many of them.

But here's the thing: last year we sold our beloved house in NH, where we'd lived for 26 years (and where we had a converted garage-turned-man cave, with a ceiling high enough for a tree that tall), and we moved to VA to be near some of our grown sons; and our new house, while lovely and cozy, does not have such an area for such a tree.  So we had to retire our old tree, sadly, and get something smaller.

Since we couldn't have a big tree, we decided we could at least have one with an obnoxious amount of lights on it.

There are so many lights, it looked pretty even before we put the ornaments on it.

But of course, we did put ornaments on it!

There was a whole plastic storage bin filled with treasures that never made it on the tree this year, but the branches still ended up looking pretty packed.

Every year when we decorate our tree, I love to open the bins and boxes.  Each and every time, it's like Christmas morning all over again, and each precious memento feels like it's brand new.  I love that about ornaments!

I'm just going to highlight a few for you (if you're even still here; and if so, I'm sorry this post is so long!).

A few Christmases ago, our second-oldest son hand-painted two ornaments for his author mommy, recreating the cover of Finding Grace in one;

 and Erin's Ring in another.

For our last NH Christmas together in 2016, I had these porcelain ornaments made, one for us and one for each of our five boys--with a photo of our NH house on them.

After my dad died in November of 2016, I took his vast collection of NY State Lottery t-shirts (which he was always wearing, as a proud employee we called the "Lotto Guy") and made a t-shirt quilt for my mom and five of these "quilted" ornaments for my siblings and me.

I also made this "quilted" ornament, using scraps of material from our boys' old Catholic elementary school uniforms.  They wore gray pants and white oxford button-downs (see the button on that ornament?), and then maroon sweatshirts and sweatpants for gym.  I made the boys some bell-shaped ornaments out of these scraps as well, and I know how snazzy they thought their school uniforms were, so I'm sure they treasure them.  ;)  (If you'd like to see a how-to post on making ornaments like this, I did one once and you can read it here.)

Of course, no tree would be complete without the handmade ornaments the kids brought home from school in their boyhood days.  Like this one.

Or this one.

I should give the boys their TMNT ornaments, which we've had for about 25 years...but I don't have the heart to part with them.  Yet!

The same son who painted the book cover ornaments above painted this one-of-a-kind Garfield number for us back in 1997, when he was 11.  (All of my sons are quite artistic!)

I recently added a VA ornament, fashioned from a cookie cutter shaped like our newly adopted state.

Lots of our ornaments are Irish-themed. And lots of them are gifts from our kids or other loved ones. That metal and bead Claddagh ornament (right near the glass Irish step dancer) is a gift from our #4 son.  (Our boys all know what Mom likes!)

I have several ceramic mouse ornaments that I made when I wasn't even a mother yet.  There was a studio on the base where my husband was stationed, and I took classes there with several other Navy wives.  We were a crafty bunch!  (We were alone a lot, and crafting helped to fill the hours that our husbands were away.)  This little guy is hanging near two blue and gray ornaments from Salmon Falls Pottery in Dover, NH (the old world Santa and Merry Christmas ball) that are quite dear to me.

In 2013 I made eight of these stuffed "This Tree Stinks" ornaments for my husband and his seven siblings.  There's a funny story behind it; if you have the time you can read about it in this old post.  What tickles me is that now, every year each of them takes a picture of this ornament when they're decorating their trees, and they post the pictures on the family text stream.  I wasn't even sure they would like them (I mean, they're kind of tough to explain to outsiders who come to your home!); but these ornaments have become part of our Pearl Christmas tradition, and I love that I was able to contribute to that.

Okay, then...on that note, maybe I should wrap this up.  This is a long post (with links to old posts to boot!).  If you stopped by here for a quick pick-me-up, you're probably thinking you should have just gone to Instagram instead.  But bear with me.  I'm just trying to get my blogging muscles warmed up again.  After taking too much time off the past few years, I've gotten pretty stiff.

But I'm going to keep plugging away.  And maybe I'll even find more important things to talk about than what I have hanging on my tree.  We shall see.

#imfinallyfinished
#thanksforhanginginthere
#pleasecomeback
#happynewyear