Well, once again it's taken me longer than I anticipated ~ these "open houses" are a lot of work! :-) But I'm finally ready to resume and conclude our tour of Dragonfly Cottage (with a few decor side-trips), starting with the tall and wide - but boring - hallway. :-) The master bedroom is to our back, the kitchen entrance and half bath (behind the closed door and too small to photograph effectively) are on the right, and the main bath and the linen/laundry closet is to our left. That's the tiny second bedroom at the end of the hall, which we're using as an office (as always, click on the photos for larger versions)...
I'm not sure if other people use kites as window treatments, but it works for me! It's very pretty when the southern sun shines through my butterfly kite. (Besides, I had nowhere else to store it!) The bookcase is our most recent, and final, furniture purchase, and I consider it my other birthday gift from BW since I have always wanted a bookcase I can take with me (not a built-in I have to leave behind someday!) This one is made of mango wood, and matches the new desk we bought last fall...
(Iain & Sophie - if you click on this photo,
you'll be able to see your wedding photo!) :-)
Here's decor side trip #1: if you clicked on the photo, you may have noticed the tea party scene in the display case on the bottom shelf. That is my favorite scene from one of my favorite books, so when I was in college my mother commissioned it from a pair of local Maine artists who created scenes on driftwood using carved wood figures covered in dyed corn husks, had my dad build the case for it, and they gave it to me as a Christmas gift...
(Notice the set of books displayed beside it?)
This next photo, taken just inside the office door, isn't very interesting but I'm including it as a teaser because on the dresser (one of my first furniture purchases when I was a brand new grown up in my first apartment) is another of my mother's miniature scenes: a one-room schoolhouse decorated for Halloween. She just sent it home with me during my last visit in November, and I plan to feature it in its own post next October. So you'll just have to wait till then to see closeups of all the goodies ~ neener, neener! ;-)
And here's where all my blogging action (such as it is, lol) takes place ~ at my beloved iMac on the mango desk that matches the bookcase...
The east-facing transom window above the desk, which frames some beautiful sun and moon rises...
Okay, I know most of you are just acting politely interested while it's the kitchen you're most curious to see (it's always kitchens for me too!) So here's our kitchen as you enter from the hallway...
See the illuminated grapes in the basket atop the refrigerator? I ordered them as a housewarming gift to myself shortly after we moved in (not knowing or caring if rentals warrant housewarming gifts to oneself!), with the intention of putting them in that big empty space above the windows. But they looked awkward there, in part because the grape bunches hang 9" below the vine ~ and the vine had just one lone grape leaf on it! So we used it and some artificial grapevines I already had to decorate the basket, and it's now up to that lone wooden folk-art chicken to do his best to liven up the big space above the windows. :-)
The 5-burner Wolf gas range may be our favorite feature in this house. We really love cooking on gas...
Here's a closeup of the stained glass chicken light in the corner. A holdover from the days when our kitchen and dining room were decorated entirely in chickens (an amusing but long story), I've had it so long I can't even remember when or where I got it. But it always gets pride of place in our kitchen, despite our switch a few years ago to a Tuscan-themed decor...
Where the cookbook shelves are (with the living room just beyond) is where the original chimney used to be. Well, it's still there, just not in use and now sheetrocked over with the shelves added. I love the shelves, but wish they'd left the old exposed brick! (I love old exposed brick in a house, especially in a kitchen!) That double oven is the one whose timer tried to trick me into burning my mishap muffins, and to the right of it is an under-counter roll-out island that BW likes to use when he makes bread and pizza dough...
Backing up a bit we find ourselves in the dining area, too small for a regular dining set so we bought this fun pub table. Both the bedroom/office and this dining area are part of a new addition, so neither has the 9' ceilings of the rest of the house...
Here's a closeup of the plaque between the dining area and kitchen...
"Live well, love often, laugh a lot"
This piece of cherry furniture, which I designed and had custom made many years ago to hold all our stereo equipment and CDs, has been repurposed since we got rid of all our stereo equipment during our downsizing. Here it comes in very handy for storing kitchen gadgets like food processors, waffle iron and popcorn popper, and makes a nice display area since it's the first thing you see when you walk in the back door. I fell in love with the old mirror on the wall to the right during our first visit to Red Lodge, MT in the early 90's but talked myself out of buying it, then had the opposite of buyer's remorse when we got back home. So I called the store and had them ship it, kicking myself black and blue for the additional expense but never regretting for a moment that I went ahead and bought it...
Preferring how I had the erstwhile stereo cabinet decorated for Autumn (and for Christmas, too, but failing to photograph it then - how did that happen?), I'm including this photo. I intended to continue displaying the pheasant painting (done by my mother on a piece of slate that fell off a neighbor's roof in a storm), but can't for the life of me find it since putting it away when I decorated for Christmas! (I'm certain this has more to do with living in a tiny space requiring creative storage uses than with advancing age!)...
And here's the dining area with the kitchen to our backs. To the right of the pub table is one of my least favorite features of this house, the trap door to the tiny cellar (which used to be the house's coal storage room, back in the day). Very heavy and awkward to raise and lower, it inconveniently requires two people to open it, and going down the narrow wooden steps with that heavy beast propped up against the wall above your head can be nerve-wracking. So we only store stuff down there that we need access to no more than once a month, since BW has to go down there that often to change the furnace filter...
The back door leads to a covered deck where the dogs often like to sit on hot days, and this is where our tour concludes! Thank you so much for coming to visit! Willow and Josie are already waiting by the back gate in eager anticipation of your return! :-)
