What is this {pretty, happy, funny, real} you speak of?
~ {pretty, happy, funny, real} ~
Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~
Every Thursday, here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
Come over to Instagram to see some pictures of our Europe trip. I don't want to be that tedious person who shows you all their slides (I remember this well from the days when it took a lot to get overseas and was a really big deal to get the photos printed and mounted in the slide carousel, sometimes turning out to be the wrong direction, necessitating a complete reversal of the order, or else recounting the trip backwards… but that's another story).
On the other hand, I have lots of photos!
I'll just show you a couple, randomly pulled out:
This is the ceiling of the church at Castel Gandolfo, dedicated to St. Thomas of Villanova. Very light and pretty.
Here we are on the Pont Neuf, over the River Seine in Paris. People put their little padlocks all over the fencing there.
And here is Bridget at the Tower of London, with the Tower Bridge in the background (I have a hard time typing “bridge” and not making it “bridget”!)
But now we are back to the {real} of our lives. I need to recover these cushions on this settee. I had gotten this furniture on Craigslist back in the day, and couldn't handle recovering it at the same time that I did the free set a friend gave me (that jungle print just had to go!).
So I finally found more of the fabric and will do these cushions. It's not as cheap as the first time I found it, but it's still cheap.
And there's planting to be done:
The lettuce has come up…
My pear trees look pretty good:
Well, this one is still un-pruned, but ah well:
Garlic:
Beds yet to be overhauled:
[inlinkz_linkup id=634228 mode=1]
Claire says
Oh thank you Leila for more gorgeous pictures!! NOT tiresome at all; we’ll chug over to Instagram for more . . .
I sometimes dream of Rome, when there is laundry to be done, groceries to be shopped for, gardens to plant . . . You know.
So um, better get on things. Thanks for a mini vacation in my head 😊
kristina b says
Even untended in the wild riot of spring, your gardens are beautiful 🙂 Is that lavender?
Leila says
kristina, we do have lavender but I’m not sure it’s pictured here 🙂
Karen says
Fabric questions!!
What are you using to recover the cushions? Do you leave them out all summer? Where did you find this second batch of fabric? I too must cover some outdoor cushions, but the expense of outdoor fabric makes me wonder if I should keep saving and just purchase new cushions…….. someday……
Leila says
Karen, this fabric is Sunbrella, which I HIGHLY recommend. It truly just does not get affected by anything.
When I was dreading the work of covering the cushions, believe me, I searched all over for new cushions. But there are two obstacles: one — finding the right sized cushions for these sets — they are not standard; and two — any cushions, even really cheap ones with which you could sort of “make do”, are so expensive! Even at Home Goods, one set of cushions (I’d need 3 for the settee) which might or might not fit cost as much as the fabric to cover all.
Normally, Sunbrella is expensive (although for a good reason — it is amazing). But if you do a search (try Amazon and Fabric.com), you will find some on sale. Then the challenge is figuring out if any of the sale fabric will work for you, decorating-wise.
I had found the fabric (“waves graphite”) on one of those sites and instead of the usual upwards of $50 a yard (granted that it’s wide width), it was $5 a yard! And went perfectly with the existing dark brown of the iron furniture’s upholstery. So I bought enough to cover the faux wicker cushions.
Flash forward to needing to cover the settee of the iron set (the solid brown of the chair/ottoman combo is still in good condition and goes well with the Sunbrella, so I’m just going with that). I searched for the same fabric and could only find it on ebay for $15 a yard plus shipping, which was $18 — too much, but oh well.
We do try to put the cushions in the sheltered part of our deck when it rains. The faux-wicker’s cushions tend to sop up the water. However, the Sunbrella sheds water to a great extent, so leaving it out isn’t the end of the world — whereas the old covers not only got wet, they got moldy. (That said, I covered over that old upholstery — it’s still under there, so I try to keep them dry).
The vintage iron furniture’s covers are a sort of woven plastic and just dry very well, so I worry even less about them.
As I say, I do try to put them away just so that we don’t have to wait for them to dry once the sun comes out.
Here is a good example of a fabric that I think is a pretty good price and will wear very well and go with everything:
http://amzn.to/1YVsWGm
Kate says
This is my first time linking up. I will try harder to get better pictures next time. I am hoping I did it right. I am excited to post garden pictures next week. This is probably the earliest we will have things in our garden. It is usually too risky….last frost date is supposed to be may 15th but in our past experience we usually get one just before Memorial day.
Thanks for the encouragement.
Leila says
Dear Kate — thank you for joining and sharing about your home improvements! Welcome!
Mrs. B. says
More pictures, more pictures! You need to let us have a trip as well, albeit vicariously 😉
Isn’t it weird how every country seems to have a bridge with padlocks… A bit silly if you ask me.
My green effort for this year: I’m going to go nuclear against the most devilish pest of a plant I’ve ever seen: previous owners planted the infernal chameleon plant in the flower beds in front of the house, and the more we try to get rid of it, the more it thrives and spreads… We’ve been fighting this battle for 5 year now, and I’m tired of it!!
Claire says
Oh my gosh Mrs. B, that came with our last house. The wise old landscaper we hired told me to Round-up it and let the ground sit bare for a full year while I kept at the shoots. “Otherwise” he said, “you’ll be fighting it for the next 20 years.”
Did I in my new-dream-house-bliss pay any attention? Nooooooo.
Eight years later, we moved. I was still fighting it, and it was still going strong.
Mrs. B. says
Oh, Claire, I could cry… It’s an evil plant, period. We’ve been using RoundUp all this time, and last year we thought we were finally going somewhere. This year it came back with a vengeance, thick and healthy as if RoundUp was just what doctor ordered! And suddenly we’ve seen it in two other spots far away, though we had read that it spreads through the roots, not by seeds: in no time it suffocated two big clusters of daffodils. I even read that it’s useless to pave over it, because it will travel under the cement and come up at the sides… I think this year I’ll call a garden center and ask them to dig a couple of feet deep – and they better be careful how they dispose of that load!
Julie says
This post makes me itch to have my hands in the dirt. We can’t have a garden this year as we are moving at the end of this month….boo. Thanks for posting the pictures. And Habou’s Hill is lovely.
Lisa G. says
Did the Blessed Mother snap that photo of your cat (Farouk, is it?) 😀
Lisa G. says
I guess I shouldn’t just leave it at that; that shadow looks like a shadow which would be cast by a statue of the Blessed Mother with a crown of roses on her head. So, what’s up at your house? 😉
Leila says
Lisa, haha, you are seeing the shadow of my head of curly hair!
Lisa G. says
I must have seen a shadow like that once, otherwise why would that occur to me so instantly? 😀 But it still looks like that to me. The Blessed Mother was looking over your shoulder, I guess. 🙂