Tape Paper Scissors

I've said before that Noah is not really into crafts. And to some degree, this is true. Hand him paper and crayons and he'll walk away. But give him paper, a scissors and some tape and he'll go nuts with projects.

Yesterday, he asked me if he could watch something. I said, "No, why don't you make something with this paper?" He promptly built himself a television monitor, which he and Mattias watched for 10 minutes. The program was quite funny to all three of us.

Today, Noah planted things in his garden.

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And the boys practiced walking OVER it, not ON IT. Hmmm...what do you think we've been doing lately?

Over the weekend there was a lemonade stand in the living room.

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Complete with pitcher and little (fallen over) glasses.

Shoes like Daddy's had to be made, because Mommy refuses to buy them. (But, in my defense, I DID help him make the flip flop on the left.) There were many, many tears when somebody tried to change into his pajamas without taking off the flip flops first.

This is an egg cooker that doesn't use water, I'm told. The white crumpled up papers are eggs, the green things are utensils.

The awesome news here is that we've got a really creative kid. The bad news? It's very difficult to make an impression by taking away real things as a consequence. I guess we're left with taking away his tape, paper, scissors.

Pigeon Blue

Fritz is of the steadfast belief that leather furniture will last longer with children. I don't really know if this is true. I mean, maybe in the 1970s it was true, but today there are a lot of fancy woven and otherwise fabrics that repel stains. In my experience so far, it is not necessarily true that leather is better.

Our living room leather sofa and chairs were hand-me-downs from Fritz's relatives, who bought them in the 1980s in Germany. When Fritz's brother inherited the furniture, Fritz's whole family regarded them as rather well made and stylish in shape, but that color! They called it pigeon blue and put the furniture in storage under sheets for a decade. I believe the words of Fritz's brother were: "They would be smashing in black." I'm almost sure he said this to me in English, so I'm not mistranslating the 'smashing'. Much discussion was had about dying them black for...somebody at some unspecified time.

After Fritz and I got married, we had little money but big needs for seating, so an arrangement was reached. The sofa and chairs were moved to our first apartment in Munich. They were still pigeon blue, although now, much discussion was had about covering them with some sort of slipcover.

Back when I had time to do shit like set out china and light candles to photograph a pigeon blue sofa.

Then I got pregnant and I settled for throwing a blanket made-by-my-grandma-from-old-clothes-that-her-neighbors-gave-her over the sofa when I wanted to lay on it because - Hello! Leather is icy cold in an 1890s apartment building! Strangely, I didn't take any photos of that phase. Nobody talked about changing the color of the furniture anymore. The sofa was not very comfortable for my pregnant body. I politely began referring to the sofa as A Sofa for the Art of Proper Conversation. In other words, it was NOT for lounging around watching Verliebt in Berlin! (In Love in Berlin), a German soap opera that I watched ostensibly to improve my German throughout my pregnancy.

So, time passed, babies were born, babies burped on the furniture, and kids cruised along the furniture with sticky hands and climbed on the furniture and made deposits on the furniture from their sand-drenched clothes and scratched the furniture with fingernails that needed to be cut and left dripping-milk-sippy cups on the furniture. Our pigeon blue furniture was becoming smashing in an entirely different level.

AND several moves were made and a great many friends visited and endless photos of people holding babies and kids sitting on the furniture were taken. The pigeon blue furniture found a soft spot in my heart, and to this day I can't really bring myself to part with it. We recently purchased some new furniture. But I put that new furniture upstairs, where it's rarely seen.

Meanwhile, the pigeon blue furniture sat in our formal living room looking something like this:

Cracked, scratched, faded, pigeon blue leather.

(I forgot to mention that somebody duct taped the words LIVING ROOM to the furniture. Just in case the movers couldn't figure out where to put the only seating furniture we owned. The duct tape left the most noticeable mark dead-center on this seat.)

After several unsuccessful attempts to recondition and clean the leather, I finally decided we should try shoe polish. Fritz was less convinced - he was worried the polish would rub off on our butts. After a fair amount of debate, I finally decided to blindly purchase some shoe polish that sounded like approximately the right colors and give it a try.

In the end, I had to mix pigeon blue:

And then I had to convince the 2 year old to get off the chair between application and polishing. This is the way most projects go around here. Wouldn't want anyone to get the impression putting shoe polish on the leather furniture was easy, you know.

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And finally? Success! Sort of. Pigeon Blue Leather furniture once more. I'd say, it now looks aged instead of destroyed.

And the pigeon blue color is not coming off on anyone's butt.

Red

How about something light for today?

After I completed the stairwell of red pots last summer, my mother and my aunt teased me for several months about the red spray paint. You know, I took it a bit to heart because I do really dislike half-baked solutions like, "Hey let's spray paint it!" It seems dishonest, it seems forced. It seems like not allowing something to be what it is. So, it actually DID pain me a little bit to paint those pots red.

But if you are looking for plant pots, it's really tough to find minimal shapes, the correct size, the right price point AND in primary colors. (Okay, fine, and in RED.) My aunt tells me that is because red and blue glazes are more expensive. (?)

However, I've recovered from the red-spray-paint-teasing. Or maybe all those years of architecture education indoctrination are finally unraveling. Or maybe I just care more about doing what I want than I care for guessing at what other people may or may not think.

So, I've painted more pots! Primary red! This time around, I've taken to simply painting pots that I otherwise find unpleasant. Below, I painted the large red pot in the back. It used to be sort of army green. You can see that there's some decorative design molded into the pot. This type of decoration is fussy-ness that I don't like.

ACK! ACK! Decoration! Quick, paint it primary red!

Those two pots in the front (little yellow and deeper red?) - see how nice and simple and lovely and bright and cheerful they are? Yeah, those pots came from Germany. Sorry, Ann. Can't buy them here. I specifically put those little pots in front so I wouldn't have to see the decoration on the newly painted, (ACK!) decorative pot in the back.

Alright, next up: a terra cotta pot (left) and a metal pot (right). The shape of both these pots is still a little too fussy for me. But, I can at least I can change the color. Spray paint it is!

The terra cotta pot (left) - which is only partially painted, was really ripped off inspired by these pots at Crate and Barrel. The shape of C&B's still looks better (to me) BUT it doesn't take Portuguese artisans to have some old, worn terra cora pots sitting around. Speaking from experience, erratic watering habits can create some lovely lime deposits on your terra cotta. I put painters tape over the top part of the planter, and sprayed the rest of the pot...bright red!

Although I'm pretty pleased with the terra cotta pot result, I predict the paint will flake off within a year. Terra cotta is one of those materials that really needs to breathe - not just air - but moisture, as well, right? That's the worst: spray-painting something that shouldn't even be spray painted.

Too late!

In the bigger picture, I'm still really struggling with how to incorporate houseplants into my house. If you spend a lot of time looking at the modern design magazines I look at, houseplants are doled out gingerly and sparingly. I'd like to be sparing with my furniture, but excessive with my plants. Do you have any recommendations on where to find inspiration?