Out and About

During our house renovation, we spent a great deal of time at Rejuvenation in Portland, which carries salvage and reproduction hardware, house parts, lighting, furniture and all sorts of specialty items. Back then they also carried plumbing, although this has recently been discontinued. 

They were a great resource for us, starting with our first clawfoot tub which we purchased just a few days after we got the keys to the house. That first tub - an enthusiastic and charismatic, but misguided first purchase! It spent nearly six months being shuffled around various locations of the house in order to be out of the way while we completed the main floor renovation around it. We followed that purchase with many more. Next up were the farmhouse sink, a second clawfoot tub, and the rest of the plumbing fixtures.  We also purchased all of our window, door and cabinet hardware from them, as well as our porch light fixtures and most of our indoor fixtures as well. 

We stopped by the store again recently - here are a few photos from the visit. 

Although we didn't get the brackets for our kitchen shelves from them, they do have a wonderful selection.  

Here's our family portrait! 

I love their selection of antique hardware. You can read a post my friend Steve did at An Urban Cottage to learn an easy way to remove paint from hardware.

Here is Foley helping us with some research. She helped us a tremendous amount during our renovation. 

I fell in love with this couch! 

I didn't dare get too close to this display while I was holding Margaret in my arms, but think that this may be a mixture of old and new. 

All of their reproduction shades are displayed on this open shelf. For our kitchen light, we were able to fit one of these to an antique schoolhouse base that I'd had been saving for many years. 

The babies' favorite part of our visit was getting down to run around in this big open space. It's extra cute to us because this was the first day that Graham and Margaret were wearing big kid shoes. They were laughing up a storm as they toddled back and forth. 

Graham is trying out the Simpson door that inspired our exterior front doors. This display was actually very helpful because, as we learned from our renovation experience, it's quite common to have to order items without seeing them firsthand. So having a display to view major items like windows and doors was very helpful and eased pre-order jitters significantly. 

Margaret is making sure to check prices...note, new shoes! 

Here is Margaret inspecting the Marvin windows, which are what we used throughout our house. 

Apparently, Rejuvenation was just acquired by Williams Sonoma and will be expanding beyond their Portland and Seattle stores. I think it's great because I admire their ethic of recycling original and classic house parts. But I also admire that they inspire people to restore their old homes through their great reproduction line. 

Soon I'll tell you what brought us to the store! We are indeed working on a little project this spring...details to follow. 

A New Orchid to Love

This orchid has come home to live with us. 

I'm crossing my fingers that those lovely closed buds open up into blossoms. 

I would love to find out who makes these beautiful nest-like containers. 

They are the perfect compliment to the orchid. 

Our little orchid is enjoying the wonderful view from the mantle.

I really do think I heard her giggle while watching the babies. 

xoxo

Note: our fireplace is not in use right now. 

 We needed a barricade as all of the toys in the room were somehow finding their way over the gate and into the fireplace. ; )

My Grandmother

I've spoken a lot about my Grandmother on my blog so I thought it was about time I introduced her. My Grandmother was very, very dear to me, and was the only Grandmother I ever knew.  

Yesterday was her birthday, a day on which I find myself reflecting more than usual on the profound influence she had on my life. When I was a little girl, she nourished me with her unconditional love and adoration. As I grew to be an adult, she was a voice of strength, wisdom and love. Always love. 

In the photograph above, she stands by her beloved rose garden at her home in the hills of Studio City, California. 

My Grandmother was my father's mother. He was her only child, so my brother and I experienced the honor of being her only grandchildren. She lived as a widow for the last thirty years of her life after her husband, our Grandfather, passed away in his sixties.  

When I was around ten years old, I started to leave her little love notes each time we visited. I would slip away at the end of the evening before we headed home and would sit down at her desk to write some words of adoration for her to find after we left. This became a tradition of ours. 

These handwritten notes eventually grew into long letters when I moved to Maine to go to college. And therein began our love affair of writing long letters to each other. Our long distance correspondance lasted for over a decade through my college years, after graduation, during my time in England, and continued after I returned to Maine to live for the subsequent seven years. 

My Grandmother had severe hearing impairment. She struggled with hearing her entire life, and I know that it affected her deeply in many ways. She told me that when she was young, she wore a large, battery-operated device with headphones in order to help her communicate verbally. By the time I was born, hearing devices had improved, so she was able to hear better with the use of hearing aids. But her hearing was a constant struggle for her, especially in the latter days of her life 

Despite her hearing impairment, she graduated from UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) where she earned a degree in business. For her to graduate from UCLA despite a hearing impairment, and as a young woman in the 1930s, was quite an accomplishment which must have required incredible determination and patience. While she was at UCLA, she also gained a penchant for college athletics - she was a devoted UCLA Bruins football fan for all of her days!

She used to amaze my brother and I with her stories of walking through the long rows of the cornfields that she passed between her family home in the Hollywood Hills and the campus. That was incredible to imagine when we were kids in the 1970s and 80s. 

She suffered from dimentia during the last ten or so years of her life. This was hard for all of us. But for all of the short term memory that alluded her, she was given the gift of absolute clarity in recollections of her youth. She loved telling stories about growing up with her parents and all of the things that they did together. It was wonderful to witness because it was obviously a very happy time in her life. And ironically, I think reliving her role as her parents' only child was comforting for her as she grappled with the vulnerability of her memory loss and aging. 

The last time I saw my Grandmother, Mike and I were standing in her bedroom at her home in the hills. She was being attended to by a nurse by that time. We stopped by for a quick visit on our way out of town after visiting for the Christmas holiday. She looked at me standing next to my new husband Mike and said, "Oh my darling, you look so grown up standing there." 

She passed away that following spring at the age of ninety three. She lived a long and wonderful life but I miss her so.

When my mom and I were closing up her estate, I came across several large three ring binders tucked safely away in her closet. I took one out and sat on the bed to look at it. What I saw took my breath away. Resting in little protective plastic sleeves were all of the letters, photographs and postcards that I had sent to her over the the course of our correspondance, including those first little love notes I left for her when I was a little girl. 

These items that were accumulated over many years were the story of my life, and she held it so very dear. I don't think I've ever felt such utter adoration and love in my entire life. She gave me the most wonderful gift and I will never forget it. 

Yesterday, I went through some of her old letters. It's been about seven years now since she passed and as I read her words once again I was reminded of how beautiful and special she was. Her letters were so lovely. She made the most ordinary things in life sound like poetry. 

I will cherish her words forever. 

Her name was Margaret. 

Pigtails

I cannot believe it but my baby girl is wearing pig tails.

She looks like a little girl now but she'll always be my little baby. 

xoxo

Pink Tulips

I brought home our first bouquet of tulips for the season. 

Happy Weekend Dear Friends

Butterfly Dreams

We hung a garland of Monarch butterflies over Graham's crib and he loves them. 

Their glowing orange wings are a-flutter over sweet baby dreams. 

The nursery has evolved into Graham's room for the most part, where he sleeps at night and during his naps. Margaret is still sleeping in the crib upstairs. We're never really in here otherwise, except to change diapers on the changing table and to get clothes from the armoire. 

All of their toys are in the living room because it's more centrally located and also much bigger to explore - and they are exploring. Both are now walking and it is absolutely adorable. They are keeping me on my toes!  

Here are a few noisy friends of ours...

What's a monkey say? Ooh-ooh-ooh....Ahh-ahh-ahh

What's an owl say? Whoooo - Whoooo

xo

Down the Road in Late Winter

At this time of year, as quickly as the snow comes...it goes. We've had a couple of glorious days recently that have felt tantalizingly like spring, with that perfect combination of new warmth and lingering chill, and just a little bit of a sweet fragrance in the air. 

Along one of the roads to our house, the fruit trees are still sleeping, with cherries to the left and pears to the right. It won't be long before they show signs of awakening. In just over a month, the valley will be resplendent with white-pink blossoms, a sure sign of spring and one of our favorite times of year.

Mt. Adams in southern Washington is the mountain that we see from our property. Some days it feels like it is right there. It is, however, across the Columbia River from us here in Oregon. 

Healthy Baby

As I mentioned in my post A Green Nursery, we have been passionate about creating the most healthy environment for our babies that we can. This includes everything from what they eat, to the toys that they play with. 

However, we've found that despite our dedication, it can be quite challenging to navigate through all of the research on what is safe for baby in order to make sound decisions. From the beginning, for example, I made a point to avoid products that have chemical flame retardants applied to them. I had heard how the PBDEs used as flame retardants were found on everything from mattresses, to furniture, to pajamas, and even toys. 

So my search began and I heard about the non-profit web resource Healthy Stuff. They are an advocacy group that conducts testing on various toxins like lead, bromine (chemical flame retardant), arsenic, mercury and chlorine - yes, all of these chemicals are readily found on children's products. On their website, you can search products by brand or type of toy to obtain the corresponding test results. 

It was a relief to finally have found some guidance on baby products. But is was also a sobering reminder that we have to work really hard to make sure that the baby products we bring into our home are indeed safe. 

The Healthy Stuff web site helped me pick out our car seats and to help determine which toys I could buy with peace of mind. It was reassuring, because everything (and I mean everything!) seems to find it's way into the babies mouths. 

I was recently introduced to another wonderful online resource when I asked our local toy store if a fabric book was free of flame retardants. The owner told me about the SafBaby web site which I've found it to be an invaluable resource. This article on clean toy manufacturers was particularly helpful. 

I wanted to pass along these resources because I wish I had known about them from the start, but also because I think the best resources are often found through word of mouth. I would love to from you about your favorite sources for healthy baby products. 

By using resources such as these and also by shopping at stores that have green toys readily available, we've managed to find a nice selection of toys for the babies. But it is a challenge and it takes effort to seek out alternatives that we're comfortable with. Sometimes that feels like enough, and sometimes it doesn't completely. For instance, plastics are a major component of the toys that are available. As a result of the well-documented concerns regarding plastics and health, we have shifted to be a primarily plastic-free household. 

Even so, there are many toys in our home that are made from BPA-, PVC- and Phthalate-free plastics. Because these targeted culprits have been removed from these toys we've decided to use them, balancing our concerns with the fact that they provide a great play and learning resource for the kids. But at the end of the day they're still plastic which always leaves me with some small lingering concern (that seems unavoidable).

So you do the best that you can. I hope that these resources are useful and help 

give you peace of mind. 

Magnolia Blossoms

I brought home a bunch of magnolia branches on our last trip into Portland. They already had beautiful pink buds, which the florist thought would soon open as blossoms. But either from the trip home, or because I didn't clip the ends sufficiently before I put them in water, only a few of the buds opened fully into their sweet blossoms. 

As you can see, I take many of these closeup pictures on our kitchen shelf. The window provides good lighting on these grey winter days. But also, I can multi-task as the babies have their snack and watch me take photos. I'm sure that one day they'll lose this curiosity...but for now, they seem to enjoy watching mama with her clicking toy. 

Snow Day

On mornings like these, there is perhaps no one as excited as my resident 

Wisconsin native: Hubby Mike. 

Here is bundled up baby Margaret... 

And a bundled baby Graham. 

Ready to go, here they are loaded up in their chariot, which is a baby trailer on skiis. 

Mike usually pulls them while skiing, but this morning they just went for a stroll around the property.