Mr. Jack O'Lantern

The thing with jack-o-lanterns is that they only last about a day or so. I like to enjoy them the whole month of October. So years ago I bought one of those "funkins" that look a LOT like the real thing. I liked the classic face on it, a good mix of happy and menacing at the same time. It had a light at the bottom, like a Christmas tree light only this one was clear. I didn't love that you could see the light inside the pumpkin and therefore see that it wasn't real. I had a brainstorm: glue some parchment paper on the inside of the pumpkin in the shapes of the face. It has a nice glow, you don't see the lightbulb, and it "lasts" a whole month! Every year out comes Mr. Jack O'Lantern to add a bit of whimsy and holiday cheer to the living room. He's particularly spooky when all the lights are off, it's very John Carpenter.

"The Autumn leaves caress my window..."

...the Autumn leaves of red and gold."
A great old standard of the American Songbook covered by countless artists...it reminds me of this perfect day in Ye Olde Sag Harbor.
I took this picture a couple of weeks ago because I wanted a Fall-like background photo for the blog, just a few scattered objects I picked up on a walk back from town, played out on the 'new' kitchen island table.  I'm posting it here unobscured in case you want to Pin it for yourself.

And here's the song to put you in that Autumnal state o' mind, listen to it here.

Or here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkQaFJjhsek

Diamonds are a boy's best friend

A while back I replaced the windows in the front of the house, the four that made up the bay window. They were totally shot, a couple wouldn't even close properly. I wanted to do upper panes and a friend of mine told me that it was "very East Hampton" to do diamond shaped panes. I like the idea...and so it happened. I liked the way that it mimicked the diamond pattern of the rail above the front screened-in porch too, I had a quasi-design motif going even though this house was turning into a hodgepodge of renovation add-ons.
Here's the bay window from the outside...

The bay window.

and here it is from the inside, picture is kinda dark but you get the idea...

Inside looking out.

The diamond pattern up above on the porch railing.

So then the diamond idea kept growing.
One day I was over at my friend Steve's house when he was doing a major renovation. A winter pipe had burst and had destroyed his kitchen and dining room with water damage. He had two window paned doors that he was tossing out that enclosed a closet in the dining room. They were just sitting outside on his porch. "What are you going to do with those doors?"
"Nothing. You want 'em?"
"Sure! I'll take one of them. I know just what to do with it."
I thought it would make a good room divider between my fireplace room (the living room) and the kitchen. It would act like a screen but it would allow light to come through. You wouldn't feel like you were sitting right next to the dishwasher when you sat in that room.
And best of all? The panes on the door were in a DIAMOND PATTERN. Perfect. The decorating theme continued.
I had my carpenter Zeb install it nicely, he cut it down to size--it was too tall to fit--and he put molding all around the edges to secure it.
I love how it turned out...

The permanent 'screen' between the living room & kitchen.

Another day I was driving around Sag Harbor and as is the practice in our little town, someone had
put a pile of stuff on their front lawn with a "FREE" sign on it. In the pile was a wooden window that I spotted with my eagle eye and, you guessed it, it had DIAMOND panes. I screeched to a halt, grabbed that thing and put it in my SUV. I later painted it a dark cranberry color, the color of the front door and the stairwell and it sits leaning up against the wall next to the fireplace. I'm not sure what statement I'm going for with it, but it's got those diamonds in it so it makes me smile.

The window pane 'object d'art'

Not only does this old New Yorker cover look like the Hamptons but it's from 1949, the year my house was built!

The Halloween cat

I was looking out the dining room window when I spotted a mysterious cat sitting on the retaining wall in the backyard. It was a big cat. Gray. I wanted to take a picture of it but I just knew that by the time I went to grab my iPhone it would have scurried off. But it didn't. The way it was steadfastly sitting there staring intently at the house was frankly unnerving...and a little spooky.

Mr. Cat

What was he staring at?

I'm not a cat person but they always seem to like me. I've been told animals and children like people with 'old souls' so I must be one of those types as I'm always the one with the kid or the animal sitting in my lap. Especially cats. Even when people say "Oh, she's not friendly at all, she'll ignore you", cut to that damn feline crawling all over me. So the big gray one kept staring right at me as I snapped it's picture. Did it pick up my aura? Did it sense it was looking at the house of a friendly soul? I did see some tags, but usually you're familiar with a neighborhood cat. Not this one. And of course it happened right before the spookiest holiday of the year. At least it wasn't black. That would have sent me over the edge.

Aerial view of Sag Harbor

I'm right there on Hamilton!

Island in the stream

I've been thinking about getting a kitchen island for a while...but wasn't sure if it would really work in my kitchen's layout, if it would be too cramped.
So I had a brainstorm: rather than chance it by buying something new and then finding out it was a bad idea, I realized I had this old farm table in the basement that was just gathering dust. Why not try it--at least temporarily--as the island?
So I hauled it upstairs and, lo and behold, I think it kinda works. I'm getting used to it. We'll see if my patience holds up with having to work around it specially as I cook and clean, but for right now it does hold some extra things I don't need to clutter up the rest of the couter space.
Here's what it looks like...

Farm table as kitchen island

It's a nice place to put the cake stand, I like to feature baked goods in it when I have them. Also a good place for my bar board. I always keep fresh lemons at the ready for ice water or tea. There's also  a bowl of potatoes and a trivet (I'm always in need of a place to put a hot pot or pan).

A good catch-all space

It would help if it were a little less wide, but it shows me that if I like the idea of having an island I can look for something more narrow and know for sure that it will work.
I may wake up tomorrow and hate it but for now I'm digging it, stay tuned.

The media room

I call it 'the TV room'.
It's got a big comfy couch with a  chaise so I can stretch out and listen to music, watch movies on DVD (I have no cable connection at the house so no regular TV watching), or read a good book.
And the centerpiece is the floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves that also hold the flat screen TV and the multi CD player. Yes, I still play CD's, I'm a child of the 20th Century and I make no apologies for it.
These shelves were designed by my friend Steve who's an architect. He came to visit one weekend and I was lamenting the lack of bookshelves and a place for a flatscreen. He sketched this design out in a few minutes and did up the real technical plans a few days later. The wall behind the flatscreen is a 'false' wall, it hides all the cables...great thinking on his part. There are tons of DVD's and CD's in the cabinets and drawers at the bottom, as well as the Blu-ray disc player.

Steal from the best

I had a blank wall that needed something, some kind of art. I had four Pottery Barn frames, all alike, and I thought, "Well, I can do some artwork for these." If I grouped them in an arrangement I thought they'd fill the wall nicely.
But what kind of art?
I had some back issues of Elle Decor sitting around, I looked at the covers, and voila!, inspiration was staring me in the face. I copied the paintings that were on the covers for a couple of the 'artworks' and the grouping worked. My motto is: when in doubt, steal from he best. I mean if it's good enough for the cover of Elle Decor it's good enough for my cottage, right?
Here was the first cover...

Can you spot the crow picture?

and the crow drawing I copied.

This cover had an interesting Picasso-esque painting I liked...

and here's my forgery.

Here are the other two pieces, a hand and an abstract...

And here's the full grouping. The whole project took less than an hour...instant art!

Fall scene

Sag Harbor is enchanting this time of year, the leaves are falling, the air is brisk, and there are lovely touches of the season all around town.
Here's a nice little vignette I spotted outside Harbor Market where I had breakfast this morning (breakfast sandwich and coffee).

Autumn apple pie

Autumn is falling leaves, crisp weather...and apples. Which in my house means only one thing: apple pie! I like to try different recipes all the time. This one was adapted from a recipe that won the Iowa county fair in 2004. You can find it here. I haven't tasted it yet--it's still cooling--but I can tell you it made the house smell wonderful. Incidentally, those cutouts on the top of the pie are apples. My folks gave me a two-sided pie stencil once. On one side it has the apple cutouts and the other side has maple leaves...the next pie I make I'll use the other side and post a picture of it.

Summer me, winter me

Every other season my living room gets a facelift.
When the weather turns cooler (like now) and when it turns warmer, the pillows get alternated.
In the summer the pillows on the window seat and wingback chair  get off-white linen slipcases with red or tan trim. In the winter they get a heavy kilim and the wingback gets a deep cranberry velvet pillow.
There's an American flag pillow for the sofa in the Summer, a sort of Ralph Lauren inspired piece; the winter sofa gets a kilim. The sofa also gets a thick wool Woolrich Indian blanket in deep reds and browns to hang over the back. I curl up with it in front of the fire on cold days with a good book and a hot tea.
Heres a series of warm weather/cool weather 'outfits' for the room.

The window seat: linen with red and tan trim in Summer

Kilim for Winter

The wingback chair: linen for Summer

Red velvet for Winter

Leather sofa: American flag pillow for Summer

Kilim for Winter 

Striped wool throw for Winter too...cozy!

ps...yes, that's a Harvard sweatshirt on the window seat and, no, I did not attend Harvard...just a leftover memory of someone I used to know...

Hedging my bets

I finally had it with the front yard.
It was a disaster.
All the trees in the front of the house (a very large sycamore, two Japanese maples, a big yew, and a dogwood) had become so overgrown they had completely obliterated all sun from the front of the house. It was an all shade yard, which would be fine except that it was causing the privet in front of the house to get all scraggly and woody. Years ago it was a nice full, thick hedge that you couldn't see through. Now it was so sparse you could see right through it...what's the use of a privet hedge that you can see through?
And the small front yard was no longer able to grow grass. What was once two pools of soft green grass was now a patchy expanse of MOSS. That's how little sunshine got to that area.
I finally said 'enough'.
I had to take action.
So I said to Jayson, my yard guy, "2016 is going to be the year of the front yard and we're starting NOW." I decided we needed to give all the trees a major haircut. They needed to be severely pruned and cut back. Basically they needed to start all over, practically from scratch, especially the privet. I told Jayson to be brutal. Sometimes with yard plantings you have to be cruel to be kind. I even toyed with getting rid of the maples altogether but Jayson said if we took them way down (and keep them in check) they would turn into smaller bushes and not cast so much shade. I had him cut the dogwood away from then house, too many branches were touching the roofline and the railing on top of the screened-in porch.
We're having a professional tree surgeon come and take care of the sycamore. It's no small affair, I had it pruned once before. They come with a huge truck that has a basket on a hydraulic lift. I'm still waiting for the estimate on that, but in the meantime they tackled all the other trees and privet. It looks great and SO much light is hitting the front yard now, it'll be perfect come next Spring to kick things into high gear as they start filling out.
The two Japanese maples look the worst, but they needed it, now they're just some stumps! LOL.

The privet was trimmed WAY down. It had to be done so that it will grow back fuller.

The privet in front of the house and along the driveway; look how much sunlight come in now! 

The privet looking down the driveway and into the backyard, much more uniform.

And the yew is gone for good. It totally opens up the that side of the house. It was too big and woody, just not attractive anymore. Now it's gone, GONE!
I can't wait to see how it all looks next year!

Right side of the house, look at all the light!

Privet on right side of house...chopped!

The yew stump, it's gotta go, looking too Beverly Hillbillies right now,  LOL