The joy of nesting

Before you get the wrong idea (oops, some of you already have), this has nothing to do with babies ("I don't know nothin' bout birthin' no babies, Miss Scarlett!"). People, please! :) When I say nesting, I mean making your house a home--filling it with things that you love, painting it, decorating it, mixing old things with new things--making it "you."

Until I moved into my current home this January, I had lived in rental apartments my entire life--I even grew up in one. I think that many folks are so driven to own their own home in early adulthood because they grew up in a house and they think of it as something you are supposed to do when you grow up. It's not that I wouldn't have liked to have owned a home at a younger age; but being single and living in a major metropolitan area where real estate was mind-blowingly expensive, a home that I would want and where I would want to live just was not within my financial grasp, even though I made a pretty good living.

Being a rule-following kind of gal, when my apartment lease said "No painting.", I didn't paint. Hence, my blog post on Labor Day about learning to paint a wall at age 55. A friend asked me "Why do you want to paint your bedroom? Do you not like white walls?" And my answer is that I forcibly lived with white walls my entire adult life; and, now that I own my own home and I can do with it what I damned well please (within limits), I want something other than white walls.

To update those who read that Labor Day post (The joy of independence), I did ask my friends for help in finishing the bedroom painting and it is now done. Mike is so experienced that he painted the whole darned room (2 coats) in the time it took me to tape, trim and paint just the alcove portion of the room (1 coat). I still helped--well, he may not have thought of it as helping, to be absolutely honest, but I wanted to be a part of the experience. I cut in around all the switchplates and did some of the painting around windows/doors/corners.

So once the bedroom paint was dry, I put all the furniture back, hung some new art and mirrors and did some decorating. Below is what the "new" bedroom looks like. Yea, I know, it still sorta looks like white walls, but it isn't. The color didn't come out exactly as shown on the paint card, but at least it's warmer than white walls. I was going for a light-but-rich cream color. It looks like that in some light, but in other light has more of a pink undertone to it.







I have been furnishing and decorating my place on and off for nearly the entire 8 months that I've lived here. It has been a true pleasure and so much fun. I watch for the sales and I do a little bit at a time to keep the financial expenditures under control (I'm living on a pension now, after all). This recent nesting process reminds me how passionate I was about interior design/ decorating in my 20s, when I got one of those mail order degrees in the subject. I never had the confidence at that time to actually get a job doing it, or strike out on my own doing it, but now I'm thinking "Hey...I'm not so bad at this."

Sometimes our passion for something and our confidence to take it somewhere don't coincide at the same time in our life. That's okay. All I know is that I'm having a ball doing it now!

To quote my friend Pam, "Nests are best!" Happy nesting from my nest to yours (with apologies to Paula Deen).

The joy of independence

My 75-year-old mother has come to the realization that she shouldn’t do everything for herself (like being up on a tall ladder washing her house). Being that my siblings and I live hundreds of miles away, the fact that she has acknowledged the need for occasional assistance is of great comfort to us.

I understand my mother’s desire to be independent, though, because I am the same way. Like my mother, I have lived alone for many years; until just the past few years, I rarely asked for help with anything, even though I am barely 4’6”and am not physically able to move, carry or reach a lot of things by myself.

When I was in my 20s and 30s, I refused to ask for help—I was Miss Independence. I did things by myself that I shouldn’t have done—things that my back aches just thinking about now. I remember buying my first microwave (back when they were new technology and half the size of my tiny kitchen). I moved that box (which was much larger than the microwave due to the packaging) from the car, up the stairs, into and through my apartment, unpacked it, and then hefted it up onto the kitchen counter. That could have been accomplished in 5 minutes if I'd asked for help; but it took me forever to go one painstaking inch at a time because the box was not only very heavy but way beyond the reach of my tiny arms to carry.

This past Monday—Labor Day, appropriately—Miss Independence re-emerged. I decided it was time that I learn to paint—walls. I have two close friends who live nearby and are very good at interior painting; one of them, in fact, painted my master bath for me. But I wanted to see if I could do this by myself. Armed with an 8-foot ladder for my 9-foot ceilings, I began in a small alcove that leads to the bathroom. I did all the taping first and then the edging and then the painting. It took me hours just to do the alcove, esp. since the paint roller pan only fit my ladder in a few locations, so I couldn't move it to the level where I was painting and had to reach through the ladder to load my roller/brush. When I finally descended the ladder for the last of what felt like hundreds of times that day, my feet ached horribly, my neck was stiff and I was spent.

The difference between Miss Independence at 25 and at 55 is that the 55-year-old can admit when she’s beat. I’m going to ask my friends for their help to paint the rest of the bedroom. Did I fail? Oh no. The joy inside me when I lay in bed Monday night looking at the newly-painted alcove was so full-to-bursting that it far overcomes any feeling of failure. Miss Independence just wanted to see if she could do it—and she did. The fact that she didn’t do it all by herself is of no importance. The fact that she tried when she was afraid to try (and fail) is huge.