14 December 2023
Today is my mom’s birthday, so Happy Birthday Mom! (it will be belated by the time this gets posted). These cute crocheted poinsettias are her work, she's a crochet maniac!
It’s been cold and WINDY! Yesterday we had sustained 20 mph winds. The old farm was very windy as well. We don’t have any data to compare, but looking back I do feel like we had the wild and comforting shelter of the woodlots to bear the brunt of some of the wind. Of course, when you live in the woods and it’s very windy it is LOUD all the time - like scary loud. Like you would be fully eaten by the bear before you ever heard it coming. Just one of the terrifying scenarios I thought about while caring for my delicious flock of prey animals in the pitch darkness. Here at The New Farm we only have hedgerows and they definitely act as a windbreak, but it feels like the wind moves west to east across the property completely unhindered, blowing all of the tears from my eyeballs twice a day.
There is a LOT going on in my brain these days regarding projects in the house. The first thing is the list of house projects that we ended abruptly once the weather cleared in the spring so we could get the farm projects going. I need to finish those asap! I will definitely post about those as the work gets going after the holidays.
The thing that is in the front of my mind is the ballroom project. I fully understand the insanity of casually mentioning that I need 3 bolts of upholstery fabric to cover the chairs in my home ballroom, so I don’t usually. However, this is going to be a big project and I was going to have to share it sooner or later.
This house is set up for entertaining large groups. The previous owners had a very large family by today’s standards so I imagine that even if each child invited one friend over, they would need a game room the size of an airport hangar. They called this room the game room and they had an impressive collection of games tables. It must have been super fun to grow up with that. We love to entertain and I would love to host events here as part of my ‘retirement’ plan. I haven’t done anything legally about this hope/plan, so if you work for the town, don’t come for me to say we are in a ‘no party’ zone. We did have a pajama ball with all of our friends last year wearing jammies and eating obscene amounts of cheese and we hope to have many more in the future, but it’s off the calendar this year for an important renovation.
2024 is our 20th year of marriage and we are hosting an anniversary party to celebrate!!
Anyway, we already had a million tables and chairs when we moved here and we did have a wonderful music and dancing event here in June, but since then we have acquired more tables and chairs thanks to the Facebook marketplace and we can now feed 60 people for seated dining!! Look - if you eat chips and dip while at a table - it's still technically seated dining.
The chairs are all different which is a look that I like depending on the situation, but once the ballroom is redecorated it’s going to be WAY too fancy for the land of misfit chairs, so I need to spice them up. I’ve talked on the blog here before about my definite old lady style - or at the very least strongly American Traditional / Maximalist (clearly someone’s been watching too many interior decor YouTube videos). Anyway, my sister in law reminded me that this is very much not everyone’s style, but this is the goal for all of the chairs - glossy black with this gorgeous chinoiserie upholstery. Since we plan for many multi-course meals with much conversation and laughter, I’m planning to upholster all of the chairs. Even though it probably wouldn’t be an issue for me, this is my cushy offering to the more bony bummed people of the world. I may have said negative things about you in the past, but that was mainly out of jealousy and I really do have love for everyone regardless of whether they ‘struggle to keep weight on’.
What do you think? “OMG, I would die to put my bum on those chairs!”? Or, “she’s really lost it this time”. I guess both answers aren't mutually exclusive, but I still want to know!