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Home; What makes your home your home?
Topic Started: Dec 16 2007, 04:10 AM (163 Views)
Inky
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Thai
What personal touches make your home your home?

I've always kept a pretty minimal house, with books and plants providing most of the personality. However, due partly to various coinciding events, I've been in a nesting mode lately and want to make my house pretty, make it mine. I'm looking to paint several walls (mural on one, just a soft green colorwash on others) and maybe drape fabric strategically, as well as finally busting out some art projects that have been collecting dust so I can have something to put on the expanse of wall.

Bex mentioned buying a peacock chair, which I thought was pretty cool. What beautiful, comfortable, or useful things does your home have that makes it yours?
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Regullus
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Reliant
The coolest thing we probably have is a rocket shaped tent with flames surrounding the base in the living room. The only reason we have it is my mother got it for my daughter but it is very nifty. It's fun to sit in. Tents are nice but probably not for everyone.

I like photos, lamps as opposed to ceiling light and lots of pillows on a bed.

With the paintings, art work, draped fabrics, you're on the right path.
tempus_teapot
 
I'd like to add that at this point I have taken my Spider Jerusalem action figure and tied his wrist to my Cassidy (from Preacher) action figure just so I can work out which positions are feasible with them and which aren't.

Read that and weep, internet. Weep!

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Inky
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Thai
Argh, yes, I hate overhead lighting inside! I've never been able to get that through to roommates.
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Bex
puppet dictator
Oh, I am a nester. A lot of that is with the books and the music, and the plants and the animals, but I've always surrounded myself with stuff to... please the senses I guess.

I have colourful dishes, mix and match in a couple of patterns. Gorgeous heavy purple goblets that we use for both wine and orange juice. Most of the coffee mugs are thrift store finds of a particular Korean stoneware - they're weighty and have a pleasing curvaceous shape. The current kettle is lime green.

A lot of our furniture was built or refinished by my late grandfather, so that's pretty special.

I enjoy an eclectic look, so the plants and assorted useable glassware and such are mixed with garage sale and eBay finds, and stuff that I've made or altered. Hmm... I've got a ceramic fox sculpture from high school art class (still very pleased with how the glazing came out), a fish bowl that I filled with plastic aquarium plants and toy fish (it looks cool), and a trophy that I rescued from the trash and refitted with a plaque declaring "world-class bullshitter" (it's a man at a podium, really nice marble base too).

The art on the walls is a mix of prints people have given us (mostly wildlife) and more thrift store finds we liked. I framed a series of greeting cards of North American wildlife, very stylized black line drawings. They look really nice together, and the frames were just a cheap IKEA purchase. The cards themselves cost a dollar for six, because I found them in... a thrift store. Yup. My favorite picture is something I got from my paternal grandmother when they moved out of their old house. It's three kings, or men wearing crowns at the very least, with a large number of cats at their feet. I've always found it fascinating.

All of J's musical instruments make this place as much his as mine, I should hope. They certainly make him present even when he's not.

I could go on. I don't really decorate in the sense of consciously thinking about how things will match in a room, but it tends to all work anyway.
I belong to one of those families that does not speak to or see its members as often as we should,
but if someone needed anyone to fall on a sword for her, there would be a queue waiting to commit the deed.
-Min Jin Lee
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lara
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Kopi Luwak
My family, and you can't have them.

I'm not much of a decorator. Back in university, I was into posters - couldn't live without my London Calling and Ghandi posters on the wall.

I'd like to get the prints my mom-in-law is "holding" (well, her wall is holding) for us to put on our big blank walls. They're yellow to brown paintings of the bluffs near Gordon's childhood home in the Okanagan Valley in B.C.

I like having red accents. We have red curtains in our living room. I like colour. We have a plum-coloured couch. I want to paint our living room yellow.

I think the best homes have big windows looking out at green, and I'm partial to wood. The house I grew up in was oak, oak, oak. Lovely. (Turn-of-the-century Victorian-inspired middle-class home.)
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Madame-Charl...s_i1511456_.htm

I have never been able to find out what her name was. :(
We have some beautiful Monet prints, blues and golds and greens, but she's my favourite. I like her eye brows.

Most of the decorative things in my house and garden are gifts. Every now and again I go out and buy a new table runner or cushion cover or plant pot just so I feel like I am an active participant in the decoration of my house. :lol:



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Inky
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Thai
That's gorgeous, Eral! Reminds me of some of Klimt's portraits.

I will grudgingly acknowledge that someone taking someone else's name makes paperwork a lot easier, but I'm glad that women being referred to as "Mrs. Bob Stone" is no longer common.
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
I am just discovering Klimt. So beautiful. A different feel to the Impressionists- still shimmering, but detailed.

A friend of mine has "The Kiss" in the hallway outside her toilet. The last time I was at her house I was accused by the other guests of having some sort of bowel complaint. Never put a really beautiful print outside the loo if you only have one (loo) in the house. It causes grief. :lol:
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Krazy
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I haz powah!
Too many computers in one corner of the room. 3 at the moment. (At one point, and it's no lie I had 6)

I don't really care for pictures, photos, prints etc. I have a few plants, because they refuse to die and that's about it, might have something to do with the periodic watering, I dunno.
"Well, ‘course dis one’s betta! It’s lotz ‘eavier, and gots dem spikey bitz on de ends. "
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Guest
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Yeah, I've got a print of The Kiss that a dear friend gave me. It's cropped a bit, but painted over for texture and glitter, and has a huge black and bronze frame. It's quite striking.
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lara
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Inky
Dec 17 2007, 01:21 AM
That's gorgeous, Eral! Reminds me of some of Klimt's portraits.

I will grudgingly acknowledge that someone taking someone else's name makes paperwork a lot easier, but I'm glad that women being referred to as "Mrs. Bob Stone" is no longer common.

Arg. Got the annual postcard to "The Gordon MacGregors" from the mil today. I think last year it was Mr. and Mrs. Gordon MacGregor. I don't mind the MacGregor part, but I am not Gordon. (Although legally I am not, I do sometimes call myself Lara MacGregor for simplicity's sake - I consider it one of my family names.)

The card is obviously not for me.
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
Is your mother-in-law unable to remember your name? <_<
Is she just relentlessly stuck in the fifties, or having a :ld: at you?

re: computers as a decorating theme - :rolleyes: Mr.FPS recently decided that the zillion old monitors, leads, motherboards, video cards and various bits cluttering up his study are not a good look. He tidied up a treat. His study looks terrific now, because they're all on the landing or in the bedroom. :banghead:

I think one of the real features of any home is how much mess there is. The chair as wardrobe - very common. My sister doesn't like clothes-horse/rails. She just drops the clean wet clothes over the heating vents. :blink: She stayed with my dad recently - not a man to whom the word 'tidy' is a lodestar, shall we say- and he is still complaining about the trail of stuff all over the house. She'll take it away eventually. :fb:
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Bex
puppet dictator
Eral
Dec 17 2007, 07:42 PM
Is your mother-in-law unable to remember your name? <_<

Mine is. Actually, her excuse is that she can't spell my surname. (It's eight fucking letters long. I've been able to spell it since the first grade.)

re: mess
Yes. There is mess. In a while, there should be slightly less.
I belong to one of those families that does not speak to or see its members as often as we should,
but if someone needed anyone to fall on a sword for her, there would be a queue waiting to commit the deed.
-Min Jin Lee
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lara
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Kopi Luwak
Eral
Dec 18 2007, 02:42 AM
Is your mother-in-law unable to remember your name? <_<
Is she just relentlessly stuck in the fifties, or having a :ld: at you?

I'd say definitely :ld:

This is also the woman for whom I chose a silver pattern, and now I get a piece of cutlery for every Christmas and birthday.

I suspect she is unhappy because I refuse to do Christmas cards.
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
Every Christmas and b'day? :tp:
Nothing like a gift that is completely unrelated to your needs or whims to let you know they disapprove on some level. :rolleyes:

My family home is full of a huge range of stuff - from exquisitely beautiful pieces of porcelain and crystal, to the most hideous kitsch. We're talking pictures of past Popes alongside Waterford crystal, here. Beautiful Doulton vases and tea cups, next to Belleek china teapots that have been tortured into shapes of sea shells and are probably very valuable, too bad they're hideous. What mum - a woman of superlative dress sense but no taste in objet d'art :lol: - was thinking when she acquired it all, I don't know. My dad keeps threatening to share it all out among us.
I live in fear of having to find a place for the sea-shell shaped teapot.
Although, it would always remind me pleasantly of ma. :xmas:


*I had to edit this post: I used the same smiley twice. :faint:
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lara
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In the mil's defence, she is 84 and shopping is difficult after you've had two knees replaced.

Thinking about it, I suspect the "Mrs. Gordon" is also a way of letting me know that I'm not a real MacGregor. In my family, in-laws are, upon marriage, treated as equal to children. In his, definitely not.

As I pointed out to my hubby after my fil's funeral (he and his sibs sat with mom in front pew, no thought they might need their spouses, too), I am as much MacGregor as she. He seemed startled to realize the truth of that.
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
Maybe your m-i-l is suffering from the side-effects of son-worship? "My son is the best person in the world" can mean that fairly high standards are required for spouses. :rolleyes:

Two of my sisters have in-laws who regard them as pseudo family members. :huh: "And this is D's wife" was a common introduction in the early years of the marriage of my oldest sister - note the lack of her actual name? Very subtle.
My other sister's in-laws do things like organise family dinners for "just the family, the siblings." They are still deciding whether her children are real members of their family. :blink:

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lara
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Kopi Luwak
See, in my family, if any of us organized a dinner for "just the family, the siblings" - scratch that, the siblings aren't "the family." If anyone organized a dinner for just "the siblings," that would mean: Get a babysitter for the kids. No one would even consider the possibility that my husband is not also a sibling. We don't use the term "in-law" very often. In fact, I have troubles describing my brother's in-laws and my sister's in-laws because the words are so foreign to me. I want to say something silly like "my sister's parents" when I talk about my brother's wife's parents. (And yes, I know all the in-laws - that's what I call the people who are my siblings' in-laws in my head - except the family in Germany.)

And yes, there is definitely some son worship going on, but she obviously finds it difficult, because she values me highly for being the decent woman who finally recognized her son's worth. (He spent many, many years as a semi-employed pothead and really, women just don't see them as the marrying type. I met him during that time and wasn't interested, to tell the truth. Luckily, I'd forgotten that when I met him the next time, and he was working and smoking much less pot.) I'm fairly certain she knows that until the recent raise, I made more money than he makes and she even likes my family, so she is very pleased that someone worthwhile has validated her feelings about her son. But she also knows that no one is worthy of her son, so... And then, to top things off, she knows that she can only push him so far and he'll tell her to bugger off, I'm his wife. Plus I gather she has gathered that I know my power is that in the end, it doesn't really matter what she thinks.

So you see, I make her life difficult, but mostly she likes me and respects that there are boundaries. Ergo no more than the occasional :ld:

Well, Inky, your home thread has been considerably hijacked.
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Bex
puppet dictator
One of the reasons my home is my home is because my mother-in-law is not permitted to clean anything in it, no matter how much she whines or insists it would be "helping."

Back on track.
I belong to one of those families that does not speak to or see its members as often as we should,
but if someone needed anyone to fall on a sword for her, there would be a queue waiting to commit the deed.
-Min Jin Lee
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Regullus
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Reliant
Well, just one more off the original topic.

My friend's sister has been married to her husband for years. They have two nice daughters. For years she was the primary breadwinner. From what I can see, they're two nice people who have been together amicably for years.

Recently, her brother-in-law's wife drinks during family social events and lights into my friend's sister. According to the s-i-l, my friend's sister is a non-supportive wife, a terrible mother, has poor morals, etc., etc. Why? I don't know. The weirder thing about all of it is nobody says boo to the sister-in-law. The women's husband just sighs resignedly and gets her coat.

My friend's sister has solved this by nixing any more family get togethers involving the vituperative sister in law.

Luckily for me I don't have to see the monstrous in-law, the ones I see are very easy to get along with and they love Lily.

Frank and my mother don't have the best relationship. If they see each other it's for minutes at a time or on the telephone. If she needed help, he'd come and help her - if it was an emergency. It works. :lol:

Sometimes they inform me that they don't like each other. "Yes, I know," I say. :rolleyes: Really, as if I hadn't noticed. :titter:


tempus_teapot
 
I'd like to add that at this point I have taken my Spider Jerusalem action figure and tied his wrist to my Cassidy (from Preacher) action figure just so I can work out which positions are feasible with them and which aren't.

Read that and weep, internet. Weep!

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Eral
Kopi Luwak
We didn't even get off the first page before detouring. :redface:

How validating for your friend's sister that no-one spoke in her defense. :blink: Maybe it was one of those rabbit in the headlight moments - the social contract has been broken and nobody knows how to behave. The husband's actions suggest that her behaviour isn't a one-off.
Being freed from the obligation to be nice to the s-i-l must be nice. My younger sister now doesn't have to see her m-i-l after said m-i-l stopped hinting she didn't think my sister was good enough for her expensively educated son, and came out and said it, adding a few pithy remarks about my parents being from the bog for good measure. :mercy:

Quote:
 
Sometimes they inform me that they don't like each other.
:rolleyes: I really hate it when Mr.FPS does that. (He dislikes the princess ways of some of my sisters.) Getting it off his chest makes him feel better. :lol:

:off:

All this talk of signature decorating is leading me to do some work in my garden. Time to re-arrange the pots. :ph43r:
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