Tuxedo buffet

There's something... dapper about how the buffet came out. The white and dark wood almost feels tuxedo-ish, and the knobs are like cufflinks. Maybe I'm the only one with that take, but, well, suffice it to say that I'm quite pleased with this fellow.

Still needs knobs, of course. I had a few Anthropologie mercury glass ones from last year's Christmas stocking that I tried out, and liked, and so then I waited until the day after Christmas, and found, low and behold, some beach ball-striped mercury glass knobs marked down to $2.21 apiece. So, that meant I could get eight of 'em for $17-something instead of ninety-six damn dollars. Which is what they would've been not-on-sale. Cripes.
So, those will be on their way shortly, and then we can call this puppy done. As I mentioned before, I used Benjamin Moore's SmartPrime primer, and their Cabinet Coat paint in a color called Acadia White on the painted parts. I can't say enough good things about that combination-- so durable, with such a nice professional sheen. And it hides the grain really well, too, which is nice on painted pieces. 
I still have some rearranging to do on the wall behind the buffet, as I bought three giant, heavy mirrors for up there-- all antique, all varying degrees of shabby-- and neglected to provision myself with super heavy-duty hanging cable. My plan is for a mirror "collage" with all different shapes and sizes on that wall. Someday.

And now that this little project and holidays are over, I'm ready to sit still for just a minute, put all the decorations away, and officially launch myself (and our whole house) into the official Big Kahuna, the Epic Kitchen Renovation of 2014. The kitchen we (I) have planned and dreamed and envisioned since we bought this place. The kitchen that involves taking down a wall (oh goody), doing a ton of electrical work, laying ceramic tile, casting our own concrete countertops (I think) and sliding the cabinets into place one at a time, as my dad, who is doing the work pro bono (+ materials) can squeeze in the time to finish them between, y'know, actually taking real jobs from real customers that write checks. 
I am on the edge of my seat with excitement and terror. I am spending lots of time scrutinizing graph paper. I will be back here Friday with a run-down of our new floor plan, design, etc. In the meantime, I'm going to try to find a sink. Wish me luck!
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In the moment

Oh, it was wonderful. So good, and so wonderful. Last year, I think I was in some kind of PTSD blur-- we'd just put down Diesel, two days prior-- and I didn't pre-prep enough, and I'd barely slept in two days... so last year was a little frantic and forced, to be honest. 
But this year, there was free, clear, smooth sailing right into the teeth of the flurry-time. All month, I set aside a few hours Thursday nights (during Patrick's band rehearsal) to bake cookies, or make mushroom pastries, or make pumpkin garlic knot dough. I made cranberry sauce and chocolate cake on my birthday. The day of, I prepped carrots and parsnips to roast in the morning, and reheated soup for a light lunch, and assembled a big kale salad with craisins and apple and toasted pumpkin seeds, and then I handed the kitchen over to Patrick for two hours, and he made the mashed potatoes! I sat with my feet up and a glass of wine! I watched Delmer open his presents like a professional, on the living room rug! That was my favorite part-- the interlude between the madness and the madness, with the big meal and the long evening still ahead. 
Also: it snowed gently, beautifully, just about all day long. Magic.

That long evening. One of the best of the year. Delmer bogarting the best part of the couch, Pete commandeering a lap, me succeeding in scolding my mom to stop cleaning and sit down!, all of us just baking by the fire and sipping our preferred sips and relaxing. 
And then, it was morning. A beautiful, bright, cold cold cold Christmas morning. 

I got up early, early, foggy from wine but needing to be a good hostess, and was so glad I did. I lit the fireplace and sat on the couch with everyone for a few more long, sweet hours. The best times are when the hours slow down and there's room for reminiscing. Time for being in the moment, just for a little bit, for thinking of the good old days, and telling over the stories that have been told for longer than I've been alive. 

Ah. Such a good Christmas. I hope it was for you and yours as well! 
Back Monday, with a buffet run-down. I did manage to get it done in time, just barely.
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Scenes

It's time for finishing touches-- on the house, the gift pile, the card list (there's always those two or three people who send you a card you didn't expect, notice that?) Finishing touches are my favorite part. Yesterday found me spray-painting weeds-- that's right-- and then playing with spray-painted weeds. Somehow it was one of my favorite things I've done this holiday season.
I was inspired by this gift-topper project, though I used actual dried weeds from my fields and garden, not natural floral stems. He-LLO, weeds are free. I used yarrow and Siberian iris seedpods and spirea and just plain old, regular runner-grass (not its technical name) plus some sprays of fake red berries I had, and some real multiflora rose hips, which I use just about every year. 

I made wreaths out of Virginia creeper vine I ripped from of the weeds, which was surprisingly easy. A new tradition, I think. 
When we lived in Binghamton, I used to gripe about how whenever you need something, in a city, the only option is to buy something. I hated that. I missed foraging, though I still managed to find spots to gather cedar and bittersweet and pinecones (on hikes!). But this is so much better. So much more space, more to explore, and lots and lots of natural resources-- weeds and twigs and vines and pinecones-- to create with.
Adding a little color, and a little sparkle, to those dead flowers and grasses was just the thing to make them a little more festive. I painted the iris pods gold, the yarrow silver, the spirea copper, and the grasses white. I brought in a little bit of white pine, too. Thoroughly enjoyable.

The baskets are all ready to go, packed with hot sauce and tomato sauce and peach salsa and pickles and homemade pasta and pesto and shortbread and chocolate-covered almonds. I had so much fun putting these together, and managed to stick, fairly faithfully, to my Plan for not buying much. That makes me super happy. Almost every year, Christmas gives me this great excuse to play with repurposed materials-- labels cut from catalog pages, secondhand baskets, 12-pack boxes covered with wrapping paper to serve as baskets when I couldn't find enough at the thrift store, ribbon and wrapping paper I save like a fiend. I'm still using up scraps of ribbon from our wedding, five years ago. It's such a fun, crafty holiday, and I'm glad I started bringing in more natural materials this year-- more colors and textures to add to my palette. Sad it's all going to be over soon-- SIGH-- but until Tuesday, I'm just going to slow down (and clean) and relax (and clean) and absorb as much cheer and brightness as I can. (And clean!) I hope you can afford to take a little time to do the same!
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Crunch time

What, you were thinking I would be done by now?! No way. I only got to primer yesterday, not even real paint, but it's a start. Before that, I had a very proud moment of ingenuity (I love proud moments of ingenuity) when I realized the bottom drawer wouldn't fit in the drawer-space not because it was warped, but because someone long ago had made a half-assed repair (I can only assume), nailing in that little upright piece that goes between the two doors. SO! I flipped the thing onto its head, wrenched out the (puny, smashed) nails, and drove in a nice big screw. Problem solved. Drawer fits. 
Sigh. It's the little things, isn't it? Anyway, today it will get coat 1 of paint, and tomorrow coat 2, and maybe Friday I'll decide it needs a coat of poly, and then that with be that. Then we will clean. We will clean as we've never cleaned before.

Yesterday, it snowed. I checked the forecast and realized, it's not going to snow again until after Christmas! and quickly decided to play hooky from writing work and spend the day finishing up a few gifts, wrapping, working on the buffet, and making another foray into the weeds to gather rosehips and white pine. A snowy day to work on Christmas things is so heavenly. Now all the Christmassing is done, save for a little bit of homey decor I want to undertake, and all that needs doing is the buffet, the cleaning, and the Feast. I can handle that. It's going to be a good Christmas.
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Outside and in

We got over a foot of snow between Friday night and Sunday morning. I would be here telling you it was awesome, except I was driving home in it, from Ithaca, Saturday afternoon. That was emphatically not awesome, but coming down, down out of the hills west of the Unadilla valley and knowing there was naught but level roads between there and home was awesome. And pulling into the driveway was awesome. 
And Sunday, snowed in, was awesome. I sewed and made pasta and soup and pancakes, and in the afternoon we took Del for a frolic. The snow was so deep he could only move by bounding: these ridiculous, gleeful, high dog-leaps in the snow. We walked through the pines to the flat by the river; I gathered a bunch of white pine and rose hips and nannyberry twigs, to make things festive-r inside. It was great.

I had a good 24 hours in Ithaca: drinks with Kat and Mark, cold-cold-cold walking to a show with Kat, dancing 'til 1 am with Kat (something we have not done in a very very long time), Christmas shopping, lunch with my cousin. So full and good; definitely worth the scary drive home. 
It's crazy how close we are to Christmas. I'm in pretty good shape gift-wise and meal-wise, but the house is a mess. I am going to try, in between scrubbing the bathtub and swabbing cobwebs out of corners, to savor these last seven days before Christmas arrives proper. And these last seven days of being 30. Oh, what a year. Hard year. The year of the Del and of Nashville. Good year.
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Come to stay

Not bad for $45, eh? It has a mirror, too, see?

I'm happy. Inevitably, though, "just a quick coat of paint" has turned into dealing with stripped screws + stuck drawers + wood putty + sanding, sanding, sanding. Such is the way of old furniture refurbishment. I spent most of the day yesterday steaming off the damaged top layer of veneer, with our iron.

And, of course, the clock is ticking. In less than two weeks, this room and this buffet need to be shiny, polished, and ready for their close-ups. We'll see. So far, I'm optimistic.

I do so love a last-minute project.

As for how I'm planning to dress this thing up, see here:

Not planning to go with pink, of course, but I am planning to paint the drawer and door-fronts, and the untaped part of the mirror. I have some really good cabinet primer (SmartPrime) and cabinet paint in a color called Acadia White left over from painting the laundry room cabinets, and I'm thinking it'll be just the thing. And for hardware, I'm imagining a whole slew of these, though that would run over a hundred dollars. But... when you've only put $45 into a project, and you're going to cover it with leftover paint, you can consider such extravagances.
Alrighty. I'm headed off to Ithaca for the weekend, for a little Christmas shopping and a lot of carousing, and, despite the snow forecast, I am looking forward to it.
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Festive

It's modest, but makes me smile. Never had I done any exterior decorating-- save for a wreath on the door-- but, with the outside of our house finally looking one-quarter pretty, I wanted a string of lights.
In my heart of hearts, I want twenty strings of lights-- enough to do the whole roofline-- but... well... there's just no way. Man lift + snow? Sigh. 

Yesterday I braved a rather persistent snow squall to go to my Zumba class. But the real motivation was the antiques store not far from Zumba, and the love of "the hunt" and the thrill of Christmas coming. I finally have a plan for the dining room, and I can't wait to put it all in place. 
I'm pleased to say that after Saturday's bad luck antiquing, yesterday brought me better prospects. I found a beat up buffet for $60 that they said they'd let me have for $45-- their idea, not mine!-- and scurried down the road to pick up Patrick's dad's truck. Then I paid, and we loaded the thing, and I made the poor choice of driving the podunk backcountry hill road home rather than the longer and less-direct county road...
Whoever designed the F-150 was not from a northern clime. I spun all over the place trying to get up a series of hills, and stopped to wait, and tried not to freak out, and let a cinders truck pass me once, twice.... and backed down slowly, and fiiiinally made it up. I was The Steam Engine That Could. I was never so happy to see my own driveway than I was yesterday afternoon. Phew. This buffet and I already have a story together, and I can't wait to dress it up and put it in place.
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