Playing House Yet Again

 Summer holidays are here, and none too soon!

Sophia is heavily pregnant and ready to pop. Her little boy has accommodated his parents' health insurance concerns by remaining cozily in the womb until June, when Matt's insurance coverage from his new job kicked in. Thanks, Baby Patrick! He can come any time now, and Sophia is ready for him to quick kicking her so hard from the inside. The baby has dropped, and Sophia has been having irregular contractions for days now, so it could happen very soon!

Siân, Nathan, and their sweet little boys have moved into their rental home in The Big City. Fortunately, the home is a good fit for them with three bedrooms and a very large main floor containing a front room, a large kitchen, and a large family room. We already had our first family gathering there for Siân's birthday. Unfortunately, I no longer get to see and play with my darling grandsons every day. Fortunately, there is the Marco Polo app, which keeps us connected and lets me see their adorable faces and hear their adorable messages to me. 

Siân sent this picture of the littlest one's new facial expression he's been practicing. It looks like a few more of his teeth have finally popped through!

With our home much less populated and so sadly quiet, Husband and I and the boys (Joseph and Gary) have done some furniture shuffling. All four girls are married off and in homes of their own, and I am now the only woman around here (and I have an entire craft room all to myself), so the family room has been turned into the ultimate man cave: a 70-inch TV, all the game consoles, two reclining couches, a dart board, the board games collection, and a drinks fridge. We will also put in a bed for guests, and I want the long wall under the HVAC soffit to be lined with shelves for food storage, in front of which I will hang a nice curtain to keep things neat and tidy. 

The Man Cave: a work in progress or manly perfection in its austere simplicity? The boys want to add a coffee table that will serve as a board games table in front of the couches.

I want shelves all along this wall for food storage, and I will cover the food storage with curtains to hide it away. 

This basement room has been a bedroom or an office multiple times in times past. It is now going to become the exercise room. We still have a couple more pieces of equipment to move in here and to mount a TV.

On the main floor, we have thinned the amount of seating and changed the furniture around a bit. I'm going for an English country vibe, but I, admittedly, have more mid-century modern furniture than overstuffed sofas and a hoard of chintz. 

I am not a great photographer with my phone -- sorry in advance!

We replaced the TV cabinet that was moved downstairs to the Man Cave with a mid-mod dresser that Siân and Nathan didn't want to take with them. It's a little worse for wear, but I plan on trying a refurbishment on it to re-stain the wood and replace the terrible drawer pulls someone installed in the past. The chair in the foreground looks more blue in the photo than it does in real life (where it is much more green). Those chairs are way too bling-y and modern to be English country, but they are comfortable and I can slipcover them if I want. The tchochkes on the dresser are awaiting a new home (Husband's grandfather's mining lamp, a couple old bottles from England, and a Toby mug I found on our last trip). You can see Husband's Cadillac of massage chairs lurking in the background. It will stay where it is because there is no way we're attempting to move that super-heavy behemoth up- or downstairs. Husband uses it all the time anyway, so we will leave it. I was experimenting with floral arrangements, so I spray painted some truly hideous thrifted early-2000's tall metal vases with matte copper spray paint and added some fun fake flowers.

With the two two-seater couches gone, we were able to pull the living room seating in a little closer and cozier. We don't have a coffee table, so we've been using TV trays for laptops or snacks. I will be hanging floor-length drapes on both living room windows. The wood slat blinds are fine for blocking light and creating privacy, but I want some billowy fabric to make the scene even cozier. 

Marmite the Dog approves of the blue-green chairs. I found the rug at an industrial supply discount store, and when we got to the register, it turned out that all rugs were 50% off that day. What a nice surprise! It isn't as large as I'd like, but I've checked into layering it over a much larger sisal or low-pile rug and choked at the cost. I plan on re-covering the throw pillows, and that's where I can bring in some chintz. 

The entryway situation is still cluttered. I have a full bookcase plus more stacks of piano music; the coat closet needs to be sorted out so shoes and the vacuum cleaner can easily fit in there; I will get rid of that side table; and we have two white-painted rattan chairs that were Husband's grandmother's from the 1930s. They are neither pretty nor sturdy, but they are family heirlooms gifted to us by Husband's parents, and I'm not sure what to do with them. My thought for the music books was to surround the closet door with custom shelves and put the family tchochkes on a shelf above the door for display.

The cabinet at the top of the basement stairs was made by Husband's great-grandfather and brought to the States when his parents moved here in 2012. They gave it to us when they moved to Indiana, and MIL gifted me some of her mother's china and some other special plates. I also have the ivy salad plates from my own grandmother's collection on display. We don't have a window by the front door, which is so annoying, so we hung a round mirror to be a sort of faux window and bounce some light around.

Husband is currently crafting a cabinet room divider for me. I don't love open-concept, and I want something to break the view from the living room to the kitchen/dining area. It will make the living room more cozy and also increase storage on the kitchen side. Husband thrifted a cabinet and a set of shelves that were roughly the same size, and he has been working on putting them together and making them look like a cohesive unit. I'll post the pics when it's done and installed.

We were laughing yesterday that we will never have the problem of living in a space that is static and dated. We are always changing things up to fit the current situation, and that is fun because we get to use our imaginations and ingenuity to come up with new ideas on a tight budget. The older we get, however, the harder it is to move all this stuff around--but that is where our sons and sons-in-law come in super handy.

I have been taking piano lessons for a few months now, and the lessons have really helped me play better. My teacher, Michael, is a wealth of knowledge. Michael is also a close neighbor, which is very convenient. He completed a degree in music theory in addition to piano performance, and music theory is something I have been studying on my own. It's not an easy thing to learn, and sometimes I ask a question and we get so involved in the answer that we find the lesson is over before we know it. I have to set timers so we can also include piano playing instruction as well; but even with those diversions, my playing has definitely improved as he helps me fill in technical knowledge gaps and change bad habits. My improvements have been a true joy for me. 

My voice has not healed at all, and though I have been invited to go back to the choir as a tenor (wouldn't that be weird!), I think I will stick with piano and cello for now. 

We have plenty of indoor and outdoor projects to keep us busy all summer, along with the anticipation of welcoming two new grandsons. I am so excited to meet them!