hey June (why'd you have to come around, so soon)

It can't possibly be (unofficially) summer already, but here I am, with a to do list a mile long, and it's far too hot to be working. We sat down and made a list of stuff to do this last week, and remarkably managed to not do a single thing on it. This isn't to say we haven't been busy, we've just not been busy getting anything done. Actually, we did finish something, I managed to finish painting the last corners of the master bedroom, a project almost two years in the making. This means that the paint cans no longer have to live in the fireplace!

the enormous frame is the ketubah from our wedding
- nothing like a Celtic design for a Hebrew document

The last places I had needed to paint were around the top of the fireplace mantel. There was evidence that there had once been an overmantel, so when we pulled two fairly simple ones out of a house about a year ago we knew one would go in here. We had foolishly thought we'd have finished stripping the paint in here by now, and were waiting to strip the overmantel at the same time, but since that clearly isn't happening anytime soon, we went ahead and installed it.

the three photos are of astronomical phenomena
over Stonehenge (where we got engaged)

Although the scale is right, the spoon-carved designs clearly date it to about a decade before our house was built, but I doubt anyone but me (and now you) will notice that it clashes with the (dare-I-say) Moorish turquoise tiles.

5 different types of tile, all in need of scrubbing . . .

Because of the set up of the room (typical Victorian, lots of doors, windows and fireplaces to work around), we were forced to put the bed in front of one of the windows (to the right of where the closet once was).

In addition to looking awful, the sun always managed to find a gap in the curtains and get you right in the eye at the worst possible times (fellow migraine sufferers will understand). We tried to get used to it for a year, but with the closet gone and the room shaping up we decided to take action. We had planned to hang curtains behind our headboard, blocking the window and adding some symmetry, and when we found these antique/vintage foxes we figured we'd add them to the mix (one of my many minor obsessions). All that velvet paired with the huge iron bed does end up being a little overboard, but I guess we don't describe our decorating style as Nouveau Industrial Victorian Hunting Lodge for nothing . . .

the bed may or may not be antique, but it's a European
size king, which is odd, and aggravating . . .

This bedroom must have been something to see in its heyday. Stained woodwork, interior shutters (we can see the mortises for the hinges, they're missing from every room on the first and second floors), the moorish looking turquoise tiles, the Japonesque silver and white cloud wallpaper on the ceiling, gas lights (you can see one of the pair of sconces peeking out next to the bed on the right) and anaglypta under the windows instead of the paneling they used downstairs. Oh, and her . . .

She was my housewarming present from the house. There was so much stuff in the house that I didn't find her till about a month after we moved in. I *may* have sat on the floor and cried. May have . . .