January AKA The Morning After

If December is the month of excess, pretty decorations and soft glowing candlelight, January is the calendar equivalent of "The Morning After". 

Once we clear away the Christmas paraphernalia (which by the way I have not done yet), we stop and look around at our newly bare spaces in the cold light of January and say:

1) I am sick of this room!  We need to move some furniture around!
2) I didn't realize how awful that paint colour looks!
3) How can we get through another year with that couch/chair/carpet/fill in your own blank. 
4) who needs all these clothes and where am I going to wear them anyway?  How come nothing fits?  The latter is a rhetorical question, since we all know what happened to make something not fit..

You, my friend, are suffering from the post-Christmas/early January blahs!

But there is a cure!  It is called organizing and decorating!

There is a reason that every issue of every January magazine extolls the vision of exercisem dieting and organizing: they are trying to keep us busy!

They take us from this

and lead us to this:

But it is a truth universally acknowledged, at least in this house, that cleaning and organizing seem to lead to spending money.  We purge, we clean and then we think we need something to replace it.  Or that special bins would make all the difference. Or that we have given away or sold so much clothing, surely it must be replaced....

This year, I will do my best to resist an outlay of cash in my pursuit of organization!  I will resist repainting and will instead tack up a picture or two over chipped spots.  Besides, we are 1/2 way through a renovation of our laundry room and I am sure I cannot talk Mr. WMM into anything else right now!  I will "shop" my own house if I feel the need to redecorate.  But I cannot resist moving the furniture and I know that Mr. WMM will be very sad to hear that.  Ah well, a small price to pay for a fresh outlook on life and avoid the January blahs!

My friend Cate is about to renovate her bathroom.  While I hate the whole renovation process, I am always thrilled by the results.  Since we have been in our house we have reno'd both bathrooms.  I have already shown one of our bathrooms, the more elegant one, in my post here.

My other bathroom is meant to feel like a cottage bathroom.  You have seen parts of it before, as I often take pictures in there.  We did all of the work ourselves. You can decide if that was wise or not!   I don't know what kind of bathroom you have, Cate, but I do have some suggestions that might help.

Looking into the bathroom.  You can see it is very small.  When we bought this house it had terrible tile that was so ugly.  We also did not have a lot of money.  But Mr. WMM was smart, and since I wanted a cape cod/maine kind of look, he simply put beaded board right over the old tile, except around the bathtub, where he took the walls down to the studs.  This saved a LOT of money and work and we even took the beaded board right up over the ugly popcorn ceiling. You loose an inch or two of space, but save a lot!

 This gives a bit better short of the beaded board. 

We have a huge shower in our other bathroom, so we decided to only put in a tub in this bathroom.  We actually bought our bathroom months in advance of starting the work, as it was such a good price.  It sat in our backroom.  It became quite the conversation piece.  We found some lovely glass tiles that look like beach glass to put around the tub and the lower part of the wall.  We didn't have the space to put in a huge whirlpool tub, but we found a very deep regular-sized one that is divine to sit in and have relaxing baths. 

Over the tub is a chandelier.  Do not worried - it is grounded and were it to ever fall, would cut off from the electricity immediately.  It is also on a dimmer, which is a nice for a relaxing bath.  Above it is a large photo of 1990 NYC, an antique door header, some lovely glass, a little painting done by a friend and my turquoise foo dogs, who move around the house.

At one end of the tub is an assemblage of an original painting, flea market finds a photograph of my children at the beach.

At the other end, is a painting I got for $100 at local art show by a young woman starting out. 

And across the way is a glass etagere, which is particularly messy as I took these photos at the end height of Christmas.

The cost of this bathroom reno, tub and flooring and paint in, was about $3000.  Of course, you do need a man that is handy!  Not sure if this is helpful Cate!

And now I know which room needs some cleaning!!!!!

How about you?  Any reno/redecorating/organizing plans now that you are cleaning out the Christmas "row"?(there's a good Maritimes word for you - pronounced like wow!)

*****************************

On the 9th Day of Christmas WMM gave to me:

A taste of the beach!

This picture was taken around 1998 at New River Beach.  New River Beach is practically unswimmable - at the height of summer it only hits a balmy 60 degrees typically.  But we loved to go there as a family and take walks and have picnics and let the kids play on the beach. 

Some of you are lucky enough to live near the beach or somewhere warm year round.  When I look out my window today, I am seeing 4 feet of snow and it is -28 with the windchill.  But like the hummingbirds, this picture makes me smile remembering a very hot day spent on a very lovely beach near a very cold body of water and happy times.  Those days will come again; they always do!  But it is nice to remember that the days are getting longer and summer is coming!

Have a lovely day out there!  I am off to clean and start to slowly pack up Christmas!