Paris painting framed

When we painted the upstairs bedroom in June and darkened the mantel, George also wanted to get a new painting for over the fireplace. He found this lovely vintage oil painting of a Paris street scene (Place de la Madeleine) on the One Kings Lane website, but it was in a rather basic, unbecoming frame. So we took it to our local framer, Aaron Ballard, who has a great eye for these things, and now it has a much more suitable frame.

Souvenirs from Salzburg

As souvenirs from our recent trip to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, we returned with a couple of watercolors of Salzburg, purchased from local artists. The one is a view from across the river of the church towers of Old Salzburg with the Hohensalzburg fortress above. We've added it to our grouping of travel watercolors. The other is of the traditional street signs hung along the Getreidegasse. It is hung in the living room by the sliding glass door. Frames, as always, by our great local guy Aaron Ballard.

Finally adding color to the upstairs

After 13 years of the original off-white, we finally painted the upstairs with some color. We really liked the taupe tones we had used downstairs, and so we continued that for most of the upstairs, painting the landing spaces in Fine Grain (DE6213) and our master bedroom in the one-notch darker Pigeon Gray (DE6214). In the guest bedroom, we went just a little bold and chose a green (DE6263 Pistachio Shell). We added crown molding in both bedrooms. And we painted the fireplace mantel and the bathroom cabinets dark.

And note that Florencia has been retired from her position over the mantel and is now gracing the guest bedroom. In her place is a 1940's oil painting of the Place de la Madeleine in Paris, which George scored using the One Kings Lane website.

Front landscape starting to fill in

Our new plantings on the front slope from February are starting to fill in. We've very happy with how it's turning out.

New watercolor from Porto

On our recent trip to Portugal, we acquired a new watercolor for our collection of travel souvenirs that we've been building in our living room. We found a piece that captured the bright colors of Porto as seen from across the Douro River, and with a rabelo, the iconic boat traditionally used to transport barrels of port wine from up river where the grapes are grown, to Gaia, where they are aged. George had it framed as a birthday gift to Tom.

Front landscape reboot

In our thirteen years in our home, we have done a ton of work to make the backyard a beautiful space, but we've never done much with the hodgepodge of plants put in front of our house by the original builder. Now we've finally taken that on, with the help of Stephen Baldonado at IGarden Design. The hodgepodge has been ripped out and replaced with a much cleaner and less thirsty palette of plantings., including kangaroo paw for color, flax (Phormium 'yellow wave'), Salvia clevelandii, Agave attenuata, and blue fescue. A small madrone tree (Arbutus 'marina') adds an anchor of interest in the upper left corner.

We also replaced the front fence, which had gotten rotted from years of being watered by sprinklers. We ripped out the patchy lawn and replaced it with gravel, and a few potted succulents, watered by drip. See photos of the whole project before, during, and after.

Hawk drops by for a visit

Red-tailed hawks live behind our house, and they have grown accustomed to visiting the stone bench in our backyard, and using our fountain as a birdbath. George captured this shot of the majestic creature just taking off after a visit.