Ahead Of Your Own Time

I am going to brag a bit, I won’t be obnoxious, just feeling like in my next life I will marry a doctor so he can take care of all my old age woes. Of course, he will be about 20 years younger than me so he will still be practicing. Then people will think my home is so decorative and innovative in designs, they will confer with me on décor for their own homes.

Then I will also be an award winning dance student winning much more than the 58 trophies and medals I earned in this life from ages 45-65. I will have a room, not four shelves like now of more dance trophies and medals. I will have all my custom made dance dresses hanging from the ceiling in which I won these many trophies and medals wearing them. I will have won by then the Pulitzer Prize for writing which I think may be gold and a huge trophy. Then the hairdressers association will award me for being the first in Baltimore, Maryland to sport a huge chunk of hair made golden blonde mixed in with my dark brown brunette hair and this way back in 1956 or earlier when it cost me the huge sum of five dollars plus tip to get the color put in every month. When I met my husband to be in 1957, he liked it but said “I will never take you home to meet my mother with that in your hair.” Ha,  he did anyway.

Now in today’s Sunday Sunpapers which comes to us ‘ahead of our time patrons’ there is a home article and it shows the fifth wall in the room. This means the ceiling is decorated now like the old master painters/artists did way back hundreds of years ago. The most well-known ceiling was done by Michelangelo 1508-1512, the Sistine Chapel.

About twenty-five years ago, I had painted my master bedroom ceiling dark lavender and adjoining wallpaper in a light lavender tone and draperies and shade and bedspread in dark lavender. Then in the adjoining master bathroom, the ceiling is painted light lavender and the walls are all dark purple. See, I was way ahead of Purple Friday for our beloved Ravens.

In the rest of the house, the featured color is blue in different shades with some additional high lights or low lights of another color. The kitchen is in tones of blues and the border of wallpaper was put on the ceiling instead of around the walls. So the border on the ceiling is about 20 inches or more and the rest of the ceiling is light blue. It is quite beautifully startling when you see it for the first time and I still love it now. In the former bedroom of my son, after he left to marry thirteen years ago, I had to think long and hard to paint the ceiling a dark blue. I got estimates from my painter/contractor Mike several times.

I got the paint swatches several times and one afternoon my niece came to visit unexpectedly, she is from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and I showed her the swatches. She is a psychiatrist and she told me

“Do what you want, not what others want and make yourself happy. It can always be repainted if you dislike it after it is done.” So here came Mike and he did it and I still thought maybe I did like it or not like it. After about five days, I loved it and still do three years later.

So the article on ceilings tells you to do things to your ceilings, it is the fifth wall of the four walls in a room. In my dining room I had installed a thing called a medallion, white beautiful very round disc of sorts and then you put your chandelier through the opening in it. It makes the dining room ceiling gorgeous. They sell them in all tile stores and they cost about one hundred more or less now. It was more way back 20 years ago. I got it from a popular drapery store that I dealt with for my draperies, shades and bedspreads. The designer helping me loved it when she suggested it. When the owner’s son came out to measure it because it comes in different widths said “you do not need it, your room is beautiful without it.” I told him his mother the owner of the store will not like you advising against a purchase that the customer likes. I love it and everyone compliments me on it as they come in the front door and immediately see it.

The final thing though not a ceiling adornment is two scrolled medal corner pieces attached to the side of the dining room wall entrance. My friend who has passed on since then, installed them in his dining room entrance and he showed me a picture of it and I fell in love with it.He had got them, a pair online and I could not find it anywhere. They had wooden ones and wire ones, not metal like his. Finally, one day I found them online and ordered two pairs and I only needed one pair. The second pair is still sitting in the boxes of the downstairs now called junk room which was a play room for the kids. I love them and since he passed on two years ago, I think of him when I walk in there.

So if you read the article in the paper today or tomorrow or if you go online, I am sure it will be there and you will note that Elita, who you have never met, was way ahead of her own time, so many years ago. From the blonde thick streak in her dark hair, now all women have streaks, not as large as that one was, narrower and all through their hair, I do too, to the colored ceilings in kitchen, master bath and bedroom, son’s former room to the doorway metal fancy scrolls, you too can be way ahead of your own time. Perhaps, you already are and so you do not need decorating advice from an old seventy-nine year old senior on your décor.

You know I always find a way to bring in ballroom dancing; so I too way back in 1977 started to ballroom dance, take lessons, compete in competitions, social danced on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons and I did all this as many other dancers have done too, long before DancingWithTheStars television show appeared and became very popular.

It is good to do something, anything, maybe not popular yet or in style yet in your lifetime and daily living. Even if you buy a new pillow of a different color and add it to your sofa in the living room or the family room, buy an artificial plant that looks better than a real one and place it on the floor in some room, if you add a sconce in a dark room or even my newest thing, have your doggies who are now gone and have them made into real looking dogs by an artist in Arizona as I did, then you have your doggies back and she creates them and they look alive. She does it from a picture you send her and she got the look of the brown doggie, a Pekingese named Rhumba,  it is as if Rhumba, our beloved second pet who is gone about 12 years now is alive and next to her on the baby grand piano front is Candy the all-white like a cotton candy on a stick looking Peke, are here atop the piano and though they cannot play the piano or run through the carpeting, it is the next thing to having them alive I have ever seen. They are real art that came alive. They are actually the size of the real dogs and the one is sitting and the other one is standing and I tell you, it is unbelievable art work.  Also a can of paint costing about fifty dollars or less and a new paint brush can work wonders too.

Make yourself happy and you can put a stuffed animal costing ten dollars on a bedspread in a bedroom, a new bedspread, a vase of artificial flowers on a table. Anything that picks up the room and  you too will feel elated and these items other than the two custom made doggies which total together 170 dollars plus 25 shipping, can cost you may be less than fifty dollars. The doggies Candy and Rhumba look like they cost five hundred dollars. If any of you want her phone number in Arizona, it is Kathy Kreations 1-602 547 8760 and tell her Elita suggested her. I have never met her in my life, I just found her online and I am so happy with this $ 195 purchase.