Design In Your Mind

I was reading in this week’s Scene section where they feature people’s dream homes. This couple paid one million point one for the home of the late poet Ogden Nash.

It is a lovely home with about eight bedrooms and eight bathrooms, a gorgeous lot, a pretty staircase and they made the kitchen into a modern one. They spent one million dollars to remodel it.

I looked at the four or five pictures and saw where she had done something very interesting in the family room, which I will try as soon as I can walk the seventeen stairs to go down there. I have not been down in one year since it became difficult for me to maneuver the high steps. I always kid that my husband could have a girlfriend down there who came in through the down door, leaves by it and who would know?

This lady took a framed painting and attached it to the middle of one of the bookshelves as its background. So here are hundreds of books lined up on many shelves and there in the middle of it is a large painting hanging from a shelf. It blocks the books behind it, but it is very outstanding for a painting not to be on the wall. This will be my next decorating project. It will look quite outstanding.

Everyone can have their own dream home. It need not cost two million or one million. My old two aunts, my father’s sisters, one not married and one a widow and they lived downtown here in what they called then government projects. The rent was extremely low and you had to only make a certain amount between the occupants.

These two sisters fixed it up on their meager income and it looked real cute. They loved these cut out bowls and vases and little do-dads of small dolls, plush animals and teacups. They spread these treasured pieces all over the two bedrooms, small kitchen and the living –dining room area.

I remember as a kid visiting them every so often and thinking at that young age, that if they surrounded themselves with pieces like this probably from the five and ten cent variety store (now called Dollar Stores) what it would be like if they had some real money. One of their treasures I have in my home. It was called then a closed fruit bowl. The glass is all cut out and it has a fancy glass lid with a knob on it. It was said that these were the bowls to keep fruit in and thus the name. When they passed on, Mom took them and I took one of them when I moved into my home. When Mom passed on, I gave one of them to my daughter.

If you were to go and purchase it now, it would probably cost five hundred dollars in the Crate and Barrel store.

There are lots of ways to decorate even on a limited income and every piece you use can be meaningful to you. There is a saying that states: “Words can be. But actions will always tell the truth.” So can the actions of trying to make your home as pleasant as you can afford and when looking in decorating magazines like House Beautiful, you can get some very clever ideas and when it is admired by your friends, you can say “Oh I just thought about it and designed it in my mind.” You do not have to let on that you saw it in a furnishings magazine.

When we first married and had our own first home, I could not afford custom made draperies for the large and wide windows in the living/dining room. I use to envy the people who I thought had those custom made fine looking draperies in their large same as mine windows. When I walked my daughter on the sidewalk, I would see who had readymade bought in a department store or Walmart draperies or the custom ones made just for you. I could tell by the way the pleats fell on the drapes that you could see from the outside. I would go back in and try to pin in my pleats on my readymade inexpensive drapes and then I would go outside to see if I had worked wonders and made my drapes look like they were custom made.

Of course, they did not, but it became a dream of mine when I had our first home, the first thing I would order would be custom made drapes. It sounds silly now, that I have these custom made for me only and expensive coverings, but then in about 1961 it was a good dream. Now days, there are stores like Home Depot and Lowes where you can buy readymade coverings and if you are handy, you can make them look when put on the windows as if they are almost custom made.

I have one bedroom where I did that a few years ago with a valance bought in Lowes and it covers expensive wooden blinds as a valance. They cost me all of about twenty dollars and twenty dollars for my handy man contractor to install them when he was here doing something  big. In the whole house, these are the only readymade inexpensive drapery coverings. You know what? They are very cute and they make me think of Aunt Sarah and Aunt Jenny, my two old aunties of so long ago. They did their own window coverings and they were quite cute. They would cut up a sheet, a colored one and Aunt Jenny would sew it into a window covering and they would hire the handy man in the development and he would hang it on a rod for them. They gave him two dollars and he was thrilled.

It does not always matter if something is custom made or readymade or homemade; it can bring happiness and style to your home. Your home is your castle and that was a catchy political phrase used in the forties by someone running for a political office here in Maryland.

Your home is your castle, your kingdom, your abode, your loving place in your life where you can go to be yourself or whoever you want to be all the time. You are surrounded by all the themes you desire, you can be happy no matter whether it is custom or ready designed.

Words can be custom, readymade or homemade but actions tell the truth.

Another saying is “Love is like life, no path is so clear, no step is so easy.”

The path to your doorway of the door you open when you come home from anywhere is the path of the right journey. Design the path in your mind and the mind will be a path of happiness and contentment.