Happy Holloween!

My father sent those purple candlesticks to Kathleen.  They flicker when you turn them on.  Too funny.  We bought the bowl a couple of years ago.  The hand comes down when you reach into the bowl, and it talks, too!  "Want some candy?   Trick or Treat!  Happy Halloween!"
I finally sewed my shades for the kitchen.  I'm thinking I'll be closing them at night in the winter to keep it a little warmer in there.  Don't mind the unpainted, un-put-together radiator cover.  I have yet to lay the new kitchen floor.  All in time.  
Ok, you may want to enlarge this photo to see it better.  Mr Coyote is on the far left of the shot, stalking the four deer on the right.  You should have seen it!  He never did chase any of them down, though, thank God.  I'm not so sure I could have watched that.  :(

Chapel Pond, Keene, NY

I took these pictures on the way home from Lake Placid.  I hope the pictures convey the complete peace I felt while taking in this scene.  I wish you could smell it too.  Please click to enlarge the photos.  They are much more impressive that way.  :)

I realized during this trip, that I had forgotten how beautiful The Adirondacks are.  We used to camp all over The Adirondacks in the summers when I was a kid....and I used to tool around during my college years in Plattsburgh, but going back as an adult, with a fresh perspective, is really something else.

Lake Placid--Where We Stayed

Here's another shot of the view. The sun was setting behind us here.  This is the little mountain next to Whiteface.  I don't know its name.

That's the view of Whiteface from the condo.  

My friend has renovated all of the common areas in the last year or so.  The last time we were here, the kitchen was sort of half walled off, and it was all white with bad white cabinets, etc.  It looks really great now.  

She really went to town with the Adirondack decor...wood and logs everywhere.  It was really great looking.

The girls on the deck. 

...and in their beds

I absolutely LOVED the birch bark trim around the place.   I thought it was very clever.

...view of the DR from the loft

That's where I slept!

There's Whiteface out the LR window

And the view out the sliders wasn't half bad either!

Note the big logs on the ceiling.  This was all just sheetrock before.  

And this staircase used to be white metal, I think.  These logs were beyond cool.

Lake Placid...The View

I have to head up to a staff meeting this morning, but I wanted to share my magnificent weekend view with y'all.  I have lots more fun pictures of Kathleen and Emily on mountains and in gorges.  I'll be back!  In the mean time, click on these pics to enlarge them.  It was a truly beautiful view from the condo.

Window Treatments and Coyotes

There he is!  Yesterday morning, Mr. Coyote was out there chasing a rabbit.  I'm pretty sure he got him, too, because there was a lot of leaping and pouncing going on out there.  I think he was playing with his prey before meal time.  Ugh.  Poor little bunny.  Oh, and can I just say that I think it's CRAZY that there is a coyote hanging out just feet from my house?  I love nature, but come ON!   Aren't these guys supposed to hang out in caves and howl at the moon?!  
So I don't know if y'all are aware of this, but when I'm not blogging, I'm actually making a living!  Hee!  These are the draperies I was telling you about last week that are just my favorites ever, I think.  The flash washed out the fabric, but the no-flash pics REALLY sucked, so this is what you get.
The striped fabric is a faux silk that I could have sworn was real silk when I found the swatch...and I am really good at knowing my fiber content, people...so you KNOW it's a good faux silk.  The embroidered banding and swag fabric is a poly too, which is pretty obvious from the shine.  The tasseled onion fringe is a linen/rayon blend.  

Aren't they purty?

This is the same client's LR, which we worked on last year.  It's still a work in progress, and I've decided that we need to add swags to these panels too, because they are WAY too boring now that we've got the DR looking so good.
The embroidered silk I used on the pillows is what I want to make the swags out of.  It's $82.99/yd at Calico Corners, though, so we'll see.  I may have to come up with plan B if she doesn't want to spend $500 on fabric alone....lol.  
The next project is going to be getting rid of that black marble surround on the FP.  It looks BAD in here.
This is the office window I did last year too...upholstered cornice with banded drapes.  This too is a room in progress.  We just picked out some really nice swivel rockers the other day for one side of the room.

That's it from me today.  Kathleen, her friend Emily and I, are off to Lake Placid this afternoon.  I'm going to bring my laptop in case there's a wireless connection I can snag.  BF's fishing tournament is EARLY Sunday morning, so he's not coming with us, which is cool because now it can be a GIRLY trip! (There's a bead shop, people!  Somehow I don't think BF would be into that, do you?)

I'll catch you on the backside!  Have a good weekend!

Indian Ladder Farm

Kathleen and I went to the local apple farm last week to get our pumpkins and apples. We were GOING to get cider donuts, but the line was ridiculous. (I didn't need those darn donuts anyway, right?) It was a gorgeous day, and it was nice to follow through on our yearly ritual trip to Indian Ladder Farms. Can you see her pushing the cart? You know, in years past, she would pose for me next to pumpkins and under apple trees. Not any more. Brat.

In other news, Kathleen got the lead in her school play. They're doing Mulan this year. I just got her interim report from school, too, and besides getting excellent grades in all of her classes, her choral teacher (who is also the Drama Club teacher) said "Kathleen is exceptionally talented." *sigh* I love those interim reports. Yay, Mulan! Hee!

Ushering in Autumn

This view is from the back deck of a client's house.  I took the pictures just two days ago.  Isn't it gorgeous?!  I couldn't believe her view from every window in the house.  Those mountains in the distance are the Berkshires, and that's the Tomhannock Reservoir down there.  Of course you must know that these pictures really don't do justice to it all.  I was wishing I had a wide angle lens so you could get a better feel for it.  


That last one is a hill in Vermont, which was very close to my client's house.  I had to keep driving, didn't I?  There was a little country store I had to stop at and grab some beeswax candles and a gift or two.  

On the 18th, we'll be headed up to Lake Placid for the weekend.  One of my clients has a gorgeous condo there, with a fantastic view of the lake, and Whiteface Mountain, and she has kindly offered it to me for the weekend.  I hope there is still some color left when we go up!  The last time Kathleen and I went, it was winter, and there was snow everywhere.  It was stunning.  This will be my first time up in the fall.  I'm really looking forward to a little mini-getaway.  BF will be in a bass fishing tournament that weekend on Lake George, so it'll be me, Kathleen, and one of her friends, and maybe BF will join us on Sunday after catching all the big fish.  :)

Good Thing They're Indoor Cats

Yeah, I know...this pillow has nothing to do with my cats--other than the fact that they aren't allowed to touch it.  But I made it the other day out of remnants I bought at the fabric outlet in Kinderhook, NY a couple of months ago.  I put a standard size bed pillow inside.  The fern is actually embroidered on there.  I love it!

OK, now watch closely....

See anything?

It's a coyote!  And there were TWO of them, chasing each other back and forth right in front of me!  We've seen them further out in the field before, but never this close.  I was just going to take a pretty picture of the field for y'all this morning, and I was greeted by two coyotes running in front of the camera!  I was wondering where all the deer and turkeys were getting off to....hmmm...sorry about the blur....I feel like I'm sharing my pics of Bigfoot with you...lol.

So how about that Dow Jones, eh? Y'all stockpiling your gold, or what? 

If You Can't Beat 'Em....

I don't think I've posted any pictures of my jobs before, but I figured why not?  I just installed this job last week.  This customer has a dated color scheme that she is very happy with, so I figured OK, I'll just go with it.  It's her house, right?  She wanted the burgundy silk on her windows, where I would have used a cream silk with a burgundy trim, but this was a lesson for me in "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!"  So I addressed the issue of how to dress this awkward bay window area by screwing brass knobs into the wall, and hanging a half-width of tie-top panels from it.   I also put sheers all the way up above the transoms, to keep the lines consistent.  This was a good way to bend the panels around some turns in the wall without having to hang some sort of curtain rod up there.  I'm happy with the result.

Sorry I didn't get a closeup of the tops of those knobs.  I think you can see them ok though.

I also made a bunch of pillows for her.  These were my favorite part of the job, even though this whole color scheme makes me cringe....lol.

This one was my favorite.  I used a striped fabric as a border, and mitered it in the corners.  It was a good way to use the stripe to its best advantage.  These fabrics were really quite lovely:

I put the tassel fringe on both sides of this pillow, so that it would be extra full.  Pretty!

Yesterday, I installed some of my most favorite draperies that I think I've ever done.  Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me.  I have a lot more to do for her, so the next time I'm there, I'll get pics.   She was very pleased!  

I'll apologize now for being away for a week!  Yikes!  I guess work got in the way.  Fancy that!