Like a child

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Build, child, Construction, Design, Dreams, Homes, Memories

Everything is a house to a child….a tree and the space under a table.

 When thinking about a house, see like a child.

 A little home for little people: The dining room table can be truly amazing. The flat plane of the tabletop becomes a roof, while the lacy cloth that hangs down on each side provides as much security as a brick wall.

• Children live with a sense of awe. They live with amazement, not judgement, and their possibilities are endless. Are you living in awe of your surroundings?

  Design and build as if you were passing your home down to your grandchildren.

 Before you begin designing your home, visit your childhood city or town and take pictures of the houses that inspired you. Return to the homes in your memories…

 

Excerpted from “Home: Celebrating the Spaces of Your Heart,” available soon at Apple’s iBookstore.

“Daniel’s Fort” photograph by Jamieson Thomas

Haphazard

Tags

Hair, Humor, mood

Whether they were imperfect updos, off-center buns or masses of messy waves, models walked the runways with do-it-yourself hairstyles for spring. There wasn’t a controlled hair in sight.

Loose ends “should look like a curtain that’s covering the bun,” insisted celebrity hairstylist Orlando Pita. “It’s how girls are dressing today, but in a way that’s kind of haphazard. It’s something that translates well to the average woman.”

Haphazard? You bet…I can do that.

According to Rose Weitz, a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Arizona State University, who wrote the book, Rapunzel’s Daughters, What Women’s Hair Tells Us About Women’s Lives: “In part because our hair plays such a large role in how we view ourselves and are viewed by others, it offers us many opportunities for pleasure. Each day our hair provides us with the means to create ourselves anew – at least until our perm, release or hair dye grows out.

“And in comparison to losing weight, affording a better-looking wardrobe or finding true love, changing our lives by changing our hair seems downright easy.”

In that case, let me find my brush.

Community

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Community

The essence of every community is a sense of interdependence. Good communities start with good people, small groups committed to each other’s success and well being, in both commerce and living.

• The spirit of community continually seeks us.  It seeks us whether we greet a neighbor or ignore the chance to talk. It seeks us with every word of encouragement or every envious thought …with every open hand or closed heart.

 

“Community” photograph by Jamieson Thomas

An escape hatch

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Acrhitecture, Design, Residence

The best residences include places to be together and places for quiet time alone.

 Playrooms and family rooms foster fun. But we also need an escape hatch, a place to retreat for tea and talk, thinking or reading.

Architects, designers, and builders love the challenge of providing both. Let them solve your problems – big and small.

 “Victorian Wicker” photograph by Jamieson Thomas

The roof

Tags

Design, Houses, roof, Shelter

• A roof signifies shelter. Make this a direct design statement. Roof overhangs are like the protective shelter of a wide-brimmed hat.

• When we say a house has character, we are really projecting human qualities onto an inanimate object. Like our human experience, this recognition of character in a home represents a sum of attributes, (not least of which are excellence and honesty.)

Excerpted from “Home: Celebrating the Spaces of Your Heart,” available soon at Apple’s iBookstore.

“Shrimper Cottage” photograph by Renee Garrison

They paved paradise

Tags

Design, Earth Day, environment, Growth

I returned to my car in the mall parking lot and braced myself for a burst of hot air.

The blacktop beneath the vehicle was radiating enough heat back into the air to roast vegetables and/or incinerate Finland — all for want of a tree.

Once upon a time, cities developed zoning formulas to determine the number of parking spaces needed – typically, between six and 10 spaces per 1,000 square feet of floor space.

These sprawling asphalt jungles are designed to accommodate two or three days of maximum use per year (perhaps, the day after Thanksgiving.)

In his book, “Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking,“ author Eran Ben-Joseph estimates that there are 500 million surface-lot parking spaces in the U.S., covering more than 3,590 square miles. That’s a bit larger than the island of Puerto Rico.

Most of them are suffer from poor design and poor lighting. Yet parking lots don’t have to be ugly: a canopy of trees is an easy way to improve their appearance.

Ben-Joseph estimates that planting enough trees to shade 50 percent of the surface-lot area in the U.S. would remove 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere and return 822,000 tons of oxygen. In addition, those trees would mitigate two billion cubic meters of storm-water runoff.

It might not be the cheapest way to build a parking lot , but it would be the most aesthetic. Our environment would benefit from fewer cost-cutting developers.

Best of all – my car would stay cooler.

Generosity

Tags

Conversation, Homes, kitchen

• 
• It is a generous act of service to prepare and offer food.
• Invite someone over to eat with you on a regular basis – not for a social extravaganza, but for the celebration of friendship and life.

Letting go

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arlington national cemetery, condo, Downsizing, Family, Home, Houses, Memories, real-estate, Shelter

My sister sold her house.

A red brick structure in McLean, Virginia, where she and her husband raised three children, the house sold two weeks after it was listed.

“I’m happy to get the contract,” she said on the phone, “but I also feel kind of sad.”

Sad to leave the bedroom hallway, lined with family photographs (or it was until the realtor ordered her to remove them and paint it.) For 28 years, her children walked to school, went to prom, and returned from college.

The entire family gathered there after our father’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. Then, repeated the event 20 years later when we buried our mother with him.

More than bricks and mortar, my sister is selling a house permeated with memories.

Last year, 15 percent of US home sales involved dwellings that had been in the same hands for more than 20 years, according to the National Association of Realtors. A century ago, several generations lived in the same house, so these transactions were more rare.

Today couples tend to unload large homes before they grow too old to take care of them. Downsizing has become a retirement “rite of passage,” as children follow career paths across the country and no longer live close enough to help out.

My sister and her husband will move into a new condo and I shall try to forget the address that I memorized 28 years ago. Soon , two new little boys will be playing in her old backyard.

My sister doesn’t need a five-bedroom house anymore. She just needs a moment to grieve.

So do I.

One inch closer to heaven

Tags

Attic, Construction, Home, Residence

The attic is the space that separates your head from the rest of universe.

 The hinged wooden steps pull down, like the hatch of a mysterious ship. Hot air bursts from the opening.  Climb the steps, and peer into the dimly lit space with a combination of despair and optimism. How can this become habitable?

 Break through the bedroom wall and add a new dormer to capture the view of an oak tree. Storage behind the kneewall, additional insulation to benefit the rest of the house, and wood floors will make this place a nest for dreams.

 The attic is more than just being upstairs… In this place we are one inch closer to heaven.

Excerpted from the ebook Home: Celebrating the Spaces of Your Heart by Renee Garrison and Tom Szumlic

Just ask Cinderella

Tags

fashion, mood, Vreeland, wardrobe

Fashion legend Diana Vreeland once said the first place to put your clothing dollars is in shoes.  According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, women spent $38.5 billion on shoes in the U.S. last year.  (I fear I may have contributed slightly to that amount…)

Quality was Vreeland’s chief priority. But there’s another reason that shoes top so many seasonal shopping lists:  More than any other item, they beacon fashion changes and establish its prevailing mood.

Case in point? The wedge. Out of fashion for decades, it’s now striding onto center stage for summer in bright leathers or woven rope and raffia.