Pancakes & French Fries

English Country Style and an Armchair

House· KonMari / WMP / Decluttering Flavor of the Month

Pinterest declared me a fan of English Country Style and recommended dozens of blog posts and articles as proof. The look includes the use of wood, muted color, fabric, pattern, and quirky accessories. I remained ambivalent until I read about the fashion insider who described the style as “perfectly tasteful but slightly dated.” Bingo, as the old lady says. I am, very much indeed, a fan of English Country Style. I offer my latest estate sale find as proof.

Why I went to the estate sale, which involves possibly cursed dog tags purchased on Etsy, is another story. Today is all about the tufted armchair and footstool I brought home. Yes, I bought a chair and footstool but have yet to hang pictures or decorate the mantel since the remodel. Imagine what I could do with a to-do list and a plan!

Perfectly Tasteful but Slightly Dated

Mikey fell in love at first sight with the armchair and claimed it as his own. He did; I swear. He gasped and said, “Mom! I love it!” I was almost too surprised by a teenage boy commenting on an estate sale to preen.

“The footstool matches the gold in the tweed, but I plan to reupholster it after the pandemic,” I said, apropos of nothing.

“I don’t know what that means but it looks amazing,” he replied. Then he plopped a bewildered Fig on our English Country Style armchair to take pictures for Instagram.

Later, after testing it for two hours, Mikey gave the armchair high marks for comfort and said he felt refined sitting in it. It is unclear how refined one can look while scrolling Instagram in a faded t-shirt, but I am happy if he is happy.

Maximalist Rooms Are What I Miss

House

Life without social media is nice, but I do miss finding images of maximalist rooms stuffed with patterns and color on Instagram. I am closer to figuring out why the look draws me in and how I can make it work without cluttering up my small ’50s ranch, but I am not quite able to articulate it just yet. An estimated 350 more naval-gazing hours is all I need to develop a solid thesis and solution. So close!

Since I am not on Instagram for the moment, I scroll Pinterest for inspiration. Pinterest is not my favorite platform, and I feel a little lost with all the new (to me) updates, but it did lead me to an image of a maximalist room I can not stop thinking about.

A lot is going on, and my first reaction was to grimace and keep scrolling. Then I scrolled back up to note the chairs and how nicely their burnt orange color paired with all the green. As I spent more time looking at the picture, I started collecting ideas for my own home. Don’t laugh–I am not a design blogger or even a design aficionado. I am a middle-aged suburban mom and school librarian at home more often than usual due to a pandemic. 

Ideas for Maximalist rooms I can Implement
  1. There are no less than three different greens in the furnishings, to say nothing of the plants. I spy emerald, olive, and a muddy sage-teal color. I found the implied permission to mix greens encouraging as the owner of an enormous hunter green sectional.
  2. I would love picture lights on my bookcases. My bookcases pale compared to Oscar de la Renta’s, but I bet there are more people with bookcases like mine than his. I am going to figure out how to make picture lights look special on ordinary bookcases.
  3. Speaking of lighting, one detail that separates designer rooms from rooms done by home decorators is effusive lighting use. Designers focus on lighting form, home decorators focus on lighting function. Count the lighting in this one room! I lost count after 12. 
  4. Using a coffee table/ottoman as a sofa table is something I never considered but will now absolutely do. The area behind my sectional is a bit tight for a sofa table, but something low might work. I also love the art resting against the back of the sofa and the crewel blanket.
  5. Can you really call your look “eccentric grandmother with a weekend country home” (Dowager Decor?) if you don’t have a bust on a table?
  6. Pleated shades are a thing and deserve their own post.

There are some other great pictures in the Vogue piece, but the article gives the impression that pompous social climbers surround Oscar de la Renta. Which, you know, likely. I’ll have to ignore what usually drives me batty about design bloggers (not all of them annoy me) if I want to embrace my British grandmother aesthetic and learn how to create maximalist rooms. But first, I really need to come up with a name for it.

Madam Pince

Nonsense

Today while the students took AR quizzes, I inserted myself into a Hogwarts-like Library. Madam Pince! I could not stop smiling.

A Good Compromise

Mind + Body

I did a social media fast in 2019. The book Deep Work, by Cal Newport, which I read in 2016, first put the idea in my head. I read his next book, Digital Minimalism, during my fast. I thought I would love a book focussed on the ruinous effect social media has on productivity, but it was a rehash of Deep Work’s best chapters. Skip it.

The fast went well, but I did miss interacting with people online. I came back toward the end of October because Mikey needed to create a social media account for a theology class–a flimsy excuse to return if ever there was one. My microscopic community on my tiniest sliver of the internet welcomed me back with open arms. I was happy; I stayed.

The end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 were quiet in my section of Instagram, where I spent most of my social media time. I scrolled and posted pictures. In February 2020, a health situation in China hit the news. By March, I checked Twitter obsessively. On March 13, 2020, our Bishop closed the Diocesan school campuses. Online learning began, and so did my obsession with Instagram. I began documenting our days sheltered in place for our family Chatbooks. Day 1, day 38, day 76, day 162, and today, day 217.

As the days went on, the sense of disquietude online increased. Everyone was right, no one was wrong, and calumny abounded. I could almost hear the familiar click-clack of an ascending roller coaster. That stretch of a roller coaster is called a lift-hill, where a mechanical device carries the cart up an incline to an elevation high enough where gravity can propel the cart down and forward. Social media was my lift-hill. It brought me to a peek and waited for gravity to do the rest.

I need a break from the roller coaster, so I am stepping back from social media for an indeterminate amount of time. I did not do it sooner because there were two things about my 2019 fast that I disliked.

I felt disconnected and forgotten. I felt excluded from the goings-on of my extended family because I wasn’t on social media. My number one concern this time around is keeping up with the lives of my nieces. One is away at college, and three are at home. My solution is to become the annoying aunt who texts for updates and “pictures, please!”

I also lost my community. Before Instagram became my sinking quagmire, it was a fun place to talk with people about books, food, and my goal to live like an eccentric British grandmother with a weekend home. If I retreat entirely from the internet, I can no longer share pictures of rooms festooned with chintz. I was really at a loss trying to figure out how to keep calm and share on until yesterday when I saw this post from Kelly Rae Roberts. She shared her hopes, fears (in a touchy-feely tone I am incapable of), and solutions, which I promptly adopted as my own. I do not have a newsletter, storefront, IG store page, or an online class, but I do have a blog I pay for monthly. Might as well use it!

Blogging seems like as good a compromise as any. I am still online, hopefully talking to people with similar interests, but away from the melee happening in social media. Most important of all, I can still share aspirational eccentric-grandmother-with-a-weekend home images. And on that note…

Gavin Houghton

Buckle up, everyone. There is way more chintz where that came from, and I am just getting started. I hope you stick around for a far more floral and far less exciting/bumpy/contentious ride.

Disappearing Algorithms

House

A couple of years ago, we bought two cream sofas for the boys to sit on while they played video games. We chose them because they were on clearance, and while the soft cream wasn’t our preferred color, the price was right, and my Instagram algorithm approved.

Time went on. We remodeled the house on the spur of the moment. We moved out; we moved back in. Everything was cream or white, and my Instagram algorithm approved.

The boys grew like weeds. Mikey is now the same height as my husband, and Nico isn’t far behind. I noticed Nico contort himself into the loveseat that he once laid on like a Roman emperor. Family movie nights became impossible. We put up with the discomfort for our weekly mass, and it was fitting. We sat properly with hands in our laps in uncomfortable fluffy cream pews. My algorithm said no one else on Instagram had these problems.

I started looking at sectionals. I wanted something in a mustard color similar to Medina’s from Grillo Design but didn’t see anything I liked in my price range. The sectional also needed to be near flush to the ground because Maggie and Fig want to create little dens of sin under furniture. I decided hunter green would be pretty. My Instagram algorithm did not approve.

At the same time, for different reasons, talk came up with the boys about self-expression and taking risks. We told them to be themselves, not what someone expected them to be. “Don’t follow the algorithm,” I cried out hypocritically. I am naturally an overly cautious wall builder with a tendency to overthink. My husband is just a private person in general. It’s true what they say about getting older. We lament some of the risks we avoided.

It’s also true what they say about being a parent. There is little more frustrating than seeing your personality weaknesses in your children. Our motivational pep talk wasn’t going anywhere until I remembered the hunter green sectional. I put a survey on Instagram and asked people to vote on what color sofa they expected to see in my home. Over 70% of voters said they expected me to have a neutral sofa. Even friends who sat on my old blue chesterfield voted neutral. Only one person, Kate, messaged me to ask if I considered indigo a neutral color. I showed the boys the results. “See what I mean,” I cautioned. “Don’t be so safe that you disappear.”

I took my advice and started sharing more of what I like on Instagram. I shared pictures of rooms I would never see in my algorithm–photos with color, pattern, and evidence of human life (in one I saw a discarded pair of socks and a family picture). I joked that I was going through a maximalist grandmother phase. I received an effusive if unexpected, response. I confessed to buying Midnight Sun. Sometimes when I am cooking dinner, I show a dirty countertop, and there will never be enough stories of Fig snoring in front of the TV. The Instagram algorithm isn’t happy, but I am.

I told my friend that the sectional completely changed the look of the house. “It’s more woodsy/boho than I wanted, but I think I can UK it up with some florals.”

“You can easily UK it,” she replied immediately, which made me feel better. I wouldn’t want to disappear into the wrong algorithm.