Daycor Trends You May Not Know About

For the past few months, I've been dipping into home decorating blogs.  Most are written by women in their 20's and 30's, so I'm dropping in on another demographic, and, boy, do I feel it.  It's all been news to me.

I've identified some trends.

1.  Beige is out.  Gray is very in.  In fact it's everywhere.

 Note the sign over the range.  More on that.

An example of a "before" room:

A color found all over my house.  The blogger replaced the beige paint with gray.

2.  You can use the word "décor" in a completely un-ironic way.  As in "I picked up a few things to add to my decor today."  Or "a lot of decor is on sale." 


3.  You can paint a chair:

 This chair went from crimson to gray with something called "chalk paint."

4.  Target, Pottery Barn, and Crate and Barrel are the stores of choice for home decor, depending on  income.  I've seen one gray and white  pillow from Target, below right, umpteen times.  (I bought it on sale in coral.)

At right: the pillow seen everywhere

5. Laundry rooms are tarted-up.  It's not unusual to see a chandelier.

 They'd die if they saw my laundry room.  We're talking bare bulb.

6.  Monograms are popular, especially in the South:

 Even on the front door

Multiple trends: Gray and a monogram

7.  Signs are big (see #1), always directive re happiness.

 

8. "Pops of color" are still in style:

9.  Pillows belong on any and every chair and bench:

10.  Everybody wants a mudroom (above), although sometimes it's just a closet with the doors removed:

That pillow again

 Boots as decorative element.  Chevron design appears on pillows, rugs, bed linens.

11.  Wedding dates can be converted to Roman numerals and used as art:

Even in the bathroom

I never leave comments on these blogs, but there's one I'd love to: "Could 'fun' be used ONLY as a noun?  Please?  Not as an adjective?"

Signed, Crone

Greenbaggers, Not Having Children, and Those Jeans

On Saturday, I had a tea party for six friends who donate food to the Berkeley Food Pantry through the Berkeley Neighborhood Food Project.  I call them "the greenbaggers," because everybody gets a green shopping bag to fill every two months.  I collect the bags and take them to the Pantry.

Oh, we had fun!  Two cakes from Masse's Bakery (flourless chocolate cake and spice cheesecake, which was much lighter than it sounds) and a bunch of age 60+ women, all liberal, each with a gratifying sense of humor, and all of them generous. Some of them had never met, but no matter. The party lasted three hours.

Did I think to take a group picture?  Yes, but you can't see much.

The greenbaggers:  Ann, Anne, Suzanne, Valerie, Claudia, Karen.  Plus cakes.

The neighborhood food project now provides about half the food distributed by the Pantry. It's so satisfying to see the food I bought in from the group on a Saturday given out to clients on Monday, when I volunteer. Last month,  I sent out an alert to the group about the need for dry cereal for families, and they donated so much that our combined-weight total was the lowest it's ever been.  Cheerios aren't very heavy.

* * * * *

Yesterday I had one of those lightbulb moments when you wonder why in the hell it took you so long to figure something out.

I was lying on a massage table having my neck and shoulders kneaded.  The young woman with the magic fingers was talking to me about some issues in her life and mentioned that she and her husband have decided they won't have another child (they have a two-year old).  She said there are many reasons, some financial, and it just isn't going to happen, which makes her sad because she's 40, and this is it.

Grieving the loss of a child you might have had is something I can relate to.  I have no children, by choice (my temperament,  lack of patience, desire to focus on other things), but occasionally I feel sad about the loss.  For a while, maybe right up until yesterday, whenever I felt a twinge of sadness about it, I'd think I might have made the wrong choice.

But yesterday, listening to this young woman, I realized that you can feel sad about something and still know that your choice was the right one.  In my case, I've revisited that choice periodically when I'm around small children, and never have I come away thinking I would have been well-suited to being a mother.  Even the adorable girls next door (now 24 and 26), who so enriched my life, were never mine to be responsible for 24/7.  Their mother, Laura, did all the work.

The young woman and I commiserated.  I told her that for me, the hardest time was when I was 38-42, when I knew window of opportunity was closing.  It would get easier, I told her.   You can have a fine life without children or with only one.  Not that you sometimes won't feel sad about the loss of what might have been.  But it doesn't mean you should doubt your choice.

Driving home, I could breathe a lot more deeply, in part due to the massage, but also: Why had it taken so long to figure this out?  Maybe because I'd never talked to a younger woman in the throes of making that choice, and I'd never articulated what I already knew, on some level.

 * * * * *

The jeans I mentioned in  the last post are continuing to be terrific.  They have ample stretch and the added benefit that they don't crease! Yes!  No crease marks from sitting.  I may go back for more. Now, if I can just stay away from the leftover cake.

 Thank-you, Not Your Daughter's Jeans!

Didn't We Just Do This?

Red and green!  The holidays are here!  Is  anybody looking forward to it?   Or let me put it this way:  Is there anyone without grandchildren who's looking forward to it?

Sigh.

Gump's has been flogging its Christmas-ornaments-for-tourists since October, little Golden Gates Bridges and Coit Towers.   Starbuck's is doing both pumpkin-spice and peppermint-chocolate drinks--which holiday are they exploiting, anyway?  The catalogs are arriving, even the Shaker Workshops.

Oxymoron, somehow: what happened to simple-and-free?

I'm doing Thanksgiving dinner for my family this year.  There's no way out, because my sister's birthday is on T-giving Day and asking her to wrestle with a clammy-cold turkey that morning is too much to ask.   I think.

My friend Mabry says a woman has only so many dinners in her.   My quota of holiday dinners was filled about 25 years ago.  Also, my quota of Christmas shopping, although the internet makes it a lot easier. 

Onward.  Can't leap forward to January 1, so might as well make the best of it.

* * * * *

Retail:   I just bought a pair of clogs!  Yes, I did, despite wearing size 41 (11 US size).  They are surprisingly comfortable.  I clomp, but there you are.  I feel taller and more confident when I'm wearing them.  Only with pants, though.  With skirts, they make me look like a cartoon character, all feet.

On Tuesday, for the first time, I deliberately bought a pair of fat-jeans.  My closet is full of semi-skinny jeans I've been talked into by salespeople.  I can't breathe in them!  Can't sit down!  To hell with it.  So I bought a pair a size up, not skinny (see photo, above).  They're baggy, but so what?  AND they were on sale.

I also bought a couple of pairs of my usual size because Not Your Daughter's Jeans has slyly figured out how to incorporate an invisible maternity panel at the tummy.  Oh, yes!   They must have, because these jeans  are quite comfortable, extremely forgiving, even a bit skinny.

Style M10K43B4337, if you're interested.

It's getting to be the time of year when I can wear a scarf without triggering a hot flash.   I took a look in my scarf drawer:  total disaster.  I can never find what I'm looking for;  I rummage around frantically, and then give up because if I find one I want to wear, it's always a wrinkled mess that needs ironing.

So, I took a handful of 20%-off coupons to Bed, Bath & Beyond and bought two of these:

$4.99 each

They are splendid! I ironed my scarves and looped them through. 

 There's so little left in the scarf drawer that I can actually find things:

Did you know that BB&B coupons are good indefinitely, even if there's an end date printed on them?  Also, you can use one for a group of things, instead of one per item.  Learned that yesterday.

* * * * *

For months,  ever since Jerry found out he'd have to vacate his campus office in Wellman Hall, we've worked a few hours each weekend packing up books and reprints to bring home.  Or, better yet, to leave in a big sloppy stack outside his office door to be recycled.  We owe the Recycle Gremlin a great big bottle of bourbon.

Here we were last weekend:

My role is to badger and direct.  I read the Sunday New York Times until I see that he's bogged down and putting way too much stuff aside to be saved.  Then I'm ruthless.  No, no, and no.  He pretty much goes along, mostly because his home study is already full.

He's a big fan of old oak office furniture

Acres of books and reprints removed...

...almost removed, anyway.  To go WHERE, is the question.

My favorite sign

Half the room is empty.  But the other half:

Worse than my scarf drawer

Left for the Recycle Gremlin at the end of the day.  Week after week, it disappears like magic.

 We're aiming to be finished with this by the end of the year.  Stay tuned.

Black Lingerie, Glammy Armpits, & Quilt Update

Quilt finds new home!  Claudia M. put in the winning bid of $400 and wins the quilt.  It lives across the back of her new cream-colored (pale butter?) leather sofa.  Congratulations!  And the Berkeley Food Pantry thanks her, too.

 * * * * *

Yesterday Val, Anne, and I trekked over to Pt. Reyes/Inverness to celebrate Anne's 82nd birthday.   We went there for her last birthday, too, but the weather that day was vastly different--cold, windy, wear-fleece weather.

LAST YEAR

Chilly but we had a good time

THIS YEAR

The weather was perfect--warm, with a cooling breeze.

 The basking birthday girl

We ate lunch at Chicken Ranch Beach and marveled at how many off-leash dogs there were considering that there's a front-and-center sign saying that dogs must be on leash. Teeny dogs, big masterful dogs, and everything in between.  But that's beside the point.  Mostly, we chatted and watched people wade out into the calm waters of Tomales Bay.

Val, pondering and browning

After while, we hied ourselves up, carted our beach chairs to the car, and drove up a nearby hill to my friend Elisabeth's house, where we sat on her deck and gazed at the hypnotic view:

Well, not gazing right at that moment

I brought cupcakes from "Love at First Bite" in Berkeley.  (You don't think 8 cupcakes for 4 women are too many, do you?)

My gift to Anne: 100% cotton BLACK granny panties, which she insists on calling "lingerie."  Generally, she wears the Hanes 3-pack variety.  (The shop that sold me the new pair is "Beauty and Attitude."  Berkeley shop names.)

My dear pool compadres, Val and Anne

We drank iced Earl Grey tea with lemon and mint, more perfection.

Afterward, Elisabeth e-mailed me and said, "Such lovely ladies...It was so nice meeting Anne and Val today. They're so different from each other, but I love the friendly joshing and camaraderie among all of you."

Friendly joshing and camaraderie! Perfect description.

* * * * *

In today's New York Times Style Section, brought to my attention by Val:

No, those are not ink smudges in her armpits.  That's dyed hair.  Oh, yes. (Don't you feel old?  Do you even have enough available hair to do this?  I don't.)

The color above is "Voodoo Blue" by Manic Panic, in case you were wondering.  The model, Destiny Moreno, sees this as a feminist statement.

"Nobody questions when a guy wearing a tank top does a selfie that shows his armpit hair," she says. "But if I happen to show my armpit hair in a selfie, it's like, 'Whoa, feminist witch asking for attention.' "

You can go to a "pit-in" for group dyeing sessions in Seattle and Pensacola, or you can pay $65 in a salon. Or you can go to the "Free Your Pits" website and learn how to do it yourself.

There are lots of ways to make fun of this trend, but, honestly, I think these young women have a point.  Shaving your legs and armpits is a form of tyranny.  Erasing part of your body to make your appearance more mainstream, more acceptable per social norms, is not appealing in theory, although everyone I know goes with it in some way (haircuts? make-up? nail polish?)  Why not  "broaden the standard of beauty?" I get that.  But I'm too old.

I showed the picture to Jerry.

"I don't imagine you're thinking of doing that," he said. Nervously?  Warily?

It was almost enough to make me consider it.  In the abstract.  If I could.

Library Glasses, Granny Panties, and Fluffing the House

You've seen plenty of "nerd glasses" around, mostly on younger people.  But did you know they're part of a "generational swing?"

I learned this today from the New York Times.  Understated frames are the mark of Baby Boomers.  Younger people are buying outsized plastic glasses, formerly nerd glasses, now "library glasses," which make a statement.  They indicate that a person is "open and guileless and actively inquisitive," among other things.

A model on the runway for Gucci this year.  Inquisitive or bored silly?

The small, unobtrusive glasses that Steve Jobs wore rejected excess; the new glasses "reject that rejection."



I never did think he seemed as "adventuresome as a critter out of Japanese animation,"  possibly due to his glsses, so maybe this theory holds.

Soon I'm going to have cataract surgery and for awhile I'm going to have to wear glasses I bought in the 1990's:

Will I finally look cool?  Sadly, no.  A couple of years ago, someone in an eyeglass shop told me that big 1980's-1990's-style glasses were coming back, but "not for people your age."  Meaning that I'd look like I living in a time warp instead of making a fashion statement.  Or any statement, let alone open and guileless, etc.

* * * * *

The author of the eyeglasses article, Troy Paterson, starts out by saying that eyeglasses are "more intimate than underpants," because they're plain for all to see.

Which brings me to another thing I learned recently:  Thong underwear is out!  Oh, yes! (For years, I've referred to flip-flops as "thongs," which raises eyebrows and  shows how out of it I am.)  I do own one pair of thong underwear, courtesy of my sister, who spotted a Visible Panty Line. 

Some of today's young women have switched to wearing "granny panties," or what my college roommate Debbie called "big whites."  Back then, we were all switching to bikini underwear.

"Within millennial and Generation Y consumer groups, it's considered cool to be wearing full-bottom underwear," says an apparel analyst,  again in the New York Times.

It's also a feminist statement, because scant underwear is designed to appeal to men, and big whites are all about comfort for the wearer.  However, you can still be a feminist and wear skimpier underwear, apparently.  Yours to choose.

* * * * *

Well, fine!  I've just overhauled my undies so that I have a smoother look from behind, which I got a really good, dismal look at in a department store dressing room recently.  This is what I bought, neither Big Whites nor bikinis, just something to shore up what's sagging and/or too visible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These babies are stretchy and comfortable and have rows of
stick-um around each leg to hold it in place.

Weird stick-um but it works

 

 More info  here .

* * * * *

I've been rushing around like a maniac refreshing and refurbishing my house.  For several years, I've been busy planning trips and making quilts and ignoring things in the house that were tired, needed repair, or just plain worn-out. 

I started out by replacing old stuff that works but had just gotten boring:

BEFORE

Yes, it's okay, but I'm tired of it, even if it was bought at a  museum shop in Paris.  See "understated," above.

AFTER

A $5.99 replacement from Target.  Score!

* *

BEFORE

Again, tired.  And no rubber backing, so it slid around.

 

 

AFTER

 Another Target sale item

 **

BEFORE

 I have a pair of these rooster lamps, inherited from my parents. I've lived with the old damaged shades since 1998.

 

EIGHT TO TEN WEEKS FROM NOW

 I ordered new oval shades that are a better fit, but...

 

 ...with made with plain parchment and a black and rust ribbon trim, shown above.

 

Then there's the harder-to-find, expensive stuff, like a new light fixture for the upstairs hall.  I've lived with this monstrosity for 30 years:

Hate it.  Recessed lighting may be the way to go.

Or how about this:

Sun-damaged black-out lining in bedroom curtains. Three windows like this.

Or this:

A dust ruffle that doesn't fit the new box spring.  It was nice when it was new, about 25 years ago.

**

The front doormat is shot, especially after months of workmen coming in and during the bathroom remodel. What I want is an absolutely plain doormat, 24" x 36".  Can't find one.  Or rather, I did find one online at Home Depot, but they're sold out (doesn't this tell them something? Buy more to sell!).

 

I can find lots like this:

I don't want a doormat that looks like quilt.

This one was mildly tempting because it's funny:

But I'm not that antisocial.

Will keep looking.


P.S. Just found a plain one at Ikea for $9.99!