I would like to change a few things in the Family Room/Den without spending a ton of money.    For now we are keeping the couch since it has a few good years left in it and it is a decent extra bed when we have guests.  The rug is also staying since it is a fairly new wool rug purchased from the Crate and Barrel outlet in Kittery, Maine.    The room is over our garage, and an area rug that covers most of the room makes a huge difference in the winter.  The walls are painted a Martha Stewart color called wicker white and has some undertones of yellow and pale green.

Below is a floor lamp from Ikea that serves us well and provides nice light.  On the wall are 2 original paintings. The upper is by my grandfather of our house, and the lower is by an artist in Cottonwood, AZ named Sallielou of a city in Pennsylvania.

Above the couch is a Marimekko wall hanging from CB2.  We wanted something oversized over the couch and this was an option that was less than $100.  Looking at the below picture makes it pretty clear that I need to replace the freebie lamp on the left.  I’m thinking of this as an option with the soy base, but I can’t quite establish if it will be tall enough.  I also really like these, but thought that I should probably go with a squarish shade.

The Curtains need to go since they don’t quite match.  I’m thinking of something simple and white.  I never have good luck shopping for curtains.  I also think it is finally time to buy an actual piece of furniture for the stereo instead of using the trunk that I packed all my belongings in when I left for college.  I have been searching for a low L shaped bookcase in white that is not too deep.  My second choice would be a normal bookcase to be positioned in the same way as the trunk.  Once we have a new piece of furniture I’m hoping the artwork doesn’t seem like it is hung so high.  Two more original pieces of art are in this corner, one by my grandfather and the other is from a Vermont Artist.  The room is not very large so we don’t have many options for rearranging.  It only measures 12′x10′.

Here is the TV corner.  We are keeping the TV stand and TV.  The corner unit allows us to make the most of the small space.  I’m thinking of packing up the kite over the television and saving it for flying instead of collecting dust.

Lastly, here is the light fixture that I bought at the Todd Farm Flea Market a while back.  We don’t tend to use it often, but it fits with the house.

So if only I could get the impossible to find items I can finally pull this room together.

Here are some pics of our Den/Family Room when we first got the house.  Some pics are with the previous owners furniture and the first two are with our furniture soon after we moved in back in 2003.  I will be posting more recent pics soon.  Since this small room at the back of our house is where we spend the majority of our time I want to finish it off finally.

A while back I took the plunge and organized my book shelves by color. There is actually a Flickr group devoted to Rainbow Book organization. We didn’t have quite the right mix of books to make a true rainbow, but I’m happy with the results. I think it looks neater and occasionally I can remember what color a book is and locate it quicker than I could when we didn’t have a system.

At some point this summer some weeds showed up in our garden thanks to some seeds that never broke down in our compost/worm bin. We speculated for much of the summer and thought that they were melons, but it turns out that they are Ghost pumpkins from our jack-o-lantern carcasses last year. We will have to remember not to put pumpkin seeds in the compost again this year. I may plant these again someday since it seems like they are the first type of pumpkin that the squirrels and chipmunks in my yard don’t eat.

Happy New Year! I decided to make a collage of picture highlights from 2007. I tried to choose a picture per month.

1. Our new kitchen
2. A trip to Asheville, NC
3. Our first view of the Galapagos Islands
4. A Galapagos Tortoise
5. Charles Darwin the EasterKiwi
6. Happy 80th Birthday Poppy!
7. Sailing in the Summer
8. Tony Bennett Concert in Hyannis, MA
9. Kitty Kelly’s Halloween Costume
10. Digging for Diamonds in Murfreesboro, Arkansas
11. Thanksgiving in NYC
12. Burritos on New Year’s Eve

Winter Farm Share

We joined a new CSA for the Winter and had our first pickup last weekend.  We were stunned by the amount of awesome quality vegetables that we received.  The Romanesco broccoli or broccoflower pictured below was by far the strangest thing in the bin.  We had some last night with dinner and it tasted a lot like cauliflower.

Romanesco broccoli

Originally uploaded by jjzach

Crock-pot

Originally uploaded by jjzach

I’ve been using the crock-pot from my childhood to make some meals on the weekends. After a failed Bean Soup I made a good batch of Baked Beans and most recently some Ultimate Chili. The crock-pot is covered with drawings of herbs and still works like a charm.

On a side note, the allrecipes.com ingredient search feature allows you to plug your desired ingredients in and it gives you a recipe to match your list.

Menu Board

Originally uploaded by jjzach

I was all set to make a commitment and paint a portion of the kitchen wall with magnetic chalkboard paint, but wimped out and opted to get 2 chalkboard tiles from the Pottery Barn.

Here is some useful info from Green Tips via the Union of Concerned Scientists:

The Green Dry Cleaning? article confirms one of my suspicions that dry cleaning isn’t always necessary. Wet cleaning, Silicone Cleaning and Carbon Dioxide Cleaning all fall into the green category.

Clean Laundry points out that environmentally friendly detergents should contain no phosphates, petroleum or chlorine. On a side note I’m currently testing some green detergents. More on that later.

Green Paint Choices for the Home.

Can Solar Energy fit your Budget? I would love to have solar power!

and the list goes on. Check it out.

Crafty Salt N’ Pepper Shakers

Originally uploaded by jjzach

We don’t use Salt and Pepper Shakers and I forget that the rest of the world does. After our last set of house guests seemed surprised that we didn’t even have any I decided to DIY a set. The plain set is from IKEA and I used some glass paint to add the S and P. In order to get a fine point I used my Venetian Glass pen.  On a side note, I had no idea which shaker was supposed to have more holes in the spout and Wikipedia reports that the pepper shaker does.