Forecast from our Front Yard

Here's last year's similar February forecast, even though pictures don't come close to doing our field of crocuses justice. Lulu's been barking like crazy out the front window. She does this often, but lately when we come to see what all the fuss is about we generally discover passers by stopped on the sidewalk in front of our house pointing and gazing at the hundreds of little purple flowers peeping out from the grass. They're everywhere, creeping into the back yard and flowers beds too!

Repeat the Sounding Joy!

It's been a hectic month thus far, and it's not looking like it's slowing down any time soon! Sometimes I envy the life of Lu...

but, when I'm not basking in the sun, here's where you can find me this weekend:

I designed the postcard below to help advertise our neighborhood's holiday home tour, and this year we have our lights up in time!! It's such a fun and festive holiday event with everyone bundled up walking through the beautiful old streets, visiting the lovely decorated homes, and stopping by the time warp tea room for some hot cocoa! Check out the info below, if you can make it, it's definitely worth it!

Next on the agenda, the Holiday Extravaganza! Come see the Christmas parade tonight, which will pass right in front of the Emporium on Gay Street, then stop in to get some local goods and art to check off your list! It's sure to be lively and festive with all the First Friday happenings.

Ahh, and finally, what I'm most looking forward to, Lessons and Carols Service at our church. I hear there's going to be a banjo and some Sufjan inspired Christmas hymns. Because I can't chill out as easily as Lulu can sometimes, I just keep thinking about the joy and calm we celebrate this season, "All is calm, all is bright."

*Lovely poster design by Mark and Caryn, of Smelling Oranges!

Banjo Pickin' Girl

Speaking of getting my monthly fix of live music, last week I had the privilege of attending one of Abigail Washburn's residency shows. That makes two live concerts in one week! These shows are different than a typical live show for a few reasons: they are free, there's usually a pot-luck dinner with the musicians before hand, and they're very casual, like, "let's try out this song we've never played for an audience before" kind of casual. Last week's show happened to be on Abigail's birthday! There was a huge cake, a bottle of champagne passed around with some plastic cups, and some happy flowers set on the corner of the stage. So, since it was her birthday and all, and since I just had these lovely prints made of some of my new work, and since this banjo was partly inspired by her banjo pickin'... well, I know I don't need to justify myself, but I was glad to have an excuse to sneak one of these prints up on the stage next to her flowers! Hope she likes it! And, if you do, I'm working on adding these, along with other new peppered paper prints, to my etsy shop soon! I'll let you know when it's updated.

Abigail's last residency show is tomorrow at the Relix Variety Theater on Central. Pot luck at 7pm, show starts at 8pm.

Pumpkin Heads and Blogiversary

Happy Halloween Pumpkin Heads! I know, I'm a few days late, but surely there's more candy to go around. Actually, we ran out of candy this year! I bought three big bags of fun size chocolate treats and thankfully they were all dropped into totes, two at a time for the early birds, oops. Really we just had to disappoint one trick-or-treater, and it was getting pretty close to 9 o'clock at that point. I love our neighborhood on Halloween- a resident witch lives across the street from us, it has lots of haunted houses I'm sure, plenty of cats, and bats for that matter, and lots of little pumpkin heads dressed up tromping through the leaves.

This year's trick-or-treaters brought a special surprise- a little girl named Ruby dressed up as a nun:) Her little brother was her guardian angel. Did you know we named our vegetable garden Ruby's Victory Garden after the last owner of our home? Well, this cute little family knew Ruby when she lived here and even named their daughter after her! We loved talking to them, and I was relieved to find out Ruby wasn't a horrible old lady but quite spunky!! We already knew a few things about her: she had a huge collection of seashells in the basement, a "Florida" room, and planted quite a few fake flowers in the yard, along with lots of real flowers too. I'm pretty sure she covered up the fabulous velvet wallpaper to protect it when renters moved in, that's my guess at least. Well, I'll never know what Ruby was really like, but I know she loved her/our house, and now I know a cute little girl was named after her. I'm sure that I would have liked her.

post script: Sunday was Peppered Paper's 1 year Blogiversary! This is my 80th post! And to think I was worried about having enough to blog about. Debriefing to come, possibly.

post post script: Don't you love my pumpkin head dolls! I found these at a flea market in Maryville, TN. I don't have many Halloween decorations, but unpacking these every October makes me happy:)

A Work in Progress - Part Two

The Studio

Can you believe all that dark wood paneling? We also had this paneling in our kitchen nook. Several people seemed to think we should leave the natural wood, which was most likely added in the 50's. We have no regrets. It looked better and better with each coat of paint, which were many. Sometimes even the smallest fixes, like repairing a hole in the floor or some cracking plaster, make such a big difference, but painting all of this panelling definitely made one of the biggest improvements in the feel of these rooms.

The Basement Stairway

I actually don't have a good "before" picture of the entire basement, but we've cleaned it up a ton as well. The first picture of the stairway here is post removing a 500 pound cast iron coal burning furnace, thus the grease and hand prints along the walls. It's telling that one of the first things I needed was a clean place to keep our cleaning supplies, with crisp clean blue walls- so many ways to apply color theory! I braided all the onions from our garden and hung them up there as well, if you're wondering what's on the wall.

Perennial Garden

Just one of many perennial gardens, with more to come! We added the fence after we adopted Lulu. It completely changed how the house looks from the street and opened up the side yard. And, provided this little corner for some planting. We've dug up hundreds of iris and day lily bulbs from the back yard, along with lots of old stone, which we used for the walkway and border here. We even dug up a sink- see below. We still haven't made the caps for the fence post, or fixed up much of the exterior, but we're counting down the days now till the painters come to visit! So, certainly not a finished "after" photo, but I thought it would be nice to include one of the exterior.

Of note- the enormous camilla trees on the side of the house that bloom in March, the wild nandina we can't control, and some rosemary I planted from one of the arrangements at our wedding!

I love black eyed susans and cone flowers!

some type of phlox we got at Ijams Nature center-

it's tripled in size since we planted it in the fall

Lulu practicing how to use the gate instead of jump the fence

what else could be under there?

literally hundreds of surprise lilies, and this doesn't even include all the irises and day lilies!

Again, so much more to come! We've done so much in these two and half years, but still have four rooms to go, plus more on the exterior, in the yard, and in the details. I'll keep you posted.

A Work in Progress- Part One

For a while I've been considering posting some "before and after" photos of our home renovations, but I've never wanted to because we're not really finished with anything. For instance, we need some nice art for the walls, some pillows shams for our bed, new light fixtures in the kitchen, and more flowers and trees! And that's just for the rooms that are somewhat "finished." However, after my post about getting our house appraised, I thought I should fill you in on some of the details. After all, I understand the importance of the process and realize that is really what home restoration is about. We'll never be completely finished, so please consider that my "after" pictures here really mean much better, certainly not finished. And, the good news is we'll have more "much better" pictures soon because our appraisal came in higher than expected!

The Kitchen

Along with the yard and the neighborhood, this is the room that sold me on the house. I love the windows, the view of the stone path to our garden, and the openness of the kitchen. It's perfect for us. We salvaged all of the cabinets, converting one into the island. My mom even salvaged the giant sea fan for us (top left). We added all new "scratch and dent" appliances, a butcher block from IKEA, a porcelain sink from the Habitat store, some chalk board paint, and a spice rack, custom built by Laurence.

The green for the cabinets was difficult to get just right. The color I started with was too green and the second attempt not green enough. So the solution was to mix the two myself- a nice combination of Asparagus and Relaxation, so fitting for our kitchen. Lots of the little details I'll have to post about individually, and hopefully our nook will be finished soon, along with new lighting in the entire kitchen.

The Guest Bedroom

Really, this is our bedroom for now, but we call it the guest bedroom- maybe one day. I know, how incredible is that wallpaper! I had to do some convincing to keep it, but I love it! Especially with the arrangement of black and white photos against the velvety gold background, and the soft blue walls complimenting the wallpaper and the curtains.

I like to think that this wallpaper is original to the house, it looks very 20's to me, but could have also been added in the 70's, not sure. The velvet texture is kind of lost in these photos, but you can imagine what it's like. Oh, we also had to close off an exterior door that was added when they duplexed, i.e. decimated, the house in the 70's.

The Bathroom

Some more favorites from our house- the sea foam green tile and the world map shower curtain! I guess I have favorites from every room in the house, actually. Sometimes Laurence says I'm too positive about everything and that I need to be more critical. So, even though that blue floral wallpaper looks like it's cool and funky, underneath I discovered several patches of water damage, including some rotten wood in parts of the window. My criticism - even if people used to just take baths, who puts a wooden window in a shower?

Since we agreed refinishing the bathroom should be first on the list, this little room was my introduction to spackling. At first it seemed like a genius invention, then came the sanding, and sanding, and sanding, and sanding. Two and a half years of restoration and I can say without hesitation, I hate sanding, but I love our new bright bathroom!

Much more to come...

Getting Our Home, and Heart, Appraised

I don't usually get too personal on this completely open to anyone out there journal I've been keeping, but an interesting event took place today... our house was appraised. Turns out that this very ordinary step in the process of refinancing is quite personal. We put off this event for a week in order to finish up a closet that's been in the works for just over two years, that along with our other little in the works project, our entire house. As the week wore on our anxiety escalated. Heart, soul, sweat, tears, bruises, back aches, Saturdays, and way too many buckets of Kilz primer we've invested in our house; how can we possibly begin to convince this stranger of its worth?

The interesting thing happened when Laurence walked back into the kitchen after seeing the stranger off. We smiled at each other, both understanding the immense relief the other felt. The appraiser gave no sign of a great score. He was actually very dull, and as he was leaving just mentioned something about "punching all the numbers in" and 3-5 days. No, our relief and contentment resulted from having to question the worth of our home ourselves.

Nights with friends around a fire pit on an unfinished and awkwardly painted patio can't be put into some kind of algorithm. Observing vegetables thrive with neighbors in what was once an overgrown lot as countless diy stories are told can't be punched in either. Nor can the long sweaty Saturdays, the trips to the Freez-o and Lowe's, the thrill of figuring out how to rewire a light switch or discovering a bed filled with day lilies that hadn't bloomed in years.

No, the value of our home is not measured by its appearance. Our home is just a backdrop, brightly colored with many imperfections, to the countless meals and conversations that take place here. The cracking plaster and unfinished doorways provide such a welcoming and relaxed environment. I hope that quality isn't lost under the layers of spackle and paint.

Our final appraisal: We are extremely grateful to live in a home worth so much.

Chillin' in North Knoxville

I found this happy snowman walking through the neighborhood this afternoon with the bright white snow sparkling all around. He just fits in the scene perfectly, doesn't he? So happy-go-lucky, smoking his pipe, chillin' in his baja, basking in the sunshine... for now. Seems like he could be the gatekeeper for the world of graffiti behind him. I love the bold colors and shapes contrasting with the splatters of paint around the edges, especially the bottom left corner of the building. Not sure what this building is, actually, but it might inspire some nice peppered paper. It certainly comes to life with this jovial man in front of it. I love sunny snow days!

Holly Jolly Home Tour

Come tour some of the beautiful old homes in my historic neighborhood, Old North Knoxville. It's always lots of fun and very festive with all the Christmas decorations lighting your brisk walk from house to house... or you can take one of the shuttles. Park at St. Mary's Hospital Woodland Ave's parking lot, and don't miss out on the yummy chai tea at the Time Warp Tea room, a stop on the tour.

The tour is this weekend!

Saturday, Dec. 5th Candle Light Tour: 4-9 pm

Sunday, Dec. 6th Afternoon Tour: 12:30-5 pm

I designed this postcard to help get the word out, and you can see some of my posters at the Kroger Stores around town. I loved creating the Victorian inspired font, and always find beautiful design and inspiration in the old homes around our neighborhood. I'm still working on an idea for a book based on one of these old homes... maybe a story about the crazy lady that lives across the street from us?

Classic Type

I'm pretty sure it's not made in Knoxville anymore, and I know you can't get it for 5 cents, but I love the restoration taking place on the commercial facades in our neighborhood. I might usually prefer the rustic chipped and worn paint on some of the old brick buildings, but the bright colors and crisp font on this building seem to be celebrating the beautiful fall day that it is. And doesn't that look like such an enjoyable job out in the sunshine? Maybe I should consider mural painting?