Antiques and Home Decorating

The manuscript is going well. I wrote 10 more pages yesterday and now I’m within 100 pages of finishing. This is where it gets tricky. I have “Fear of the Ending” syndrome. The closer I get, the more I start to worry about tying up all the loose ends. Hopefully I’ll get it right!

I have trouble with house decorating. I stand in awe at the people who can hang pictures artistically, color-coordinate fabrics, and make a room look like a Laura Ashley showcase. With that goal in mind, I decided to tackle my daughter’s room.

First, I appealed to my mother for help. She has amazing taste in decorating, not to mention a degree in home economics. The problem I had was the large blank walls. Aside from shelves, how do you fill up the space? My mom, God bless her, raided her extra picture collection. She found several prints of dolls which were gorgeous. They were painted by Maud Humphrey. If you’ve never heard of her, she was Humphrey Bogart’s mother. This is a sample of one of her paintings. They’re very delicate and perfect for a young girl’s room. Mom advised me to hang the paintings in triplicate with the larger at the top and the two smaller ones at either side. It looks wonderful. But to me, what’s magical, is having a piece of the past. I love antiques because they make me wonder what the people were like who owned the pieces. Once, my mother bought a secretary when we lived in England. I opened the writing desk portion and found a collection of old fountain pens. I’ve often wondered who left them there.

Do you have any antique furniture or furniture that was passed down? Or how about awful, hand-me-down furniture with the electric Day-Glo 1970’s patterns?