My First Magazine Cover

Blog Central at The Bunny Bungalow

After reading a post on Mary's Little Red House blog about creating your own magazine cover, I tried my hand at the Flickr template. It's Great Fun! Thanks, Mary.

As this is a [pretend] magazine cover, see Resources below:

Resources:

Cover:

Wooden ladder, wool rug, folding wood chair with ticking cover: Pottery Barn; Reproduction, oak fall-front desk, designed by Harvey Ellis for Stickley: Stickley; Child's Antique dress: stylist's own (and shame on her for letting that ugly black plug show!); Art: a photogravure by Dan Mitchell Allison.

Blogging Business: Update

Coming soon to a card holder near you! Next week, my card holder won't have blanks in it. Kirk Baxter of Designage and I met this week to decide on the final design of the business card for The Bunny Bungalow Blog. Kirk did a fantastic job on the design. Next, the printer will print the cards. The card will be adorable! I can't wait to show you. (Remember? In a previous blog I pointed out that when a woman reaches a certain age there are two things she can do again: wear pink and be silly.)

Pepper, Kirk's house bunny also attended the meeting. She is a beautiful, black lop-eared bunny. Kirk says he's going to "put her to answering the phone" at Designage.

Photo above: Bunny business card holder from Adkins Antiques, Houston, Texas. It can also be ordered online from The Busy Bunny.

Beatrix Potter Watercolor Brings £289,500 at Auction

Tea at The Bunny Bungalow

A charming watercolor, of bunnies putting on their coats and taking their leave of a party, was sold for £289,500 at auction by Sotheby's in London today. The painting was completed by Potter in about 1892. Not bad for an author/artist who received so many rejections that she initially had to publish her own books.

Note: As I do not have permission to use a photo of the painting, I have provided a link here so that you may enjoy it. Also have a look at this site about Beatrix Potter' s life and work. It has delightful pictures, activities, parent/teacher resources and information about Ms. Potter and her characters.

Sir Joshua Reynolds: a Belated Birthday Observance

Portrait of Francis George Hare, Oldest Son of Francis Hare Naylor, by Sir Joshua Reynolds


Sir Joshua Reynolds
July 16, 1723 to February 23, 1792

Drat, I forgot Sir Joshua Reynolds' birthday yesterday! Sir Joshua Reynolds was one of the most important 18th century English portrait painters. Happy Birthday, Sir.

The antique print above is of a young Master Hare and he is pointing the way to our workout room at the Ranchburger.

A Good Book and the Right Chair

At the Bunny Bungalow: a 1930's club chair, recovered in leather from Installations Antiques

A good book, the right chair and the time to indulge in idleness; what a luxury...or is it? For some of us reading is a necessity; a way to feed our imaginations; to expand our horizons; to connect with like minds that affirm our perspectives; or to discover minds that are startlingly strange to us, that give us different views of ourselves and of the world. In books, the writer opens up, revealing secrets that would not, could not be shared face-to-face over a cup of tea. Reading is such an intimate tête-à-tête. And the voyeur in us pushes us to turn the next page.

Photocraft

"Photocraft" by Caroline Herter, Laurie Frankel & Laura Lovett;
Bulfinch Press

Here's a book every blogger will want. It shows you how to do over forty chic projects using the photos you love. The authors also cover the technical aspects of the digital world in a chapter titled, "Photocraft 101." They also give your great resources: from photographic equipment, to fonts, to vintage Victorian images, etc.

My favorite of their projects is a vinyl shower curtain with a life size photo of Laurie's two sons playing in an old washtub. I'll refrain from showing that to you, as I want you to get the book and see it for yourself. It's a knock-out idea.

I showed the photo of the shower curtain to Tall Husband, "I was thinking that you could stand in the clawfoot tub at The Bunny Bungalow and I'll photograph you. The shower curtain would look great on the old clawfoot."

"I won't do it! Because then you would put it on the Internet. How about if we put your little fat ass on the shower curtain?"

I guess that's a "no"- for now.

Calming Places

Formosa, former studio of 19th-century sculptor, Elizabet Ney

An important skill a human should learn in infancy is that of calming oneself. As a therapist, I have had to teach this skill to premature infants, children and even adults. An important aspect of providing calmness is to manipulate the environment: such as the reduction of noise, both auditory and visual. And this is where interior design comes in. I like most any design style, as long as the design is executed with a near minimalist touch. This is because I learned early on that my neurological system cannot take a lot of "stuff" around me. Many of us have the need to exist in calmer surroundings but never figure this out. We haven't learned that we can function more efficiently and happily if the room around us has soothing colors; that odd numbers of the same object, all in a row are more calming than a clutter of differing objects; that sparseness is soothing.

Formosa, in the old photo above, was my calming place when I was a young teenager, growing up in a chaotic household. Formosa had been the studio of Elizabet Ney (1833-1907), a sculptor. The small castle was just down the street from my house in Austin, Texas. Today it is the Elisabet Ney Museum but when I was a girl, I had the run of the place. A wonderful woman, always there alone, encouraged me to choose any spot I fancied for daydreaming or reading. She was also a source of fantastic stories about Elisabet and her simple life. Elisabet didn't cook, she ate raw eggs; she slept in a hammock for, after all, one would have to make a bed. She did not take her husband's name, a source of much gossip in her day; and she wore men's trousers to work in because they made more sense than a voluminous dress. When I discovered it, the little castle was as Elisabet had left it, almost monastic. It had few pieces of furniture and the colors were monochromatic. She was more interested in space and light. Back in my girlhood, as I lay daydreaming in Elisabet's old indoor hammock, or in a tiny room in the tower, I could almost feel her calmness envelope me, letting my dreams flow like the water in the quiet creek below, at the bottom of the hill.

Sometimes when I am in Austin, I visit her place, alone. In those large, sparse rooms, Elizabet's calmness envelopes me and I become the girl that I was.