Our little dressing room has its own closet, in which we are going to build shelves for shoes and bags.

So I am in my painting clothes!

After a week of colder than usual days, it’s a scorchingly hot and humid weekend. A caffè freddo from Bread Alone in Rhinebeck takes the edge off (a bit).

Today we went to the Dutchess County Fair in Rhinebeck, which meant lots of greasy-yummy foods and smelly-cute animals!

We started the day with deep fried Oreos. Seriously, could anything possibly be more distinctly American? They were good, but not quite as good as you might imagine such a thing would be.

My new favorite blog is Smosch. I just spent 3 hours (shhhh…) reading the old entries and dreamily sneaking through all of the beautiful photos. Love-love-lovely.

Fine Little Day has been making me incredibly happy lately, too.

(And they both live in Göteborg! A most photogenic city, apparently.)

I never actually get around to hanging things on the walls with nails. It always seems like far too massive a committment.

The bird illustration was done by my father. I’m not sure when, but I assume in the early 60’s.

Those crystal candlesticks were a wedding gift that sat in a box for a few years until I discovered that black candles saved them from being too…too something. Never in a million years would it cross my mind to buy (or wish for) crystal candlesticks, but there they are, looking alright.

Bone hook and knob on the kitchen pantry door—not original to the house (all of the hardware was missing from this door), but right at home all the same. My refinishing jobs are never good enough to hide all of the painted history of the woodwork, which is just fine with me.

Three sweet mice came to live at Door Sixteen yesterday! Flossie (top), Turtle (bottom), and Olive (camera shy) are presently getting settled into their own special home, which is new construction and requires no renovations.

The big project for this weekend was painting and wallpapering the vestibule (or “the vegetable”, as we prefer to call it) at the front of the house. What I thought would be a half-day affair wound up taking 2 1/2 days, and the detail work still has to be done. I had never wallpapered before, but with the help of my mother, I think I got the hang (hee, punny!) of it pretty quickly.

I can’t find a before shot at the moment, but when we bought the house, this little 4×5′ space was an atrocity! The beadboard wainscoting, doors and moldings had all been painted with a rubbery, forest-green paint (putting the word “forest” in there might make it sound somewhat appealing, but don’t be fooled!), and the upper portion of the crumbling walls had been covered with dark chipboard paneling…and graffiti.

The result of our makeover is really refreshing: the woodwork has all been painted the same color as in the rest of the house (Benjamin Moore Simply White, satin finish), and the upper walls have been replastered and wallpapered with Orla Kiely’s Flower Blossom paper.

I can’t wait to come home tonight and see that wallpaper peeking out through the triangular panes in the front door! Ahhh.