Curb is coming back!

Mark your calendars, HBO just announced that my ALL TIME FAVORITE show, Curb Your Enthusiasm will be returning for a final season on September 20th. The ultra hilarious Larry David (to me anyway, I know quite a few people who can't stand him, including Mr. MT) is planning a Seinfeld reunion during Curb's final season. You can read the full scoop here.

Hooked on hydrangeas

I've always had a love-hate relationship with hydrangea's. I adore their beauty (who doesn't) and their strength to stay attentive and fresh in a vase for days and days.

Now comes the hate part, every spring I plant a hydrangea in my yard, and without fail it NEVER survives.
Take this pretty blue and purple hydrangea for example:

I had given this hydrangea plant to our dear friend Pat as a birthday gift in the spring of 2008. Her husband replanted it in this nice, large, terra cotta pot and cared for it through the winter and insisted on giving it to me this spring once it was in full, beautiful bloom. The poor thing lasted only a few short weeks on my watch, now it's all dried and shriveled. I followed their instructions so carefully, watering it, giving it plant food weekly, ensuring it didn't have too much direct sun and was shaded just a bit.

Whatever....this is NOT the only hydrangea I killed in my yard this year. Nope, there was a gorgeous (and expensive) one I bought at the River Oaks Plant House (love that place) which died, along with the lavender bush I purchased there, in just a few weeks after planting.

OK so enough of my whining about my lack of a green thumb, let's enjoy pictures of hydrangea's that are well cared for and thriving. During our travels throughout Italy and Switzerland earlier this month I was absolutely amazed at the hydrangea's everywhere. It seemed like every corner I turned there they were, such varieties of colors and sizes, some growing wild, and most in manicured gardens.
Enjoy:











Check out what other bloggers are hooked on this week over at Julia's hooked on Fridays party here.

I'm pooped....

....is it Friday yet?

photo came from here

Twine and Wine {a wine tasting in July}

THE INVITATION

My husband is a wine lover, "not a wine snob" as he likes to say, but a wine lover. We have acquired such a large quantity of wine throughout the years that we decided it needed to be shared with our closest friends, so we started hosting wine tasting parties a few years ago. Depending on his shipments, we usually host these events about 3 times per year. This past weekend we hosted our first ever fund-raising, wine tasting event. A Fanatical Change Foundation (FCF- a local Houston foundation) is hosting their second event on August 13th which you can read all about here.

This was such a fun evening and we had a rather large turnout which made for a hot, but wonderful event. I had planned to capture images of the trays of imported cheeses, chocolates, and the rare and old vintages of wines that we served, but after drinking that first glass of champagne to kick off the event, I neglected my camera for most of the evening.


Here is what I was able to capture while preparing for the event, just before our guests started arriving:

THE FLOWERS
Here are the flowers as I was carrying them in from the store. White and green hydrangea, roses, Gerber daisy's.

More flowers: tuberose, pink Gerber's and roses, and white miniature roses:

THE TABLE
White Gerber daisy's in jars adorned with twine and tea lites lined the main dining table where the wine was displayed. Here you see our glasses and decanters all lined up ready for action. I used my burlap runners on the table:


Here's another shot of the glassware, daisy's, and menu with some of the red wines at the end of the table. We served our guests champagne as they arrived, then the tasting included 4 white wines and 9 reds.
A close up of the menu. I made this framed chalkboard (using chalkboard paint of course) and placed in on an easel. We got the idea for the menu from the same wine bar in Italy that I posted about here yesterday. See idea menu picture from said Wine Bar below. I ripped and lightly burned the edges of a piece of a piece of paper bag (honestly didn't mean to shape it like Italy) and glued the printed menu with frayed edges on top. Attached menu to top of easel using twine and glued halved wine cork to top and bottom.


I used these two empty wine bottles as candle holders to frame our menu display. While my husband melted the white pillar candles enough to fit inside the bottles, I tied old wine corks to the bottles using twine:


Here's how the menu and wine bottle candles look once finished:

More glassware on the table:


I figured out a way to incorporate my prized 'dairy slab' into the party. We always use this round bamboo cheese board and it fit perfectly on the margarine platter. We placed the hard cheeses on this board in the living room for our guests.
I haven't been able to find a glass cloche large enough to cover my platter so I cleaned this old hanging wire plant holder and gave it a fresh coat of black paint.
THE HOUSE

Since I don't have a true entryway I always put fresh flowers (preferably hydrangea) in this round vase, on this chippy old Florentine pillar that once belonged to my grandmother. It's tucked away in a corner right next to our coat closet, directly as you enter the front door:

Roses on the hall tree:
Twine and roses inside the bird cage:
Green hydrangea in the ironstone pitcher inside the ironstone bowl:
I was outside spray painting these pine cones white just hours before the party started. Thankfully my husband handles the food and wine and I handle the fluff!


THE PEOPLE
I was able to capture some great images of our friends at the event but figured it wasn't right to post without their approval (most of them don't even know I have a blog, shhh, it's our little secret).
*By the way, in case any of you have been wondering about Mr. Morning T he does exist, really, he's just very camera shy so you may never get to meet him, not even on facebook!
You'll have to settle with a picture of me and my amazing and adorable niece. She's a college student in PA (no, she wasn't drinking at event) and just so happens to be the Interim Director for FCF while she's in town for the summer.


Here's a final collage of the event prep.... Cheers!


It's Tablescape Thursday, hosted every week by Susan at BNOTP. Go check it out!

Oversized antique wine bottles

I love these old wine bottles that were used to display corks at a wine bar where we had an amazing lunch while in Italy earlier this month.

Pottery Barn is selling them here.

Paloma from La Dolce Vita posted a very interesting take on PB's new 'found' vintage items last week, read it here.

Joni at Cote de Texas has found some great bottles on her antiquing adventures throughout Houston, here and here.

I found some others out there as well:

Alhambra Antiques:

Rubylane:

And 1st Dibs has this version in a basket:
And our own Memorial Antiques and Interiors has them as well:


Here they are used as outside decor at Casa Honore in Marseilles, France:

Don't you love the shape and color of these bottles? So pretty.

These are also called 'Demijohn' bottles and here is a definition from antiquebottles.com:
A demijohn is a very large bottle, sometimes up to 10 gallons in capacity. Most were handblown and some have pontiled bottoms. They were used as containers to hold wine, molasses, and other liquids. Common colors were olive green and aqua, while amber is rarer and cobalt blue the rarest color for demijohns.

If these walls could talk

What do these magnificent homes have in common?



If you're not a horror movie buff or from Boulder, Colorado, those might not be easy for you.

If I throw in this picture, now can you guess?


Well let's just say that not only am I obsessed with houses, my eyes and ears perk up when macabre or just plain abnormal things happen in a beautiful home.

After seeing Grey Gardens two weeks ago which I posted about here, I started thinking about how intrigued we (me, hoping you're part of the 'we'....keep up with me now) are with homes where strange occurrences have taken place.

The first picture is the 'Amityville Horror' house. I actually read the book back in the mid 70s (before the movie came out) and was obsessed with the home even as a youngster. Of course the claims of the house being haunted are controversial, but the murders which took place inside the home (prior to the Lutz family moving in) are real. The night of November 13, 1974, Butch DeFeo murdered his father, mother, 2 brothers and 2 sisters in this beautiful, colonial style home on the South shore of Long Island, NY.

Looking at this beautiful home you would never guess that such a gruesome tragedy occurred within it's many walls.


Then there's this house. After JonBenet Ramsey was found dead in her home on Christmas day, 1996, cars lined up along 15th street in an upscale neighborhood in Boulder, Colorado to catch a glimpse. I lived there at the time and although I waited for things to settle down for a few months before I drove by the house, I was obsessed with it as well.

Such a beautiful little girl, seemingly nice and normal family, and a gorgeous home in one of the most coveted neighborhoods in Boulder. What a tragedy! This home was back on the market just last year and in this article from May, 2009, was still on the market then and this site stills shows it as an active listing.


Here are a few pics of the inside of the home from the current real estate listing:






I've always wondered what it would feel like to walk into a house where such a horrible crime happened. Could you actually sense that something went terribly wrong inside at one time? 

Or how about Grey Gardens? Although no tragic crime happened inside (at least none that we know of), can you sense the bizarre events that took place inside for over 30 years?



In 2006 USA today published this article about real estate values of homes where crimes occurred, it's very interesting and discusses the values of homes where some of the most publicized crimes took place.

This article (from July 2008) in Boulder's Daily Camera  addresses real estate values of properties with sordid pasts including the homes of Nicole Brown Simpson and Sharon Tate.

Old houses and buildings are intriguing. I guess I haven't lived in Houston long enough to learn about the homes surrounding me. Have you ever lived in a home where a crime or tragedy occurred?

photos courtesy of amityvillemurder.com, dailycamera.com, usatoday,com, greygardens.blogspot.com