“Autumn Nesting”—this must be what’s come over me at artCentral and at home. With our maple leaves rapidly going brilliant and beginning to twirl to the ground, deep in my bones there’s an overwhelming urge to create order.
A few weeks back I was down in the Hyde House basement when this strong nesting impulse first came over me. Anticipating the annual visit of the Trustees who oversee Katherine Hyde’s estate, I was collecting Ms. Hyde’s paintings from their basement storage cabinets and racks. Having promised to create a photographic database for Ms. Hyde’s Trust, I had set aside the day to photograph all of her paintings—those displayed upstairs in Hyde House and the ones held in the miraculously dry basement storage.
Finishing all the photographing and the database creation, I blissfully proceeded to move up from basement to attic giving Hyde House an extra tidying up here and there, bottom to top to be ready for our special visitors.
The Trustees arrived on a brisk sunny morning. We went through the house and over the campus. All was in serene and perfect order. Our visitors were delighted and pleased to witness once again the tender, loving care artCentral gives to this beautiful foursquare farmhouse artCentral calls home. Buoyant with the success and fun of my happy ordering, I carried home the urge for more “autumn nesting”.
With any domestic flex time available, I have been enthusiastically autumn nesting and creating order in Paradise, the old home I’ve shared with my husband David for the last two years. Finally I’m almost done with sifting through the boxes “temporarily” stored in our sometimes rather damp basement. We’ve transformed our shared office into the sewing room I’ve always dreamed of having. We’ve gathered up all the household supplies (light bulbs, tools, painting accessories, et cetera) that were scattered in random locations, and we’ve set up shelves for all-in-one-place storage. Now we can quickly find what we need without having to search high and low.
And finally, perhaps most satisfying of all, the under cabinet lighting (carried from house to house over the last several years) has been installed in our kitchen by way of our usual modern-couple team-tasking. As David observed during the installation process, our approach is not the old-fashioned, “Leave It to Beaver”, Ward and June Cleaver, 1950’s gender specific, division of labor. We switch roles often. David’s even quipped that maybe he “should have a white apron like June!” Right! And I can give him a strand of pearls to complete his domestic ensemble. Lol.
I’d already assembled most of the tools and the fixtures for the kitchen lighting installation before David arrived home at dinner time. Since he does practically all the cooking and we were both really hungry, for him to cook while I put up the lights made perfect sense. We agreed to work around each other. We did.
First David fetched the exact drill bit I was missing. Then, while I cleared small appliances and sundry items from a big section of the counter surface, David pulled ingredients from the refrigerator and pantry and did his preliminary dinner chopping. As he started stirring up a vegetable medley at the stove, I climbed up and stretched out full length on my back on the cleared countertop. Looking above me and working on the bottom of the overhanging cabinet, I carefully measured, marked and drilled holes and set screws.
Aligning and installing the fixtures went quickly and well. David rang the gong and we sat down to another of his delicious dinners. During his clearing and cleaning up before tea and dessert, I used his heavy duty staple gun to neatly secure the excess wiring under the cabinet and out of sight.
Now we’re no longer doing kitchen counter work in our shadows. As our daylight hours grow shorter, we have lovely pools of soft light to illuminate our meal preparations. Voilà! Another pleasing nesting project successfully done just as another glorious Maple Leaf parade and celebration have passed, and still I have this urge to nest. What next? Ah, artCentral’s HOLIDAY BOUTIQUE! Mark your calendars please: Thursday, Friday and Saturday—December 5, 6, and 7, 2019. Soon I’ll be sharing all the exciting details!
For now I’ll get ready for Jane McCaulley’s GLASS ORNAMENTS WORKSHOP on November 2 (there’s still room for you!), and I’ll spend as much time as possible with Jodie Sutton’s ENCAUSTIC AUTUMN LANDSCAPES—continuing on view at Hyde House through November 17, 2019. Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 12:00 to 5:00 p.m. and Sundays 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. The display of these 112 stunning paintings made with hot wax is generously underwritten by Sirloin Stockade. For more information call (417)358-4404.
