Outside, I enjoy those books too--- my late FIL went to school with Ferrol Sams and we love his novels. I hadn't realized he wrote essays as well. "When attending art shows, I swear off coffee table books but I am weak." We share that weakness, lol. Seems I am "always" never going to buy another huge book... Beagles, that room is fantastic, and I do see your pile of books peeking out from under that chair to the left :-) I'm with you on the kindle, but every now and then I like to hold a real book. Even though I find myself pushing the edge of the page instead of turning it (hanging head). No screen can reproduce the heft and color of those prints in large books, there is something about a good quality art print that is somehow more convincing than an image on a screen. Sloe gin, over the past decade or so I've seen many people putting lovely shelving in their dining rooms to combine functions or simply bring books into a room that doesn't often see them. I love that look, of a literary dining room! And your basket sounds eminently practical, we use our shagreen boxes and ceramic bowls for the same purpose--- the "stuff" has got to be corralled somehow. I have seen that Circus book, Robo, and the Atomic Ranch book also, they are both marvelous! It's clear that our collective enjoyment of these tomes is at least partly for the esthetic quality of the books themselves in addition to the content. I suppose that's what makes them "useful" decor :-) In some cases they might function purely as decor, as the leather books you've used, tinam. Have you seen the book purses that are so popular in some circles? Kate Spade has or had a few, and there's quite a cottage industry on Etsy making real old books into small handbags. They aren't a tenth big enough for me, but I love looking at them!

Whelp I got the project mostly done. I need better latches on the upper cabinet doors as the cat Abby has decided I put that there for her to open doors and climb up into. GGGGRRRRRR Both pieces were on wheels !!!! All furniture should be on wheels. LOL The old stuff has come from all over. I remember the hooser came from a liquor store in Challis. Just some thing they were selling on the side.Most of my stuff really is just junk. Yard sale stuff thrift store. I still need to fine tune things in studio and kitchen but already Hoosier is great where it is and the ability to easily get to the appliances is a big help. Not that getting them from a shelf below cabinet is all that hard. For me now it is. sigh. Good news is my hands are getting better. This has been pretty miserable. I am going to jazz up the hoosier a little bit. I am not at all concerned to devalue it as it is not a good one. Crappy wood not pretty oak. Painted and all. Then I will get a picture. Adding fru fru to the top is out of the question Again Abby has her own opinion on what belongs up there and has cleared it twice already of what she does not like. This dang cat is more like an Orangutan than a sweet little kitty.

My husband makes the best french fries. He cuts the russet potatoes in rounds....doesn't peel them. Then he cuts them in sticks, so they are about the size and thickness of my little finger. He has a pot of oil, and he dumps them all in at once...which tends to cool the oil a bit, but when the oil reheats and they finish frying, it is like they have been fried twice, which is the real way to make french fries. You fry them, drain them, and then fry them again. They are lightly crunchy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside. I used to always cut my french fries length ways, but after seeing how he does it, I changed to his way. His still taste better than mine. I am another one who loves an electric skillet. I don't think I have ever fried potatoes in one, but I like frying chicken it better than I do using cast iron. And I have over 100 pieces of cast iron cookware. Or, did have. I have given a lot of it away.

I just installed a Levolor transformations shade. It has blue light filering fabric on the top and cream room-darkening fabric on the bottom. It has a blue header and blue pull bars. It is just as I ordered it. But I'm having a problem falling in love with it. (Maybe it's because I don't like window coverings.) You can adjust how much of each fabric you want to show. Kind of like an adjustable colorblocking effect. I thought the blue could be a pretty extension of my white wood valance. The cream would make a nice backdrop for the TV which is partially in front of the window. It's effective at removing the glare from the TV which is one of the reasons I bought it. I guess I was a little disappointed in the room darkening fabric. It is more yellow than the corresponding light filtering color which was beautiful. But I don't know if I would have picked a different color had I known. Or maybe it's the graduated pattern of the pleats that bugs me a little. They are more scrunched up near the bottom of each bar. Or maybe I should have picked two colors that were more similar. I don't think they let you pick the same color for both sections since they often don't match that well. I liked it better after I hung some of my pictures on the wall, because they repeated the colors and balanced out the color distribution. The thing I love about these shades is the small profile. When they are completely retracted under my white wood valance, there is only 3" blue-bordered cream stripe under the valance. Very clean and doesn't block the view. If I extend the top a bit, I get a pretty blue stripe across the top of the window. I needed color up there since I removed the fabric valance I had before I trimmed out the window. I also like being able to lighten up the room by exposing more light filtering shade. (I did not do top-down-bottom-up because the window would have let it too much light creating a glare.) So I think after I frame it a bit with more decor, I won't mind it so much. Functionally it is perfect. But it seems a little "off" aesthetically. Is it the color combination, or the fabric differences (room-darkening vs light-filtering), or the variations in pleats, or the color-blocking concept, or the cream room-darkening color, or should I just have gone with light-filtering in one color? I just lowered it to the light-filtering blue all the way, and I think I like that better, but there is a smell amount of glare on the TV. Do you have these 2-in-1 types of cellular shades? Do you like them? What colors did you pick?