Friday, March 26, 2010

Health Care cocktail party at House of Sweden!


Welcome to the Health Care cocktail party put on by the Embassy of Sweden last night- George holding the chocolate mousse hypodermic needles!!! Then greeted all guests with vials of Aquavit with mint leaves as you entered the event!


Any party that has chocolate mousse hypodermic needles has got to be good!!! Great idea- all the wait staff was in scrubs- so cute!



So good- I had to have few!!!




Up on the roof they were doing yoga and giving Swedish massages! Also great smoothie bar- great because all smoothies had vodka!!!!!



George enjoyed the roof- a little breezy but it was a mild night in DC!



Everything was white - tents and curtains blowing in the breeze.




View if the Potomac River and Sequoia Restaurant below.




Fabulous fruit and nut bar- the dried apricots were the best. They even had pots of grass to flower up the place! Gorgeous.


Curtains blowing made for dramatic effect.



The elevator took everyone up to enjoy the view of DC from the top of Sweden House.



Overlooking the Kennedy Center from the roof. I don't look too happy but it was a great night!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Three separate projects...

We have a few thing percolating up at the house in Maine. A number of projects should be getting underway this spring and hopefully finished up by June.

Last summer the kids worked on a project- the downstairs bathroom. They removed the wallpaper and painted the walls "Fenway Blue" - Go Sox!!! The dark blue looked great in the small bathroom- but when the wallpaper was removed we saw that it was hiding a multitude of wall imperfections. One huge one was behind the sink - large hole. We discussed several alternatives before deciding on beadboard. I love the look and it would lighten up the room and cover the wall issues. We needed it to be high enough to cover the holes and I really like the look when it is covering over half the wall. We decided on 4 feet with an edge like the one in the picture below. Wide enough to maybe tuck a shell or two on the ledge.


Hopefully Steve our handyman will get started soon and the end result will be all done by May when we head up to the house.






Next up on the projects will definitely take longer. We have found - through a previous owner's video- that the butler's pantry original counter top was wood!!! Yikes it looked soooo gorgeous in the video. Dark, but so cool. We need to get back to that. The ugly formica counter top needs to go! The pic below is very similar to our set up. Glass front cabinets on top and drawers on the bottom. We have lifted up portions of our counter top and the wood is still under there- It is going to be a very interesting treasure hunt uncovering it!!!

The only difference is we will also get rid of the white paint- back to the original stain on the cabinets too! Hopefully will look more like a bar/butler's pantry area with gorgeous wood grain. Can't wait to see the results- George has already started sanding some of the doors- its going to be a big job!!!


Lastly another big project is replacing the "floating" stick on tiles in the upstairs shared bath. I have chosen a 2 inch hexagon shaped tile like the picture below. I love the clean look and think it is more historically accurate for a 1912 house. Many of the fixtures in our 4 baths are original - we hope to keep most of the look the same.

Steve and a helper are going to retile this bath and hopefully have it done before we arrive in May. It is always a problem to have large projects scheduled around the arrival of guests. We want to get this one done early as this bath is used by most of our guests. And we are hopefully having many a houseful this summer.



I'll keep updating as the projects progress- here's hoping they end up looking like these examples!!! Happy Spring!!!!