Ended up buying a huge teak bench yesterday after finding a forty percent off sale and out-talking a fast-talking owner of a little import furniture shop who was anxious to make money but also aware that if he prices things too high his inventory is going to sit.
We both came out really happy with the transaction and the house looks more West Coast and less cobbled-together prairie farmhouse every day. I'm going for a fusion of the two. I don't really actually care but am going into fall looking at shit I hate and changing it. This was for the front hallway, which has somehow had a radical makeover without actually making many changes at all. Works for me. Not like I spend any time in that room, it's just a place where I drop my keys in the wooden bowl and then kick my shoes off and leave my bag on a hook with my favourite scarf or wrap. That's it. Sometimes I need to go put shoes away or mop the floor or collect half a dozen hoodies left on hooks. But it's the first thing I see when I come inside if I use the main doors (which I never do, I come in the side door and up three steps into the back side of the kitchen, from a long hallway with a bathroom and the butler's pantry. So I want it to be homey. Case in point, the back hallway is painted a beautiful shade of burnt orange because it just needed to be warmer. I don't know but it works and it works very well. The whole area down there is natural wood trim with lots of light from very tall windows and yet it's shaded by the huge trees around the edges of the driveway.
I don't know, I like the bench, is all. And fall makes me think of reinvention in a way spring never has. Maybe if I put up new curtains this fall will be different. Maybe if this room is a different colour shit will hurt so much less. Maybe I'm coming down from these pills and feeling too much again and decorating is just a strawman topic for today.