Richard and I don’t give each other Christmas gifts. It’s a bit of a Grinch thing… He hates shopping any time of year, but especially during the holidays. So we don’t do it. But there has been something troubling about the Laurel Street Cottage that I’m even embarrassed to call my reader’s attention to… our mailbox.

What? What could possibly be embarrassing about a mailbox? How bad can a mailbox be?

Pretty bad. In fact, it's a downright scandalous state of postal affairs.

Please note the numerous things wrong with this picture starting with the fact that it is the wrong type of mailbox. Clearly it was not designed to be attached to a fence.

Let’s go on to note that the previous owners of our home were not daunted by the challenge of attaching the wrong type of mailbox to the fence. It was a simple matter of rope. At some point the rope was deemed insufficient to hold the mailbox so it was reinforced with loops of wire.

You may notice the curious angle at which the wrong type of mailbox (attached incorrectly to the fence) hangs. It’s about 30 degrees. Nothing like coming home to find your Christmas cards and magazines sitting in two inches of rain water on a wet day. And of course the mailbox acquired a lovely ‘patina’ over time.

For a long time I was in denial about the mailbox. I joked about the mailbox. “It’s the three times wrong mailbox!” I would say. “Three wrongs don’t make a right!” I would laugh.

I have to sympathize with the previous owners a bit. It’s not as if I hadn’t looked for one. You know what kind of mailboxes they carry at Lowes and Home Depot? Lots and lots of versions of the wrong type of mailbox, shown here.

It's even more lovely from the back. Please note the couturier-like detailing of the frayed and moldy rope edges.

In my defense, I bought a nondescript, modern wall-mounted box when we first moved in (a readily available style) but it was roundly rejected as inappropriate by the household and I was forced to return it.

I would just like to repeat, the bland wall-mounted box which I purchased for the house was rejected as INAPPROPRIATE for the style of our house. I am only now wondering at the logic which somehow allowed for the old mailbox to be considered APPROPRIATE. Regardless, the mailbox persisted. Until Christmas. I got us a gift.

They just don't sell these at Lowe's dammit.

I'm no longer the postal scourge of the neighborhood.

I love it sooo much. Yes the fence needs a bit of work now… but scraping, painting and iron finials will have to wait until spring.

Dawww!

Wheeee!

I’ve been told twice today that my blog is snarky (and that’s why people love it). It must be the Christmas Spirit filling me, so I’m letting this one go without any comment other than, “Go ahead everybody – have some fun!” These folks look like fun.

So Christmas sales, Christmas sales… I find myself awash in daily email deals. I resist them all! (Ha. Well, I try).

And you should know that I am not an artificial anything type of person. A friend was standing at my kitchen counter once idly teasing at a fern I had there while we were talking. He looked at me shocked  ”Whoa, these are real!” when he pulled off a frond into his hand by accident. Um, yeah.

Therefore I was skeptical of artificial wreaths (the one in my kitchen is the real deal) but when I saw that Ballard Designs had these good looking fakes on a super duper “Hey, we have to unload all the Christmas junk!” sale, I thought, “wouldn’t it be nice to hang one from each window arch on the Laurel Street Cottage?” So here we go… “Introducing the Permo-Wreath. Now with 40% more wreath!”

Permo-Wreath from Ballard Designs

I'll have to hand it to Ballard....

...these do look very convincing.

Wow. I made this scale drawing. I am a geek. Yes, yes I am.

I decided to fit the smallest window, the glass in the front door, then match the other three in size and hang them all at that same height. They looked a little puny to me in this drawing.

So I was fretting a bit (you know, the usual ‘wreath fretting’ that one does. You know, right?) that they might be too small while I waited for them to arrive… until my drive home down Prytania Street in New Orleans last night – one of the prettiest residential stretches I know. I saw a monster Garden District mansion with only a single small wreath on it’s huge front door. I stopped worrying, it looked elegant. Bigger is not always better, I suppose.

So this morning before work I got to fumbling around with fishing twine and hooks and ladders and hammers and hung me up some wreaths!

I should've had a little more coffee in me before I started this before work. Pay no attention to the enthusiastic Jasmine vine growing on the fence. It's A-type personality is getting to me a bit. It's getting a haircut tonight. Maybe with my chainsaw.

My lunch hour: Fluffing up these extremely cheap ready-made bows. These won't last long. Still looking for that ribbon tying tutorial, if there's even any more ribbon left in stores at this point...

But even those cheap bows bring it all together somehow. Merry Christmas from Laurel Street, Y'all!

Settee? Chaise? Regency something-or-other? I’m in love. I desperately wish to replace the sofa in the front room. I love the lines of this and the transparency of the caned back. Wonderful.

Please deliver to Laurel Street right away. And the drapes.

But I think I’m going to need another one of these. I like it pretty much any place I put it!

I thought I was buying it to put it here...

But I like it here, too!

And in here...

And I'm fairly sure I love it here.

Now you can pretty much see what I do during my lunch break when I get a FedEx notification that a new toy has arrived at my door

So Jason and I spent a very pleasant Saturday walking the New Orleans Garden District and touring some spectacular homes dressed in holiday finery for the annual Preservation Resource Center’s Holiday Home Tour. We were blessed with spring-like weather (it has already fled) and DIY Bloody Marys from Cafe Atchafalaya.

I took my camera with me but felt self-conscious about using it as I had once been told that photography was forbidden on the tour… so I don’t have many great photos (though I may go back around on my bike today to take some exteriors). However, I did pull it out to snap one picture of a newly constructed garconniere that I admired behind one of the tour homes. In French it means a bachelor’s apartment or quarters. (I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I learned the meaning of that word from an Anne Rice novel, not from years of expensive college French.)

This structure caught my eye for it’s perfect space efficiency. I wouldn’t even say that it was 14 feet deep, but it lived large when I stepped inside.

The Garconniere

In five years or so, we’re going to have to make some decisions about the Laurel Street cottage. Really we have two options.  In five years we (A) do a complete kitchen remodel, update the wiring in the front of the house and ‘camel-back’ the rear (adding a second floor) to create a real master suite, studio space for me, laundry center and room for exercise equipment. Or (B) put the house on the market and go shopping for a larger house.

The idea of the camel-back is frightening. It could last ten months and we (and the dogs) would have to move out completely during construction. But the little garconniere got me thinking maybe we have a third option. We’ve got a wonderfully large lot by New Orleans standards… why not add a second building rather than dismantling and reassembling the main house in a wrenching renovation?

In the meantime, I have rather more mundane updates to make to the house:

Mundane but vital!

After yesterday’s exertions, I could manage no more than this

I find shiny objects irresistible. Me, and Raccoons.

I want a real ribbon tying tutorial, now... The hot glue gun is poised at the ready in case I find any other objects that need to be attached.

An Awful Mess. Help!

God help a queer with a chain saw.

This Saturday New Orleans was blessed with absolutely Spring-like weather and my mind was clear of work worries that I had used as procrastination justification against cleaning out the yard.

The “Pittosporum” tree above the fountain is actually what most people consider a shrub. Shown above, I like to keep it limbed up like an ornamental tree because if left to it’s own devices it’s natural tendency is to grow itself into a ginormous green golfball.

I’d let it get away from me this summer so I got out the chainsaw just to give it a little haircut. Okay, the thing about having a chainsaw in your hands is that once you get started, it becomes kind of hard to stop. Have you ever used a paper shredder? You know that small gratifying feeling of sending old bank statements into a burr of dusty destruction? Same thing with a chainsaw except you get the added thrill of potentially dismembering yourself.

Sooooo. Now I have four metric tons of limbs in piles in the back yard that need to be hauled to the front of the house and then transformed into some sort of organized and convenient series of small bundles acceptable to our city’s sanitation services. The Spring-like weather didn’t last for more than a day and neither did my motivation to haul all this junk around the house.

I’m considering calling the Nature Conservancy now and having my giant pile declared a bird habitat.

UPDATE… Berrpberrberberberbeerp…

It's amazing what a person can do while waiting for a plumber... the sanitation guys are simply going to LOVE me tomorrow!

And this is why I keep the tree limbed up. I put these Christmas lights on a timer and keep them going all year long

P.S. Those banana trees are a mess, I know. Maybe next weekend…

That was supposed to go in the bedroom corner? It’s been found! Well, not the classic ‘broken column’ I had been searching for, but Christmas sales will provide. And this one, from generally less than favorably priced Restoration Hardware scratched that classical itch that I had for the corner of the Bedroom. $139 and all wood… the pale cypress tones should go well with the rest of the wood trim in the house.

Holy Plato! $139?

Everyone look out! There's a runaway train, err, coffee table headed our way!

So I’m hanging out in the kitchen with my Mom and my SIL over Thanksgiving… talking about recipes, etc. Someone says, “I sure miss Southern Living.” I had to agree. The whole publication has gone more Better Home and Gardens. Actually, Better Homes and Gardens isn’t even Better Homes and Gardens anymore. Now it’s BHG. How ‘now.’

The features in this month’s Southern Living pretty much sum up the decline.  First of all, on page 52 there is this story, “Southern Beauty Secrets… Smoky Eye Made Easy” followed by mascara tips. Really. Is this why any of us read Southern Living?

The interiors have also descended to the lower ranges of boredom/stultification. Or they leave me scratching my head. In December, they featured this cave, err, kitchen:

I almost got a splinter in my haste to turn the page

One woman featured home decor tips. Here’s one view of her living room:

Two things: 1) Do you need a Christmas tree if you already have a hideous painting in Christmas colors? I say put some lights and balls on that thing. 2) The height of decor ingenuity and freshness is not a purple chair. I can't decide what the focal point is here. There's so much going on all at once. Don't miss the mirrored coffee tables. What is the curious sprocket decorative object?

The homeowner offer her style secret “When you use a strong color, you should pick it up in at least one other place in the room so it doesn’t look random.” You certainly wouldn’t want that to happen.

The other side of the living room. Let's count. #1 purple chair #2 Red armchair #3 Yellow checkered sofa #4 Leopard fabric ottoman #5 Red patterned chair #6 Polks dot pillows #7 brown checkered rug

Oh, Southern Living… come back to us! Come back!