Safe and Sound

Well, Sandy has pretty much moved on for us and surprisingly she didn't leave much of a calling card in our yard at least...something we are very grateful for.  We had a few tree branches come down, which Mr. Tide made short order of this afternoon, and we've had some flooding which damaged our dock, but other than that we are good to go.


 

If we are experiencing this sort of flooding, then I know that other more low lying parts of our county are in dire straits.  Some parts down river from us are barely above water when the weather is calm and the tides are low.

We never even lost power, though the lights did flicker from time to time during the most ferocious of the wind gusts.  From what we've heard, the highest wind gusts got to 74 mph in our area, and we thank our lucky stars that our contractor installed our windows so well.  Having lots of windows is great for views, but when a hurricane, nor'easter, or tropical storm hits (in this case a combo of those 3), they can really be put to the test, and ours have passed with flying colors each time we've had a major storm...knock wood!

The winds were at their worst after dark, and that is always a bit unnerving to hear it howl and wonder what sort of destruction it's doing outside.  Our dock suffered a bit of damage from the winds and rising waters and some of the boards were ripped off, but we'll take that compared to what others are now facing!

This morning we ventured out early to check on the farm property and it was like a ghost town.  There were very few vehicles on the road, and most of those were power company trucks.  The farm did fine too, only a few large branches down but nothing major.

All in all, this storm was much kinder to our part of Maryland than Irene was.  We had some trees come down into the creek and one fell this afternoon on the river side, but as we drove around this morning it didn't look like a war zone as it had after Irene.

We have theorized that because Irene had so much more convective energy she likely spawned micro bursts and mini tornadoes which caused the utter devastation she left in her path last year.  And because we had drought conditions this past summer, I think a lot of the copious amounts of rain made their way into the parched soil with Sandy...all good news for us.

The coastline of Maryland didn't fare quite so well I'm afraid, and like NY, NJ, CT, MA and so many other parts of the eastern seaboard, it will take a very long time for life to return to normal for them.  My heart breaks when I see the amount of destruction they have experienced, and as a hurricane prone area, we can certainly relate to their plight.

Today has been a quiet day here, one where I even took a nap.  I think that after all of the stress of preparing, and then riding out the storm, my body just needed to re-set itself.  

We feel so very fortunate to have made it through the storm with almost no damage, and we truly appreciate the outpouring of support you gave us during the storm.  I received so many wonderful emails asking if we were ok...thank you so much!

While we wait for the waters to recede and for life to get back to normal, which it nearly is, we will think of all those facing massive clean ups and trying to contact loved ones.  I hope that sometime soon they will all be safe and sound as well!

Long Overdue

Broken lawnmowers, nails in tires, art appointments, industrial air purifiers, doctor's appointments, and dead computers, want to know what all of these things have in common...well they're all associated with moi!

The last few weeks have been a blur.  You know the kind, where even in your dreams you are behind the eight ball or atop the highest point in the universe with no visible way down...yeah that was last night's fun dream!  The kind of pace where the bullet train goes whizzing past you in a blur, but you're on one of those hand crank railway seesaw car thingies like they always had in the cartoons, pumping your heart out to try and catch up.  Phew, I need a vacation and there's none on the horizon, so the crazy train will have to keep chugging a few more months.

Yesterday, it dawned on me that I never showed you my friend Melissa's beautiful shop photos that I told you I would show you last month.  I made a promise to myself that today would be the day I would get the post done, and then like magic I saw Melissa at Panera last night...you gotta love how the universe works sometimes don't you?!  Like it was saying to me..."remember, you said today, this means you better do that post, you promised...see there she is!" 

So below is my LONG overdue post filled with lots of lovely photos from her amazing store.  But before we get to all the pretties, I'm also long overdue in thanking each and every one of you who commented on my last post.  I haven't returned a single email or comment from that post and I feel sick about it.  The fact is that I read them all and each one gave me a greater and greater sense of comfort regarding our empty nest, so thank you!  And thank Mr. Tide for fixing my dead computer so that I could come here to say what should have been said within just a few days of posting...THANKS, you guys rock!

And because I've blathered on enough for one post, I will let the pictures do most of the talking for The Right Mix, Antiques and Fine Art, owned by my dear friend Missy/Melissa Geimer!  Enjoy!

Beautiful antique oil paintings...check!

  Gorgeous silver serveware, including antique samovars...yup she has what you need!

 Beautiful antique furniture and rugs, including burl wood and a baby grand piano...whatever you need to tickle your fancy!

 In need of a little sparkle in your life, or maybe just an Aidan Gray fix...well you've come to the right place...or should I say The Right Mix! ;-)

And did I mention that she also carries accessories for yourself (she even sells antique jewelry), or your home, Missy has you covered, at her shop you'll find giftware too, including cards and napkins.

And because Missy understands that every well dressed home deserves a beautiful setting, she offers an array of beautiful garden accessories to boot.

I think you can see why I love this shop, and why I think the name The Right Mix is perfectly suited to it, it truly is a wonderful mix of must haves!  If you were to take a quick lap around my house right now you'd find one of her armillaries gracing my front flower bed, a beautiful antique blue and white creamer sitting on the tea cart in my dining room, and a gorgeous white German Shepard statue atop the Hepplewhite chest in my living room...not to mention some wonderful paper napkins in the drawer of my buffet waiting for guests, or to use as hostess gifts.  So not only do I love Missy's shop, but I love how her wonderful gifts and antiques have helped me create the right mix in my own home!  And the best part is that she's always finding new treasures so each time you visit her shop you're sure to find something new to bring home!

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of The Right Mix located in Leonardtown, Maryland, and I hope you'll have the opportunity to visit it yourself one day and meet Missy, who is one of the sweetest women on the planet, and I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that!

The shop isn't open every day, but you can always contact Missy/Melissa via email at missygeimer@yahoo.com or you can phone her at 480-365-8871 to schedule an appointment, and please tell her Kat says hello!

Thank you Missy for letting me invade your space and take photos of your beautiful shop!

The Right Mix 

25775 Point Lookout Rd

in the Nationwide Building

Suite 2

Leonardtown, MD 20650

480.365.8871

Hours:  Fridays and Saturdays from 11 am to 5 pm

 

The Right Mix

Sometimes I feel like a lousy friend.  Not because I want to be, but because work gets in the way of connecting with friends and then...well, you end up having to give somewhere and these days, that seems like on the friend front.

I have some really cool stuff going on with work, and sadly I can't reveal what it is quite yet...soon I hope.  But because I'm so busy creating and doing work stuff, I find that when the end of the day rolls around I am just too tired to sit down and try and reconnect with those I really want to connect with...ie friends!

I think we all feel this way sometimes, the last time I felt this way was when my kids were younger and I had a lot going on so life revolved around family and home.  Thankfully, I still have that network of my kids and husband...plus my dogs, but for the past few years I feel like sometimes making time with my good friends has become hard.

And it's not just me, they are all really busy too, so we feel like power brokers trying to sneak in a lunch or chat on the phone.  It seems crazy to me really since you would think that with our kids grown things would have slowed down a bit, but actually I think they have sped up...sometimes at breakneck speed!

And then there is this blog and all of the wonderful friends I have made since I started it just 2 years ago.  I used to love the email chats, phone calls, and occasional meet ups that I had time for when I was just writing, but those days are long gone.  And it's kind of like with my local friends, we are all so busy doing our own things that it's not just me finding it difficult to find a balance where we can stay connected without becoming completely frazzled in the process.


 

I sometimes lie awake at night thinking about the emails or comments I haven't responded to...ones I REALLY wanted to respond to, and it makes me feel sad and more than a little guilty.

For now I will have to pick and choose my battles though, because in order to get my business up and running I have to put 110% of my efforts toward that right now.  And of course I just can't let my family fall to the back burner, so they stay at the top of my "to do" list always.  I love that opportunity is knocking at my door, but I refuse to let it knock me off my feet, so I have to slow down sometimes.

But on days like yesterday, when I popped in to my friend Melissa Geimer's (or Missy's) beautiful shop, The Right Mix, in Leonardtown, I was reminded of how much I miss being able to just be, and having the luxury of hanging out sometimes.

Missy is a gorgeous person both inside and out, someone so generous of spirit that you think she could have been the heroine in a fairytale.  I plan to do a whole photo shoot at her shop very soon, so stay tuned...and if you're reading this Missy, get a website girl! ;-)  Up until a few months ago she was part of a local antique mall, but she recently branched out on her own.  Her shop is perfectly named and she has a great mix of antique furniture, accessories, lighting, and artwork.  Her taste is impeccable, and she has brought a little bit of Europe to quiet rural southern Maryland...and I love that!

After I visited with her, and she sent me on my way with the gorgeous antique blue and white creamer you see in this post (plus a few other goodies I will show you soon), I thought about how wonderful it was to see her.  We last saw one another at a wedding back in September...time flies!  She is going 100 mph trying to get her store up and running, and if you live in the area I highly recommend you pop by to check out her wares.  She has everything from Russian samovars to breathtaking antique oil paintings framed in equally beautiful gilded gesso frames that would be at home hanging in the rooms and corridors of Downton Abbey. 

We talked about our new endeavors and she told me how excited she was for me, the way true friends do.  And I couldn't help but ooh and ahh at all of her hard work and feel happy that she was finally where she should be, in charge of her own destiny and in a place where she can showcase her many talents.  I know that it's only a matter of time before designers in the DC metro area find out about her and come calling to snap up her amazing inventory! 

When I got home. I thought about how really lucky I am, and that I just need to be patient and eventually I too will find my right mix.  I will learn to balance a new career and still find time to keep up with the other things that are important to me.  I've done it before, so I know I will learn again, but there are always growing pains I suppose.

So for now, I will focus on the things that need my attention the most and I will hope that I don't offend anyone as I find my way.  I'm more excited about this new venture than I can even verbalize so I know it will all be worth it in the long run!

Do you feel pulled in a million different directions all at once?  And if so, how do you make it all work?

Thank you Missy!!!

For more info on hours and the exact location for The Right Mix ...Antiques, Furnishings & Collectibles (located along Route 5 next door to Guy Distributors in Leonardtown, Maryland) you can email missygeimer@yahoo.com or by phone at 480-365-8871.  She hopes to have a website up and running soon, and I will let you know all about it when she does.

According to Plan

Thank you everyone for your wonderful birthday wishes, I had a great day!  It started with lovely cards from my family and a special gift from Mr. Tide.  He bought me a teleconverter for my big lens.  It is a special piece of equipment that can give your lens even more range, so it's great for trying to capture wildlife or things that are far, far away.

I slapped that puppy on just as soon as I could unwrap it and get it out of the box.  But there was a slight problem, it wouldn't work unless you were using manual focus.  This particular teleconverter overrides the auto focus feature on my camera.  Now that wouldn't be a problem except that the whole point of extending my telephoto lens was so that I could capture better shots of wildlife, like eagles, swans, herons, etc. 

All of those feathered friends I just mentioned aren't too keen on just sitting still and posing for portraits.  They are constantly moving, even if it's just a tiny head movement, so trying to use manual focus on something that is forever in motion just doesn't work.  And on today's digital cameras there isn't even a really great way to make sure you have sharp focus.  Remember on old film cameras when you could line up the two halves of the circle to make sure you were in focus...well those days are gone!  I would like to say that I can see as well as I did 20 years ago, especially for distance stuff, but the truth is I can't, so even on things that were sitting stock still I couldn't get a nice sharp photo. 

That meant that the only present Mr. Tide had gotten me for my birthday was heading back from whence it came.  I was fine with it, but he was really bummed.  It all worked out in the end though, and I ended up getting a few other lovelies to make up for it which I will show you soon.  In the meantime, I am back to long distance shots of eagles...these two were in my neighbor's tree today and I'm pretty sure I overheard them snickering about my eyesight and the fact that my teleconverter didn't work according to plan.

And another little hiccup of late, the winners of my last giveaway, I know you think I have forgotten you and left you in the lurch.  While I was sitting here thinking your photos were winging their way to your respective homes I got a little shock on Saturday when the mail was delivered.  I had carefully entered your addresses into the website of the place where I get prints made, only to have forgotten to click the "drop ship" button on each one.  So that means that it defers to my address as the default address...huge sigh!  So, your photos are all at my house and not with you...another huge sigh!  I braved Walmart (have I mentioned how much I hate Walmart?!) and bought some photo mailers so that I can get them in the mail by early this week.

Sometimes life just doesn't go according to plan I tell ya!  But hey, no one died, so it's all good in the end!

The Golden Hour

A few days ago my neighbor called me to say that it really wasn't fair to the other trees in the neighborhood the way my maple was showing off this year.

I hadn't given it much thought, but she is right, it is a bit of a show off, and one both she and I greatly appreciate for being so boastful.

The leaves have not been as colorful or vibrant as they have in years past, but that's ok, everyone needs a little break every now and then, right?

Photographers often refer to the hour just after sunrise or just before sunset as the "golden" hour, but this time of year that golden glow seems to extend just a bit longer and I find it to be one of the prettiest times of year in terms of light.

It's been a crazy week, filled with ups and downs, frustration and jubilation, and a little bit of feeling yucky just for good measure.  But tonight, after having to cancel a lunch date with a friend who I've tried to hook up with since summer, and not making dinner for my friend "J" who is undergoing chemo (for fear I might give her something), I decided to just go outside with the dogs and enjoy that beautiful golden glow.

This time of year there really isn't a need for Photoshop or increased saturation, Mother Nature has taken care of all that for us.  So you can just point and shoot, knowing that whatever you capture will make you feel warm inside when you look at it later...though adding a cup of tea to the mix while you are resizing pictures never hurts either.


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Even the inside of my house was aglow this evening, and you have to love it when your crystal decanters, some of which are antiques, and your mercury glass leaf ornaments look like works of art.

I will be gone for a few days, the Midwest has requested I make a visit.  Ok, that's not really true, parts of the country can't actually request your presence, but if they could then I would have been sent a pretty embossed invitation asking me to come for the next few days, so off I'll go.

I hope each of you has a wonderful weekend, and that you find a way to bask in your own special glow.  Oh, and I will be back tomorrow to announce the winners of my latest giveaway, I wouldn't leave you hanging, even if the Midwest does request the pleasure of my company!