Crossing the Bridge

Roughly six weeks ago our family moved from a lovely 2000 square foot home in the trees of Castro Valley, California, to a tiny 1940's cottage in the small water-side town of Benicia, California. It was a daring move.  While both towns are technically within the "Bay Area", or greater San Francisco metropolis, Benicia requires the crossing of a toll-bridge, which, to many Bay Areans, means it doesn't exist.  This explains how I managed to overlook this quaint town for the first 6 years of my Bay Area residence.

It's not the bridge-crossing alone that makes this move a daring one, however.  The house we signed up for is a cottage that was built in the 1940's; giving it ample time for a speckled history of being loved and nurtured, as well as abused and neglected, as evidenced by uniquely executed additions, mismatched fencing, questionable plumbing and wiring, a variety of flooring types, and a well-earned, 70-year-old-house scent.

In general, I welcome this type of "character" in a home.  I prefer it to the modern comforts found in many tract homes, actually.  But, it can be a challenge to take on as a renter. Particularly if the contractor in charge of renovating the well-aged home fails to complete the renovations prior to the move-in date.  When we arrived on moving day, with two truck-loads of way too much stuff, our new little cottage was missing a few necessities (any appliances, useable closets, finished floors, functioning gas, electricity, plumbing, sinks and showers).

Why?

Well, for the first month of living with strange hammer-weilding men traipsing through our personal space, drilling holes in our walls, holding cock-fights on our roof (or so we suspect), and shoveling shit (yes literally) in our backyard, we weren't sure we had a good answer to that question.  But, there was an answer.  We came here on purpose.  We were following our soul-fire.  That unquenchable inner light that haunts you with visions of the life you're meant to be living.  I have always felt it - since I was a child drawing pictures of my dream home.

We saw the potential for that life in this old home, in this small town.  And, while the initial weeks were flooded with the dread that maybe we had made a horrible mistake, Benicia gently whispered to us that we were home.  She whispered in the distant lullaby of the train whistle and passing boat horns.  She presented us with gifts of sea glass and beach wood.  And she embraced us with the warm smiles and genuine "hello's" of her community.

Slowly, this cottage is accepting our many treasures (and helping us to identify the less keep-worthy items).  Goodwill and Craigslist have been well supplied by our loosening grip of 'stuff'.  It feels good to trim back again.  I have always felt at home in a cottage.  It makes sense in my entropic mind to live in a smaller space with less to manage.

Not everything is smaller though.  We have a lot of dirt to play with here, and I'm giddy about it.  This weekend, Klee and I tore down the old picket fence surrounding our large front yard.  We have been carefully pulling out old rusted screws and sifting out the rotted lumbar (not a small task) in order to reclaim the old wood to build a new fence.  We are building a "hog-fence" (also called a welded wire, or no-climbe fence).  We have already re-set all of the posts in cement and are almost ready to start assembling.  I can't wait!  Once we have it up we can start our garden.  We are planning to plant a large vegetable garden in our front yard and another in our backyard.

This is it!  The beginning of the answer.  A small piece of the WHY that moved us here.  We are living in a 1940's cottage (at substantially less rent than before) surrounded by the promise of vegetables and flowers (and chickens?), on a quiet street with friendly, and perfectly quirky neighbors. We are just a short bike-ride away from the beach and a fabulous downtown community that embraces art and music.  This is the vision.  We are here and my heart feels at home.

I Hit the Motherlode!

Elli and I set out for an Ikea outing yesterday when we happened upon a local estate sale.  I have almost no ability to resist garage/yard/estate sale signs, so we detoured.  Fortunately, my Mr. shares in my sickness, so the only reprimand I receive from these detours is for going without him.

Anyway, I found FABULOUS! I can not wait to post these treasures in our shop! Hats! Scarves!  Bohemian Beads! Polka dots! Ruby depression glass! Linen!

I'm beyond giddy. 

The Shop!

We did it! We've finally launched Entropy: The Shop. And just in time for the holidays! We even shipped our first order this week!

We're small right now, but are growing daily. Please stop by and check out the goods...

We're selling some of our fabulous vintage finds:

My funky bohemian designs:

And Klee's delectibles!

And, if you ever see something you want from one of my blog posts, please message me, I'll do my best to accommodate!

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Channeling Eden

I'm currently sitting in my garden whilst my youngest freely runs about innocently terrorizing the dogs and prematurely plucking our tomatoes, or "bapples", in toddler-speak.

He calls them bapples because any round fruit even slightly resembling an apple is, of course, a bapple.


My interventions have minimal and temporary success. With each tiny green bapple presented by my toddler's fingers, I restart the four stages of grief. I go through them relatively quickly now, as I've accepted a certain degree of defeat.

And, I'm simultaneously forced to self refect as I listen to my little imitator sternly scold the pups, "No No, doggie!" for nothing in particular.

Regardless of the on-going grief and introspection, this is my favorite place to be when I'm at Shadow Creek. This tiny Eden was why we chose to live here (well, that and the fact that the landlords were willing to rent to us, a whole other blog).



When we saw the lush landscape of trees perched behind our house-to-be, concealing the modern world, we knew we were home.


So, as I said, this lttle garden is now my favorite perch, but it didn't start out that way.








When we first moved in, our small yard was a huge, oddly shaped, thorny mess.

We referred to it as our East meets West jungle of, "holy Moses, what is that?!?"










We knew that, if we put some love into it, we could find the beauty hiding back there.

It only took a few garden tools (rake, shovel, rototiller, hacksaw, machete...),

a little tenacity (muscle, patience, bravery, rage, night-terrors...),

and some ingenuity (bribing the garbage men, child labor...),





and before much time at all

(except for the years stolen off our lives),

we had the beginnings of our sweet Eden...

While her progress is slow (thanks to that gopher from the underworld and his minions, the snails),

she is starting to give back some of the love.

And we are so grateful!

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The Office (Devil Birds Included)

View from my bed

Before I get started, I have to comment on the duck.  I'm sitting here, on my bed, and I hear a quack from the creek below.  How completely cool is that!? (I never know what punctuation to use when I'm both questioning and excited. There needs to be a third option.)  And the duck is not alone!  I have been spied on by both deer and wild turkey.  And, somewhere in those trees is a horrid screeching devil bird and some form of bear-dog.

I also believe it is skunk season, as I have passed far too many aromatic road-kills these past few weeks.  I always liked the scent of a distant skunk.  Kinda feels like home (weird?).  But, up close, it loses that homey charm.

I really want to share my latest project with you.  Please excuse my tangent-riddled brain.  She's tired.  Also, the lyme symptoms are back and doing a number on her clarity.

Well, we've been working on our backyard this month.  I can't even describe how calming it is to finally have life out there.  (I will show you before and after pics in a future blog.)  One of the major improvements, of course, is the grass!  It arrived on our driveway in one big square pile of dirt burritos. I wanted to surprise Klee when he came home from work, so I managed to muster my superhuman strength, which seems to kick in when I'm in project mode, and lugged each of those muddy rolls to the backyard.

I was delighted to find a large wooden pallet at the bottom of the heap.  I couldn't wait to play.  As the ideas developed, I knew that one pallet would not suffice.  So, Klee and I set out to scavenge for more.  They're everywhere!  But they aren't all for the taking.  Some businesses reuse their pallets, so we had to make sure via lookout man and getaway van that they were free to take.  We collected all different sizes and color shades. Treasure hunting is kind of our thing.


So that's a whole lot of typing to tell you that I made some cool stuff out of wood pallets... and other materials like a big cardboard piece, tin cans, rebar twisties, etc..

Since Klee and I are both creative types, we decided to designate a wall in our bedroom to be our "ideas" wall.  We weren't sure just how we would go about this until our magic pallet appeared.

The great thing about pallets is that they are pretty much pre-assembled (take that Ikea!).  However, you will most likely want to embellish yours.  In this case, I cleaned and lightly sanded some of the really rough spots.  Then I applied just one coat of paint, as I wanted the character of the wood to show through.  I backed it with a large piece of cardboard, covered in fabric, which I had laying around (I have crap like that stashed all over the place).  The purpose of the fabric and cardboard was to serve as a pinboard, possibly sparing the wall from unsightly pricks.  This turned out to be mute, however, as I then proceeded to use eight screws to install the piece.  Mama likes her power tools.

Once the pallet was mounted, I played...

My tin can project (in process)

Card Klee gave me, telling me I was
courageous; and some shells
 from our beach trips

Sentimental frame, postcard, jars of rocks, and vintage
hat which I bought at a thrift store in Santa Cruz
when I was about 17 years old 

And, what idea wall is complete without a desk?

I plan to add glass to the top.  It turns out,
a desk with large gaps, has some drawbacks 

And, cool antique kitchen cart, which Klee and I found on an unrelated treasure hunt a while back.









The wall has two square windows which I've only slightly covered.  I will most likely add to them eventually.

I used wire, curtain rings and
fabric-like paper

It's still a work in progress, but, I guess that's the whole point of an "idea" wall, right?  It will change with each new piece of inspiration, or project.

The Latest Dish

So, one of the things I love about Klee is his creative spark.  It's fun to be with someone who appreciates a good project like I do.  He embraces my eclectic flair, and contributes a great deal of his own.

As a chef, Klee has completely altered my relationship with food.  The man is an artist.  I mean, he needs his own spot on the Food Network, complete with cult following.  And, frankly, I deserve a cajones medal for even attempting to cook for him.  Fortunately, he still appreciates a good "kick ass" cottage cheese loaf, tater tot casserole, or stone soup.  (I mean, really, who doesn't?)

The kitchen here at Belmont Cottage is not chef-worthy by any means, and is lacking in certain basics for meal prep... like dishes.  When Klee came to join us, this dish deficit became more apparent.  Being financially challenged, buying a new dish set was not an option.  Hence, we decided to start our dish project, and it has been fabulous!

We have been piecing our collection together slowly.  Every piece, unique.  It has added a great deal of sentiment to, otherwise completely ordinary, objects.  In fact, we love our growing menagerie so much that we've chosen to display it on our kitchen bookshelf.

Of course, I have my favorites...

Like, I really love this little turquoise bowl because it says biscuit on the bottom

And, this little coffee mug has become my little cup of comfort in the mornings.

These tumblers and bobble glasses are so very much better than the foggy plastic Walmart cups we've been using for the past 12 months.

They remind me of the green vintage glasses I used to have in college.  Don't know what happened to those...

And, I sort of have a thing for birds.  We even found a fun Elliott's Owl plate.  Hopefully it lasts long enough for him to use it when he's older.

Our dish collection has become so special to us.  A bonding endeavor.  Pieces will break over time, which will be sad, but the collection won't be lost.  We'll just have to set out to find new additions to keep the project alive.