Thanksgiving Greetings to you all....

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Here's to a wonderful, relaxing (well, hopefuly mostly relaxing) day today enjoyed with the best of what-is-living: family, friends, gratitude, a good meal or two, football game watching, lovely environments to be within and all of that good stuff.....

All the best from here where I've finished setting our table and now will work on finishing-up the preparations in the kitchen for our Thanksgiving Dinner this evening.  Earlier we enjoyed lunch downtown in one of Savannah's great hotels in the historic district, delicious!

 

All the very best to you and yours today and during this holiday season, Lachlan

Prettier than a growing mountain of moving boxes...

Not wanting to leave readers with a dull photo snap of moving boxes...

....until I get to really-blogging-again, here's a picture of one of our late-blooming gardenias plopped into a vase on a side table in the living room which is much prettier to look at than copious squares n' rectangles of cardboard :)

As is evident, we're southern-traditionalists when it comes to interior design and decorating.  This is mainly due to having family items we're enjoying which have been passed along generation to generation but also is due to the fact that (as all of us Preppies well know) true Preppies are traditional, not obsessed over decorating/redecorating and enjoy the inherent frugality of family-used furniture, paintings, rugs and such. 

There's currently very little New and Exciting out there I feel the need to add into our house's interior.

Many of my girlfriends seem entranced by the almost acid-brights of Tory Burched-like Geometrics being found as painted surfaces and prints on everything from huge decorative hallway mirrors to metal wastebaskets for bathrooms.  Personally, I can see these being fun for pre-teens and teenager's bed and bath areas but for me at least, I think they're a bit-much when found in other parts of houses unless... they are part of the whit n' whimsy of someone's light, bright Caribbean getaway cottage.

Another trending going on that I'll let others spend their money on is this New Modern Revisiting.  Less 1970's Halston and more like Bill Blass-on-an-uptick, I find its English-farmhouse-plain-NYC-loft-purposing-RennovationHardware-cataloguing-with-dashes-of-bright-modern-artwork mix up frankly confusing.  Not sure what all is going on with this cobbled together stylizing.  I'll pass...

The older I get, the more it seems to me that house interiors work best when they're the background for relaxed living and comfortable entertaining.  I tire so easily now with "forced" interior statements.  When I find myself within a house like that, I'm already ready to get back to my own space or at the very least, get outside to the porch, dock, garden where one can breathe a bit better.

Early in my adulthood, I used to add-into our home needlepoint pillows, small porcelain boxes and silver picture frames...now being into my middle-age years, I mainly bring in a few books and plants.

The three E's: editing, easy-elegance and experiencing-enoughness have become my middle-aged mantra.



  

Final Moving-in...last of the moving boxes will lead to blogging-once-again

Hello Dear Readers!

I really thought that I'd be "right back into" lots of Prepperly blogging away this summer but our moving-in processes have seemed to just stretch out endlessly amidst both of our career hours also stretching themselves out to keep us overly-occupied about 24/7 each week.

Sleep and rest became almost non existent so writing anything became completely non existent.

Fortunately, that is changing this month of October!

I am fortunate enough to be able to retire from over two decades of being in business management into the semi-retirement of part-time merchandising for the same company.  My work days are now limited to 29 hours a week which, to me, is akin to being on vacation. 

My husband and I looked into what this holiday season was shaping up into for managers of the company I work with and we made the decision that I needed to step away from all of this pre-holidays.  Caregiving for a parent takes up a good bit of my time already and is our top priority.

Sooo I'm now, as of this week, a semi-retired international-pilot's-wife and LOVING IT!!!!

This week James is home and I'm at-home so much more and so we're doing the final unpacking of moving boxes today and may head off to our farm for the weekend.  Yes, I have weekends again! 

I'm looking forward to posting about the upcoming holiday season, Preppy trends, Southern lifestyling and alla' that wonderfully good stuff....tune in next week....I'll really be posting once again.

Best to you all as always, Lachlan

This Preppy Pup...the life and times around a new house for our Mr. K

What a life but hey, some dog's gotta' live it!

One of the biggest concerns we all had with this past year's move and life transitioning was how our dog Kanon was going to take it. 

For here was a pup who had the run of an island.  Here was this little-big-man fellow who dashed into the marsh, trotted about deep woods and dragged fallen palmetto fronds around the sunny glade our house stood in before plunking into the ocean water for a quick dip every now and then.

Here was a dog who loved to race up each side of our island house's front stairway to skid on the lower platform before lunging up to the porch awaiting at the top of the stairs and now... he was heading to a new house that is primarily one floor with wide, shallow brick steps instead of a tall, tall wooden double stairway.

But here also is a doberman who is incredibly adaptable to change as we've found out first, with his adoption and secondly, his next move sitting contentedly alongside his beloved grandpa in our bigger jeep as we traveled south to Savannah.

From North Carolina to an island off the coast of South Carolina to now, the ocean water's edge of Savannah...yes, our Kanon "can do" change very well.

Now he has less stairs to charge up but he does still have his own island to dash around; this one in the form of a small private island attached to our property but only accessible at low tide.

He smells the herb garden and flowers about the property, sniffs the wind in the marsh grass, play-chases herons, squirrels and plays with neighboring dogs, sploshes around in the ocean water off the back yard, runs along his own little island's pathways when the tide's low and then.......

.......sits or lies down in one of his now-favorite spots out in the screened-in room off the living room and kitchen's french doors......ah yes, it's a rough, tough dog's-life but this one is lovin' the livin' of it!

Flowers from the new house...new yard

One of the nicest things about this new house for us has been the amount of flowers blooming in the yard and its small garden areas.

All spring I have been able to keep vases full of first snowdrops then daffodils then a variety of roses and azaleas soon followed by white, yellow and orange lilies and now...here come the roses again!

We no longer have the raised-beds pottagers garden which we so enjoyed out on the island however, I have put-in a small potted herb garden which is doing quite nicely at the moment.  A southern gal absolutely needs fresh mint springs for her iced tea at the very least eh?!

In the kitchen I have a large sunny spot for my various orchids which is nice: we put a bakers rack up against one of the bay windows and the orchids are thriving there.  There are still a few scattered about the house but for the most part, I have finally found a "home" for my orchid-tending.

Down the road from us is a wonderful local nursery with loads of beautiful plants and elegant planters, fountains n' such.  I picked up a few seasonal flowers and vines to add-to the large front porch planter urns perched at the top of the brick stairway and also to use in the planters dotted about out on the back porch's spread out areas.

James has always said that even if we lived in a mud hut, I'd find a way to have flowers in it.....

This new yard and its gardens are more "landscaped" than I prefer but there's always a way to place punches of color n' whimsy around in the form of pretty pots amid so many flowers already a' bloomin' around this place as we're moving and settling in.

Flowers all around, yes please and thank you!

A "Hello" from my new at-the-water's-edge writing nook here in Savannah

It seems like it has been much longer than a year when we began transitioning from our family island home off the coast of South Carolina to be-back with lots of extended family here within Savannah's environs.

It didn't take long for us to find a darling carriage house in the Victorian District to "work out of" as we searched for a new house while getting the old island house ready to sell.  Fortune favored us indeed when the island house sold in two weeks and in a week's time, we were moving-on towards finalizing the paperwork for a new place out here at the edges of ocean water with views much like the ones we had so enjoyed out on our old island.  With today's housing market, this was amazing!

Our new place isn't our "style" at all on the outside but it met so many critical parameters most of which involve having my father living with us.  We more than doubled our square footage but fortunately, by the sake of design (much of which involves eaves), this place in no way feels too-big or having too many wasted-spaces.  Dad has one end of the house reachable down a long hallway for his master bed and bath rooms which connect out via french doors and an elevated walkway to a gazebo.  He also has a large office, a guest bedroom and guest bathroom and storage closets.  James and I have the other end of the house for our master bed and bath rooms, a large study and office room plus what I enjoy the most, a spacious-yet-cosy "reading nook" complete with a window seat which looks out towards the dock and the herb garden side of the yard.  In between we all share a spacious entrance porch, an entrance hallway that goes into a wide living room, a formal dining room, roomy kitchen, laundry/mud  room as big as the dining room, a large outdoor room which spreads out into porches n' decking going into the back yard which on the left, faces our private mini-island and a lagoon and on the right, goes on out into ocean waters.

The three-doored garage and its long workshop area with another bathroom there completes our spot.

Merging two households wasn't easy logistically but now that we're moving into the settling-in stage of this transition, we're all so happy that we finally went down this road together.

It's such a joy being back here in Savannah and back amidst almost all of my family, on both sides, plus friends and now, some new friends as well.  We miss our ole' island digs of course... however... we kept the two upper acres with the palmetto grove facing the water and plan to build a getaway cottage there in the next few years.  We'll still keep our close ties to the area and good friends there. 

Besides being with family again, we also are enjoying the benefits of being nearer to the Savannah Airport, being in the midst of some top-rated medical facilities and my being able to return to having a full time career once again in business management and yet also, just being literally ten minutes commute from the new house in case Dad needs me for anything.

We're focusing on "being" rather than "doing", "acquiring", "striving" and it's been wonderful so far!

The irony of doubling our space?  De-cluttering in earnest for this new place!

We have donated like crazy, given away like crazy and taken things to dumpsters again n' again.

Combining households while also taking the overflow out of three large storage units has us seeking to be elegantly-minimal from this stage of life onwards.  About everything is all set up in the house now and aside from holiday and some seasonal decor' plus family memorabilia, we're storing nothing else that isn't kayak, fly fishing, flying, skiing or gardening related.

This transition has been well worth it on many life levels that's for sure!

And so... enjoy some pictures of my writing nook in our master bedroom's area.  It's my writing, reading, watercoloring, violin playing and putting on makeup at great-grandmother's vanity table personal space I'm absolutely enjoying and I hope that you all are enjoying whatever spot you're living within and living-from at this moment as well :)

All the best as always from Lachlan

P.S. my digital camera is still packed-away somewhere so these pics are from my cell phone........   

Thank you for your patience dear readers...

A sincere "thank you" to my readers n' regulars who have been so patient over the past few months during what would be one of the loooongest, most complicated n' many-layered moves I've ever experienced!

We are FINALLY on the back-end of this huge transitioning which involved moves from our carriage house, our island home and two large climate-controlled storage units in two different states several hours away from where we are here now on the beeautiful waters' edge within Savannah's environs.....

I do so want to catch-up with all things Preppy, Pretty and Positively-fun to ruminate upon with you!

Here's hoping everyone had a great springtime and here's to summertime and some more postin' soon :)

Best to you all and I'll be back posting-away now that all this moving dust has settled, wheh!