I just wanted to highlight Judy’s incredible work again. As always,it was so much fun to work with her and she did a beautiful job. She is so creative!!
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Holiday House Tour-The Family Room
Okay-I will admit it. I have a lot of Santas and again,the collection began while living in Zurich and driving up to the Black Forest with all of my American friends. They are so dear to me that the architects actually built the mantle in the Family Room to fit all of them at Christmastime.
I cozied up the couches with loads of Christmas pillows celebrating our Goldens. Judy also created a beautiful centerpiece in a sleigh that I had bought years ago.
Holiday House Tour-The Kitchen
I have a snowman collection that I started while in Switzerland. I had them in the double window as you walked in the kitchen,over the bench seat.
The dog tree in the kitchen didn’t always have Judy’s golden puppy Tucket in front of it for the tour, but I just had to put this picture in. I have all goldens and westies on the tree for our dogs.
The deer seemed a little large when the huge boxes arrived from Frontgate but I loved them on the table.
Judy and I decided to keep the windows clean and simple and just tied burlap squares around white poinsettias and finished them with red organza ribbon.We had a baking station, as if someone in the house were making cookies that day.
Another one of Judy’s amazing arrangements!Just simple boxwood wreaths in the windows tied up with gold ribbon. The HO HO’s I got years ago but had never used.
Holiday House Tour-The Dining Room
Judy did such a beautiful job with the Dining Room table. She took white roses and greens and put them in 6 of my Waterford “Lismore” brandy glasses. She then weaved in a serpentine shape the mixed greens,gold ribbon,white pine, cedar, seeded eucalyptus and magnolia leaves in the center of the table. We used my antique Johnson Brothers plates,Waterford “Lismore” wine and water glasses and my Cristofle flatware.
These beautiful bubble trees are from Simon Pearce.
We used mixed greens,winter berries and pine cones to surround my silver tea set. The little trees I made in a pottery class in Zurich.
Holiday House Tour-The Living Room
These adorable angels were made by the Milton Garden Club. If you look closely- it is a pine cone, a pipe cleaner,a golf tee, an acorn and a milkweed pod then it is spray painted in gold-so clever!!
These reindeer were purchased in Finland by Bill. The glass cubes are “ice cubes” made by Simon Pearce and tied with very thin red ribbon.
The family tree is very special to me. All of the ornaments have a story behind them. Interests the kids had-hiking boots for Kate’s days at Dartmouth,scrubs for Phil in Med School,Bud Light can for Peter’s favorite,computer screen for Chip,horses for Susan. We also have an ornament made by my Mom for when we got engaged-complete with the teddy bear with a ring around his neck as Bill did. I also have many handmade ornaments by me and by many members of our family.
The brass reindeer I purchased this fall from Gerard’s in Lincoln MA-love them! Judy surrounded them with beautiful balls of moss and boxwood that she created, mixed greens,gold ribbon and magnolia leaves.
These are our pyramids-each of the kids has one and I also have my Mom’s. I bought all of them either in the Black Forest in Germany or at The Christmas Haus,located in New Oxford,PA. I used to go to the Christmas Haus when my two boys were at Gettysburg College.
Holiday House Tour- The Front Hall
As you entered the front hall, my friend Judy had made a beautiful arrangement out of rhododendron,magnolia leaves, white pine, flowering kale , and some other mixed greens that she used for layering and texture.
On the other side of the front hall, we had Bill’s grandmother’s creche.She had apparently made all of the pieces at a pottery class in Pennsylvania in 1963 and painted them herself as well!
As you left the front hall,you went into the library to the left. In this room, we had a small tree with little Swiss cowbells. We lived in Zurich for 3 years and when I first got there, my new friend Joan told me to collect the bells at kiosks in every village as I travelled around with our family. “Then” she said, “you will have a second Christmas tree when you move back home- dedicated to your years in Switzerland”. I thought this was a great idea!
In addition,just as we were leaving to return to the US, my friend Sandy found a shop that sold real Swiss cowbells with a brass plaque on which they would inscribe your family name and the years you lived in Switzerland. This bell was at the base of the tree.
Bill’s trains from his childhood circled the tree but unfortunately we could not get them to go-he has ordered the missing part!
Holiday House Tour-Enter In!
Holiday House Tour-The Model A
As you walked up the driveway from the barn to the house there was an antique car that I had borrowed from a friend.It was fantastic to have it there-many people took pictures next to it,some for their Christmas cards.
I asked about the car and this is the story my friend told me:
It must be 10-12 years ago, I was driving to a Middlebury board meeting on a Wednesday night in the pouring rain in October. I drove through Bethel, Vermont, as I have done almost every Friday and Sunday nights for the last 35 years, literally! I drove by this green and black model A on the side of the road, badly needing a paint job. I drove by, and then it started to work on my head. I was not in a hurry to get to Middlebury, I would just go to bed later. I was by myself, so no conflicting points of view. After a couple of minutes I turned around to go check it out, got out an umbrella, raincoat, flashlight and returned to the car, checked it out, and wrote down the phone number, and noticed the asking price of $6000. It seemed intact, but in bad need of a paint job. The next morning, meetings didn’t start until noon so I got up early and drove back to Bethel, probably a 40 min drive. I called the number and the guy told me to swing by.
I stopped in the tiny First National Bank of Bethel in the middle of town and asked the teller if I could get a $6000 advance on my MasterCard? She referred me to the president of the bank sitting in the corner. I approached the president, and he said as long as I had an ID, and credit available, that would be fine. I don’t think I had ever gotten a cash advance on my credit card.
I asked the president if he was familiar with the model A for sale around the corner. He replied, “oh John Merrill’s car? Definitely! He tried to sell it to me”. Fully convinced the entire town would now gang up on the flat lander to exploit as much cash as possible, I asked with trepidation, “What do you think of the car?” He replied, “it runs well, but obviously needs a paint job. Have him start it up for you.”
“Is it worth $6000?” I asked nervously. “Probably” the bank president said, “but let me tell you a little bit about John. You should decide ahead of time if you want to buy the car for $6000. I wouldn’t negotiate. He doesn’t believe in negotiation. Either buy the car for $6000 or don’t buy the car. Let me tell you a story about John. I knew his now deceased father well. I was over there one day and John had 2 Indian head pennies that he was selling. John was about 9 years old at the time. These two men came over from New York to look at the pennies to buy them and John took them in the house to show them the pennies. I was outside with his father and asked, ‘Aren’t you concerned about John negotiating with this two adults from New York?’ John’s dad replied, ‘Yes, I am a little worried for the two guys from New York!’
“Any idea where I could find someone to transport the car to Massachusetts?” “Sure, Ed at the Sunoco has a flat bed.”
So I left with the $6000 in cash and went to the local gas station where I have filled up hundreds of times. They had a tow truck and flat bed, as do most gas stations in Vermont. I talked to Ed, who gave me the same story about negotiating with John. He asked “Do you have AAA prime?” I said I didn’t know. He said “Let me see your AAA card.” He said “you don’t have AAA Prime but I can call and get you upgraded. With AAA prime, I can put that car on the flat bed and take it to Massachusetts for free!” I said “deal”
I went see John. I said, ” I have talked to the president of the bank and the fight who owns the Sunoco station. They both said I shouldn’t negotiate with you, but I have to ask, is this the best price?” John said, you can buy the car now for $6000, you can buy the car in an hour for $7000 or you can buy the car tomorrow for $8000.”
I bought the car for cash, had it delivered to Massachusetts and here it is. The paint job is chapter 2!
Judy’s House in Harwich Port
I just visited a friend in HarwichPort who is not a professional decorator but definitely should be! Her choice of fabrics,art work and little details amount to a very warm,beautiful and welcoming home. She tends to find fabrics at Zimman’s and is constantly looking for items on sale-I love her creativity and old Yankee ingenuity. She has a great eye for putting it all together. She also is lucky enough to have inherited many beautiful pieces of furniture and artwork and has used them perfectly as well.
Pictured below is her Living Room:
Family Room:
Kitchen:
Her beautiful bedrooms:
I think my favorite-just love the fabric choices:
It’s all about the attention to detail……..
Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys
Monday May 16th,2016-the album Pet Sounds is 50 years old. It is one of my absolute favorite albums EVER!
The story of Pet Sounds is the story of art versus commerce, youthful optimism versus adult cynicism and the independent spirit versus the mundane status quo. It’s also a story of tremendous courage. In 1966, 23-year-old Brian Wilson hijacked the Beach Boys, a multi-million-dollar industry consisting of his two brothers, cousin and childhood friend, to give voice to the sounds he heard in his head and the emotions he felt in his heart. The result was an album that had leading musical figures struggling to match his technical innovation, lyrical depth and melodic genius. Half a century later, it’s questionable whether anyone has.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the seminal album’s release, here are some facts about Pet Sounds‘ creation:
Pet Sounds‘ lyricist penned jingles for Barbie dolls, Max Factor cosmetics and Gallo wine.
In an effort to craft material that moved beyond the Beach Boys’ lightweight fun-fun-fun-in-the-sun fare, Brian Wilson sought to work with a lyricist from outside the band’s usual circle. In late 1965, he tapped Tony Asher, a copywriter at the prestigious Carson-Scott advertising agency, who had written campaigns for Mattel toys (“You can tell it’s Mattel – It’s swell!”), as well as Max Factor, Gallo Wines and a host of other high-profile clients. The pair was loosely acquainted through mutual friends, and had recently crossed paths in the recording studio where Asher was producing advertising jingles. The meeting was short and uneventful, but the urbane and articulate ad man stayed on Wilson’s mind.
“A few weeks later, I got a phone call, ” recalled Asher in an interview for the Pet Sounds 30th-anniversary box set. “And Brian said, ‘Listen, I have an album that is overdue. Would you want to help me write it?’ I thought it was somebody in the office playing a joke on me.'” After confirming it wasn’t a prank, Asher secured a leave of absence from his job and reported for duty at the pop star’s Beverly Hills home several days later. Though it may sound like an unusual pairing, Asher’s experience turning long meetings with ad clients into crisp copy and memorable slogans made him an ideal partner for Wilson. Most of their writing sessions began with abstract conversations about life and love, which would inevitably seep into their work. As Asher relayed to Nick Kent: “It’s fair to say that the general tenor of the lyrics was always his and the actual choice of words was usually mine. I was really just his interpreter.”
“God Only Knows” was written in under an hour.
The track has become one of the most beloved in the band’s canon, famously praised by Paul McCartney as the greatest song ever written. Its legendary status is even more remarkable considering that it came together in less than an hour. According to a 2015 Guardian interview, Wilson claims that he and Tony Asher composed the song in just 45 minutes. “We didn’t spend a lot of time writing it,” confirms Asher. “It came pretty quickly. And Brian spent a lot of time working on what ended up being the instrumental parts of that song. But the part that has lyrics really was one of those things that just kinda came out as a whole.”
Author Jim Fusilli theorized that the song’s title was born out of a love letter Wilson wrote to his wife Marilyn in 1964, signing off with “Yours until God wants us apart.” Whatever the true genesis, this reference to God created a dilemma for the two collaborators. “We had lengthy conversations during the writing of ‘God Only Knows,'” remembers Asher. “Because unless you were Kate Smith and you were singing ‘God Bless America,’ no one thought you could say ‘God’ in a song. No one had done it, and Brian didn’t want to be the first person to try it. He said, ‘We’ll just never get any airplay.'” Though a handful of Southern radio stations banned the song for blasphemy, it was warmly received nearly everywhere else.
The original title of “I Know There’s an Answer” caused major conflict within the band.
While Brian Wilson was busy writing and recording instrumental tracks for Pet Sounds, the rest of the Beach Boys spent early 1966 touring Japan on the back of their most recent hit, a brainless campfire cover of the Regents’ “Barbara Ann,” which Wilson had tossed off in the fall to fulfill record-company commitments. When the group reconvened in the studio that February to record vocal parts for what they assumed would be another sunny Brian Wilson anthem, one of the first things they heard was a track called “Hang on to Your Ego.” Written with the band’s road manager Terry Sachen, the lyrics were inspired by Wilson’s experience using LSD. The whole band was taken aback by this jarring new direction, but Mike Love reportedly took particular offense to the piece, which he rejected as “a doper song”.
For the album’s emotional closer,”Caroline, No” 23-year-old Brian Wilson cast his mind back to his teenage crush on a cheerleader named Carol Mountain.
He had been obsessed with the girl as a student, rhapsodizing about her beautiful complexion and long dark hair. By 1966, Wilson had discovered that Mountain was married and still living in their hometown of Hawthorne, not far from his Hollywood home. Though also married, Wilson began to call his unrequited high-school love, who had no inkling of his true feelings until decades later.
Though they didn’t meet in person, Wilson grew depressed that the torch he carried for Mountain had begun to dim. “If I saw her today, I’d probably think, ‘God, she’s lost something,’ because growing up does that to people,” he explained decades later. He relayed this story to Tony Asher, who penned a chorus in the form of a dialogue between the two: “Oh, Carol, I know.” Wilson misheard this as “Caroline, No,” giving the song its pleading title. The recording became one of the most heartbreaking tunes ever committed to wax, plodding ahead at a depressive crawl. He played the song to his father (and onetime band manager), Murry Wilson, who advised his son to speed up the tape a full tone to give his voice a sweeter, more youthful quality. The effect made him sound like the lovesick teenager that, in many ways, he still was.
Session musicians used Coke cans, water bottles and orange juice jugs for percussion.
The arrangements on Pet Sounds boast a dazzling array of percussion previously unseen in the rock-music arena. Sleigh bells, timpani, güiro, vibraphone, bongos and other exotic instruments all add color to the album, but certain sounds aren’t instruments at all. In order to create the music in his head, Wilson improvised a number of percussive instruments from whatever he had on hand. For the Latin-tinged “Pet Sounds” track, he encouraged drummer Ritchie Frost to tap two empty Coke cans for a distinctive percussive beat.
Drumming legend Hal Blaine, unofficial chief of the crack team of session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, had something special up his sleeve for the clip-clop rhythm that kept “God Only Knows” galloping forward. “We used to drink orange juice out of the vending machines,” he explained. “I took three of these small six- or eight-ounce plastic orange-drink bottles, and I cut them down to three different sizes in length. And I taped ’em together, and I used a little vibraphone mallet. Brian loved that kind of stuff.” Session man Jim Gordon (later of Derek and the Dominos) actually played the OJ bottles, but Hal pulled off a similar trick on the introduction for “Caroline, No,” playing upturned Sparkletts water jugs like bongos.
As the flutes from “Caroline, No” fade away, the melancholic sound of a passing train is heard while dogs wail. The locomotive whistle was sampled off a 1963 effects album called Mister D’s Machine (“Train #58, the Owl at Edison, California”), but the barks come from Wilson’s own dogs: Banana, a beagle, and Louie, a Weimaraner.
According to legend, John Lennon and Paul McCartney got together to pen a Pet Sounds-style preamble for their lush “Here, There and Everywhere.” The track found its way onto Revolver that August, but it was their 1967 follow-up that truly bore influence of Brian Wilson. “Without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper never would have happened,” admitted Beatles’ producer George Martin. “Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds.”
Lauren Huyett Interiors 