"Instrumenting" change

After all our shopping this weekend, Barb and I dove in and re-worked her music room and her living room. She was really happy with the way both rooms turned out, and I was especially pleased with this front room of her house. She has beautiful instruments and lots of meaningful and lovely family keepsakes.

I turned some of Barb's collection of old books around to face page out, and I like the old look of this whole case. She has a bunch of old, beautiful books and we mixed in some of her dad's things, like his bronzed baby shoe and a pocket watch on a stand. Barb cleaned out everything out of this bookcase (and room) that she didn't love or love to look at, and above the shelves we hung a collage of pictures that Barb said hung above her dad's workbench for years.

She even has the most precious pair of little boots that belonged to her dad when he was a kid. I really wish I had more things like that, old treasures that connect me to people who are important to me. I really love to collect old photos of people I don't even know, and I think Barb is so lucky that all these pictures we rehung in this room are of family members several generations back. My favorite is the one of the girls all dressed in the white ruffles.

Barb's whole family is actually musical, so some of the instruments are older and of sentimental or decorative value, but most of them are actually played. So it was important to Barb for this room to feel cozy and welcoming, to be a place where you could sink in and listen to an impromptu performance.

A last-minute touch we added the next day is this garland stretched across the window made of some hymnal pages I pulled for her straight-pinned to some black tulle. I just can't get enough of old typography and music and that combination of aged paper and black ink.

Barb was so sweet about how much she liked what I helped her do that she treated me to a manicure and pedicure afterwards. Our next project is her dining room...