Au Revoir

Leaving today for our annual ski vacation to the great Canadian Rockies.  Will be back in March. This is where I will be, so think about us skiing down these pristine slopes, with only a view of the most beautiful mountains in North America.  It will be cold!

Enjoy the rest of February and we'll catch up when we return!

The Old Homestead Stables

You may have seen my September 2011 post about the Homestead Resort.  This great place is less than an hour away and we sometimes make our way to this old hotel nestled in Bath County, Virginia, heaven on earth.

The Hotel has quite an illustrious history, for another day, but it was served by the railroads back in the day when taking spa water was thought to cure a lot of ills.  The railroad is gone but the hotel survived.  The town is tiny, Hot Springs, and right in the middle sits an old delapadated stable.  This is the stable today.

  The original stables, below, were lost in a fire and replaced with the current stables in the early 1900's.

The stables were quite active at one time but now that horses are not needed for transportation, well, they became less important.  The Homestead also had a very fancy horse show at one time, I remember reading about it in the 1970's, The Bath County Show. 

 A newer facility was built in the 1980's and the "old stables" served as storage.  In 2012, Bath County declared the old stables a nuisance structure as the building became unsafe.  It was decided (unfortunately) that the structure should be demolished. 

This is where Black Dog Salvage comes in. 

They were brought in to salvage materials from the old stables.  The carriage elevator was still in tact:

They salvaged bead board from the tack room walls, stall doors, masive trusses (4 reclaimed trusses as a set for $12,000):  31.5 feet wide x 8 feet tall x 8" 8 3/4 thick.  

It is a sad day to see this historic structure being torn down but comforting in a way since some its parts will live on somewhere else.  You can see some of the stuff on Ebay here: http://stores.ebay.com/Black-Dog-Architectural-Salvage

Quote for the Month

Cabin Fever

A house up the road from me came on the market recently and it is adorable.  The house is new and I have not been in it but take a peek.  The price is extremely high and the market is dead on arrival around here, but it's fun to look.... The house is only 2000 square feet, on less than an acre, two bedrooms and three bathrooms but certainly quality throughout.

Amy Adele Stationary

Amy Adele Stationary offers some really cute stuff at very reasonable prices. Love this stationary!

I ordered these for myself:

Cuteness never gets old. 

These calling cards can be used in so many ways!

Click on the banner to the right side of the blog to see her entire line.  And it comes quick too! 

Tweed and Toile

Like an old wine, tweed and toile get better with age.  I hate to admit it but I have a vintage 1990's Banana Republic wool tweed blazer (with velvet collar) still hanging in my closet.  For some reason, I can't bear to part with it.  A good tweed is like that.

I associate tweed with fox hunting and country living.  When you think of heavy tweed wool, England and Scotland come to mind.  It was traditionally used for upper class country clothing like shooting jackets.  My husband has a coat similar to this one from Orvis:

You also wear tweed during cubbing season, the time between Labor Day and the date the "formal" hunting season starts.

 

Tweed is also modern and fresh like in this t-shirt cleverly used by J Crew this spring.  It comes in two colors, pink and blue. Not sure which one I prefer.

Or in this shirt, part of the J Crew Collection, read expensive.

And in these skirts in bright colors for spring:

 Chanel has used tweed for years and we all know how well that has worked.  The Chanel jacket is still the standard by which all others are judged, and copied, I should add.

You see the influence in Tory Burch every season.

While tweed has English and Scottish origins, toile, or toile de jouy, is French.  Toile de jouy originated in the late 18th century and was originally produced in Ireland but soon became popular in England and France.  Toile, like tweed, is timeless and original but has been updated. 

And you now see toile on everything:

Toiles can go almost anywhere:  bedroom, bathroom, living room, dining room, kitchen, mud room, den or entrance hall.   But I must admit that I like the more traditional toile better.  I don't have any toile in my current house but have used it in bathrooms, bedrooms and in an entrance hall.

This is one of my favorites, in shocking pink no less, but it looks great.

Isn't it wonderful that something that looked good three hundred years ago is still in vogue today?