Ok...Ok...I'll join in! Day 1 of the 30 Day Blogging Challenge

I've seen this all over the blogosphere and I've never really been tempted. Most of all because I always think my clever ideas are better than other clever ideas. I'm sure you agree, but here I am trying to get into better blogging habits rather than being STRUCK by brilliance and then emoting all over the darned page. So here I find myself with a challenge to blog every day for 30 days. Can I really follow directions? Conform to the masses? Find something quippy to say every single solitary day? Access both my keyboard and my brain every day for 30 days (successively)? Well here goes nothing!

Day One: Your Blog's Name

This one should be easy. I've always been about a bargain. I've always seen beauty in the "broken, battered, or bruised" pieces of life. About 5 years ago I started to develop a love...no...an obsession with vintage and vintage-inspired decorating. I loved the recycle-renew-reuse concept and felt the pull towards the past. Living in Arizona as a transplanted San Diegan I truly missed the value of the historical. San Diego as a city is not as old and historic as places back east and down south and I really felt drawn towards them. Almost overnight I developed wanderlust.

Unfortunately I did it alone. Not with my husband and partner. Coming from Philadelphia, he has a much more dismissive approach to anything old. In fact, to him, new is much more desirable and is inspirational. So I found myself at odds with this and struggled to include him in my journey.

So Junkyard was a natural for me....I love everything rusty and dusty, metal and wood. Shabby to industrial and everything in between.

Jezebel to me represented everything forbidden, secretive, and felt...well...a little bit wicked! I wanted to be the "bad-girl" of junking...so what better name?

It was then that Junkyard Jezebel was born!

Stay tuned...tomorrow will be 20 Facts About Me

A Chair To Remember

I love chairs. Its just a fact about me. Like my hair is auburn. And my eyes are a greenish gold that gets very flashy when I get angry or excited about something. Like Chairs. There is just something about them. I'm in love with their potential. I get a thrill from the idea of putting a contemporary Donghia fabric on a vintage frame. 

Or the other way around. You too?? And they don't require a lot of commitment. Of Money. Of  Time. Of Fabric. Of Space. They are Occasional. Or Accents. They can fit in a corner. They are simply the most wonderful piece of furniture invented.

I used to have a chair policy with my husband. Yes, a policy. We had a policy because I couldn't stop buying chairs. I had more chairs than I had house. Something had to give. He determined that 9 chairs in our house was sufficient. In fact, sufficient wasn't a strong enough word. 9 was the absolute maximum (according to him). 

This is where the negotiations as to what defined a “chair” began. Because there are so many different kinds. Dining. Easy. Occasional. Accent. Boudoir. Office. Reclining. Host and Hostess. That's ok. He didn't think I was funny either. So it was decided. 9 chairs other than 1) Dining and 2) Office was the limit. 

Sound reasonable? Well maybe, if I didn't own sixteen. And so it was decided that I was either to “get rid of” chairs or I was to “rotate” chairs in and out of the garage. But the rule was....no more than 9 in the house. Period. One goes in...and another goes out.

 

You'd think that admitting I had a problem would have been a step in the right direction, but in fact it was just the beginning of my lifelong addiction to chairs. That was a time when I lived in a bungalow with many rooms and nooks and corners. Long hallways to nowhere and tons of corners and spaces to highlight the perfect chair. Now in the final stages of active parenting and the beginning stages of my nest emptying I've decided to streamline my life. Reduce clutter. Make living simple. I've downsized and embraced.....(gasp) contemporary.... 

So gone are my 9 chairs and I must live vicariously through chairs that I cross paths with in the outside world. I may run into them at market as our eyes meet across a crowded showroom. Or my heart flutters a bit when the truck opens at our dock and the perfect bergere comes into the light. Or I walk into a model home for the first time and fall in love. 

So here is where I will share it with you my dear friends. If anyone will understand, it will be you. A problem shared is a problem cut in half. Please indulge me as I discover new chairs that I can't have....I will take a picture and see if you share my vision. If not...maybe you'll share yours with me. After all...My name is Jen...and I have a chair addiction.