Sheriff's House B&B Update

You may remember a post from about a year and a half ago in which I announced that I had finally convinced my darling husband to let me try opening a bed and breakfast. http://oldjailarts.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-princess-has-left-building.html He thought "Old Jail B&B" had a negative ring, so we ultimately decided to call it the "Sheriff's House." I had many poignant (weepy) moments going through our daughter's room and boxing up items that she had left behind. We called it the "Tower Room" and the room across the hall the "World Traveler Room." The third bedroom on the second floor, which houses our son's high school trophies and memorabilia, became the "Servants' Quarters," not a B&B room but a space where  I could keep cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and other things needed for the B&B rooms. Visiting relatives joke about being forced to sleep in the "Servants' Quarters."

I set up a simple snack station in the hall with DS's old dorm fridge and an end table. I contemplated buying a Keurig, but ultimately decided on a water kettle and various packets of instant beverages instead, having read scary things about difficult-to-clean disease-harboring tubes in the Keurig. I was also concerned about all the waste involved in the little K-cups, but having used a Keurig recently at the Howarth House B&B in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, I may be revisiting that decision. The coffee was delicious.

DH and I scoured the countryside for antique furniture and other pieces to make the rooms interesting, and I did a lot of "shopping" among the treasures we had collected from overseas as well. I spent a small fortune on bedding and towels, all white 100% cotton so they can be bleached (something I learned from watching "Hotel Impossible"). I created a "Management Handbook" with breakfast recipes, tax information, etc., cleaned the kitchen as it had never been cleaned before, got a food handler's certificate from the local health department, and we were ready.

I wanted to dip my toe in the business, so I started in November 2014 with two listings on the website airbnb.com: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/4033247?checkin=07%2F11%2F2016&checkout=07%2F12%2F2016&guests=1&s=_ZxOOA7v and https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/4235270?checkin=07%2F11%2F2016&checkout=07%2F12%2F2016&guests=1&s=z6_qY5O_

Within a couple of weeks we had our first guests, a very nice couple who were coming to the area for Parents' Weekend at IU. Since then we have welcomed many IU parents, as well as students, business travelers, wedding parties and an amiable fellow with a vintage Porsche he was taking to a car show at French Lick. All of our guests have been wonderful, and I feel very fortunate that things have gone so well. Thanks to airbnb, I never have to handle money, which makes things easy.

Some months we have no guests; other months we may be quite busy. I think in our busiest month we had 11 room nights, which for a B&B with no staff means that I am constantly washing sheets and towels. I have learned to "x" out the rooms on airbnb.com if I know I'm going to be busy or out of town.

I changed my website from oldjailarts.com to sheriffshouse.com, but immediately ran into an issue when I couldn't upload the photographs I had taken with my phone. I paid for that website to remain dormant for more than a year, thinking I would get someone to redo the photographs for me, before finally deciding to give it up last month. I'm still contemplating the benefits of having a website. 

All in all, though, the B&B experiment has been a success. Although I do all the cleaning and laundry involved, making the breakfast is a job for the two of us, and it's fun to get up early and go through the many steps to preparing healthful, delicious food and setting a pretty table.

There are some issues: Keeping the lawn respectable is difficult. DH is busy and really too tired after a long hard day fixing icemakers to run the lawn mower. This summer I finally started hiring someone to mow and weed-whack, but at $50 a visit, lawn care costs seriously cut into the very modest profits I make on what is still a part-time business. Another issue: the cotton comforter covers I bought are a real pain to put on and take off after every guest. While I agree with Anthony Melchiorri in principle that everyone should have a fresh, clean bed to sit on and not a spread that was last cleaned when George Bush was President, there has to be a better way. The 100% cotton bedding also wrinkles like nobody's business, which I hate, but there's no way I'm going to try to iron these huge sheets.

We've never put up a sign to indicate that we have a B&B; all our guests so far have found us through airbnb.com. We talk often about marketing a little more widely and hiring someone to help if needed, but I'm reluctant to go from B&B "Lite" to a full-time operation. We also talk about turning the third-floor tower room into another B&B room, but that is a subject for another post. There is still a ton of work to be done on the house, and now that we have so many more guests, and a little more money, hopefully we will be inspired to tackle more of it.

  

On the trail of writing women

My sister Dee and I recently spent five days traveling from Bedford, Indiana through southern New York and Massachusetts. The theme of our trip was "American Women Writers."

We visited Edith Wharton's beloved estate "The Mount" near Lenox, Massachusetts (www.edithwharton.org). I had wanted to visit the Mount for years, having closely studied Wharton's fiction in graduate school. The house and grounds are beautiful, and I confess to being inspired to copy the draperies and the leopard spotted stair runners for my own "castle." We had a nice lunch on the veranda, and at one point I could feel Edith right there next to me, dressed in rustling silks, looking out over her formal gardens and worrying about her husband Teddy, who became more and more mentally unstable during the couple's ten years at the Mount.  

Our next woman writer of interest was Emily Dickinson, and we were lucky to secure a wonderful tour of both her family home and the home of her brother Austin Dickinson in Amherst, Massachusetts (emilydickinsonmuseum.org). Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable, and, as there were no children in our group of five, she treated us to some shocking details from the diary of Austin Dickinson's mistress Mabel Todd, as well as recent scholarly speculation on whether or not Emily Dickinson had an affair when she claimed to be seeing an eye doctor in Boston. It was all quite delicious and completely at odds with the popular image of Emily Dickinson, virginal recluse. 

The last of the three women authors' houses was Orchard House, Louisa May Alcott's home in Concord, Massachusetts (www.louisamayalcott.org).  We had to race a bit by this time, as our rental car was due back that afternoon in Queens, New York, but once more we had a fantastically knowledgeable tour guide who made us feel that we knew the Alcott girls intimately. Our tour group this time included a family of children, which meant we spent more time thinking about the Alcott girls as children and no time at all speculating about their sex lives, which was just fine. One takeaway from this quick stop is that May Alcott, whom we all know as Amy March in Little Women, was an extremely talented classically-trained artist. Her works decorate every room of Orchard House, and it's hard not to feel that the world lost a great talent when she died at age 39, seven weeks after giving birth to her daughter Lulu.

We had only the vaguest of plans when we set out from Bedford. There were many spontaneous stops along the way (several of them involving food, most notably ice cream). We lodged in three equally wonderful, although very different locations: the Old Library B&B in Olean, New York (www.oldlibraryrestaurant.com), Polacce's Family Resort in Catskill, New York (funinthecatskills.com), and the Howarth House B&B in Fitchburg, Massachusetts (www.howarthhouse.com). We booked each one of these from our cell phones--whichever of us wasn't driving was seeking our night's lodging, and I think we both did a wonderful job of finding memorable locations to stay. We took long walks in the morning to explore each place and cement them into our memory. In Amherst we crashed at my niece's group house, which was empty except for a young man from Chicago and his dog. There we got to switch gears a little and fix up the bathroom for my niece's impending senior year at UMass Amherst.

Other noteworthy and serendipitous finds included the Golden Lamb Inn in Lebanon, Ohio (www.goldenlamb.com), where we had a scrumptious lunch and toured the old hotel, the Smuggler's Wharf in Erie, Pennsylvania (smugglerswharfinc.com), which offered a lovely view of Lake Erie and a chance for Dee to recharge her cell phone, and the colonial-era Benjamin Patterson Inn in Corning, New York (http://www.heritagevillagesfl.org/). We enjoyed the view at the Afton Golf Club (www.aftongolf.com), even though neither of us is a golfer. The food was predictable, but the portions were generous; my chicken Caesar salad served as both lunch and dinner. 

I flew back home from New York on Friday, feeling as if I had been gone for much longer than five days. Dee and I had so much fun on this trip we have already begun planning our next escape.  

Trashion/Refashion 2016

Another April,  another wonderful Trashion/Refashion show in Bloomington. Thanks to John Streiff-Fraser for the two professional photos, and to my beautiful model, Kara Ratcliff,  for making the clothes look so good! You can see more of this show at http://bloomingtontrashion.org/.

I submitted only one outfit this year, "Stellar City Girl, " a rather obvious reference to our little city of Bedford and all the positive changes taking place here since our designation as a "Stellar City."

The outfit consists of four pieces: The first, a skirt made of vinyl banners promoting the Stellar program and an old shower curtain,  was draped with a gunslinger-style belt made of choice words cut from the same banners to deliver a positive message about our community.  The crop top was fashioned from old jeans salvaged from my mom's house, and fastened in the back with four gold star buttons from the same source. For the hat I cut down a damaged cowboy hat of my dad's (you can see the original in the picture), then edged it with gold Thai silk from my stash and added a starburst medallion cut from an old necklace and a shooting star "tail" of the same silk.

Obviously not just anyone could wear this outfit, but Kara  looked fantastic in it. Every time I think about getting rid of all the fabrics, old clothes, old jewelry,  etc., that I hold onto, I remember how much fun it is to pull together an outfit without spending a dime.

I'm already collecting plastic mesh produce bags for next year. Stay tuned!

Farewell, Downton Abbey!

For a "Farewell to Downton Abbey" tea party at the museum,  I dug deep into my fabric stash and came up with a  sheer sparkly piece that I bought at least 17 years ago in Djibouti.  Inspired by a kimono jacket worn by Essie Davis on "Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries," I bought Butterick B6176, which promised to be "Fast & Easy," and voila, a couple of hours later I had a sparkly jacket.

The tea party was at 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoon,  so after thinking hard about how to dress my head, I hurried home from church and whipped up a turban  from an old skirt  (bought in the Tbilisi bazroba in 2003 for a Halloween costume for DD). I sewed a piece of broken jewelry to the front, added a peacock feather rescued from the mannequin tree at Christmas,  and I felt pretty fabulous as I left the house! 

If I make this pattern again, I will make it a size smaller than indicated by the pattern measurements. I love the freedom of movement of the kimono shape, but honestly,  two of me would fit inside that jacket. I pinned it closed in the front with an antique button, but I could have wrapped it to the side seams. 

Christmas Open House at the Sheriff's House

Every year, Lawrence County Cancer Patient Services has a holiday home tour to raise money for their charitable work. I had been asked a few times to open our home for this, but never felt I had the time or resources to clean and decorate the house to a level I felt appropriate for  this event. I mean, close to 250 people were paying money to walk through our house--there should be something to surprise and delight in every room, right?

Well, this year I said yes, and my sister Dee flew out from New York to help with the preparations. My friend Emily also worked with us every day the week before the tour, and other friends pitched in as well. I borrowed decorations from a lot of people, particularly my mom and sister-in-law Roxie, and bought a very few new things for my permanent collection. Here are a few highlights:

Bloomington Trashion Refashion Show

I'm so pleased I can finally show off my designs for the Bloomington  (Indiana ) Trashion Refashion Show. I had two designs in the show. One was a simple swimsuit cover-up made by folding a crocheted tablecloth, attaching ties from burlap string retrieved from a coffee bag, then stringing ceramic beads from the Congo on the string to add a little subtle color. I didn't have to cut or sew anything for this design, just wrapped and tied it. This design was modeled by our Croatian exchange student Iva.

The second design took a lot more time. A local coffee shop donated several burlap coffee bags, which I cut and sewed into a long Jane Austen-y coat. I lined the coat with colorful silk from a pair of old Indian saris.

To wear under the coat, I originally intended to knit a long Regency - style dress out of string my brother salvaged years ago from the dumpster of a furniture factory where he worked. I ran out of time, and quickly decided a short dress would make a nice modern contrast to the coat, so I kept the dress short and sleek with a high Regency waist set off by an old piece of ribbon. This design was modeled by Kara, a yoga-instructor-in-training and experienced runway model.

A few days before the show, I made a skirt for myself out of another coffee bag, lined in old muslin. The muslin was so soft I felt like I had thrown the skirt on over my nightgown. The skirt went together so quickly and fit so well that I want to make this pattern again soon. Even DH liked it.

Easy table runner!

I whipped up this table runner yesterday in about an hour from fabric I bought a few years ago (you may remember my obsession with blue and white china). I sandwiched a piece of leftover quilt batting between two pieces of fabric, edged it with wide bias tape, and sewed along the edge of the bias tape to secure everything. I love the way the runner adds color to the table and pulls the dining room together. I have a small piece of this fabric left. Hmm, what to make? A matching runner for the buffet, maybe?