mrs. V Answers the V'ROUST Questionnaire

This is What I am Willing to Admit…

What is your idea of the perfect beverage?  A Nuevo Laredo Cantina frozen margarita, no salt, circa 2001 because this being the ‘perfect’ beverage, I would also like a bit of my twenties back to contend with the wicked hangover it produces.

Who is your favorite fictional character?  Mame Dennis.

What is your most marked characteristic? My dramatic enthusiasm which usually presents itself either as clumsiness or long, detailed stories of that legendary clumsiness.

What trait do you most adore in yourself?  My sense of humor.

On what occasion do you lie?  When asked how long it will take me to get ready – once I was 5 hours late to a date with mr. V – it is nothing short of a miracle that we are married because he is very prompt.

How would others describe your laugh?  Raucous and insane sounding.

If you were locked in a rubber room with only one tv show on repeat, which one would you most prefer?  Any from Masterpiece Theater, but preferably Downton Abbey or Pride and Prejudice (the Colin Firth version).

What movie do you truly love but are embarrassed to admit?  Devil Wears Prada and Deuce Bigelow.

Which reality star do you secretly wish to be?  Contenders include:  Ricky Gervais for his complete irreverence and b/c An Idiot Abroad lands him squarely in the ‘reality’ genre; Mary McDonald for her design skills but more for her friendship with Nathan Turner;  Zoila Chavez, who wouldn’t want to get paid to watch telenovellas all day?  Ellen DeGeneres (a cameo on a Bravo show qualifies her) for wisely scooping up the insanely funny Bethenney Frankel; or Jeremy Clarkson whose unending jibes at James May never get old not to mention all the sexy cars he gets paid to drive.

What talent do you think you have, but others would disagree?  At one time it would have been ‘whistling’, but I am now well aware that all those years spent practicing the Andy Griffith theme were totally in vain.  So now I would have to say my ‘acting’ skills.  I have always known that I was made for the stage.  However, I am slowly coming to realize that whenever I get in front of a camera my nuanced characters are more like Catherine O‘Hara’s Sheila Albertson from Waiting For Guffman than Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly.  In retrospect, I am thinking that all those leading roles in grade school and high school productions had more to do with my photographic memory and less to do with my natural ability to embody a character.  But I am banking on my exuberant theatricality to pay off big time when Andy Cohen comes knocking.

You can answer it here.

kisses,  mrs. V

Life at Chez V - Vignettes

Too Damn Busy to Answer my Own Questionnaire!

Packing for a quick jaunt to my beloved old stomping ground (Atlanta).  I am readying Chez V, mr. V, and the Monster for my absence.  No time to answer these today but you still can!

That means stocking up the fridge so they don’t eat pizza and chicken fingers all weekend.  That means playing toilet paper/Q Tip fairy to ensure they don’t use corn cobs to wipe their butts and rusty nails to clean their ears.

In the meantime, a few Chez V vignettes to tide you over…

All photos by me

'V'ROUST Questionnaire - A Brief Survey

Getting to Know You or What are You Willing to Admit?

**UPDATE**  Three is definitely more than two but significantly less than the stats imply…mr. V is declaring victory.  I will not go down without a fight!   I know you are dying to tell me your deep dark reality star obsession.  I am not above begging…Tomorrow I will share mine!

I desperately need your help.  Bragging rights and vanity are at stake.  mr. V argues that stats lie and only a few real live people are probably reading Chez V.  I argue that surely there are more than a few humans, of real flesh and blood other than my sister and Kassey visiting each and every day.  So do sister a favor, if you are real, I would love to hear more about you.  But more important, because I am vain and competitive, I would love to win this bet.

Here is my on-the-fly condensed version of the ever popular Proust Questionnaire with a decidely Chez V slant.  Take a moment to reveal your true self.  I dare ya.  

Don’t judge about the sketch.  I did this two minutes ago with only the back of a shopping list and crayons at my disposal.


Leave me your answers via the comments.  Love your hair, voted for you!

All photos by me

kisses,  mrs. V

Tales From the Projects - DIY Monogrammed Espadrilles

Those Who Don’t Have, Make Do…

You would think that I was a born and bred Southern girl for as much as I adore a good monogram.  In a fit of compulsion creativity the other day, I decided to add a custom touch to my new espadrilles.

Of course, in an alternate reality, I would much prefer a bespoke pair of Stubbs& Wootton slippers.  Heck, I would even settle for a pair of those new monogrammed Jack Rogers in navy.

My present reality, however, dictates that sometimes I have to get a little crafty when it comes to bespoke touches.  Necessity is the mother of invention, I say.  And yes, I find it ‘necessary’ to monogram nearly everything.

A pictorial DIY of sorts:

I am officially in love with them.  Sometimes ‘making do’ feels a heck of a lot more gratifying than just ‘having.’

All photos by me

kisses,  mrs. V

Design Profile - Blue and White Porcelain

An Affair with Blue and White…

We have a saying in our family, ‘Don’t gam it up,’ the precise origin of which is unclear but I am fairly certain it surfaced around the same time that the shabby chic style gained momentum. This cautionary directive is usually aimed at our familial tendency to enthusiastically add MORE.  And as these things go, the saying has gained a life of its own in our family lexicon, particularly between my sister and I, slipping seamlessly from noun to verb to adjective and back again, clearly carrying a negative connotation.

Mary McDonald

For instance, instead of adding a few pieces of patinaed furniture, my mother filled her living room to the gills with aged furniture and probably more than a few tattered chairs hanging on the walls.  Similarly, when embracing the transferware craze, her parlor walls were often covered top to toes with oil paintings surrounded by scads of blue and white plates.

In the same fashion, when I first moved into the Stamp, I immediately slammed an over large oil painting on the wall and promptly surrounded it with tons of my own collection of blue and white plates that I had been dragging around from apartment to apartment during my tenure as a singleton.  I scattered blue and white ginger jars, cache pots, and delft here and there.    I was very pleased with my efforts and smugly thought, ‘how very un-Pottery Barn.  Success!’ That is until my college friends visited Chez V and said, ‘wow, your house looks just like your mother’s.’  I was devastated.

the only evidence I can find of the plates/painting situation at that time...

more paintings and plates...

So it would seem that I had gammed it up. I practically ripped those plates off the wall as their car was pulling out of the drive.  I called my sister.  She understood.  I wrapped up all that blue and white and shoved it into the garage pile of stuff.  And so began a self-induced purge of all things overly traditional and to my mind, gammy.  

I feel it important to pause here for a qualifier:  my mother has great taste and has TONS of beautiful things.  In fact, I am lucky enough to have a fraction of her cast-offs.  But the fly in the ointment, or rather the gammy in the hammy, is that she has so much of it on display that each becomes lost in a sea of STUFF.  So I hope you can understand my reaction to  my friends' well-intended comments about the house.

Ruthie Sommers

However, time and again, at least according to my tear sheets and Pinterest, I find my eye returning to rooms with traditional influences, particularly with blue and white, that are reinterpreted for today.  My heart skips a beat when I see mass groupings of ginger jars.  And here I find myself, some years later, pulling out all that blue and white and trying to mix it back in with a fresh eye and a determined effort to toe the fine line between tastefully en masse and moons over my gammy.

home of Mark D Sikes via Habitually Chic

home of Scot Meacham Wood

Anna Spiro

Michael Penney

via And George

Anne Hepfer

Ashley Whittaker

Cote de Texas

Grant K. Gibson

Like with any affair, it seems I am destined to move seamlessly and sometimes painfully from love to hate and back again with all things blue and white.   At this moment, it is true love again, and not gammy over my hammy.

kisses,  mrs. V

Life at Chez V - Scenes from the Weekend

Scenes from the Weekend…

Hope ya’ll had a lovely Easter/Passover weekend.  Easter is next weekend for us Greeks, the explanation of why having to do with the Eastern Orthodox Church following the old Julian calendar and observing Easter after Passover.  So our big celebration is next Sunday at my mother’s house.

In the meantime, we enjoyed a family-filled weekend puttering around the yard, celebrating Western Easter with mr. V’s family, and playing with an Easter basket goody…

the V baskets in use

this is hysterical on so many levels

chicken souvlaki happened yesterday.  delicious.

All photos by me

kisses,  mrs. V