Tag: Parlor

  • Dawning 

    Dawning 

    “Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.” — Rene Daumal Early birds enthralled with the daily matinal unshading embrace the mystery (and the wellspring of possibility that flows through it.) I know. I am one. A “morning lark” married to a “night owl”. Opposites attract. The dawning invigorates me, and the…

  • Architectural Salvage: Repurposed Columns

    Architectural Salvage: Repurposed Columns

    It’s time for another architectural salvage update, this time focusing on the Greek Revival columns that we salvaged from Rosslyn’s future dining room back in 2006 in the early days or our renovation project. Let’s dive right in with that photograph above, but first a quick semantic note. For the sake of this post (and others)…

  • 2007 Thanksgiving Remembered

    2007 Thanksgiving Remembered

    Nine years ago I sat in Rosslyn’s front parlor on Thanksgiving morning and started drafting a blog post. I’m sitting in the front parlor (aka the “green room”), drinking coffee, scratching Griffin behind the ears, and allowing my mind drift to back to that first Thanksgiving we celebrated at Rosslyn. It was actually one day…

  • Old House Journaling

    Old House Journaling

    Yesterday marked ten weeks of old house journaling. Every. Single. Day. Two months and ten days back at the helm of this wayward, meandering, sometimes unruly experiment I call Rosslyn Redux. I emphasize the daily component of this benchmark because it’s been an important part of the goal I committed to at the end of…

  • Daybreak

    Daybreak

    Daybreak: Lake Champlain sunrise through “wavy glass” in late August, summertime slipping through the hourglass. (Source: Geo Davis) Since my earliest Rosslyn intrigue, wondering if the house and property might one day become a home for us, daybreak was my fixation. Perhaps it was just my lifelong affinity for the early hours. As a “morning lark”…

  • Rosslyn Featured in Old House Journal

    Exactly three years ago on June 3, 2015, Old House Journal published an article about Rosslyn. Time for a flashback! Regina Cole’s story and Carolyn Bates’s photographs are entitled, “Beguiled into Stewardship“, and you can find their original article here. (Note: the print edition and the online edition differ slightly.) If you’re unfamiliar with Old House Journal, —…

  • Hawk Attacks Dove

    Last Sunday my bride and I settled in for a post-lunch-tea-and-snooze in the parlor. The previous week’s unseasonably temperate spring-going-on-summer weather had yielded to cold and rain, so we weren’t feeling too guilty about playing hooky. No gardening or tidying up the waterfront for spring boating. No orchard pruning or apple tree grafting for us.…

  • Rosslyn Featured on Emmet Carter Green Design

    A major upgrade to the Emmet Carter website incorporating recent green design projects prominently features Rosslyn. I’ll excerpt a few descriptions and some of photographer Nancie Battaglia’s interior images in the post below. Welcome to Rosslyn Rosslyn is a stately Federal home on the shore of Lake Champlain in Essex, NY. This circa 1823 property, includes a turn-of-the-century Eastlake inspired…

  • Recovering from Irene

    Much of the North Country is still recovering from the devastation wrought by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene. Four weeks on, I return to the notes I jotted during and shortly after Irene passed through Essex, New York. A sheet of water cascades in front of the parlor windows. I’ve sunk into an armchair to watch the…

  • Imagining Rosslyn Boathouse, Spring 2006

    “Coffee? You don’t even drink coffee,” Susan said. “I know. I know it doesn’t make any sense. But I’m walking through Rosslyn early in the morning with a steaming cup of coffee…” I hadn’t drunk coffee since college, and I’d obviously never wandered around Rosslyn at the crack of dawn either. But I kept having…