Who I Haven't Forgotten...

You, dear readers. Though I'm sure you may have thought that I had.

For those that have followed my blog for years or have blogs of your own, you know that sometimes this happens - this business of going for weeks without a single update.

In my excitement over my studio room redo and my just knowing that at least this project would be quick and painless and over with in no time flat, I failed to remember that it would take an act of the Almighty for us to work through any remodeling plans in a timely manner and without a hitch. Can I just say that hubs and I have had many serious "discussions" over the s l o w progress of our cottage in the making. We seem to have two different views, many times, of how quickly a project should move along. Between real work and life, the reality is that maybe in a months time, five to eight hours may be dedicated to a project. So this is my reality and it has been since we've moved here. I think had I known this is the way it would be, I would have been content to live in our regular 70's made ranch just the way it was. But who knows...maybe when we are finally finished, I'll be glad that we struggled through each and every project, large and small. Maybe I'll say..."It was all worth it." Maybe I'll say that it was ok that we lived with a gutted bathroom for five years because once we finally finished, it was all that I could have ever wished for. Maybe I'll be glad that we lived for years without any real flooring as our beautiful hardwood sat untouched in the garage while we finished up the "dirty work" inside. Just know that right now I am extremely envious of all of you who are able to complete remodeling project from start to finish in a reasonable amount of time. You have my undying admiration! We, however, are not one of those types of people.

So in my disappointment and discouragement, I couldn't bear to write and update my blog. I hope that you have been there or at least understand.

We had to paint the studio three times, of course. I ended up using a custom robin's egg blue that I created myself even before I had painted the swatches you saw in my last post. My color had a bit more green in it and a little less blue - which is what I wanted. We painted the whole room out and needed just one more coat but ran out of paint. But when we had another custom gallon mixed and on the walls, it wasn't the same color as what hubs had already cut in in the corners and along the trim. Soooo....we had to buy another gallon and paint the entire room again. Much better! A couple of weekends hub was out of town, so no real work in the studio took place because I cannot for the life of me paint trim without getting it on the walls. Hubs put the second coat of white trim paint on last weekend, thinking the painting would finally be *done*, but it still needs another coat. Though the steps and stoop have been primed, I'm going to hold off painting them until last because I don't won't hubs work boots marring them up. The fan and lights have been painted for weeks now and I've been dying to have them installed, but I guess I'm going to have to practice patience for a bit longer. I don't want to take photos of the studio so far until they are up and the last of the trim paint is done, but it has turned out nice so far. If you look at one of the photos of the kitchen below, you can get a sneak peak of the studio walls if you look through the french door to the right. Who knew red and robin's egg blue could work so well together?! I'm not going to make predictions on when we'll start building the work stations as hubs has another trip coming up. I just hold my breath and hope that we can begin sometime this month maybe. My plans to officially start my business this year have once again been foiled. Hubs says I should "create product" anyway, but that's not how I work when supplies and stuff are strewn everywhere because they don't have a home and proper organization - and it looks like all my "spare" time needs to be spent on trying to help him work on the room.

I do, however, have photos to share. Just little vignettes I photographed today and recently. I have a new found love of robin's egg blue and have begun collecting and making accessories to use throughout the cottage. Also, I've completed two Wilton cake decorating courses and wanted to share with you the last cake I made for class. I'm making a similar one today for hubs grandmother:)







I made these spools well over a year ago. I love words and old-fashioned style paper, so this was a nice way to bring the two elements together.





I painted the birds with my custom color but the creamer I found at Goodwill - it is my exact blue!



I thought about shooing this moth away before I took this shot, but she was frantically flying about the kitchen lights last night when I was baking some cookies...I was glad to see that she had found a peaceful, safe spot to rest so I left her:)







(This is the photo from which you can see the robin's egg blue studio walls...)






We worked on our cakes in class. We learned the basket weave technique and promptly applied it to our cakes. Mine leaves a lot to be desired, lol! My frosting softened too much as I held the decorating bag in my warm hands, but thank goodness for lots of flowers to cover it up!








Thanks for continuing to stop in and for all the emails and nudges I've received:) Thanks so much!

Cottage Living Room Decorating - Adding Softness with a Touch of Romance

We've been working on the kitchen so much over the last year that it's become a rare thing for me to post anything that's not kitchen related, so I thought I'd give you all a break from all things "cottage kitchen"...Today we're going to venture into the living room and see what's changed in there over the last year!

(living room before photo, right)Has this ever happened to you? For years, you are a renter who must suffer through living with white or beige walls - and then finally you are a homeowner. You tell yourself that *never* again will you have white or beige walls and before you know it, your new home looks like the inside of kaleidoscope...and you love it! I do believe this is what happened to me after buying our home a few years ago. My living room has been I don't know how many shades of yellow, and at one time I very briefly had a red accent wall. You may as well have been in McDonald's and I never even bothered to take pictures of that design blunder! At some point I decided that all four walls should remain yellow and after I finally found the right shade, I was quite pleased for a year or so. I think then, too, my own personal cottage style was still in development and I was going for more of country farmhouse style look.

The more I researched the many different cottage styles, however, the more I realized how much I loved (and needed) a very simple, soft, and romantic color palette. (See what I mean here in this beautiful blog!) I'm not talking about pink or other pastels...I mean whites and beiges, the colors that I told myself I would never use again in my own home! But balanced out with a few sparing pops of color here and there - dark brown to black accents and the red kitchen cabinets, white and beige can be very pretty and restful! So, last month when we painted the kitchen, we also repainted the living room the same beige color. It's called Malted Milk from Valspar at Lowes. (photo, left)

As far as remodeling goes, we haven't really tackled the living room yet other than remudding the walls, painting them, adding window trim, and giving the fireplace a makeover. One of the major things to be done to living room includes replacing the ceiling. Hubs wants to reinsulate up there which involves tearing out the old cottage-cheese laden ceiling and replacing it with a tung and groove ceiling like we installed in our kitchen. We will also be adding hardwood floors (we still have the painted white subflooring), tearing out an unused coat closet to add some space for a secretrary style desk, replacing the front door, installing baseboards (you can see from the photos that we are still baseboard-less!), and *maybe* adding beadboard around the perimeter of the living room to about the height of the just below fireplace mantel. (I don't know...what do you think about that?) So lots of work to do in here down the road.

I've decided that the cottage look I'm going for is more of European country / farmhouse cottage style, leaning heavily toward a romantic French flavor. Perhaps like an artist's countryside retreat... can you picture it? Oooh la la!

I thought I'd highlight a few of the projects that I worked on recently for the living room. Do you remember this table? It was actually a small dining room table that I bought at Goodwill for $10. Well over a year ago, I had hubs cut it down to coffee table height and then I primed it. And it sat primed in our living room for a very, very, very long time. The photo of our yellow living room above shows the table in it's primed state. Would you believe that last month I finally actually painted it and distressed it? (Someone please tell me that it takes you a year to paint your furniture, too!) We love having this oversized coffee table - it's great for games, food, or just propping your feet up on! So be on the look out for those small dining tables at thrift stores...it's amazing how a little paint and a saw can transform them!

I love displaying my favorite pages of my favorite books, especially art and poetry books. To counterbalance all the white going on the room, I'm trying to infuse some darker accents like the mirrors, lamps, candlesticks, and the wooden box. I think I need a taller something for the coffee table...hmm....

I bought the white end tables at the Nashville Flea Market a few years back. They were already painted white! Oh, and go ahead...help yourself to the bowl of...books!

What's up with all the mirrors, Kim? Yeah, I have a lot of them. I picked up all those circular mirrors at Old Time Pottery several months ago for $1.99 to 5.99 per mirror - not bad! It wasn't until last month that I finally hadsomething hanging above the sofa in the 4 1/2 years we've lived here! The big white mirror I found at a yard sale last year. You've seen it before when it was gold - remember? It was always my plan to paint it white and distress it and I'm happy to say that I got around to that project last month, too. I may end up adding some old white plates to this mirror grouping, too. The pillows are just standard sized pillows (like the ones you sleep on) covered with decorative cotton pillow shams. I've been on the lookout for a very long time for the perfect throw pillows but haven't found them yet. These pillows, though, work great! When we lounge on the couch, we use these pillows and really get comfortable! When the shams get soiled, I toss them in the wash and they are as good as new again.

First let me say that you are indeed seeing those two white partridges again, hehe. They somehow end up in all my little photo shoots. They are like the Where's Waldo of my cottage world...look hard enough and you'll always find them:) But the jewel of this photo is the teacup and saucer! Oh.My.Goodness! When I found these along with about 11 other cups, a few saucers and bowls, and a small cream pitcher, I just about kissed the nearest Goodwill associate. You better bet I rooted around for half an hour to find more pieces but alas, no large plates or sugar bowl or anything else. I did find out that this sweet pattern is called "Millbrook" made by Independence Ironstone. What I have is old (lots of crazing) but not too old - this particular pattern dates back to the 50's or 60's. I'm going to make it my goal to pick up pieces here and there online (they aren't that hard find!) and slowly build my collection. I never thought I'd fall in love with and collect a particular china pattern! I guess the problem was that I just never found the right one. Thank you, Goodwill!

The entryway into the kitchen was very stark and I wanted to come up with a way to soften it a bit and add a little more interest. Here in the background you can see the almost sheer cotton curtains I hung and swagged behind this large ivy topiary, another Goodwill find. If I remember correctly, the pot was purple but I painted it out in white. One advantage to having the topiary here is that it prevents the kids from running through the curtains like they would sheets on a clothesline on a warm summer day:)

This photo gives you an idea of how the entryway to the kitchen looks now with the romantic curtain addition. I purchased those curtains, perfect condition, at Goodwill, too. They are the Shabby Chic brand by Rachel Ashwell. The wall with the white chair would be a great place for' something interesting. For now, I'm pleased to have this open space. I bought some good canvas a couple of months ago to create my own floorcloth and I'm thinking this stretch of space would be the perfect location for it. I just need to come up with a design...still thinking about that one! Oh, and meet my corgi, Cara Bella:)

Let me preface the following photos by saying that I hate the giant elephant in the corner - that huge TV. I enjoy having a large screen but I hate the fact that I can see it. Do you know what I mean? How I'd love to have a cabinet in which to hide it away...or a sleeker flat screen, or better yet, another room entirely for the television! Unfortunately, I have none of those and there is no getting around the fact that I have to decorate with the said elephant in the corner. Add to that, our living room is really small and there really is nowhere else in the room to move it. *sigh* So there it is. Let's just pretend we don't see it. I don't see it. Do you? I just moved the loveseat in front of the window a few days ago. Originally it was perpendicular to the couch, but I needed a change.

On the floor leaning against the wall is my growing collection of frames and mirrors. The large white one was originally gold. I think I want to make that one into a chalk board and just lean it up against the island in the kitchen. And I can't believe I finally have curtains up in the living room! The are long linen curtains from West Elm. I bought them a couple of years ago on Ebay - new and still in the package - for a fraction of the cost of buying them retail! It took me a little while to collect all four panels from various sellers, but as you know, I don't get in a hurry very easily:) As for the little round table, it was stained a honey color but I sanded it down, primed, painted, and distressed it. (I bought it at Wal-mart on clearance at a great price for solid wood...actually, I bought two!)

This is another Goodwill mirror. It's one of those heavy duty plastic mirrors that was originally gold. I removed the mirror, sprayed it with a dark brown paint, sanded it just a bit, popped the mirror back in and voila! Say hi to Penelope my beagle warming herself in front of the fire...

I hope you enjoyed this recap of my recent living room changes. Though we still have a lot to do renovationwise in here, it's been fun working on these smaller decorative projects for a change:)

I hope everyone is staying warm and dry!

~Kim

A Few of My Favorite Things

Even in the midst of remodeling chaos, there are some things around here that continue to make this place feel like "home". I've always loved the giant canvas that sits atop our mantle. The flowers and colors are so alive and are a great pick-me-up:) A few have said that perhaps the piece is too large for the space but that has never mattered to me. I could lie on the couch and stare at it all day and never get tired of looking at it.

Because we don't really yet have any bookshelves (gasp!), I do a lot of book stacking here and there and I love how some of my favorite books coordinate nicely with the canvas, which brings me to another favorite - old books! Not all of the books here are old, but how I do love finding a great old book! Do you every open them up and just smell them? So I'm always on the hunt for old books that pertain to gardening, housekeeping, music and other titles that interest me.

Atop this particular stack of books is my pair of birds, partridges I think. I picked these up at Goodwill months ago. The first time I saw them, I carried them around in my cart and ended up putting them back as I was already buying loads of stuff that day (sound familiar?). But when I went back to Goodwill, they were still there so I brought them home. Actually, I think when I saw them next, I could only find one of them, but then the *next* time I went, they were together at last. I love these little birds:) One looks like it had been broken and glued back together, but that's ok. I just like how they look like they belong together and love each other and are up there on that big stack of books by all by themselves but huddled together. One is a little bigger than the other, so perhaps they are mother and child. I keep them facing each other as they are extra sweet that way.

As you can imagine, I've been incredibly busy. I do really hate that word and wish that I could remove it from my vocabulary. I ended up having an extra week to fill my candy order so I'm very much relieved by that because between school shopping and the kids actually going back to school this week, it has been crazy around here trying to get back into the school routine, attending all the orientations (one on Tuesday and two tonight!), and other little things that I just didn't have to do during the summer. The week after next should be much easier as all three kidlets will be in school all day long and I won't be picking up my kindergartener in the middle of the day as I am now.

I did make extra boxes of candies with the large order I've had to fill so that I could go ahead and post them to my shop, but I had some requests for those boxes - which means they won't be going in the shop afterall. I want to apologize to all of you who have written and who are waiting for them to be posted online - but I will be making new ones again starting next week and won't fill any other requests locally until I have items online. Thank you for your patience!

Hope everyone is doing well and staying cool! We're having a major heat wave here - got up to 104 yesterday! Whew!

Front Porch "Garden Dresser" Photos

I'm really not sure what the technical name for indoor pieces of furniture used for outdoor gardening purposes, but I shall call mine my "Garden Dresser". Or maybe my "Dresser Garden"? At any rate, I have moved it into place and have begun adorning her with fresh floral goodness. I still need to order knobs from Ebay and I do have my eyes on some vintage glass ones. I thought that until I ordered them, I would make do with some little metal ones we had lying about the house. I even painted them white to match the dresser, but when I tried to attach them, only one would screw in properly. Seems I need longer screws for the others.


Here is a before photo. I found the dresser for a mere $25 at a roadside junk store!



And here she is now with a couple of coats of primer and a couple of coats of white exterior paint (just try to imagine the glass knobs for the top drawers, lol)....Click to enlarge photos.


The plants are new and look a bit sparse right now, but the verbena and vinca will grow tall and thick (I'll have to remove that little watering can in the basket, for sure!), and hopefully the ivy will thicken quickly, too. The flowers/ivy in the drawer are actually planted in a basket. I placed the basket in the drawer and covered it all in dry moss to make it look as if the drawer was the planter. I just remove the moss and the basket when I need to water to avoid water damage to the drawer.



I felt like the dresser needed a "mirror" above it so I took a frame that I had and painted it white. I'm not sure if I like the color as much as I thought I would...it blends in with the white lattice too much, I think. But it does make a pretty frame for the clematis:) I wired the frame to the lattice so the wind doesn't blow it over. I would *love* to figure out a way to have ivy growing just in the center of the frame, but I'm not sure how I would go about watering the ivy as it would be potted and sitting right on the dresser. I would want to move it to water it...hmmm.



You can't see it in this photo really well, but the red folded matelasse quilt on the bottom I found at Goodwill the other day for $9.99! It's in perfect condition, and is 100% cotton. I can't believe I found it in red! The apple basket and the wooden tray are Goodwill finds as well.



I'm currently reading this scrumptious old book called Elizabeth and her German Garden. I found out about it here at Brocante Home and couldn't wait to order it. There are modern editions, but I just longed to have an antique copy. This one was printed in 1901 and I love to imagine all the hands that held it before mine:)



I gave the old wooden handle of my gardening trowel a facelift by painting it red. Now it's functional and beautiful:)





The tall, ivy topiary behind the red chair is another Goodwill find. It is artificial so I won't be leaving it out on the porch, but it gives me an idea on how I may be able to fill in that space in the future. Oh, and the big white bowl is filled with birdseed! Hubs said I'm going to have a porch full of bird poop now but I want to experiment to see if that will be the case. I'll be playing with this arrangement, taking away from and adding to, all summer. It probably won't look the same from one day to the next:)



What next in my crazy gardening adventures? I would love to have a garden tub! Corey from Tongue in Cheek graciously allowed me to borrow this photo of her mothers red tub. Love it! I've been on the lookout for inexpensive or free old tubs for weeks now and almost had one a couple of weeks ago...but scheduling a good pickup arrangement was a nightmare for us that particular weekend so I told the owner to pass it on to the next person that wants it. Another one will come along...and the last thing I need right now is another project, hehe.



Speaking of projects, my fingertips have healed, gloves and grout have been purchased, and I'm ready to finish grouting the last 25% of the brick backsplash. Now if only hubs would remember to move the stove before he leaves for work (*hint hint*) :)

Oh, and speaking of hints, hehe - keep checking in on the Cottage Charm Give Away post for new giveaways between now and May 25th. May 26th is the big day where we announce the winners! Feel free to join up - there is still time!

That's all for now...It's late and my-new-bought-in-February dishwasher decided to stop working properly today so we have a sinkful of dishes to wash, not to mention the dishes that are in the dishwasher. The repairman can't get here until MONDAY. Joy. Perhaps hubs will move the stove and do the dishes?

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"Cottage Charm Give Away" Participant List - To Be Updated until May 25th

1) Midwest Neurotica
2) Rags to Riches
3) Hearth and Home
4) Like Merchant Ships
5) Hidden Haven Homestead
6) Niesz Vintage Home
7) Ivy and Lace Cottage
8) One Woman's Cottage Life
9) Home Made Simplicity
10) Nonie Mae's Shabby Shack
11) My Indulgences
12) Princess Nimble-Thimble
13) Bella-Enchanted
14) Mother and Child
15) Trinkets and Treasures
16) Casa Amada
17) Ric Rac
18) From the Pines
19) Little Penpen
20) Artistic Creations
21) Karla's Cottage
22) The Bunnies' Bungalow
23) Serious Mumbo Jumbo
24) Ancient One's Place
25) Coasting Along
26) Cottage Magpie
27) Petit Pois
28) Life at Number 17
29) Lallee's Cottage
30) Creativity in Progress
31) Digi Scribbles
32) Day in the Life
33) Pretty Petals
34) Paintin Patti
35) I♥Upstate
36) Simply Me
37)Honeysuckle Lane
38) Nestled in the Singing Woods
39) Painter of the Past
40) A Day in the Country with Farmer Di

Lot of 40 + Antique Ladies Home Journal on Ebay...What a deal!

It's not a usual thing for me to make two entries in one day, but I wanted to let everone know about an Ebay auction before it ends.


For those of you interested in ephemera and antique papers and old magazines in general, this auction is for you! It's not my auction, (and I sure wish I had the extra cash floating around to win) but I think this is a great deal:)

Someone is selling a Lot of 40+ Antique Ladies Home Journals dating from the 1800's (1888 to 1896) for the starting bid of $75. I don't know how high the bids will go (no one has bid yet - the auction ends in 1 Day 4 Hours as of this posting), but I *do* know that if these were sold individually, you would pay A LOT more than that. For instance, someone else is selling an older LHJ (early 1900's) for $25. Someone else is selling one pattern from a Ladies Home Journal for $9.99, another is selling one ad from the magazine for $25, and so on. So this is an awesome find!


There would be so many uses for these old mags...framing ads and articles or using the beautiful pictures and print for decoupage. It would be splendid if one of you bids on and wins this auction! The seller has tons more photos on her auction page - check it out! The auction ends on Mar-29-07 16:25:48 PDT (1 day 4 hours)