200 Blogs!

Tags

beaded lights, book page wreaths, Charleston bonnet, children's Halloween costumes, coffee filter ornaments, fabric back packs, jeweled Christmas tree ornaments, trumeau mirror

A quarter of the world’s wealth is controlled by just 200 companies.  Two hundred miles a day was the average daily distance covered by the Pony Express.  Each dandelion flower head produces 200 seeds.  In Greek mythology, Typhon the Titan, the “father of all monsters” had 200 fire-flashing eyes, two for each of his 100 heads.  And…this is my 200th blog entry!

I started this blog experience at a time when I was helping to care for an aging family member and I needed something in my life to be creative.  There wasn’t time to paint or do crafts, but there was time to talk about that sort of thing.  I challenged myself with figuring out exactly how to make a blog actually happen.  For me, it was not easy but in time I learned the intricacies of WordPress.  

Now, as I sit down to write number 200 I am thinking that there should perhaps be something profound to share.  Alas!  All I can say is that if you really want to do something, you should just go ahead and give it a try.  Julie Powell said the same thing more eloquently in her book, Julie and Julia, My Year of Cooking Dangerously.  When she started cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, she had no idea that the experience would change her life.

Let me show you what I mean by “where there is fear, there is no creativity.”  Here is a light fixture that Kathleen, my daughter, made because she wanted one but did not want to pay full retail price.

She started with a metal planter basket and cut it in half, spray painted it gold, and spray painted a small shelf unit the same color and then hung it upside down. Following that she wove turquoise stones into the looped cut work around the top of the half basket.  Next, she hung white wooden beads from the upside down shelf bracket.

It casts a beautiful pattern of light and shadow on the wall and looks like a million bucks.

In the spirit of, Where there is fear there is no creativity,”  here are some of the special projects that I have reported on from the last 200 blogs.  I use them here as examples of what you can do when you set your mind to it and as a retrospect of some really good ideas.  I do hope that you enjoy!

1).  My friend Barbara makes dozens of sandal foot cookies every year for her annual beach party:

2.  Kathleen wanted a better looking shed in the back yard.  

3 .Kathleen “dressed up” her IKEA storage units using fretwork she bought over the internet.

4.

4.  I wanted a botanical chart so I made one out of wrapping paper, two dowels, and some twine.

5.  My mother taught herself to make exquisite Christmas tree ornaments.

6.  I painted a floor cloth to go under my granddaughter’s high chair.

7. …and another for two more wonderful grandchildren:

9.  …and another for the triplets:

10.   One daughter made her daughter a candy corn dress for Halloween:

11.  ….and another daughter created a Cabbage Patch box:

12.  I met a crafts person who makes warm mittens from old sweaters.

 

13.  Beth made a precious bonnet for Amelia.

14.  …and she made a backpack for the first day of pre-school!

15.  Kathleen created a trumeau mirror from plywood, molding, and some embellishments.

16.  I used Krylon mirror paint to spray crystal prisms.

17 .Kathleen created this light fixture from two metal planter baskets and some crystal prisms.

18.  When we bought it this mirror was black, but I faux finished it with Rub”N Buff and silver paint.

19.  I made a table runner from old book pages for my book club.

20.  For years I had a small business making angel pins from the handles of forks and spoons.

21.  I made these ornaments from coffee filters and old jewelry.

22. …and this wreath from old book pages.

23.  I printed the fern image on top of an old dictionary page print.

24. This collage was fun to make using manila tags and old stamps and shells.

25. It was fun to faux paint this bamboo “frame” around some majolica plates.

26.  My friend made me this divine shell picture.

27.  I glued shells to the top of a wooden box.

28.  My mother did pencil drawings of Hollywood stars from the 40’s.

29.  I made a book of all of her drawings and gave them to our daughters.  

30.  My father wrote letters home from WWII and I published a book of his letters and pictures for our daughters.

The last 200 blogs have lots more information and ideas. These were just a few of the ones that are near and dear to my heart.  I am glad that you stopped to read a blog or two and I hope that you will subscribe so that every time I write a new blog it will show up in your e-mail account.  Who knows what twists and turns the next 200 blogs will bring?  I hope that you enjoy the sharing of ideas.

Create and be happy!

 

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Summer!

Just a glance at the calendar tells us that summer is almost gone.

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
― Henry James

Here are some photos for you to remember and to love.  Photos are from:  thefullerview.tumblr.com.

…and so it goes.  Can you smell the freshly cut grass, see the roses climbing up a trellis?  Can you hear the crickets chirping as it becomes dusk?  Hear the waves lapping against the side of the boat and see the fireworks explode in the night sky?  Feel the electricity in the air just before a summer thunderstorm?  Summer!  I will miss it!

Create and be happy!!!

Southern Living Design House in Little Rock, Arkansas

Tags

French design, Providence Design, Southern Living Design House in Little Rock

The pictures of the Southern Living Design House in Little Rock Arkansas were released this week.  The sisters who write the blog “Providence Design” were the decorators who made this home absolutely beautiful.  Visit their blog at Providence Design.com to learn more details about this, their most beautiful project ever!  The pictures that I will share with you are from their blog….just too good to keep to myself.

What a welcoming foyer.  The drop leaf table is narrow enough to leave nice room for guests to enter or mingle, but large enough to make a statement, especially with the collection of blue and white china.  The neutral tone for the home is set right here in the foyer.

Wouldn’t it be fun to put the drop leaf up for a party and have appetizers there to welcome the guests…or maybe have little presents there to thank them for coming?

This wing chair is a stunning piece.  It also looks comfortable!

Notice the nice detail on the cabinet doors.  This would be something you could add to stock cabinets.  I think that these were most likely custom cabinets.

The dining room, above, continues the neutral tones of gray and cream.  All of the paint in the house is White Dove by Benjamin Moore.

I have two shutters that I am going to hang next to each other and then find a mirror to put on top of them just like the shutters in this room.  What a genius idea!

 

The living room provides a great place to display art.

The living room is a place where you can feel that you can relax, but at the same time it is sophisticated and elegant.  That is a difficult thing to do.  The greenery in the urn between the French doors gives height and provides a natural touch.

Who wouldn’t want to cook in this kitchen?

Notice that there are no wall hung cabinets. Note the open shelving to the left of the window.

The open floor plan has the living room flow into this eating area and then right on in to the kitchen.

The “ghost” stools feature acrylic legs.

The range hood, the marble counter tops, the gorgeous floors….so wonderful.  This is one of those homes that make you want to throw everything away and start over.  I wish it was that easy!

The island is marble and the counter tops by the cook top are another material. Maybe they are quartz?  The mix is very nice!

There is even a little home office area between the kitchen and the garage.  I wouldn’t be so apt to burn dinner while working on the computer with this floor plan.

Love the lamps, the bench at the end of the bed, the tufted headboard, the mirrored night stands, the soft colors in the rug….

I had a frame that suffered this kind of damage and I repaired it by making a mold and adding new pieces.  I should have left it, saved time and effort and enjoyed it the way it was.

Ooh la la!  This master bath is spacious and beautiful in its elegant simplicity.

 

The front bedroom is styled as a home office.

 

This is the upstairs landing media space.

Look how they handled the wall space below the sloped ceiling.  This could be a teen bedroom or a spare bedroom.

Notice the French amoire doors that have been hung flush with the wall.  They might conceal a tv space or a closet.

If you have ever had a dormer window, then you know the difficulty trying to find a use for that space.  Here is a perfect example.

This porch is across the back, just outside the living room.

Should we cut the legs off of a day bed and hang it as a swing?

…and this porch is off of the kitchen.  I can see us out here in the evening enjoying a roaring fire.

The furniture has been taken from the home and gone back to Providence Design where it is part of the collection offered for sale in the store.  The bed in the master bedroom is from Dillards!  If you live in Arkansas, maybe you would like to stop to see the Providence design store.  Lucky you!

Lesson learned from this fabulous house:  I like that one design team was hired to do the whole house.  Sometimes multiple designers divide up the rooms and the final result is a riot of color, different design, and sometimes very strange choices.  I think that anyone could live in this gracious Southern home.  There has been lots of talk lately about design in Houston, Texas, but I am here to tell you that Little Rock Arkansas and Providence Design have thrown down the gauntlet.  I think that we will be hearing lots more from the talented sisters.

Create and be happy!

Times Remembered

Tags

braided rugs, Finding beauty around you, jeweled Christmas ornaments

Yesterday I was reading a very touching article in a Southern Accents magazine.   The author, designer Matthew White, wrote a tribute to his mother who raised him and  three siblings in a trailer in Texas.  She worked hard to plant a beautiful flower garden outside of their trailer and once a year she would load all of them up into the family car and drive to the “fancy” part of town where they would look at the beautiful homes and make mental notes of things that they might be able to do around their own home.

The author said, “We never once felt poor, though I suppose by some people’s standards we were.  We didn’t look at these houses with envy; instead, we studied them for ideas.  As we slurped the last drops of Dr Pepper and balled up the crinkly  paper that had wrapped our now devoured hamburgers, Mama would sigh.  Then, with great resolve, she’d say, “This fall we’ll plant bulbs.”  Putting all her 98 pounds into turning the car around, she’d take us home.”

His tender description of his mother got me to thinking about my own mother and of how hard she tried to decorate our own modest Dutch Colonial home in Iowa.  She painted a corner cabinet in the dining room creamy white and with little nail scissors she cut flowers out of wallpaper and glued them around the opening.  I always liked it better than the modern French Provencial china cabinet that she bought years later.

She was an artist with an artist’s eye for symmetry and color.  The living room was cream and taupe and rose. When she could, she added turquoise to the mix.  She loved mirrors which she hung opposite windows so that they would bounce light around the room. Every Christmas, her sisters-in-law would give her a piece or two of sterling flatware until after many years she had a full set.  She saved for a set of white China with pink rosebuds and was delighted the day she went to the F.W. Woolworth to bring them home.

My mother loved family pieces that had been handed down to her from her grandmother. There was a Victorian settee and matching chair that sat by the front door.  Whenever I had a special occasion like the prom or a graduation, it was customary to pose on the settee looking as elegant as possible.  Today, I am the keeper of the settee.  It is in my upstairs bedroom.  I must remember to have my grandchildren pose on it the next time they are all here.

Once, when my mother and her brother were children, they were alone in their grandmother’s Victorian parlor and they accidentally broke a vase that sat in a prized location on the piano.  They buried the broken vase in the back yard and hoped that no one would notice its absence.

My mother made sure that the bedspreads matched the curtains in our bedrooms and that the towels always looked pretty against the pink tile in the bathroom.  Her green kitchen was not very large but the white dishes with little rosebuds looked so fresh against the walls.  She never met a pretty dish that she did not like or a crystal prism that she minded cleaning so it would catch the light.  She taught me to refinish furniture, and repurpose clothing so that it could have a second life.

Once I left home to go to college she decided to concentrate on the yard.  Her best idea was to ride with my father along the gravel country roads around their small farming community and get him to put large rocks in the trunk of the car so that she could make a rock garden around the well and along the walk to the garage.  It would have been like my father to complain just a little, but he indulged her and they brought home more than a few heavy rocks to form her beautiful garden.

One of the best lessons she gave me came with a simple little story.  She related that her father, who could do just about anything, installed a new faucet in her kitchen sink.  When he came to visit a time later he noticed that it was water spotted.   She told me that he said, “Shame on you.  You need to take care of what you have or it will not stay nice.”

In her later years she taught herself to make jeweled Christmas ornaments from scraps of beautiful fabric and old jewelry.  She made a stunning cross stitch quilt in her favorite color….rose.  Her braided rugs were perfectly shaped and the colors were arranged so that they drew you into them.  One morning when I was in junior high, I looked unsuccessfully for a wool skirt that I wanted to wear that day.  When I went downstairs for breakfast, I saw that it had been put into a braided rug.  “Oh, you were about to outgrow that skirt,” she said.  That may be true, but I think that the fabric looked just too good in the center of the rug for her to wait until I could no longer wear it!  I still have that rug and it makes me smile.  I just can’t get rid of it!

Today, whenever I make something that turns out well, or I visit a model home that is full of wonderful ideas, or I see my daughters do something wonderfully creative in their homes, I wish that my mother could see what has happened.  She would be delighted.

Create and be happy!