Cottage Accessories Part Deux (or I Have Nothing More Interesting to Share)

Nothing exciting to report on the homefront today. Life and the cold weather is slowing us from painting those planks as much as we need to be now. Last night I spent hours on school related things...helping my oldest kidlet with pre-algebra (oy!), covering toilet paper rolls with white paper (of the non-absorbent variety), tracing and cutting out paper pretzels, priming a shoebox to be painted later today - all for my middle child's upcoming Octoberfest/Germany study. Hubs worked eight days straight...some emergency came up at his company and he couldn't get away for the weekend. He finally took today off and he's spending it with our youngest girl (they're out on their "date" now...). Tonight, we're having dinner with some dear friends who will be moving out of state in a few days, and before that, more homework/school-related things to do. Hubs says we may have to set up our plank painting station on our dining table (protected, of course). I foresee more mealtime chaos in our near future:)

So with no work related photos to post, I thought a share a few more cottage accessory photos. The other day, Kim from Daisy Cottage shared a photo of some sweet little Italian gold boxes she had. I told her that I would try and post a photo of an Italian gold box that I've had for many years, plus some Italian and Spanish gold mirrors. I bought the mirrors at a yard sale for $10 (for the set!) shortly after hubs and I got married and later found the gold box at another yard sale. The box isn't in great shape but I still enjoy having it. I pulled these mirrors out to photograph them but they've been wrapped up and stored for a while...excuse the dust! You can click on the photo to enlarge.



Even though we don't actually *have* a real working guest bathroom yet, when I run across things that I would like to use in there someday, I pick them up if I can afford it. I bought this little cabinet and shelf at Hobby Lobby a few months back. They are solid wood, distressed, and less than $40 for the both of them!


I found a couple of 12 X 12 inch plaster floral reliefs at a consignment shop recently....just $1.99 each. They're nice and heavy.


No, that's not me trying to make shadow puppets, lol, though I think it is my hand partially covering the flash. I had to precariously perch atop our kitchen countertop to snap this photo. I have this relief above our kitchen cabinets.


I have a weakness for colorful mosaic "anything" so I was happy to find this mosaic candle holder. I keep it in the bedroom beside the bed, but photographed it the bathroom because the lighting was a bit better...


I guess I'm going to go and try to be productive now, though while the house is empty it sure is tempting to find a good book and a warm corner!

Cottage Accessories

It's been a while. With the changing weather, I've had to deal with some health problems so I've just been shuffling around here like a little old lady and haven't managed to get much accomplished. First hip problems, then my neck went out. Joy. We're still painting all those pine planks that will be installed as our kitchen ceiling. The color is called "Pale Bloom" and it's a pale creamy white. We have about 10 more painting sessions to go...painting 15 planks at a time. That's all the space we have to work. When they are dry we, stand them up on end to cure and will eventually bring them into the house to acclimate before we install them.

So in between painting sessions, I've just been puttering. I've collected lots of cottage accessories over the months and thought I'd give the empty space above the cabinets a trial decorating run. Everything will have to come down soon when we work on the ceiling (and we still have so much work to do in the kitchen...I just got the decorating bug that day, I guess!), but it was fun to experiment and get some ideas of how to display my wooden bowls, baskets, and "white" items. I bought some thin little long twigs to put around the edges and this gives kind of a rustic, natural look. I may need to elevate some of the items a bit...we'll see.

Oh, in case some of you are wondering about what I've decided to do with the backsplash, I've made a decision! My choices were beadboard or painted and antiqued brick pavers, or 1 inch travertine tile. I was really, really leaning toward the tile because it just matched perfectly with the countertop we've chosen. Upon further consideration, I felt that it might just be too busy with all the other patterns we'll have going on. Some also felt that it might look too modern for a cottage. Since we'll be putting beadboard halfway up the kitchen and dining walls, I felt that also using it as a backsplash would be a little redundant. So to add more texture and for that old-fashioned feel, I've decided to go with the brick pavers. You can see a couple in the photo below that I've painted up and antiqued.





Gotta love red flowers! I'd like to paint that planter an antique brown or antique white. I picked up that gumball machine at a yardsale last week. I did *have* some chocolate malt balls (Whoppers) in there, but they didn't last long.:)



I found a home for that 100 year old painting of a cottage I bought a few weeks back. I put it above my armoire in the bedroom. There's just something so home-y about it. Ah, and the bedroom furniture. Yet another painting project for the future. Am I obsessed or what?!

My Indoor Cottage Garden

With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures
and some books, I live without envy.
- Lope de Vega

Someday I hope to throw myself into the exterior landscaping of this place. With our time so divided as it is, I'm afraid I would only succeed at killing any plant or flower I attempted to nurture. There is so much potential here, so many garden beds that have pretty much sat vacant for a couple of years. I can't wait to fill them to the brink with all kinds of colorful flowers and plants. Someday...someday. For now, I'll be quite content caring for a little indoor cottage garden over the winter. I've already made up one small window sill "garden" and will be creating a second one for the other living room sill in a few days. I really love how they look in baskets. I'm supposing that I'll need to line the baskets and get the plants out of their little pots and give them a bit more room to grow.





I also found a sweet little plant, commonly called a "Sunny Ficus" to go in one of my "new" old urns. After looking at it for a while today, I decided that it looked like a chia head. The worn spot on the urn looks like puckered lips, lol. But that's okay.



Speaking of windows, I'm happy to say that we are now the proud owners of real wood (white) blinds for our living room! We haven't had any kind of real window covering in there for probably a year now and...well...I've really gotten use to our naked windows! I've chosen a slightly different trim color that is a t a d more creamy (as opposed to the stark white) so I'll need to repaint the trim before we can install the blinds. I think I might be a little sad to cover up our uninterrupted view, but we really need the extra insulation on the windows this winter.