4th of July is now a memory, a very good memory of grandkids cuddling while oooing and ahhhing at all the fireworks, tons of good bbq, and yard games with family and friends. The two weeks leading up to the 4th for me were spent 1) getting ready for and having a garage sale, then 2) being sick with upper respiratory junk and getting over exhaustion. I felt great by the 3rd so I managed to sneak in some last minute patriotic décor before guests arrived.
A partial view of my dining room/kitchen buffet.
Ironstone and transferware lend a festive feel paired with blueberries.
For a bit of whimsy I added a white metal medallion and some vintage ribbon to a military hat worn by my handmade mannequin head Miss Mood.
I think the hot item for fireworks this year were the big floating lanterns. Launching one is sort of a trick but very fun to watch. We saw them lighting up the sky all night long. The next morning we found three of them had landed in our yard.
My daughter made a festive three layer scratch cake. The middle layer was cheesecake! Yum!
It was the first time in a long time that we hosted the event. I’m still picking up the after effects from all the outdoor festivities but I thoroughly enjoyed hosting and look forward to doing it again.
The following is a re-post which originally ran in June 2014. Since July 4 is right around the corner I though it would be a great time to share it again.
Summer is in full swing, with swimming, baseball, bbqs, nights on the patio, lightning bugs…ahhhh. And I’m starting to hear fireworks, a definite sign of summer. Today is #45 in my series, Girls Want Pearls, and I have a patriotic décor project to show you. It’s a play on my previous post here. I’m going to show you how to make Pearl and Bead Patriotic Sparkler Sprays for your July 4th table or buffet.
The supply list is short: 20 gauge wire, pearls, red beads, blue beads, foil, glitter and glue. I have actually taken vintage mercury bead sprays and modified them but I’ll show you how to make them from scratch.
To create a bouquet of this size (2 sprays):
Start by cutting 8 pieces of wire, approx. 14 inches in length. Twist 4 pieces of wire together approx. 6 inches from the bottom to form a wire spray. Thread the beads and pearls on, in solid or alternating patterns. Repeat steps to make the second spray.
Cap them at the top with foil using the method shown here:
The above bouquet is 4 sprays.
That’s it! You can make several sprays and place them as centerpieces or to beautify your buffet table.
It’s officially spring and now that I’ve got some Easter and spring decor up my home feels happier! The photos I am showing you in this post will be some of the last few I will show of my dining room / kitchen with pumpkin and charcoal colored walls. The next time I show it will be the “before” photos of the whole room. We are in the process of painting now. I say “we” but my husband does all our painting. Right now, each of my first floor rooms ~ living room, entry hall, kitchen, dining room and bathroom ~ are a different color. At the beginning of this year I decided to change all the rooms to the same color to improve the flow and make it feel more cohesive.
But now I’m getting ahead of myself and into my next post! In this post I would like to share some spring inspiration with you from my “old color” dining room.
Wow, the above photo really makes the wall look orange! The first two photos are more representative of the true color. The buffet sits in my dining room next to the trestle table. With the exception of the pastel eggs, everything is non-holiday enough to keep it out as long as I like. I think it could be improved with a big spray of “something” in the silver trophy urn . . . maybe later.
Around the corner from this buffet, halfway between the dining room and kitchen sits a second buffet.
You may remember this one decked out for Christmas.
As you can see, I have decorated this buffet in much more of an Easter theme than the other one, with my vintage papier mache bunny, vintage cardboard egg half and pussy willow eggs.
The cross is something I will leave out year round as well as the birdhouse and candlestick, so this vignette could stick around with just a little tweaking after Easter.
How do you decorate with the change of seasons? Do you have Easter décor or do you keep it holiday neutral?
With only 2 days left to prepare for the big day, I would like to take a moment to say Merry Christmas from my house to yours, and to share a few of my holiday vignettes. Many of my displays are the same from year to year. I might tweak them a bit, but once I get them how I love them, I put them together the same way each year until I’m ready for something different. I will only show you the ones that are brand new this year, and I have two of them.
The first one is my buffet that sits between my kitchen and dining room. You can see how I decorated it last year here. I decided to use most of those pieces on my other buffet in the dining room this year. So I had to come up with a new look for this buffet, and my inspiration was the pair of mirrors.
The one in front has most of the silvering worn away, and has a sort of wavy pattern in the glass. The ripples remind me of sand dunes or the ocean tide. It’s the same mirror I used in my blog header. I love it so I use it a lot!
First I took the tiny vintage garland and draped it over the mirrors in a random way. I pulled objects I already had like the birdhouse church and the two white stick trees. I added the gold angel hair underneath for softness and embellished the birdhouse with vintage picks of gold glass glitter. I wanted to bring in some silver so I added the mercury glass owl candle holder.
A real bird’s nest tied in perfectly with the birdhouse. I needed a little more sparkle so I added the vintage coiled tinsel and two candlesticks with crystal prisms.
The second thing that’s new this year was a project my husband helped with. We have had several trees cut down and I am finding so many ways to repurpose the slices, both small and large. I was standing at my kitchen window one day and I spied the large slices laid out overlapping one another and it gave me an idea. So I grabbed hubby and dragged him into the yard to share my thought with him, fully expecting him to be blown away by my great idea! wink, wink. Most of the slabs I needed were already there, but I needed a couple more cut to fill out the tree. He obliged, and the result was this simple stacked Christmas tree. It’s the centerpiece on my dining room table, but I had to move it to the end to get good lighting for the picture. Please excuse the shot of me in the mirror. And see those pumpkin colored walls? Those have got to go in 2015!
So now to the heart of the matter, the reason we celebrate. It’s so easy to get caught up in all the decorating and gift buying to the point of forgetting to pause and give due honor to the King of kings. I’ve done it, and I have to remind myself to spend time pondering the beauty of the Christmas story and how it truly does make the season bright with hope and sweet with peace. I wish you a heart full of joy and a new sense of wonder at the miracle of Christ’s birth and the gift of reconciliation with the Father.
Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you’re getting everything checked off your list and that you’re taking time to reflect on the wonderful meaning of Christmas. I still have one more set of pictures from the market I sold at in November, Junk Jubilee Jingles.
Here I am, ready to make some sales.
And here I am with a sweet neighboring vendor I got to know during the show. Nicole of Angel Wings and CT is amazing! She has a shop in downtown Winterset, IA. I haven’t seen it but I’m sure it’s full of gobs of goodies, judging from her booth at the show.
Here is a look at a few of her creations
In her shop, she also carries boutique clothing, jewelry, home accents and antiques. It was a pleasure meeting her. You can check out her Facebook page here Angel Wings and CT.
I’m back with more pictures and stories from the show that consumed the last 3 months of my designing time. And not just my studio time, to be totally honest. Many things are put on hold when I am preparing for a big show. Thankfully, I have a husband that is understanding. He knows by now that I get so crazy consumed by getting ready for the big event that there will be big heaping piles of laundry, take-out meals more than twice a week, and requests to please get out his tools and “do a little job for me”.
These necklace stands are one of those requests that he so graciously fulfilled.
My husband has willingly gone along with me to many shows and helped with set up, tear down and anything else I have needed from him. But this time when my best friend offered to go in his place, he happily bowed out.
We stayed up late talking all three nights at the hotel, even though we needed our sleep. I was just too keyed up to sleep. Do you know that feeling when you are just so exhausted but your mind won’t shut off? Yeah. So we had wine and chocolate, laughed and cried, and fell asleep in time to get about 5 hours each night.
When the show closed the first night, we headed out for our 20 minute drive to the hotel. About ten minutes into the drive, I heard a still, small voice nudge my mind with a thought ~ a scary thought. I asked Bobbi to grab my purse from the back seat and see if I had put the money bag in there. As she frantically dug around in my purse, my gut told me that it wasn’t there. Me and my gut were right. I pulled over and we searched everywhere before heading back to the fairgrounds. The ten minutes back seemed like an eternity. I just kept saying, it will be there, nobody took it, it will be there. I ran from the car to the building and tried the door ~ locked! So I ran around the building trying doors until one opened. I tried to calmly (not insanely) walk past the people lingering by the door. I got to my booth, checked the place I kept it, and it was there! I can’t tell you how relieved I was! I’m usually not a particularly forgetful person, except when I’m sleep deprived.
The next day it snowed about 3 inches, and as we were getting ready to close, people were saying that there were several reports of cars sliding off into ditches. Oh yay! Nighttime highway driving in an unfamiliar city…with slick roads! Another drive to the hotel that should have taken 20 minutes turned into an hour. I wasn’t taking any chances so I drove really slowly and we arrived safely and ready for the hot tub. A good soak while watching it snow from the hotel window ~ does it get any better?
Having Bobbi there gave me a much needed dose of girl time, but she was also extremely helpful. From rolling up her sleeves and helping with the heavy lifting, to offering valuable advice. It was her suggestion to pair necklaces and bracelets that coordinated on the necklace stands, to assist customers in putting together sets. I think they displayed great this way.
And now, for a look at some of the other wildly talented vendors’ booths.
I still have a few more pictures to show you and a vendor to introduce you to, but I will save that for the next and final JJJ post. I hope you’ll come back and read part 3.
