WHITE WEDNESDAY & THRIFTY THURSDAY: COTTAGE WHITES

Today I am linking with Kathleen from Faded Charm Cottage and Leigh from Tales From Bloggaritaville for White Wednesday and Thrifty Thursday respectively. Have a seat!

Another perfect fall weekend at the lake. By now you know we spend every weekend there, so I probably don't need to say where I am at. But I am doing a lot of decorating and changing things around there that I don't do at home so I think I need to mention it. I got a lot of R & R in after being home from Las Vegas for only a day and then heading up to Michigan, which is nice. I was feeling the crunch of the time zones, but that's good. Keeps you on your toes. Or bum, as it were. While The Husband worked outdoors, putting away lawn and patio furniture and knocking down sand castles, I busied myself in the kitchen making a 15 Bean Soup with Chicken. Nothing special. You just purchase the bag of beans and use the little packet of flavoring inside. I added a fresh chicken breast cut in slivers for the last hour and it turned out quite good. If I were at home where my fridge is better stocked, I think some celery and green onion would have been great in it as well... So soup and some bread for sopping up all that juice was on the menu at Blondie's Diner and afterwards we sat by the fire...okay. Stop now, Jane. I sat by the fire. The Husband sat up in the loft in front of the Bears game. It sounded romantic for a second there, didn't it? My neighbor Susie came over and we had wine and some nice conversation. She picked the last of my tomatoes for me and most are the size of cherry tomatoes. I sliced them up and we had those on mozzarella cheese and crackers....oh, heaven! What ever variety I had that she picked, they were tart and sweet at the same time and so fresh!!!! The good old Husband was upstairs stomping and clapping and never knew what he missed!! ;-)

My favorite old pot bubbling away...The kitchen is not finished yet. I have no drawer pulls or knobs, thus no fingernails. I don't think Resident Carpenter is coming back now that he is no longer in residence. But let's not go there. I feel really at home with the way the house has turned out so far and somehow the details will be pulled together. I have so much more to show you and I think I will start taking pictures of the master bedroom which is just about finished other than some artwork I am framing. I will hint to you that a wonderful and generous artist/blogger has gifted me with an incredible amount of her work and I will be doing a post about it. In the meantime, please visit Karen at A Scrapbook Of Inspiration. Her work is fabulous and she sells quite a bit through her Etsy Shop.

I have been having a thing for chairs lately. A 'chair affair', if you will. Whether I am in a thrift store or antique shop, they beckon to me. And no matter what, like stray cats, I always have room for them. (Actually I have no cats, but I would if I weren't allergic). The chair with the basket on it you might remember from some of my summer photos. It sat under the oak tree on our patio with a pot of geraniums on it. It made it through the summer fine, but the paint had a yellow tinge from the iron in our water, so I painted it white again. I found the other chair with the rush seat at a little fleatique store in our lake town and I painted that white as well but left the seat natural. I have to touch up a few smears and I was running around the house like a madwoman trying to find my Mouse Sander to distress the paint a bit before I took the picture. Alas, my Merry Maid, Emily was at the house the weekend before and her idea of cleaning is to hide all my stuff. lol!! So I'm still stressing over the distressing... I have the chairs in the kitchen where my future Hoosier cabinet will go. What I like about chairs is how they can be used for little vignettes; holding a plant or something treasured, in a bedroom with a collection of pretty purses...well, maybe I just have weird ideas, But I do love these thrifty chairs that I paid no more than $20.00 for.

This is one of the pillows that Barb from French Elements made for me. Pay no attention to the lack of trim on the walls (and the crumbs for that matter).

I finally bought pumpkins!!!! Some are huge. Sue from the Farm Stand at the Lake had a neat assortment of all shades of oranges and yellows, in all sizes and shapes. I found a big one in the shape of a squash!! When I get my porch all arranged I will post it. I bought a few bunches of wheat from her. Isn't it nice how pretty something so natural and simple (not to mention wholesome) can look? I put the two bunches in a jar on the table.

Finally I have this wicker shelf thingie that the previous owners of the house left me. They literally left it hanging on the bathroom wall and I used it for soap and towels...nothing special. For 18 years!! It was thrown into a junk pile when the bath was gutted and for something that I just left hanging on a wall for 18 years, I scrambled to save it!!! It is in good shape, it just needed a bath and a good coat of white spray paint and now it is ready to go in to my freshly painted blue & white bedroom, which I will show you soon.

My bedroom has a combo beachy/garden theme if there is such a thing! lol!! Hey, maybe I have started a new style~Shabby Beach Garden Chic!! I wanted to do seashells and pretty sandy beach pictures and then I found a floral duvet cover that I had to have! Please do not read tropical. Just beachy and shabby flowers. So this is my shelf and on it I will have seashells and flowers and something old and something new...Shabby Beach Garden!

Visit Kathleen and Leigh and all the participants in these events by clicking on the links at the beginning of my post. I hope you enjoyed reading about my finds! Have a wonderful week! :-)