SHADOW BOX GIVEAWAY WINNER!

A name has been pulled out of the proverbial hat and the shadow box will be winging it's way to Mary of A Breath of Fresh Air. Mary's previous blog was called Across the Pond. If you have been looking for her, please go to Abreahtoffreshair-Mary.blogspot.com. and pay her a visit. My link will not work for some reason. She is all set for her vacation in Africa and I am so excited to hear every detail of her trip. Congratulations, Mary!

WHITE WEDNESDAY: LAKEHOUSE KITCHEN & GIVEAWAY {LAST DAY }

Today is White Wednesday at Faded Charm and I am joining Kathleen's party with pictures from the kitchen at the lakehouse. Last year about this time we gutted the kitchen and I wanted open shelving. I have posted these pictures before, but I am sure that many of you didn't get a chance to see them. I change things around a lot too, and I will have to take some updated pictures soon.

My everyday dishes are Basket Weave by Gibson. You can't see the cabinets below, but they are painted a greyish green called Painted Turtle by Behr.
These shelves are to the left of the sink where I keep the glassware. The pendant lights are from Home Depot.
These are two teacups that are part of the china I keep at the lakehouse. It's by Johan Haviland. The colors go perfectly with the white shelves and grey/green cabinets.

Visit Kathleen to see more entries for White Wednesday. And remember today is the last day of the giveaway for the shadowbox. Good luck to all!

A LITTLE PINK FOR SATURDAY & A GIVEAWAY

I missed the sign up dead line for Beverly's Pink Saturday but I thought I would post a beautiful print I bought up in Michigan. Originally intended for the lakehouse, I put it in my newly painted bathroom here in Chicago and just loved it. What do you think? Hopefully I will be fully finished with the bath in a week or so and will post pictures. Is it weird to say it may just be my favorite room in the house? Will I be sleeping in the bathtub soon?


And guess what? I hit 300 followers the other day!! YES!! That makes me happy. SO I want to thank everyone with a giveaway and I love giveaways. I have won my share and I have a few that I still need to post about. Below you will see one of the giveaway gifts.
Isn't this shadow box darling? I wish I could say I made it, but I don't have this sort of creativity. But this is one of the things I am giving away. I can't help but find little goodies along the way to throw in as well. So we are starting off with this precious glass shadow box with faux eggs on sheet music paper and hopefully pull a winner by next week. I have a few trips coming up and would love to have a winner sooner rather than later. You too, huh? Yay!!


So we have the usual prerequisites. Comment on this post and my next, let me know if you are a follower, and if you have a chance. mention in your one of your blog posts that I have a giveaway going. The total three will give you three chances.


I thank all of you for making me feel like someone that you want to listen to and be friends with in the Blog World. I enjoy myself immensely just visiting and commenting and all of you mean the world to me, especially when you come to listen to me drone on... ;-D


So, come on. lets find a winner. Open to the U.S., England, Australia, France, Italy and EVERYWHERE that I have made new friends in the world!!!! xoxo

OUTDOOR WEDNESDAY: MY BACKYARD

I am hooking up with Susan for Outdoor Wednesday today as I finally have some things blooming in my backyard. Visit Susan at A Southern Daydreamer to see beautiful outdoor pictures and be sure to leave some comments.

Above is a birdhouse I have had forever. I found it in Michigan and it has a Michigan license plate for a top and half of a tin can for a little 'awning'. I have a little family of sparrows in it right now. It's on my patio and I think I scare them when I go out there. Lucky for them it is still a little too cool to be out.
This is my herb garden. The chives, oregano and tarragon come up every year on their own and then I like to add a little basil and rosemary. These are the herbs I use the most. My friend at the lakehouse, Susie, grows a lot of great herbs and I like to borrow from her. Luckily, she doesn't mind. :-) The oregano can grow like crazy, I wish I had planted it in a pot. I just keep it trimmed around the edges so it doesn't choke everything out. And when it gets warmer I add some colorful annuals to make it pretty.
I grow tulips and daffodils along this fence. Each fall I plant about 100 new bulbs. It would be overgrown by now but for the fact that The Husband was cleaning out this bed a few years ago and dug up and threw out all of my bulbs. He had no clue what they were. So I had to start from scratch. As you can see, Milo loves sniffing around in my garden.
I'm trying to add more colors as it seems I have way too much red and yellow. Below are some close up pictures of the flowers.



I love the little fringe on the edges of these.
And I love the pointed tips on these.
This is bleeding heart in a corner of my yard that gets a ton of shade. This is something you should plant in those areas. They really like to be shrouded.
And this is some sort of ground cover that grows in another flower bed that has day lily's. It thrives on neglect. I wish I knew the name...I'd put it everywhere so I could sit on my bum a little more in the summer.


Tomorrow I am planting my vegetable garden. I usually grow lettuce, spinach, beans, zucchini, eggplant, carrots and tomatoes. The rabbits usually eat most of it.

Have a wonderful Wednesday and thanks for your visit! :-)

A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS

There's a new party going on in town and I am going to it today to show off some of my prized possessions at the lakehouse. Laurie from Bargain Hunting And Chatting With Laurie is the sweet hostess of A Few Of My Favorite Things Saturday's and this is my first time playing along.

Above is a sweet little chippy urn that I usually plant with flowers in the summer for the patio, but I brought it in this winter and plopped a sheaf of wheat in it. I love the texture of it on the stone floor in my kitchen. Soon it will hold some pretty geraniums. Very soon. :-)

If I had a favorite piece of furniture in my life, it would be my Hoosier cabinet that I searched high and low for. I posted a picture of her before before I added some of my favorite things ( and I'm still adding). I keep Monster Plant on the top along with a vintage tea set and a little crackled chicken left over from the Rooster Party. Inside I have some little French plates and some herb containers. The original flour mill is still inside. And then I have jazzed up the rest with an ironstone tea set, some beachy shell dishes from a sale at Pottery Barn and some Barefoot wine on a silver tray. Pretty simple for a clutterbug like me.
This is a terrible picture but I wanted to show you these little herb jars that I bought online at Anthropologie. I only shop their sales and they are one of the best sites for really bringing down prices on nice things. A blogger tipped me off on these. At $1.95 a jar, I scooped up four. I think they still have them if you are interested.


So these are some of my favorite things at the lake. I could go on forever, but there are more Saturday parties to come! Hope all of you have a wonderful weekend and thanks for visiting! :-)

TABLE TOP TUESDAY & TABLESCAPE THURSDAY AT THE LAKE

We spent the weekend at the lakehouse and I had a little fun playing with my dishes, so I thought I would join my two favorite parties. Visit Marty and Susan to see more pretty vignettes and table settings.


Since we don't use our harvest table at the lake for every cotton picking thing that we do at home with the dining table, I am able to make a different tablescape every time I'm there and leave it until the next time. I like having that luxury. It gives me a chance to tweak it a bit, too.

The dinner plates are my every day Gibson and I picked up the pretty fleur de lis salad plates at my favorite floral/gift/ antique store in White Pigeon, Michigan. Don't you just love shops with a little of everything? Topping everything are dessert cups from Anthropologie in a very pale pink and I plopped a few Godiva truffles in them. Yum!

A few weeks ago we were in another little Michigan town and I found a set of silver plate in the original box for $40.00. Not a big savings, but it gave me a formal set for the lakehouse. The napkins are Rachel Ashwell.
I don't know why I included this picture, it looks cluttered. I wanted to get a long shot of the table with the centerpiece. You can see the table runner I bought from Sissie at Sissie's Shabby Cottage. I posted about it last week, but it wasn't a good fit on my table here in Chicago and looks so much better on the harvest table at the lake, so I used it in this tablescape.
I love the ruffle and the applique. The soft French bow is also the lining on the reverse side. I can't stop singing the praises of this runner!

Finally, I have a set of vintage salt and pepper shakers and a small hurricane lantern.


Everyone seemed to have glorious weather this weekend. Well, it was sweatshirt weather for us. I cleaned up the Summerhouse and The Husband cleaned up the grills. We started putting patio furniture out. Of course, we can still have snow, this being the crazy Midwest! But we enjoyed ourselves, had burgers on the grill and cozied up for some television when the nights turned cool. Lovely weekend. Hope you had one, too.

MET MONDAY: FAMILY ROOM & BATHROOM REDO

The painting is finished! Whoo hoo. Even thought the house smells like fumes, I am ecstatic. How scary it is to look at a tiny square of color and then see it on the walls of an entire room. I know...paint can be changed, but it is a long and expensive project and in the past I have had to learn to 'live' with things. So this is the family room. I forgot to post the before pictures but you can go back about 2 posts and see the plain beige walls and tiny floral wallpaper. AND...the ugly cherry stained trim that I persuaded The Husband to paint. What a feat that was.


Above the chair rail is a buttery yellow called Flax by Pittsburgh Paints and below is a very pale yellow called Lotus Flower. It's almost white with a hint of yellow. It's hard to tell from the picture, but my furniture is beige and mossy green. The trim was painted a stock white.
Moving on to the bathroom, you will remember that 3/4 of the wall was rough cedar panels (I know, I have a funky house). This was painted Atrium White and the wall above Teardrop, a very pale gray that is hard to make out in the picture. I am looking for a French farmhouse look. look.
How does it look? Our painter did a tremendous job. The Husband called him an artist. He left no detail undone, was timely and pleasant. It's hard to get work like that these days.
My next big project is curtains. These are the pages I marked in my Country Curtains catalog. I ordered fabric swatches as well and stapled them to the page. I am looking for something that I can tie back with a tassel. The sample above is a heavier cotton than most of the samples I chose but I love the floral pattern in it, It has green and yellow in it and a pop of blue.
This is the complete opposite end of the spectrum, a crushed polysatin with a crinkled texture. It's very light and I can just imagine it blowing in the breeze. This has a little red punch to it, but it is a water color inspired floral.
This is another pretty cotton floral, that is a bit on the heavier side. It has a lot of pretty colors in it.
This is not your average toile and I was also thinking about something like this for the little window in the bathroom. The only thing I don't like is it is lined and a little stiff. Not so much the look I am going for.


So there you have the progress in my family room and 2nd bath. It's going to be awhile until the room is finished. I still have to look for art work...everything is going to be dome from scratch (and hopefully in time for summer). Let me know what you think about the fabrics.

I am joining Susan at Between Naps On The Porch for Metamorphosis Monday. Please visit Susan and all the ladies participating. And thanks for stopping by!

TABLE TOP TUESDAY & BITS & PIECES

This is my first time joining Marty at A Stroll Thru Life for Table Top Tuesday. Please visit Marty to see her table top vignette and then visit the participants to see what they have for inspiration.
Today I am showing my coffee table in the living room. I recently ordered and received this little French wooden tray from Barb at French Elements. She has a really neat Etsy shops and sells all things wonderful and French. On the tray I have two Fleuer de Lis candle holders that you may have seen on my mantel before, and two little chippy white birds.

On the right side of the table I have a little African violet (that I haven't killed yet), and a wooden box that I found at Marshall's.
The box sits atop the my new book My French Life, which I am hoping to get to reading next week.

I wanted to show you this beautiful table runner that I ordered from Sissie's Shabby Cottage. This lady is SO creative and she can sew! She happened to post about making this and I didn't even finish reading, I went straight to her Etsy shop and ordered it. I think she is going to make more. She also makes lovely pillows. Sissie is, besides talented, a very sweet lady. Visit her blog when you have a chance.
We had a wonderful Easter. The weather was gorgeous but for a thunderstorm later in the day. I made a spiral ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, corn, asparagus and dinner rolls. After dinner we went to my sister in laws for dessert and they had family visiting from Ireland. The three children, Liam, Tessa and Niall had never received an Easter basket before ( they have the Easter Bunny and the egg thing in Ireland but not the basket) and it was the cutest thing seeing little Niall walking around with his precious basket filled with chocolates.

You can see that we dressed Layla up in her Easter dress. Very springy, wouldn't you say? Of course she got it dirty the first time she went outside! The day wore her and Milo out.

I threw this picture in because I have received some comments that Milo can appear very human like. Abby took this picture with her IPhone so I don't know if you can click to enlarge it. Isn't it a hoot? It looks like a portrait.
Our painting is going along marvelously. I am loving the white trim and today the color is going on the walls. I think I have decided on curtains for the family room but I still need a few other things to really give it that makeover look. I will keep you updated.


I hope everyone had a wonderful and blessed Easter. I know we did. Now I am going to just sit back and enjoy spring! Have a great week and thanks for visiting!