Dinning Room

Hello!  We've been so busy lately so I'm a little late to the table decor party but I finally had a chance to put everything together yesterday and wanted to share it here on the blog today.  I also built a new table that we are planning to give away at our shop grand opening during a drawing which I'll show you below.  First up, our fall table..... I really like to keep things simple and natural, whenever possible.  I also tried to use everything I already had.  The only thing I bought for this table were the pumpkin colored napkins for a steal on ebay ($11 for a set of 8) and the faux wheat and candles. To keep things natural I used wooden salad bowls and my bread boards as well as the little rosewood dipping bowls.  I love the small pop of color the pumpkin colored napkins provide.  To add a metal element to the table, I used vintage silver flatware, candle holders and salt and pepper shakers. To continue with a farmhouse feel, I picked up some faux wheat at the craft st

I think one of the things I find the most rewarding about designing and decorating is visiting the thrift store and finding a sad, inexpensive piece of furniture with good bones that just needs a little love.  I've always been able to instantly look at a piece and envision what it could be.  I truly enjoy that.  I also enjoy gaining inspiration from others and their finds and redos so I thought it would be a lot of fun to start a monthly series featuring thrift store before and afters from our readers. Beginning in October, I will choose a reader redo to feature a couple of times a month, maybe more, depending on time.  I want you to send me your before and after photos of thrift store or garage sale finds that you've reinvented or repurposed and I will choose a couple (or more) to feature here on the blog a month.  You don't have to have a blog to do this, anyone can send them in.  Just provide me with a couple of photos of your piece and a detailed description of what you

I happen to love Autumn and Halloween.  Some of my most favorite memories with my dad are during Halloween when my children were younger.  He truly enjoyed that day, just like a kid himself.  Hubby and I always spent Halloween at my parents house along with my sister and it was so much fun.  We would take our kiddos trick or treating around the neighborhood with Mom while Dad cooked up a big pot of chili for all of us to enjoy.  Then when the kids were worn out, or maybe we were, we'd walk back to their house to enjoy a warm bowl of chili and it always smelled so good inside.  Warm, welcoming and home, you know? While my youngest never got to meet his Papa, I'm glad his older siblings have those memories and share them with him often.  It's important to me that he know what a kind and fun man his grandpa was.  These days, I make my dad's chili for my family and we create new memories. And while most of our kids are now too old for trick or treating, hubby and I still ta

I'm almost embarrassed to show you these photos. White grout.  It's the bane of my existence. I've spent many many hours on my knees scrubbing the grout between the tiles on our kitchen floor with a toothbrush. Evidently, someone thought it was a great idea to put WHITE grout in a kitchen.   That may or may not have been me. And after 6 years of living here, and 6 years of scrubbing it with bleach, grout pens, sealer, you name it, this is how it looks. Remember, it's supposed to be WHITE. Pretty, huh? No matter how much I cleaned our kitchen, it still felt dirty because of this nasty grout and I really thought our only hope was to rip it all up and put down something new.  But, we just don't have the time for that right now with the grand opening of our shop coming up.  So, what's a girl to do? I've seen several blogs lately mention a product called grout refresher and while I was pretty skeptical, I decided to make a trip to Lowe's to try it out cause I

I've been trying to come up with another piece of furniture for the display window of our shop and while looking for inspiration online, I came across this cubby organizer from PB. I wanted to make a much larger version and also try to keep cost down and then I remembered that we had this pile of old pine lumber in storage that we had come across in the pile with the large walnut slabs. Since it was going to be rather large, I asked my hubby to help me with this one.  And after several redos, here's what we came up with . We made a 4 foot x 4 foot box and then cut each center divider and attached with a nail gun.  After than, I attached a piece of bead board to the back.  I wanted to put some kind of number plates on the front of each cubby.  I would have liked metal but since I didn't have that and wanted to keep cost down, we ripped 1/4 thick pieces of wood off the extra scraps of wood and I cut them down to 1 1/2 inch pieces and sanded them down to look like this. I atta

Happy Friday!  I don't know about you but I'm so ready for the weekend.   Today I wanted to blog about a few cool pieces my hubby  picked up at an auction last weekend.  The first is this amazing 100 year old Hobart industrial coffee grinder. This thing weighs around 90 pounds!  And the best thing is that it works perfectly.   I had asked my hubby to keep an eye out for a cool vintage coffee grinder for our shop because we are wanting to have coffee available to our customers and I thought it would be really fun to freshly grind the beans in a vintage mill.   Then he came home with this beauty and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to give it up.  :) I love the lines..... Another piece he brought home is this steamer trunk. We've always wanted one and he loved this one.  It needs a few minor repairs  but I can't wait to find a special place for it. And he also found these vintage wool Navy blankets.  They are so soft, believe it or not.  I'm not usually a fan

Hello! I hope you had a nice weekend! I am in the process of giving our den a facelift (again), as it's the room the stairs are in.   I've said this before but our den is usually a mess, where all my boys hang out and so I try not to put anything too nice in there or be very picky about the way it looks.......for a while.  If you remember, I redecorated this room for my hubby a year or so ago but after awhile, we moved certain pieces of furniture out of the room, changed things around, and it kinda became a little bare again.   So, time for a change.  The first thing it definitely needed was a couple of side tables.  We had some scraps of reclaimed bowling alley flooring left and an old Pottery Barn iron table frame in storage so I decided to make a side table using that.  I've already made a couple of nesting tables from our other slab of flooring and we are so happy with those but they are in the living room.  The den definitely needed one, too.  Here's what I st

Hey there!  Hope you are all having a very relaxing weekend. I wanted to share with you that our home was selected as Cottage Of The Month over at Jennifer's amazing blog The Old Painted Cottage .  It is truly an honor.    If you'd like to check it out and see a few never before seen photos and parts of our home,  click here !  And be sure to check out the rest of the beautiful cottages featured there, as well as, Jennifer's blog ! Have a great weekend everyone!