Houzz Tour

This is a Pennsylvania home that caught my eye with its lime green front door.

Image: Houzz

Home Tour

Designer Ellen Hamilton's New York city apartment is filled with wonderful fun items that would look just as good in a country cottage. I like the casual arrangement's of furnishings and look at all the books...

Images from New York Social Diary

The Garden

The weekend was beautiful and we spent most of it outside planting flowers. I still have some holes to fill before I'm ready to take pictures.

I am surprised to find how much I enjoy gardening, it's a very physical and frustrating hobby. My hands and back ache and I spend way too much time figuring out what I want to buy for plants.

I like the look of this color coordinated garden

I find it a fun challenge to plant flowers according to height and bloom time. I have a ton of books with lists of what I should do, but I end up making my decisions at the nursery according to what catches my eye.

I found these gorgeous images at Traditional Home

Porches

The forecast is "sunny" for the next few days and I can't wait to get out and get my porch fixed up for the summer months...the goal is to make it as welcoming as these.

Images: Traditional Home

Home Office Inspiration

Our home office needs a step up. The only thing we have done to the room since we moved into our home 7 years ago is paint, add bamboo blinds and installed a couple of generic oak book cases.

Hubby works from home and the room isn't really working for him...he needs more storage.

Inspirational Images

Source

Source

Country Living

Source

Source

This is the fun part of design...dreaming. Next I'll make lists of what we have and what we need.

good bones, great pieces

I just purchased the book good bones, great pieces by Suzanne and Lauren McGrath. The concept is that "every home should have seven essential pieces that can live in almost any room and will always be stylish. The authors explain how to place iconic items of furniture like the love seat and the dresser and rotate them throughout the home as the style or need changes."

The seven pieces do not include the essential bed, table and sofa. I agree with most of the pieces.

The love seat, demilune table and slipper chair are not on my list of 7 essentials.

Remember the sofa & love seat matching sets? Ugh, I remember selling so many of these matchy-matchy sets in the early 2000's, at the time this seemed like good design sense. Thank goodness we longer follow such strict rules and home design has evolved into more of an individual, one of a kind, make it yours concept.

Also a love seat is not very practical for seating, most of the time only one person sits in it and two can be a crowd (unless you're in love).

The demilune table is a versatile piece, but I learned long ago to always think about storage. No matter how large your home or the number of closets you have, it will fill up and the need for storage never goes away.

I find the slipper chair to be some what awkward. A chair with no arms is not a chair I would choose to use.

I would replace these pieces with a comfortable upholstered arm chair, small china cabinet and a credenza.

Find a comfortable chair, in a color you love and you will have it for many, many years.

A small china cabinet can be used for books in a den or living room, as extra storage in a kitchen or keep it in the dining room.

The credenza or buffet adds extra storage in any room and if you want to get real creative, turn it into a bathroom counter top with a sink.

good bones, great pieces

What are your 7 essential pieces?

House Tour

Brigid Berlin's New York home is filled with a lifetime of collections and her life story is more colorful than her residence. I love to see homes that truly reflect the people that live in them and this a wonderful example.

All images from New York Social Diary

Thrifting

One of my favorite shopping haunts is closing;(

I'm a little bummed, since I only discovered this place a couple of months ago. The large inside flea market is located a couple of hours north of us in the town I grew up in. I could spend hours hunting for unique treasures at reasonable prices. So when we heard the "closing" news, we took one last shopping trip and here are some of my finds...

Vintage lamps (I love these things!) some need rewiring, they all need new shades and I may paint a couple.

This sweet set was a steal at $10

The color of this book collection caught my eye (aqua) and I like the miniature size.

I also bought a stack of vintage shutters, a couple of tables and some art that I'll pick up in a couple of weeks.

Luckily I still have my local thrift stores and I always manage to find a few things...

These oil paintings with fabulous frames were $20 each, more than I usually spend at Salvation Army, but I couldn't take the chance of someone else scooping them up before 1/2 off day.

These large scale candle holders just need a little paint.

I collect Italian alabaster trinket boxes, so I was thrilled to find this perfume in the color orange.

This is one of my newest collections, lacquered boxes, I find these things at Goodwill for less than $2 each.

I find the hardest thing with thrifting is the "editing" when almost everything you like has such an appealing price tag. My home can start to look like an antique store with way too many treasures. I have my antique booth that I fill with some of my finds, but some items are difficult to part with. Do other thrifty shoppers face this dilemma?