Yellow, White and Blue Dining Room

Hi Friends, I thought I would show you all pictures of my dining room and all my blue and white. Most of the dishes are from thrifting and garage sales, however I don't find as many pieces as I used to. I have loved cobalt blue since I was a child and got a box of oil paints for Christmas. It was one of my favorite gifts. Anyway the tube of Prussian blue just won my heart and I think every painting I did then always had some Prussian blue in it somewhere! Ha. My dad, one day brought home a place setting of Blue Willow dishes he had received from the gas station with a fill-up. I claimed them right then and asked for them for my someday hope chest. We have used them eversince . It was a Willow Ware set. I had enough for eight place settings. Along the way I picked up other dishes when I would find them as well as cobalt glass. Of course we all remember the Vick's vapor rub jar, noxema skin cream, Evening in Paris, and Milk of Magnesia bottles too. Those were the good old days! Anyway most of my collection is in the dining room. There is still work to be done, but I thought I would show you around. The little window above is a dormer window on the outside of the house. The little landing was a happy accident from the builder. We loved it! My DH goes up the ladder at Christmas and replaces the lamp with a little Christmas tree. We did have the foresight to have it wired so we could turn it on at the switch below!


This is our buffet, from the trainstation flea-market. I stripped it down and then one day had the idea of taking an oak footboard we had and attaching it and the mirror to the back. It matches perfectly. I have a white shelf above this that needs some attention! The cobalt blue bowl was from a garage sale and the cup and saucer are missmatches. I added the little blue cornflowers and the white flowers.

More garage sale finds

The blue band around the top was originally going to have a smaller blue basket border in it, but since I could see that borders were on their way out, I thought one day, why not just hang different blue and white plates? DH went up the ladder and measured for each one. How I love that man!

Our English Sideboard. Found at an antique mall at a not to be found again price in the 90's.

It holds a lot of stuff inside too!

Cloches from the Goodwill. A couple of pieces of flow-blue from my long ago garage saling.

An old music cabinet,(these are great) A small wall curio with a child's Blue willow set.

Oops, I deleted the full length picture of this cabinet. (also from a garage sale) It sits on top of a gate-leg table that was my husband's grandmother's. The tall cobalt vase was a recent find at the Goodwill! $5.00!!

Also the other day, found these two candle cups at the Goodwill for .75 each. Hope you enjoyed the tour. I realized I didn't take a shot of the table. It was also a antique mall purchase, but had no leaves, so my DH made four matching ones, We can seat 8 to 10. The chairs are new but matched the turnings on the table and buffet so well we couldn't not get them a few years ago.

Have a blessed day! Remember God is in control.

Linda

Valentine weekend

This has always been one of my favorite old valentine postcards. Isn't it sweet? It's a little ragged aroung the corners but I still love it. We had a great valentine weekend with three of our local granddaughters. (wish we could have seen them all) Mom and Dad were out of town on a romantic get-away so the girls stayed with us. My DH brought me beautiful pink roses! some of the prettiest I've seen and they all bloomed out instead of nodding off and dying. Don't you hate when that happens? I arranged some of my older valentines around the mirror on which I place the roses with some of my crystal candelsticks. Not a lot of effort, but it was pretty.

On Friday afternoon the girls and I worked on Valentine pages for their scrapbooks. They are all fairly new to this hobby, but are doing so well! This is MissyK working on her masterpiece. I just spread everything out on a table and let them do their own thing.

"Tinkerbell" worked hard on her page, taking great care with everything and had a special message for her parents. We worked together on the glitter part. ha

The divine Miss M took great care with her page also. Trying different patterns and pictures. She loves to create and also paid tribute to Mommy and Daddy. So sweet.

It was fun to spend time with the girls creating, my favorite thing in the world. We ate plenty of chocolate and ice cream all weekend. What could be better? Hope you all had a great weekend too.
Wishing you all the love your hearts can hold,

Linda

Is it Spring yet?

I am so ready for Spring! Am I the only one? I so doubt it! We've really had some cold weather this winter, though not as much snow as usual. And so far not a lot of ice, but that could still happen I suppose. I made this wreath for a doorprize for our women's retreat at church next month and really like how it turned out. It has purple blue hydrangeas ( I love hydrangeas!) , yellow tulips, white lilacs, yellow berries, ivy and a little lavender stem, I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. Then I filled in with some chartreuse stems. I hadn't done any florals since before Christmas and it felt good, I really need to clean up my floral room. It's in the basement and we are in the beginning stages of finishing off a portion of it. Can't wait to see all the sheetrock dust all over my flowers! ha. I will have to figure out a way to cover everything with plastic or something.

I have been very busy working on my art studio. I repainted the walls to a cheerier shade of green and have been painting all the furniture white. ( my husband said it was okay as most of it was not the good stuff. I am really excited about how it is turning out. Rearranging the furniture has made a big difference, and I've been going through my magazines and tearing out things I wanted to file in notebooks. It takes up a lot less room that way. I have trouble getting rid of my magazines, does anyone else have that problem? I have found that I go back and read them and get just as much as the first time. I always see something new! But, alas I can't keep everything I guess. All the magazines going out of business makes my so sad. Our world is changing and sometimes I don't like it at all. I have noticed though that so many of the magazine have much less content and more ads, which is so frustrating when you want to spend a leisurely afternoon pouring over favorite magazine and it takes 5 minutes to read it. One magazine, I had to let go after subscribing for over 20 years. It was so sad.

Back to my studio, I will post pictures hopefully soon when I get it all back together. Our granddaughters will be staying with us a few days and they want to scrapbook while they're here.

I put this arrangement together for an order I received. The container is a semi-circular sewing machine drawer. It was really a neat looking drawer and I am pleased with how it worked up. It was to represent the state. Can you guess which state? It is made to be displayed on a table and also can be hung on the wall as I attached saw-tooth hangers on the back. It has sunflowers, green hydrangeas, and viburnum stems along with various grasses and twig-looking stems. Then some cornflower stems. I really like the way it turned out.

So keep the faith, girls, Spring is coming eventually!

Be Blessed, Linda