Fall Nesting Series–The Kitchen

Hi, all, here’s the next installment of my contribution to the Inspired Room’s Fall Nesting Series. I thought I was done and keep tweaking my Fall decorating, but I think I’m done now ;-) That’s not to say I’m totally HAPPY with everything and I have plans to make some changes during the next year, but it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful, right?

The top picture is the village on top of my Hoosier cabinet. I really love my villages and since Fall is my favorite season, my two Fall villages rank right up there in my list of favorite decorating items.

The bookcase hutch. I'm going to be culling a ton of those cookbooks soon and just have some decor on the shelves. I never use most of them so no need to keep them all.

Moving around the room, this is pretty much the rest of the kitchen. Here's the antique clock shelf and clock that's over the bar that separates the kitchen from the dining room. Those silver pitchers are antique and are from a Navy ship many years ago. I love the patina on them and have no plans to polish them. I thought they make pretty vases for some faux cat tails. I'm thinking I have too many cat tails in each one.  What do y'all think?



You can see the top of a dish on the bar with copper acorns in it. Here's a close up. I am developing a dangerous obsession for mercury glass and I made this dish using a faux mercury glass technique with a $1 dish from the dollar store. It's not like an antique, but it turned out pretty darn well. The acorns came off my back deck, where a blue million have fallen. The caps fall off when they hit the deck, so I picked up a bunch, baked them in the oven for 2 hours at 200 F to kill the vermin and dry them out. Then I spray painted them with copper paint and hot glued the caps back on. LOVE how they turned out. I spread them out in a cardboard box and sprayed them. As they were drying, I'd shake the box to keep them from sticking--that knocked off a little paint and gave them a distressed look that I love!



OK, that’s the kitchen and all for today. I’ll be back with dining room decorations later. Thanks so much for stopping by! I’ll be back soon with the dining room.

Blue Plate Special—Dining Room Wall Makeover

I recently had the wallpaper stripped in my kitchen/dining room and had the walls painted. We also put down new flooring, both of which really changed the looks of the space. I love all the cleanly decorated rooms I see online and often wonder if I’d like that style in my home. While I can REALLY appreciate that style, realize that vintage/cottage chic is MY style.

Here’s a picture showing that shelf last year at Christmas—you can see the wallpaper and the lithograph we had hanging over the shelf. I don’t have a full-wall view but trust me, the new look is much better :)

And another view of the dining room…



The color is called Toffee Crunch. It's a Lowe's color but the paint is Sherman Williams, which is what my painter recommended. It's a warm, vintage yellow and I am in LOVE with it! My Blue Willow china and Folk Art everyday dishes go so well with it that I decided to decorate the wall with Blue Willow plates. I've been antiquing to collect enough and my DH got them on the wall yesterday. It's up over our stairwell so he had to construct some scaffolding with two adjustable ladders and boards. I'm also using more plates in other areas of the room and using cobalt accents.

This wall just makes me smile every time I look at it. My DH didn't really want to get rid of the wallpaper we had but even he said he likes this :) In fact, he has decided we need a few child's tea set plates to fill in a few spots. Who am I to argue with him? A funny: I asked him yesterday if he was willing to hang Christmas plates in that space and he just rolled his eyes. At least he didn't say NO, LOL! Not in this year's plans, for sure--I'm still loving looking at the blue :)

Thanks so much for stopping by! Be back with some Fall decorating soon!

20 Little Things I Love About Fall

Couldn’t resist joining in on this Fall Nesting Party from The Inspired Room! Since I just got started on this blog, I didn’t have time to find pretty pictures to go with my favorites, so I’m just listing them. I love pretty much EVERYthing about fall. But mostly…

1. Cooler temperatures. By this time I’m SO over hot and humid summer and ready for some cooler days with drier air.

2. Open windows. With the cooler temperatures, the windows open up and the sounds and smells of the season come right inside.

3. Apples. Applesauce, apple butter, apple pie, apple crisp, apple anything.

4. Fall decorating. Love the colors of Fall and I love spreading them around my home.

5. Snuggling cats. As the nights get cooler, cats snuggle up more :)

6. Fall foliage. ‘Nuff said.

7. BLUE skies. Somehow, the bright color of the leaves against the sky makes it look BLUER!

8. Gentle rains. No violent thunder storms like in the summer. Just gentle, soothing falling rain.

9. Cozy blankets. Sorta goes along with the cooler temperatures.

10. Sweatshirts. More of the cooler temp thing :)

11. Pumpkin anything. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice latte, pumpkin cake.

12. Fall holidays. A little Halloween decorating and Thanksgiving blessings.

13. Hot spiced cider. The scent fills the air and makes home more homey.

14. Socks. Cozy, comfy socks.

15. Fall scented candles. I don’t do open flames in my home, but on a candle warmer they fill the house with glorious warm scents.

16. Fireplace. Or in our case, a gas stove with a window. It doesn’t get cold enough here many times in the Fall for a fire, but when it does, its curl-up-in-front-of-the-fire-with-a-book night.

17. Celebrating our anniversary. In November. Married to my best friend for forever.

18. Hot tea. Iced tea all summer, now it’s time to sip hot tea all day.

19. Leaf-watching drives. Up on the Blue Ridge Parkway you can see the Fall colors for miles and miles.

20. Getting my crafting on. Summer is filled with gardening and other summer things so crafting gets pushed to the back burner. Fall is when I get to get back to being crafty.

linking to: The Inspired Room's Get Your Fall Nesting On! Party

Thanks so much for stopping by!

New Month, New Blog

“Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!”

                                                   Humbert Wolfe

Happy October 1st! Oh, MY, but I really {heart} Fall. Almost as much as Christmas and that’s sayin’ a lot. I love the change in the air as well as the change in the leaf color…

     “Every leaf speaks bliss to me fluttering from the autumn tree.”                                       Emily Bronte

Ah. Yes. This.

Life’s going to get more hectic for me soon, as I start my Christmas decorating, but I’m going to post some pictures of my Fall front porch today :) I just had to join the Fall Nesting Series that The Inspired Room has goin’ on in her annual Fall Nesting party! Check it out for some major inspiration!

 

First up: Left end of porch--the baker's rack is a home for potted plants in the summer.




I put a hay bale with a scarecrow and some pumpkins and gourds on the left of the front door. The scarecrow is one of those with a stake that you stand out in your yard--I let mine sit ;-)

This is the front door and right side of the door. We have four rockers and a Shaker bench with pumpkins and gourds, too.

And that’s pretty much it for the official launch. I’ll be posting more in the coming days so I hope you’ll be back. Thanks for dropping in today!

Additional Posts:
Fall Nesting Series – The Kitchen

Seasonal Pursuits

Hi there! I’ve been wanting to share more than the paper crafting that I post on Paper Pursuits, but never took the time to set up a blog on which to do it. I’ve been so inspired by blogs all over the ‘net that I’m finally doing it, so without further ado, let me introduce to you Seasonal Pursuits.

Here’s where I’ll share my love of holidays, decorating, crafting, gardening, and cooking. My blog design will be pretty bare bones for a while, until I get time to dress it up, but here we go!