Christmas House Tour 2015 Christmas in The Bedroom

Welcome to my Christmas house tour 2015: Christmas in the Bedroom. Today I want to show you our bedroom.  It all started when I went to Magpie’s Vintage Treasures, a little shop in Matthews, near where I live, that only opens for a weekend, seasonally.  This cute little toile bear jumped into my arms as I was browsing in the store.

 She insisted that I decorate our bedroom for Christmas, and let her be the star.  So…

 Here she is making herself quite comfortable on our bed.  I switched the blue and white quilt for this all white bedspread, and added a couple of red and white stripe pillowcases.

 Then I folded one of the red and white quilts I made at the foot of the bed.

Some greens from our yard in white ironstone, classic and simple.  It looks so good with the brass lamp behind it.  

 Got a pair of brass lamps for $2 each recently and Hobby Lobby had lampshades 50% off the same day, so I the lamps only cost me $17 each!

 Some more greenery: cedar, nandina berries and holly on the other side of the bed with something I printed and framed last year.  There were hardly any berries on our holly this year.  Not sure why.

 Last year my feather tree had a button garland and these little cloth blue and white hearts.  At the insistence of my little bear, red balls and a red bead garland were added.

A vintage bunny and some of the Christmas hearts are nestled under the tree.

Thanks little bear.  I like how it turned out!  I’m thinking about painting the walls, dark blue.  What do you think?  Actually you may not be able to respond because yesterday the comments weren’t working and I couldn’t figure out how to fix them.  If you’ve ever had that problem I’d love you to email me and tell me how to fix it!!

Come back in a few days and I’ll show you some more of my Christmas house tour.

Rhondi x0

Happy Fall Y'all

Happy fall y’all!  Fall officially starts Sept 23 4:21 am  The weather felt like fall today so it was a perfect day to do a little fall decorating. 

First thing I did was pick some flowers in the woods down the street.

 Then I added a few things to the mantle in our living room.

 It looks pretty with the candlelight.

 The glow of the candle reflects off the brass lamp which gives light to the pumpkins I painted

A few more bits and pieces finish it off: brass deer, brass candlesticks, initial and flowers.Some fake bittersweet lining the mantle to finish it off.

 I also decorated the hutch in the kitchen

 Some fake gourds and a pumpkin soup tureen.  Can’t wait for it to get cool enough for me to serve soup from it!

 A teapot with a broken handle from my grandmother and a little 60 cent plate I bought at Value Village today.  

 Solidago from our garden.  This always makes me think of fireworks.

That’s it for fall decor around here.  Happy fall y’all.

What do you do for fall around your house?

Rhondi xo

DIY Chairs

Hi  What have you been up to lately?   I’ve been busy painting DIY chairs and finding fabric bargains to cover them.  The latest one is the two chairs at the ends of our dining room table.  Several years ago I covered them in  a check pattern I made with shirts from Goodwill.  They were beginning to get a little worn looking.  So when I found some red and blue toile regular $13 a yard for $4 a yard I couldn’t resist buying it.  I unscrewed the seats.

 And took off the fabric.  This is what I had before the blue.  I just used  scissors to cut the fabric bigger than the seat, then folded it over and used a staple gun to staple it.

 Here they are finished.  But they didn’t  look right in the dining room anymore, so  I wandered around the house looking for where I could put them and they ended up here in our front entry.  I really like them there, so what if you trip over them when you come in the front door? Just a minor inconvenience.

I got this fabric on sale too, reg. $29 a yard for $12, and I only needed 3/4 yard.  I am always picking up odd chairs here and there.  This was an orphan chair that I picked up by the side of the road.  I always seem to be doing DIY chairs projects.  Maybe I should be “the chair whisperer”.  Anyhow, there were 2 like this and one with arms.  Chalk paint from Walmart , staple the fabric to the seat, and another project is done.  Color is “Nautical”.  (I should have taken a close up photo so you can see the distressing.  I’ll do that another day).

 Remember I showed you these chairs that I painted with the Walmart chalk paint?  I decided they looked better at either end of the table than the blue ones I had before.  The blue orphans are in the middle.

Here is how the dining rom looks now.  Did I already tell you about the brass chandelier I got for only $15?  Out came the red spray paint and we have a new chandelier.  My new red color scheme is falling into place. To be continued…

Rhondi xo

Chalk Paint Chair DIY

So I am continuing to add some red to our living and dining rooms. Here is the next addition to the new red color story going on in our house. I bought a pair of these chairs about 15 years ago when we lived in Philadelphia.  They have just been collecting dust in our basement for the last few years.  They used to be black.

 I covered the black paint with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint pure white.

 Second coat was chalk paint from Walmart ($7.98).  The color is Imperial. If you’ve purchased chalk paint before you’ll know what a great deal that is!

 I did it very quickly, not worrying about getting a smooth even coat.

 Then I took some sandpaper and “distressed” it.  Distressing is just sanding off parts where it would have naturally worn off over time. I used 100 sandpaper which is a medium grit. If you don’t like this sloppy look , just make sure that your top coat of paint is even strokes.  

 The arms are a place that would get a lot of wear over the years, so I sanded there too.  Annie Sloan suggests using a coat of paste wax before you distress, but I think it distresses easier if you sand before you wax it.

 I sanded the legs and also the rugs and any other place I thought would get natural wear over the years.  The idea is to make the areas that you distress not look deliberate, but look like it happened naturally over time.  When I was finished I gave it a coat of paste wax. 

 The final step was to recover the chair seat.  Sorry I didn’t think to take any photos of how to do it.  Just google it, if you need some instructions. All you need is a staple gun, screwdriver to remove the seat, and fabric to cover it.

Right now the walls in our dining room are a pale yellow. The red chairs are going in there and I have a red chandelier that will replace the white one. I’m thinking of painting the top half of the walls navy blue. If I don’t like it, it’s only paint…  

I didn’t mention this to my husband yet.  I wonder what he’ll think when he reads this post!

Thanks for stopping by. Got time for a cup of tea?  I’ve got my red and white tea set all ready!

Rhondi xo

Good Monday Morning

Good morning dear friends

I like to start every morning with a cup of tea, my journal, my bible, and my “one thousand gifts notebook”, where I record things I am thankful for.

 What a beautiful sight greeted me this morning as I sat in our sunroom with a second cup of tea.

 There were rays of sunlight beaming through the trees.

And as I watched it got brighter.

and brighter

Until it was one big spotlight flooding through the entire woods.

Then I noticed the sun’s rays had caught the delicate outline of a spider’s web .

I am thankful for a beautiful start to the week.

How is your week starting out? 

Rhondi xo

I Missed You

Good morning sweet blogging friends

I have missed you!  I miss hearing from you.  I miss visiting you in your homes/blogs.  I miss sharing with you when I have done something new.  So I am posting something today.  Don’t know if I will be posting a lot or not, just have to wait and see!

You remember my blue and white living room?

 Some spray paint on an old lamp.

 A coffee table found on craigslist painted with white chalk paint.  Don’t you love Chalk paint?  Haven’t tried it yet?  You are missing out on some fun and easy painting!

 New slipcovers on our 46 year old chairs.  Oops, just noticed I took the pictures before I hemmed the skirt on the chairs!

 Steal a lamp and some books from another room.  (Shop the house)

                               Add a quilt I made a few yeas ago.  I named it Wow in Red.

 Steal another lamp from the TV room. ( more shopping the house)

 Take a mirror and antique washstand from another room, more shopping the house.  What is so fun about shopping the house is the price!

 And we have a new living room!  I spent less than $200.

Still have a bit more to do, but I was excited to show it to you now.

Awhile back I said that I wanted to have my home be more calm.  That’s when I painted the living room walls white.  Then awhile ago I started thinking about a red check fabric that I’d seen on Tina’s blog, Cherry Hill Cottage , ( oh my goodness, that was in 2011!) and I decided just to go for it.

I’m working on the dining room next.  It used to have red walls, but when we decided to sell our house a few years ago, I painted it in the pale yellow so it was more neutral color.  So glad we decided not to move after all.

Imagine how great it is going to look at Christmas!

Hope you are having a very good day and the sun is shining on you.  Rhondi xo