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

Evolution of a Living Room

Good morning dear friends.  I think of you as friends even though I haven’t met most of you.

As I sat and drank my second cup of tea this morning I was thinking about the changes in our living room over the last couple of years and how my tastes have changed.  I like to call it “the evolution of a living room”.Here is a photo of our living room this morning, as is, no staging, although I did clean up a bit for book club yesterday. We actually use this room a lot.  It is very peaceful with the white walls and white slipcovers.  You can see into the dining room, yellow with white chairs.

Last year I rearranged the furniture so that the sofa was across the opening into the dining room.  I  loved the way it made for a cozier conversation area, but to get to the dining room or kitchen, we either had to squeeze through a narrow opening  or go around through the TV room.  So that only lasted a couple of weeks! That was when I made the brown slipcovers which I hated.  They only lasted a couple of weeks too!

Before that the living and dining rooms were both yellow and the wing chairs were covered in the fabric with the blue and  white plates.  I loved that fabric but the slipcovers eventually got worn out and I had to make new ones.

I tried another arrangement and put the sofa on an angle on the left side of the picture.  I was into a lot of color then.  The dining room was red and the dining room chairs were black and my wicker desk in the corner is also black. I had curtains on the windows, which I stole from the sunroom.

The couch looked very nice then in the corner next to the fireplace.

Another arrangement of furniture.  I was REALLY into color then.  That wicker chair lasted a week before I moved it, way too uncomfortable for a sitting room.  There was a short time when I had a lot of red accents in the living room too, but I couldn’t find the photos.

Every time I do something different with the living room I like it.  I guess I just change it up for the fun of being creative!

ONe time I switched the rooms around and the living room became a dining room.  That was fun for awhile too.

Well my tea is cold and I have some work to do so I better get at it!

Rhondi xo

Tea Party Tuesday

Welcome to my first Tea Party Tuesday.  I am very excited to have you here and I just know we are going to have a good time. When I was trying to decide which teapot to use  for the first tea party it just seemed right to use my Dainty Blue tea set.

Anyone who knows me in blogland has seen it before and many of you have commented on it, so I knew that is what I wanted to use. I have had this tea set since we were first married and it is one of the few things I own that has any sentimental value.  My aunt gave me a cup and saucer to get me started and by the time I was married I had a whole tea set for 8.  It is English. The manufacturer is Shelley and the pattern is Dainty Blue.  I just love it!  The only places to buy it now are antique shops, Ebay or Replacements China.

I have arranged all the tea things on my wicker tea trolley.

And I made some little cucumber and cream cheese tea sandwiches.  It's important to slice the cucumbers very thin and use the English cucumbers, the ones you don't have to peel.

I have wheeled the tea cart into our living room.

and moved the wing chairs closer together for a cozier setting for us.

Would you like a sandwich?  These look huge in this photo but they are very tiny!

I'll pour you a cup of tea.  milk or lemon?  sugar?   I have a pot of coffee in the kitchen if you'd prefer.

So what's new with you?  I'd love to know what you are up to these days. 

Thank you so much for coming to my first Tea Party Tuesday.  It really means a lot to me to have you here and you have made it a special day!  I am excited to come and visit you too!

Rhondi xo

If you are joining Tea Party Tuesday and have tea ready at your house, here is what to do:

1.Write your post.   Use my tea party button( you can just copy it) and include a link back to me,so that your visitors can go to the other tea parties too.

2.Publish your post.

3.Sign in with mr linky making sure you link to your tea party post .  To do that click on the title of the post.  Then up at the top of your screen it will display the url for that specific post. Copy that url in the space provided by mr linky. 

4. Please leave me a comment to let me know you posted.

One Thing Led To Another

My "to do" list today included working in the garden and cleaning the house. Everything started according to plan. The morning was lovely and fresh so I spent quite a bit of time in my garden. As I always do now that things are blooming, I picked some flowers to bring inside. Today I chose the verbena. The blossoms are huge and it's hard to get a vase that will hold them in. This large green bowl seemed to be the best fit for them and I decided to put them on the mantle in the living room. That's when one thing led to another.

I'm not sure if it was the green bowl, or these beautiful place mats and napkins that my friend Karen gave me, or all the luscious green outside. Whatever it was, it led me to remove all the red in the room and go on a search for other green items I had around the house.I put these little green gourds in a footed Delft bowl that my dad brought back from Holland when I was just a young girl. Put a green plate on a stand beside my blue and white.

Stacked up some blue and green gardening booksAnd the mantle is complete. When I saw how fresh looking the green was I looked around to see what else I had that was green and I remembered that I had a cloth from a few years ago which fits the round table. So I rummaged through the closets until I found it, pressed it and put in on the table. A couple more green books and some greens picked from outside, a pale blue vase and some pale blue books and it's looking very light and airy and springlike.Then the quilt hanging over the couch looked a little too dark, so I took down the blue and white one in the front hall and hung it over the couch. Now what am I going to do with the bare wall in the hall? The paintings my mom did are all the colors of spring, and they were just in the guest room, so I put them on the wall in the hall. Then the black hall table looked too dark, so I moved it to the bedroom hallway and put some fake ferns in an old planter that I had in the attic. So here is a view looking from the dining room. I think I've managed to bring spring inside! Another view from the dining room.Now when you come in our front door, this is how it looks. Hmm....that wall in the hallway at the back looks bare. I wonder what I can find to put there?So that's what happened today when one thing led to another. Meanwhile the housecleaning still needs to be done!

Rhondi xo

Just Had To Freshen Up A Bit

Good morning friends
Like many of you I am often re arranging things in my home, giving it a fresh look, removing some things, adding others. Sometimes I leave it for awhile but then go back to how it was before, but it's always fun to have a change .
This is our front hall yesterday.
Here it is now.

I made these slipcovers for our wing chairs several years ago and they have been in our living room all that time with a ragged unfinished edge at the bottom. So I added this pleated skirt to finally finish them. (Karen K, if you read this, you'll be proud of me!) I also flipped the seat cushion over because there is a different pattern on it, just for variety. I love lots of different patterns mixed together. Do you?
I think my furniture would look right at home in this house don't you? It's new but has lots of charm. I took a picture of it when I was out and about yesterday.

We had a wonderful visit with our son and daughter in law. I've missed my visits with you!

We're having a painting party at a friend's house on Saturday to paint all the walls and trim on the first floor of her home. What are your plans for the weekend?

Rhondi xo


Someone asked me about the quilts in the pictures today.

The first one is from a pattern by Maggie Walker. I appliqued it by hand and quilted it by hand.

Inspired by Maggie Walker, I designed the blue and white one myself. I drew things from our home: teapots, teacups, roosters, planters etc and tried to use fabric that was similar to the patterns on the actual objects. It's all done by hand also. I'll do a post on it sometime and show you more.

Flaunt Your Red

Nancy at Southern Lady is hosting a Flaunt Your Red party today. I love red so I thought it would be fun to join in and "flaunt my red".
Here is our red dining room.

Red pillows on the couch.

Red books on the mantle.

I painted the hutch in our kitchen red.

Sometimes I hang this red quilt I made on the wall in our front hall.

If you have time I'll make us a pot of tea in my red teapot. Some red hearts I made nestle in a white bowl.

Madeleine sits beside a red patchwork pillow.So that's just a little sample of some of the red in my house.

Make sure you stop by and visit Southern Lady to see lots blogs flaunting their red.

Hope you have a great weekend.

Rhondi xo