Simple as Black and White

I seem to be on a black and white kick lately. While I've always loved lots of white in my house, lately I've been deviating a bit from my usual pastels and adding some graphic punch with a number of black and white accents. I thought I'd show you some of my recent finds today. I'll start with an old photo that I came across at Goodwill last week.
While searching for some picture frames to use in the photo wall in my office, I came across this old black and white photograph of a little dog. It was housed in the most diabolical picture frame imaginable and I started to pass on it for that reason, but I kept going back and looking at this little guy, just literally begging for attention. Perhaps he belonged to a person who recently passed on. At any rate somehow he wound up at the Goodwill store because someone didn't cherish his memory, and that made me feel a little sad. I felt even sadder when thinking that someone else might buy the garish frame he was housed in and just throw away the picture, so I decided that I had to "rescue" him. Although I didn't know this pup, he will become a part of my adopted family and find a new home on my photo wall. Now I feel better!
I picked up the black and white saucer at a yard sale last weekend. It is surrounded by a bunch of great postcards that I lucked into for a dime a piece at a local close-out store.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the saucer when I bought it. Goodness knows I have more china than I know what to do with, but it was calling out,

"buy me, buy me", so I did. This is what I came up with:
Didn't it make a nice little photo frame? All I did was trace out the circle in the middle of the saucer, cut a photograph to fit and glue in place. By the way, that's me as a little girl with my grandmother's dog, Rusty.
I love old letters and numbers but rarely come across them, so I was especially excited to find this letter "D", as it is the first letter of my last name. It started out as a coat hook, though. The "D" sat atop a small wooden platform that was attached to a large hook. I sawed the platform off and painted it black.

My final find was one of those unexpected, unplanned purchases that you just know was waiting for you when you see it.
Isn't this old car just too much fun!

It found a spot on my bookcase next to the pic of my parents old Studebaker. I think they look pretty cool together. This was a tight budget week, so I think I did pretty well

with my $5.00 "allowance". Gotta love a bargain!

Until next time,

This post is shared on "Show and Tell Friday" at Cindy's gorgeous blog, My Romantic Home. You should check it out....lots of great ideas to discover!

Bare Bulb Dilema

Maybe you're lucky enough to have avoided them...but then again...maybe not. Many homes, especially older ones have a bare bulb somewhere. Pehaps yours is lurking inside your closest; or maybe it's hiding out in the garage, basement or laundry room.
Or then again...maybe not...perhaps I got them all. I have seven such fixtures in my former pizza restaurant turned rental house!

I haven't quite figured out what the person who designed the lighting was trying to achieve. Maybe they just needed lights and were on a tight budget. Whatever the reason, every room, save the kitchen and bath is at least somewhat illuminated by these creatures!

My first impulse was to replace them all with chandeliers, but that idea hit a few roadblocks. The first one was the expense of purchasing seven chandeliers. The second is my phobia of working with electricity, and finally I have to keep in mind this IS a rental house! So what to do?

One day it occured to me to replace the lowly incandescent bulbs with chandelier lights. That helped a little, but not a lot.
Then I had another idea...what if I dressed them up with some crystals... The bare bulb fixtures at my house apparently had some type of globe at one time, and the screws which once kept it in place are still here. Using that as a starting point I dangled some pretty drops from the screws. That was better, but it was still missing something.
So I layered on lengths of rope crystals to give it a little more depth. I thought about painting the fixtures, since they are pretty chippy, but decided against it as I like the contrast of rustic with refined. While still not my choice of lighting fixtures, the crystals have made the bare bulbs quite a bit more bearable than they were in their original state.

For the five bulbs in the open living area I stayed with pretty much the same design, but by the time I got to the bedrooms, I ran out of crystal chain. Time to improvise again.

This time I used a combination of crystal beads and pearls that were salvaged from old necklaces.
Perhaps one day I'll overcome my fear of electrical wiring enough to try something different. Maybe I'll come across a gorgeous chandelier that I just can't resist, and replace the central fixture with that. But in the meantime, I've learned to make do and turn my lemons into lemonade so to speak. Most of my visitors compliment my creative fixtures, so maybe they're not so terrible after all.

If you have a bare bulb lurking somewhere, you might want to try a similar treatment. If you don't have the screws to drape the crystals from, try using small cup hooks screwed into the ceiling. This approach would give you even more options when designing your "bare bulb chandelier".

Until next time,

One Thing Leads to Another...

A short time ago, I purchased a long-coveted sofa from a friend of mine, and realized that with the new addition, a new scheme in the living and dining areas of the house would be necessary.

Fortunately, I had a “look” in mind, based on a vignette that I already had in the house and wanted to expand upon.
I love the crisp romance of the black and white photo and the serenity of the white busts and cherubs that occupy the top of the piano, and knew that I wanted more of this look.

In anticipation of the arrival of the sofa, I began to make a few minor changes, the most important of which was the hutch display. In keeping with my craving for white, I removed my pink flowered dishes and replaced them with the white ones that are trimmed in gold.

Unfortunately, the bright turquoise background of the hutch, which had offset the pink and white dishes so beautifully, clashed miserably with the white and gold ones.

I thought about a color for the background, and decided upon a smokey gray; Something understated, but not white, as I wanted the dishes to stand out. It turned out to be a good choice. Good enough, in fact, to become the basis of my new color scheme.

Since I painted my walls a lovely pale shade of robin's egg blue last year, I've decided to stay with it. In keeping with the new direction, however, I'm planning to change the trim color from pale pink to pale gray. The photo below some of the fabrics and accessories that I've been gathering for use in the room.

As you can see, I've chosen a palatte of robin's egg blue with some grays along with silver and gold. All of this with a very healthy dose of white. I've chosen some formal and informal fabrics as well as modern, traditional, and vintage ones. I think it's going to be a fun mix. Now to figure out the guest/sewing room.... Stay tuned to see how it all comes out!

Until next time,

All Around the House

Welcome back! My last post took you onto the porch and through the front door of my house at Christmas-time. I like to sprinkle Christmas all through the house, though, so this time

we'll do the "grand tour" of my little cottage.
While not always in keeping with the color scheme, I love to sprinkle vintage Christmas decorations such as the 1950's Santa cutout (above), throughout the house. I think the vintage touches take a bit of the edge off a themed decor and lend a warm, cozy feel to the place. Over the last couple of years I've started

collecting vintage reindeer. They remind me of a set that my family had during my childhood. These are displayed on the chest that I featured in the Chest of Drawers Redo post.

Another collection that I like to scatter around the house is mini Christmas trees.

I've tucked at least one in just about every vignette in the house including the one here on the sofa table, where I've concentrated my blue decorations. By the way, that's my darling

Lucy, all decked out in her holiday clothes perched up on the edge of the sofa.

As I mentioned earlier, my house has an open floor plan, so the sofa doubles as a room divider to the dining room, which is one of my favorite places to decorate for the holidays.

The hutch is home to many of my vintage treasures. This little Santa Claus is one of my favorites.

The photo above shows the antique cast iron stove doing server duty for the punch bowl at my Christmas open house.

While the hutch and stove are large focal point pieces, I think sometimes it's the small touches that tend to add the most charm. For instance, I like to use touches of greenery, whether real or artificial wherever I can find a good spot. My sconce is shown here with a

garland of artificial foliage accenting the candle base. The candle chandelier, which hangs over the dining room table is one of my trash to treasure pieces. I literally rescued this

outdated brass chandelier from a trash heap and revamped it with a coat of white paint and some crystals. For the holidays, it also gets a touch of greenery.

A couple more of my flea market "fixer-upers", this mirror and triple sconce seem to also lend themselves well to a bit of festive foliage. I used some fresh clippings from the woods here.

Moving on, you'll see that I've decorated the kitchen in a more whimsical style. This handmade Raggedy Ann is made from wood and buttons. She's right at home perched on a shelf along-side a little rocking horse and some primitive Christmas trees. An assortment of vintage red-work linens is displayed on the towel bars below.

Futher indulging the child within, this shelf is home to a collection of tattered but much-loved old Raggedy Ann dolls.

Here are a few more of my vintage dolls.

Finally, we arrive at the smallest room of the house, the bathroom.

I like to keep a bowl of fresh face cloths handy, and around Christmas, they're jazzed up a bit with the addition of a few glass ornaments and some silver napkin rings.

The vanity tray also receives a holiday makeover. The red bottle brush Christmas tree is one of my favorite decorations.
I hope you've enjoyed this little tour of my Christmas cottage. I'm already getting excited about Christmas 2010! Just a couple of weeks ago I picked up a 1960's aluminum Christmas tree at a yard sale, so you can be assured that next year's decor will be quite different! For me, putting it all together again in a new way is part of the fun of the holidays. I hope that perhaps you've gathered an idea or two that you can use in your own holiday decor. I'd love to see what you're doing, so, if you don't mind sharing, send me your photos and they just might wind up in a future blog post!

Until next time,

Refrigerator Art

I love it when I find something useful, pretty, practical, and inexpensive, and this little find certainly fits the bill. The other day I was at Ocean State Job Lots and found these great

little magnet sets. I believe they were designed for school lockers, but what great refrigerator magnets they make!

You see, I enjoy using my refigerator as a canvas for whatever "art" strikes me at a given time, and currently, I'm into displaying black and white

photographs there. Unfortunately, the typical decorative kitchen magnets just don't cut it with B&W photography! But

these little goodies are just perfect with their graphic shapes and black and silver color, and while they're wonderful on their own, they're even better combined with other types of fasteners. I thought I'd show you some of my favorites today.
In the photo above, I've combined one of the black magnets with a magnet made from a vintage brooch from the flea market. I'm planning to make a couple more of these as soon as I come across the right junk jewelry to work with, but I think that will be enough, as they could really make the display busy in a hurry! But a little bling goes a long way and a few of them certainly a bit of punch to the arrangement.
For these photos, I'm using magnetic photo holders that I found at a camera shop several years back. They've also been one of my "best little bargains", as I've used them to display numerous photos through the years. The holders are sized for a standard 4 X 6 print, however my vintage black and white pictures are a bit smaller. To compensate, I simply backed the snapshots with a piece of black paper, and for a little something extra, I cut a phrase out of a magazine to use as a caption for one of them.
For this photo, I repurposed a magnetic mini-chip clip in a metallic silver tone.
For this one, I used a magnetic binder clip from the office supply.

It's fun to let your imagination run loose when it comes to magnets and fasteners for this type of display. For the only color image in the grouping, I used magnetic childrens' letters to attach a

magazine page with a great photo of some delectable looking cookies. Other good fasteners could be fashioned from clothes pins, checker board pieces, or Scrabble tiles. I'm sure once you think about it and browse your home with a discerning eye, you'll see lots of potential fasteners that will look 100% better than the designated refrigerator magnets you can buy in a store, so have some fun with it and create a display that is uniquely you!

Until next time,