French Decorating

After shabby chic and romantic I love french decorating the best. I also like italian antiques, but french wins out as the next favorite.

I've done vignettes like this for years. Maybe from seeing this decorator and others doing it, but my true inspiration comes from a friend in a small Idaho town who did this. I go to the thrift stores and get the books with the most interesting covers. I'll usually stack them together and tie them with a beautiful ribbon and put flowers on top. Over the years I've given most of them away but it does set a romantic mood. I've also used books stacked to put our bedside clock radio on. And even small vases of flowers. It works and is so cheap to do and makes a stunning statement. You might even wish to break up the rows and rows of books with some of these ideas to create little vignettes.

This room is one of my favorite colors - RED! This is a den for a man who is a francophile. How many men would like this room?! I think quite a lot. It is very masculine even though it is red. He also subscribes to the "more is less" decorating philosophy I love. Yep, More is Less for me! He also balances it with different colors of wood in this room and lots of antiques.

I have a friend, Lorena, who has a blue dining room. It's gorgeous but a darker blue than this. I love this room because he's mixed red and blue together. Toile on the wall is red; blue is interspersed around the room on the back of the chairs, plates on the wall and dinnerware and goblets. And the whimsical part is the blue leopard print on the chairs front.

While his living is considered neutral, there really isn't anything "neutral" about it. Blue willow plates grace the wall and there are chairs in other colors thrown around the room but not visible in this photo. He also places red books around this living room to add even more color.

Secret Gardens

By now I think we're all tired of winter and snow! So I thought I'd raise everyone's spirits by posting some secret green gardens! Think "spring", chickadees!!!

A secret garden with clematis and an old stone bench and tuffs of moss growing up between the old stonework pathway, ferns and lush greenery secreting you away from all the troubles of your world to quietly caress you. Shhhhhhhhhh, quietly meditate, my bunnies and chicks.

A vintage rustic chair and table among the geraniums and lush greenery.

Look at the lace work of this old patio table and chairs. Have you ever seen anything so exquisite?! Just a perfect secluded shaded secret garden. And roses on the table! Does this lady know her priorities or what, chicks????

I love clematis! It is just so beautiful when it climbs a fence or pergola. I like this fence also.

I just thought you'd all enjoy viewing this little patio and tiny yellow cottage. Yellow with the red statuary just stands out here. Adorable, especially with the rhododendrons surrounding the space.

Through the years I've looked at this picture and thought about how I'd love to have an allèe like this one bordered by luscious droopy trees to walk though. This would be the ultimate garden for me.

Just a summer time garden!

Another part of my allèe garden would be this little "echo" of it in another part which I would keep sunny for some roses. ;-)

Water would always figure in somewhere in my perfect garden. What better way than to have a pond with a lazy chair beside it for meditating?!

Cupcakes and Roses

These are my 24 cupcakes finished!! Now, I have to tell you something. I bought those silicone molded cupcake holders yesterday to bake these so it was my first time using them. I like them! However, on my second batch I didn't spray the liners before putting in the batter and they stuck a tad. But the first batch released quite well from the cupcake holders and looked absolutely adorable. I've put on the icing and the fondant roses. Don't they look shabby yummy?!?!?!

Prom Dresses and Memories

I saw some blogs months ago that had prom dress swaps or something like that and it got me to thinking about some old pictures of my proms that I had yet to scan into my computer. Now mind you, I've been meaning to do this for years! But never one to jump right into things helter skelter......hah.........NOT SO!! I'm the "Miss Jump Into It and Get It Done"! Anyway, I've been scanning the old photos lately. I look at these and think how young Jack and I were. No, he's not in any of these pictures but we were soooo funny looking as we look back 50 years ago. I guess you could call us vintage also! So here are some pictures of me and .................. well, just read and you'll find out.

This is me at my senior prom. Yellow dress with lace, yellow gloves, yellow satin shoes dyed to match.

This is me with my friend and our dates. They were twins and very smart and am sure they are now internet gurus making scads of money! But they were very nice young men.

As you can see we didn't take many color pictures back then. Color film was just so expensive it was saved for rare occasions. But the dress was blue satin. And they boy was just a friend my mother made me dance with!! I'm sure you all have had similar experiences. He was nice but just not my type. He had a terrible crush on me but what can I say.

This picture reminds me of "little miss muffet" who sat on her tuffet. It was just frou frou-y and I loved it. This was my junior prom and my date was a dud but I had a good time and got a pretty gown out of it and get to share this really geeky photo with all of you. I've got to be really into embarrassing myself to show all these photos to y'all!!

This little dress is one I just bought. Nuuuuuuuu, it won't fit this old lady but the lady I bought it from was thinking of making it into old pillows and I just loved the look of it as it was so I decided I "needed" it. I'll probably just hang it in my bedroom along side of my wedding dress and dream of the young lady who must have worn it for something special.

Cupcake Roses from a Coat Hook!

Tomorrow night we're having a special night at our church for some young pre-teens. I've decided to do something different. Okay, okay, call me Rebel is you want! Hah. But I was thinking of some pretty roses on some cupcakes. Now, I cannot for the life of me do them with the cake decorator tubes so I have to improvise. Below will tell you what I did. Read on, chickadees and bunnies!!

I have a little coat hook that I've had for probably 15 years. As I've said before, there is rarely anything and I mean anything in my home that isn't beautiful, and if not beautiful, then useful. Jack excepted here!! Um hmmmm........okay. So anyway I thought well, why can't I make a mold out of that little rose coat hook? I did.......

I took some Sculpy and just pressed it into the rose and baked it in the oven. Then put it in the freezer to harden quickly because I was in a hurry to get them done to put on the cupcakes.

Here is the finished product. Voilà!! So easy. Now, of course, I used some fondant I bought at the store today but it was like Sculpy only softer and sticky like sugar. I used red food color because they don't have pink. But I kept adding water to get a pinky color and it turned out quite well actually. So here you see the different colors: white, red, pinky. Just fun and soooooo easy to do.