Painting, painting, painting

Those who know me well, know there is always something being painted in my home, be it furniture, accessories, branches during the holidays, buildings, arbors and fences during the summer and walls in the Spring.  Today I am putting another coat of primer on a cabinet and top coat on a table. Oh and of course my friends and family are sure to point out that it is probably white.

I do not wear jewlery or perfume, I aways have that spot of paint on me that I missed washing out. So here are my two projects of the day.

My Day at Clara Louise's

Too Cold to Weed

I love to garden, and although my gardens do not look like this now, this is what I have to look forward to.

This is a hard time of year for me. 

 As much as I would like to be outside gardening, the weather is not co-operating. 

The calendar may say Spring, but my thermometer is saying no no no no.  So I am going to show some of last years garden to keep me happy when the sun is not shinning and to see what I have to look forward to.

I have come back to my gardens from last year to do a little update and share with some new friends.

I am joining Tracie from Fishtail Cottage, she has some beautiful garden inspiration for Cottage Flora Thursdays. 

If you are an new visitor thank you for stopping by, you will want to come back and visit again when I am back in the gardens because I am always planting new beds and this year I am hoping to do some major gardening.

I'm in the "Pink Saturday"

This is my first Pink Saturday.  I have not always loved pink, but I have always loved roses, and so the two came together in my home.  However, I have in the past two years started gravitating towards white, and the pink is slowly being put away or collects in the dinning room and my daughters' room.  My favorite rose is the beautiful cabbage roses that bloom all summer long, a pink hat I collected and still have in my office, pink roses on the teacups and saucers that I still can not stop collecting. They all are cellebrated in the dinningroom during Christmas, when I make my tea cup tree. Then they are put away, at least until the next summer tea party with the children.  Here is my PINK. I found out about PINK SATURDAY  through this Beverly's blog and I have seen the PINK SATURDAY sign on several blogs.  Of course now I have to figure out how to get the words to be PINK.

Bird House in the Garden

Buttons, buttons and more buttons

I am not sure where exactly my love of buttons came from, my mother, my grandmother or great grandmother. I have them everywhere, especially the white ones.  I like to glue them to candles, mirrors, and use them as decorations for holidays.  One of my favorites is my button ornament that I make and give out for Christmas. Here are some of my buttons and button projects.

My Thing for Chairs

I have a thing for chairs, especially for the little side ones that you always need more of when you have a party.  Most people do not have 40 chairs like I do.  I can not help it, with a little love, some white paint and poof you have a lovely chair.  The ones by the side of the road, they make wonderful planters and look just cute painted white and in my garden waiting for a child in need of a rest.  I have a few that have seen many different colors but they are starting to change over to the white. 

Here are two, the white one is one of a pair I have in my living room and the zebra chair is in my office for my children to sit next to me and play a game.

My Easter Tree

I was able to finish cleaning out my dinning room so I could post some pictures of my Easter Tree.  I made one for the shop, but I think I like mine better, more simple.  If the one at the shop does not sell I will take it with me to my fathers' house and put it on their Easter dinner table.  I resized vintage Easter postcards and made them into tags to hang from the tree.  You can see Clara hanging from the chandelier, she is our good farie who hangs around all year long.

The paper roses were such a hit with my children that we made enough for them to take to school for their teachers.  Today, of course I will be painting something, and while that dries I am hoping the sun will continue to shine and warm up outside so I can do some cleaning in the garden. 

I continue to find new blogs each day that are very inspiring and helpful to me on how I can make my blog better represent me.  Oh.....and the ideas I have found for decorating and creating are just limitless, it actually makes it harder to decide what I will do first. 

My White

I am slowly turning toward a mostly white home, with green and black in the mix. Here are some of my photos.

Book It

I found this wonderful blog http://www.thetinrabbit.blogspot/. that had a tutorial on how to make paper and coffee filter roses.  I happened to have an old book sitting right next to me, so I ripped out some pages and made 3 and here they are.

A day at The Barn

Yesterday while I was working I stole a couple of minutes and ran over to the antique barn, Shawnee Country Barns and picked up a few cute pieces to use in my house and they always have something for everyone.  I am always on the look out for vintage pieces to paint white, or chippy pieces that are already white.  Don't you just love them, the bunny I already had, but he looks at home in the cute little basket.

The Little White Dresser

I have been busy painting, painting, painting.  I now have one top coat on the little dresser I picked up on Thursday, now I have to let it dry and decide if I want to distress it or leave alone, and am I keeping it or selling mmmm....may have to think on that one.  I also have been getting a china cabnet ready to take to the shop Clara Louise's Painted Cottage that I work at on Monday.  Tomorrow I will tackle the yellow table, one of my least liked colors, of course I will paint it WHITE.  I did pick up the love seat and it is residing in my dinning room at the moment, that is where all things go to wait to be place, painted or sold in my house.

I have been finding so many new blogs and websites to look at with so many good ideas for decorating, creating and just dreaming about.  I am suprised to find so many links to European blogs, they definately know how to decorate with WHITE for sure.  Well I am off to add another coat of paint to a shelf.

I am so excited, my sister and I visited one of our favorite stops and I hit pay dirt. We crammed in as much as we could: cute little 5 drawer dresser, upholstered chair, yellow table (soon to be WHITE), box of glass and white pottery treasures and a box of naked barbies for my daughter. My sister picked up great cedar chest for her daughter. The best part is I have to go back and get an cute little love seat that will look amazing in my office or guest house, and another chair. If you know me well, you know I have a thing for chairs and tables. I tell my husband they just jump in my car begging to go home with me. If we didn't have 3 small children I know my husband would have me driving a sports car so I could bring nothing home. In the end my husband loves me so much and they way I make our house such a wonderful loving home, even if there are too many chairs and tables. As soon as I get the pictures taken I will add.

For The Love of All Things White

In the past year or so I have been going through the process of making my home more like the way I have always wanted to. Ever since my husband and I decided to build our home I have been collecting pictures of how I wanted my home to look WHITE. But I never took the chances to actually try it. I LOVE it now, especially in the Spring when the sun comes in the windows and it is so bright in the house. I dug in the files and I was able to find a picture of our living room from last year.

My Pink Roses

A beautiful day, 55 out and the sun was shinning, how could we ask for anything more. I am still on the quest to learn how to design my own background, so that has me perplexed, but I shall gather my strength and keep trying. The more I look for and answer the more I learn. I have already learned how to make buttons or chiclets as they call them and it really seems to be easier to have a picture attached to a website or blog than to continuously look through my favorites.

It is amazing how much we need to connect to people. We had an awesome time with friends and family. Laughter is so important to leading a good life, and when I am with my sisters there seems to be an abundance of it.

The snow seems to be gone, and hopefully it won't come back so we can get ready for Spring.

Tomorrow I am at work for the day, expending my creativeness.

Good, good day, I now have music and I learned a few tricks from my friend, thanks Wil!!

After posting a few more of my fav. sites, I am off to make my yummy spinach dip for the party we are going to.

After

Our House Before

I found and old picture of our house, before.


After several days of banging my head on the desk, I have been able to find several web and blog sites that have helped my to further custom my header and background. I also was able to master the 3 column and I am working on getting music. If you know me you know I am very stuborn and will keep at the task until it is mastered.

Yesterday was a beautiful day here in Pendleton, around 55 and the sun was shinning. I had to keep myself from starting weeding, I know it is way too early in the North East to be weeding, but looking at all the new growth peaking at me just made me want to rush Spring here. I did some trimming of the dead plants from last Fall, already the piles are starting to form for my husband to pick up and dump in the burn pile. I know he is ready to switch out the snow-blower for the bucket on his tractor, I am not the only one wanting to be working outside.

Today is Friday and so starts the weekend of trying to decide what we want to do when it is too muddy to work outside and we only have so much time in the day. My sister's friend is coming for breakfast, that is my husbands gift, to help me with the computer. I am determined to figure the ins and outs of this blogging.

Saturday my husband and I are going to a party at a friends house, nice to get a way without the kids. And Sunday is a bundled birthday party at my fathers house. And then it is Monday again, the days are going so fast, at times, it still is not Spring.

So I hope everyone has a great weekend also, may your moments be slow when you want them to.

My kids.

Up In A Tree

The days are getting longer and the grass shows more than the snow. Spring is something that can not be rushed, yet I yearn for it with such anticipation. The birds flirt in the bushes and the males check out all the birdhouses to decide which one they will stake their clame on.

Today, after much head beatting over how to master this blog, I intend to put on my rubber boots and bring in some apple tree branches for forcing. I can pretend it is Spring inside if it is not quite ready outside.

I am starting to understand better how to navigate around my new blog. I am still figuring out how to make it more my own, but for me that is the fun of process. My coffee is almost gone and I need to get some chores done around the house. I will be having fun taking pictures of the house to post. Enjoy the day, it is sunny and the snow is continueing to melt.

Bird houses in the Gardens

Some of the many birdhouses in the gardens.

Arbor House Lane

This is Arbor House in the Spring of 2009. I just can not wait to see my flowers in May again.

Arbor House Lane

I love to garden and I can not wait for Spring to come so I can start transplanting and altering old flower beds and making new ones. It was warm enough this past weekend to walk around and inspect the plants that are starting to poke through the melting snow.

Arbor House Lane

Join me every morning for a cup of coffee as I contemplate what I am going to do for the day. I am at home most days with my son Mason who is a very funny 3 year old going on 40. His caper this morning was to finger lick the frosting off as many cupcakes as he could before getting caught. He denied but the evidence was all over his face.

As with most women who are creative, I can only keep my house tidy so much. I then get bored and have to come up with some kind of creative idea to work on.

I usually can be found painting something during the winter months, and living in the North East winter lasts from November to April.

I just finished making miniature postcard ornaments for my Easter tree as the centerpiece of the kitchen table.

As soon as the snow melts and the ground dries, I am found outside from the moment my children get on the bus to the moment my husband’s truck drives in the driveway, then I have to run in the house to figure out what to make for dinner.