Let There Be New Light!

Remember when I showed you this a few weeks ago? Well, I took the plunge and ordered in online. Well it has arrived! What a fun and exciting day that was for me. It took forever but finally came UPS, and we are the last stop of the day so it arrived while Jim was out biking. I told him we did not need to put it up that night but he wanted to...so of course I wasn't going to argue! Bless his generous, workaholic heart!

To say it was well packed would be an understatement!
We had a tree's worth of paper and packing material.

I could see a bit of a raised eyebrow as he opened it...not sure what he was thinking probably something like... "I will never understand this but...OK. I'm there. I'll put it up!" He is such a good sport about my house ideas. I do so love him for that because I know he does it to be sweet to me. In turn, I try hard to have a pleasant environment for us to call home.

It didn't take too long at all and he was done.

So here it is. Just a little touch, but I really enjoy it and truth be known he does too. He added a dimmer switch and some frosted bulbs the next day and now it is perfect. He told me it looks like it has always been there and it looks like it was meant to be there. That is the highest form of a compliment to a decorator I think. Anyway, I am happy he is happy and he is happy I am happy. So, win/win.

As an aside, I have to tell you this funny thing that happened a few Sundays ago after I had posted the first piece about the chandelier. I have found out recently that several men, whom I never would have suspected....read the blog (I love you guys by the way!) Anyway, one who shall remain anonymous but whose initials are JJ came up to Jim.

You know how men in suits kind of posture when they want to share something important ...they stand side by side and lean towards each other just slightly. (It true, notice it!) Anyway JJ says to Jim, "Seriously Jim that fan is outdated...you need that chandelier!" Maybe ya had to be there, but it was so funny and cute and I loved it! I have always had a special place for him in my heart but it grew bigger that day.

Chandeliers For Sale

And I'm having one of them! Ever since I helped my friend redesign her bedroom (featured in an article I wrote for Blissfully Domestic at the time.) If you just clicked on the link you know why I have been coveting. Well not really coveting, just borrowing her idea and fabulous vision! Thanks, to you my good friend! I have been wanting to add a chandelier to ours and take down the OUTDATED ceiling fan. I have looked and looked and this week I found the perfect one!

Here it is without its lamp shades,
and here it is with them..

I think it will be awesome with our winter white and brass wrought iron bed and I am so excited about it. I love it because it is not stuffy or too formal, it is whimsical and airy and only 18 inches wide and long~ perfecto for over a bed. It will go great in our sparkly cottage decor! Yay!

Cannot wait to get it. This will add just the element of surprise and romance to the master and will be the first thing I see each morning when I open my eyes and look up! We need to make our bedrooms special. A quiet and pretty place, a place of refuge, just for you and your spouse to begin and end your days.

And if you don't have a spouse, do it for yourself, you deserve a pretty place to because it can sometimes get pretty ugly out there in the world anymore.

Beauty, order, cleanliness and bit of ambiance can bring comfort and peace into your life. Who does not need want and seek that? This is one way to shape your environment to achieve it.

Around The Cottage

Things are always changing just slightly around here. I am moving things around, I think I might be obsessed with accessorizing. Seriously! I think it is because we have had most of our furniture forever, so my way of getting a new or fresher look is in shuffling and adding and rearranging the accessories! So here are a few additions and fun things going on around here since Christmas.

The third Friday for the month is one of my favorite days. After our Friday morning friends' meeting, Maureen and I make our monthly pilgrimage to Room with A Past. A I have mentioned many times, I have found so many incredibly fun things in that monthly warehouse sale. Maureen has too.

She and I think (in our humble way) we have the coolest little touches in our homes and so many of them come from this place. One thing I truly love is the prices are so reasonable. Let's just say this treasure hunting is a form of recreation for us...it is pretty cheap, really and truly. We really enjoy it, it keeps us out of trouble and I'd much rather spend a few dollars here than at Target. You can find such unique things.

I adore the lace trim on this lamp shade!

I saw this darling little lamp about two nano seconds after we walked in this morning. I love accent lamps and this one is a treasure. $19.00 and it is looks fantastic on the hearth near the fireplace. Jim paid me the highest complement when I showed it to him. "Hasn't that always been there? It should have been, if it wasn't!" Woohoo...score! Hubbies like this are a rare find too!

I couldn't get the best photo of it because the light is bright but you can get the idea of where I put it anyway. It really adds a point of interest there and makes the room look so cozy~exactly what accent lamps are designed for in the first place. I brought my sunflowers out a little early I know...wishful thinking!


I haven't put my few Valentine's Day things away yet because I pretty much skip St. Patrick's Day and it is a little too soon for Easter. Besides Maureen made me this gorgeous paper Valentine garland for our dining room fireplace and I am enjoying it so much. All these beautiful hearts draping across and just under the mantel looks so pretty. Don't you just love it when a sweet friend gives you something like this? What a treasure!



I finally hung up the sign that Laura made for the bathroom. (Was held up by trying to figure out how to hang it without damaging the front.) I know you cannot really see the sign in this photo but wanted to show its proximity to the fresco. There is a good one below. I had intended to put it over the towel bar near the tub but I wanted to be able to see it easily so put it here in the little alcove for the loo. It is now lightly coated with a dusting of glitter and looks so beautiful with all the fun Italian things in the bathroom. So I pronounce the bathroom 100% done now, at last.

"We Enjoy The Sweet Life"

We loved the white towels in the bathroom during the holidays so I kept them up and just added orange hand towels for a little warmth and color. Here is Angelo my funny little angel with the glass eyes that really feel like they are looking at you! He came from the Hen House in Lafayette.


This angel that does not have a name yet, now hovers over the other glass towel bar near the tub. He reminds me of the Celine Dion recording of Sleep Tight where she sings...Sleep tight, May angels hover over you and spread their wings to keep you safe and warm." Hazie loves that song and likes me to sing it to her. Maybe his name should be Dion!

Call me crazy but...I love stuff like this!

One thing I have been working on is replacing some of the little things I have on my dresser top. Last month I showed you the funky, little decorated bottle I got at Room With a Past, today I picked up these fun hair clips for the mirror on my dresser as well. Mind you, they will never see the light of day in my hair actually, but they are so pretty! The stones are my favorite color and look heavenly on the dresser.

The little three-dimensional, sculpted, white wedding cake is something I will probably not replace because I love it. My sister-in-law, Marilyn and my brother, Gary gave it to us many years ago for an anniversary and the little wedding cake is just beautiful. It is a little reminder to keep the newness of romance alive!

In the same vein of keeping the romance alive
here is a sweet, heart-shaped, embellished wall hanging.
I have it hanging on our bedroom door knob.

I picked up this little candle cup today for a song.
Maybe $5.00. It is mercury glass and apple green
and I got it for this spot in our dining room.

It looks very pretty in the sunlight
and also lit at night.
The tall green decanter is also from
Room With A Past from days gone by.

I really like this lady's art work!
Maureen and I run for this booth
every month now to see what is new.

I showed you this last month and it has finally come to rest in our hall way next to the door to the brick patio. Perfect little spot for it. It proves my point that if you love something and it speaks to you, you will find a spot for it, even in a cottage. You just have to take something else down maybe, but if you love it, it can resurface later and be just as much fun the 2nd time around.

Surrounding yourself with people and things you love in your home just makes life so much more enjoyable. And it truly does motivate you to keep things maintained and tidy if you care for what you have and find your own, unique kind of beauty in it. What does you house say about you? It should be a window to your heart and your soul.

Eat Pray Love~On the Italian Culture

I did this post in 2008 before our first trip to Italy. After spending an accumulative 7 weeks there and having kids live there for three years I can clearly see that Luigi Barzini was right on. It will be interesting to see the new movie, Eat Pray, Love in August when it is released.
"I recently read Eat Pray Love in anticipation of our trip to Italy. Elizabeth Gilbert summarizes Luigi Barzini, in his 1964 masterpiece, The Italians, that was written when he'd finally grown tired of foreigners writing about Italy and either loving it or hating it too much. He tried to set the record straight on his own culture. He tried to answer the question of why the Italians have produced the greatest artistic, political, and scientific minds of the ages, but have still never become a world power? Why are they the planet's masters of verbal diplomacy, but still so inept at home government? Why are they so individually valiant, and yet so unsuccessful as an army? How can they be such shrewd merchants on the personal level, yet such insufficient capitalists as a nation?

He said it had much to do with a sad Italian history of corruption by local leaders and exploitation by foreign dominators, all of which has generally led Italians to draw the seemingly accurate conclusion that nobody and nothing in the world can be trusted. Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses and this makes the senses very strong, in fact they are stronger in Italy, than in all of Europe. This is why, Brazini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalist and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent 'opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors...' In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasures cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real. (This is a thought worth some reflection.)

The Pieta~Michelangleo

To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business---not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away."

I really found this so interesting and it struck a cord with me that I don't fully understand but I want to ponder. I find some truth in it in relationship to my profession as a decorator, how my senses can be trusted to find the beauty in the chaos. It is all rather worth some serious thought and reflection for me."

Luciano Pavarotti

Decorating a Mantel~Wedding Style

Yesterday was such a fun day. Our friends, Timme and John's son, Alden is getting married in another week in Idaho. So they had a "pre-ception" for them here in CA at their beautiful home last night. It could not have been a more lovely evening! The weather was gorgeous, the dinner delicious and the company outstanding. They had the dinner catered and we dined outside by the pool~ it was heavenly!

Timme asked me to decorate the mantel in her living room with something nice. I was delighted to help out. A mantel is simple enough but I wanted to ask my friend, Maureen, to help me. She, you may remember, use to help me stage homes and she is also a floral designer.

Neither one of us had ever made a live garland we confessed when we sat down to do it! Ah, the pressure...but we decided to give it a go. Actually it was remarkable easy and a lot of fun. The hardest part is keeping it fresh looking for a few hours. We started out tramping through our yard just cutting various greenery and then we brought it all in, layered it and wired the seven foot garland together. The heartier the green the better they held up!


I bought two beautiful hurricane candle holders, some white sparkly sand and some light yellow candles to blend in with her Tuscan wall treatment. I ♥ her walls, all mottled looking and so Italian! Scrumptious! Look at the detail below.


The bride had selected a dove gray and white as her wedding colors so since there are no gray flowers we were aware of, we decided to complement the room with a little touch of saffron yellow. We also used some little white flowers and some baby's breath pompom thingies ( my highly technical description since I have no clue what they are called) that made up the bouquets for the tables. We grabbed some white lights and a couple rolls of wired, delicate, white ribbon with a little shimmer and this is what we came up with for the party. They seemed pleased and it made a nice focal point being the first thing you saw when you entered the room from the foyer. The fireplace is just fabulous with the granite surround and hearth and the beautiful carved wood detailing.

Most of the evening they had a video
of the bride and groom playing on the
flat screen above the mantel.
For this shot it was music.

Maureen and I had a lot of fun doing it!
We are constantly laughing when we are together...
so it was a win/win for us all!

Whimsical Tablescape

A corner of our family room

I took these photos not long ago to show how I like to do some whimsical things in my home decor. I had this primitive black cat carved out of wood and this cute bird cage. I didn't want to get rid of my primitive cat as it has sentimental value to me but I don't do primitive either. So, what to do???

Recently I closed down the staging aspect of my business. In the process I sold or donated all of my household items and accessories. The little black cat had been sitting down in my warehouse but I just had to hang on to her. But my space is so limited. I also had the little green bird with the upturned tail. I grouped them together in this way with the cat inside the cage and the bird on the outside looking it. It is just a fun way to create a little point of interest in an area with a whimsical tablescape. The non-observant will walk right by but it does put a smile on the face of some, including me.


Accessorizing is so much fun and really sets the tone of the room. If you like a comfy, less formal look try a little whimsy~it works. A little surprise now and then creates fun and an opportunity to take yourself and life a little less seriously.

I Am IN LOVE With This

I'm sorry...This is Flat Out Gorgeous! Woohoo!

I participated in this new meme today and discovered this wonderfully talented lady that made this and explained how she did it here. I love the metallic look, the gems, the rustic embellishments, the glitz...in short everything about it! I love that it is not practical...it is simply beautiful! This is bedazzling at it's finest!

I am on it, thus begins my new sparkly button collection! Stop over and meet Ann. And check out the meme called WooHoo Wednesday! I can see it is going to be a FUN way to celebrate your gratitude!