Recycling Rooms While Dreaming Of New Stuff

Well, since last we talked I have totally

torn up the house to redecorate...

You know how that goes, right?

You decide to focus on one room -- and that

requires you to move almost every piece of

furniture around in the rest of the house --

it's some freaking law of nature!

While stacking stuff on a cabinet, I think I
discovered the right colors for our house!

The aged-yellow frame on the chicken picture
represents the kitchen cabinets...

and some of the other furniture... 

The aged-creamy-white of the chalkboard
represents most of our white furniture and 
the color of the window and door trim.

I love black, brown, dark green, and deep
rose for accent colors right now...
I think I'm over blue!

 Did you noticed the Restoration Hardware
paint chip? 

That's going on some walls if I get brave
enough to go to the dark side!

Most of the Restoration Hardware stores are
painted with that slate color now. I love how
RH mixes the dark gray color with the bare 
and aged wood look...

Here's my favorite two pieces of RH furniture:

 The St James bed frame and the
Willems table in bare wood...

 
or coffee stain...

Have you noticed that Restoration Hardware
never stocks anything in the stores anymore?

I tried to buy a gallon of the slate paint last
week, but when I took the gallon can to the
checkout,  the saleslady said it was for
"...display purposes only..."

I took the chip and decided to have it color
matched at Home Depot. I like their Behr's
Paint-and-Primer brand better anyway, and I can
buy a smaller sized sample in case I chicken out.

Thanks for dropping by!

Find me at:
Mrs. Olson's Share Your Cup...
http://jannolson.blogspot.com/2015/05/share-your-cup-thursday-151.html

Dwellings-the Heart Of Your Home

http://www.dwellings-theheartofyourhome.com/2015/05/amaze-me-monday-112.html
The Dedicated House-Make It Pretty Monday
http://www.thededicatedhouse.com/2015/05/make-it-pretty-monday-week-136.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDedicatedHouse+%28The+Dedicated+House%29

Miss Mustard Seed's

http://missmustardseed.com/2015/05/furniture-feature-friday-favorites-link-party-63/



The Hand-Me-Down Fig Tree

In 1912, Wild Bill's maternal grandparents...

Will and Mattie Savage

...married and moved to Oklahoma.

It didn't take them long to move back to

Texas. They returned to the little Northeast town

of Whitesboro and spent the rest of their lives

living in that small town.

Early on, Will planted a fig tree for Mattie. The

fig tree grew and provided figs for the 10 

daughters and 2 sons born to Will and Mattie.

Thirty-five years after Will and Mattie married,
their daughter Jessie (my MIL)  married in 1947.
Later when Jessie and Raymond bought a house,
Will gave them a cutting from the his old fig tree. 

Before Jessie and Raymond sold their house in
2006, Jessie gave her nephew Kent a cutting
from her (now) old fig tree.

Wild Bill finally retired in 2012, exactly 100
years after Will and Mattie married.
Our retirement house is just down the road

from Whitesboro and Cousin Kent brought

us a cutting from his fig tree that year. 

Through the freezing snow and ice of the last

few years, our fig tree cutting has survived

and thrived. Wild Bill will soon need to plant

the little fig tree in the ground as it is now

out-growing its spot on the front patio.

Every time we sit on the patio, I think

of Will and Mattie's fig tree and how it has

been handed down through the generations

to land not far from where Will first

planted the original tree for his Mattie.

I often read about how people move their fig

trees inside for the Winter. I'm not sure if

it's necessary to do that as it does seem that

our little fig tree thrives on the cold weather.

While gazing at our little tree, I often think of

this story Wild Bill told me of his grandpa:

When Wild Bill was a little boy, he was out

in the garden with his Grandpa Will. Mattie 

came out to the yard to hang the wash and

Will stared at her with a grin on his face and

told his grandson what a beautiful woman

his wife was. 

Little Bill said: 

"Oh, that's Nanny...she just looks old!"

and Will laughed and said:

"Son, you're not looking at her with my eyes."

Last Saturday, that little cowboy and I celebrated
our 18th wedding anniversary. I sure hope he still
sees me like Grandpa Will saw his Mattie all those
 years later.

Thanks for dropping by!

I joined the following this week:

Wow Us Wednesdays at Savvy Southern Style...

http://www.savvysouthernstyle.net/2015/05/wow-us-wednesdays-221.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SavvySouthernStyle+%28Savvy+Southern+Style%29

The Ugliest Area

I am tired of trying all the obvious ideas

for finding the right paint color...

you've heard them before, so I won't list 'em.

The thought struck me recently to just pick our

ugliest room and make it over.

Screw the rest of the house!

I knew right away which room is the biggest eyesore
 -- it has to be an odd section of our great room.

Did the builder mean it to be an eating area?

Or a place to put a small conversation grouping?

You wouldn't believe how much time I have

wasted on this issue!

Like Oprah, I'm starting with what I know for sure:

The odd-sized window needs trim to make it tall

enough to match the French doors.

I will never be happy until the trim is white.

All that dark brown furniture is a drag.

The yellow-beige walls are not for me.

So, like Nike, just gonna' do it!

In case you missed me, we were driving back and

forth across the desert from Texas to San Diego

and back...which, as you can tell...leaves a lot of

time for thinking and problem-solving.

Our oldest daughter slipped while out hiking and

broke several bones in her ankle/leg and had to be

med-evacuated by helicopter out of the hills.

She's recovering well now. As a good blogger
does, she got lots of selfies. My favorite is her
hospital pic while waiting for surgery. 
What a trooper:

Thanks for dropping by!



A Store Called My Favorite Room

Here's another store I can never pass up:

My Favorite Room

If you guessed it's in McKinney Texas,

well...you're right!

Here's three pictures of the inside of the store 

from their page on Facebook:

 

The store's owner, Kathy of KBM Designs,

does design evaluations/recommendations in your

home at a reasonable rate. 
I've heard she does great work and that she has a

whole slew of carpenters and painters and such...

who can implement her designs for you if you

can't don't want to do it yourself.

I would ask her to make my home look

just like her shop if we ever get to the point

where we're able to decorate instead of just
replacing and repairing stuff on the never-

ending Fixin' To Do list.

When we were down in McKinney last week,

I wasn't brave enough to ask to take pictures

in the shop. Most shops don't like it, so I didn't

even ask...

But, I did let them know I was going to take

pictures of their entryway with all the

wonderful plants outside. After all, I didn't

want to be taken for a stalker!

If you saw my last post, now you know where
I got the idea for my entryway pots.

Here's an old fashion bathtub filled with
plants -- love it!

My favorite things to buy at the shop are
these preserved roses. Somehow they make
a real rose last forever.

You can see more of My Favorite Room
on both Pinterest and Facebook by
typing in the store's name.

As usual, all opinions are my own and
no compensation has been received.



Thanks for dropping by!



Garden Dreams

Spring peeked in for a few days, so Wild Bill

and I ran down to Costco and bought a few

plants for the planting beds.

We thought the sage bushes, shown here

from last Summer, had died due to the

freezing temperatures this Winter.

They were like sticks the other day, so we bought

a rose bush and two azaleas to replace them.

When we got the new plants home, there were

new green shoots on the dead sage plants!

 

Honestly, do you ever get the feeling someone
'up there' is messing with you?
Here's the new plants...we'll have to start a
new planting bed to put them in now.

Along with the azaleas and rose bush,
we bought 3 geraniums. Two for our planters
by the entrance way...

And one for our favorite neighbor Melanie
across the road...

As soon as we got back with the plants,
thunderstorms moved in and the sun
hasn't come out since...
I gave up and went out and planted the
geraniums in the rain.

Thanks for dropping in!

Life Happens

I haven't been able to work my plan to purge

my possessions in the last few weeks.

We've been too busy moving my in-laws to a

 smaller apartment in the assisted-living

section of their retirement community, which
will provide them with a higher level of care.

Instead of purging our stuff, we found ourselves

trying to purge their stuff instead.

Because both of his parents were in the hospital

at the time, Wild Bill and I decided to just buy a

ton of moving boxes and pack up everything that

we thought was just taking up space and not

necessarily "sparking joy" in their lives. That

meant we ended up with about 50 boxes

of the in-law's stuff in our garage.

Yeah...that's right...we are definitely headed

in the wrong purging direction at our house!

I am happy to say my daughter Jaysa really

took the book I recommended in my last post

to heart. She and I are 'storage experts' and, if

you remember, the author Marie Kondo states:

Storage Experts Are Hoarders!

At first Jaysa was taken aback by the thought
that her packed storage containers and shelves
were a way of hoarding. Fearing I'd insulted
her, I had Wild Bill order her the book, that
night, from Amazon with 2-day shipping.


 She got the book one day, read it the next,
and began purging "for real" right away. I say
"for real" because she has been purging stuff
for several weeks before reading the book, but
when she read about keeping only things that
sparked joy, she had a whole new focus.


Jaysa has been posting on her blog all the

progress she is making. Here's some pictures

I borrowed from her posts:
Here's the AFTER picture of her shelves...

I especially like how she purged and sorted her

movies. The ones she kept, she placed in paper

jackets and put in two storage boxes...

She even made perfect dividers, then filed

them alphabetically within the dividers!

See...I told you this book was life changing!

Here's Jaysa's post if you're interested
in seeing more of the pictures:
http://benthewildcard.blogspot.com/2015/04/purging-progres.html

Thanks for dropping by!