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Dining Room

Decorating

bright white ceiling & pearly white walls

Today the boys are off school for the Columbus Day holiday.  Three day weekends like these always catch me by surprise, but we always find a way to just roll with it.  Jeff was out for the day, so it was just me and the boys.  We took this day to hang out in our jammies at the house.  I was planning on being in the studio today, pricing my weekend finds and working on things for the Chapel Market, but that wasn’t going to work with a day off school.  The boys were playing really well, so I decided to hop into a project at home that I didn’t think I would get to until after the market – painting the living and dining rooms. Remember this plan? I first needed to paint the ceilings.  What joy is mine.  I don’t think anyone enjoys painting ceilings.  (Except Michelangelo.  He was

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Decorating

the winner of the debate

If you’re up to speed on my living room, you know that I have been pondering taking down the curtains in the living and dining room.  Yesterday, after this photo shoot, I took them down… The sunlight poured in and it was so bright and wonderful.  I was convinced that I would go drape-free.   I continued removing the curtains from the dining room.  In case you can’t figure out how my house is situated, which is hard online, these rooms are basically one long room with an archway dividing them.  So, what I do in one, I really need to do in the other or it looks funny.  (We were shipping out of our dining room, so it’s a little untidy at the moment.) Again, the light poured in and the dust was flying.  It seemed exciting and like it would be the perfect change.  But, I’m sure you

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Before and Afters

silvertone finds a home & French chairs get a fresh start

I’ve been working on restoring an antique Silvertone phonograph for a few months.  I got into painting furniture, because stripping, refinishing and restoring is so tedious and takes forever.  Just give me a brush and a couple of hours and let it be done!  But, sometimes it’s worth it and I’ve found a labor of love is good for my patience every now and then. I have wanted a photograph for several years and finally got one in a furniture lot I purchased shortly before the Lucketts Spring Market this year.  It had good bones and still worked (yay!), but it had been neglected and showed some pretty nasty water damage. I cleaned, stripped, sanded, stained and refinished the piece and, I must say, I am super proud of myself and how it turned out.  We do still need to replace the veneer on the bottom of the sides and

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Dining Room

blooming & bringing an umbrella

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.  I’m sure you know what I mean.  Sometimes you just plow through life and other times you stop and take stock.  Lately, I’ve been examining things a bit harder. What am I pushing towards?  How do I want to spend my time?  What do I really feel fulfilled doing?  What things bog me down and pull me away from the priorities? …and a lot of other things. Things like… …I want to say no more often …I want to use our linen napkins and sterling flatware every day …I want to grow things in a garden …I want to get rid of anything we don’t use or love.  Just have a huge yard sale and get rid of it. …I want to be more intentional about everything Yeah, just a lot of stuff to think about.  It’s pretty liberating and eye opening and

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Dining Room

Photo Shoot Pics

Thanks so much for all of the prayers and well wishes.  I am feeling sooooo much better today.  I was back in bed yesterday, but felt like myself today.  I still have to stop speaking when my eye twitches and a sneeze is building up and I’m going through tissues at a pretty impressive rate, but I feel better.  My mom and I spent the day shopping for supplies for some upcoming freelance projects and antiques for the Lucketts Spring Market (May 17-18, 2014.)  We also each got a hot stone massage.  That was pretty amazing.  So, it was a part-work, part-play kinda day.  I have all sorts of fun finds to share, but I need to unpack them first. With no other pictures to show today, I thought I would share some pictures of the photo shoot I did in my house on Wednesday.  (There was a wall of

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Decorating

The Style Shift

As I’ve been working on my home over the past few months, a few realizations have hit me.  The first one was that I have too much stuff and I’ve talked about purging, selling, donating, organizing and paring down in recent posts.  I find myself grabbing more and more things to put on the sale pile.  The other day I was cleaning out kitchen cabinets and Jeff stopped and stared at me, sitting on the floor surrounded by kitchen gear and cook books, as he walked by.  I looked up at him and exclaimed, “I’m getting rid of all of this!  What is all of this stuff, anyway?  I don’t use it.  I don’t need it.  I don’t like it.  It’s gone!  I see STUFF in a brand new way.”  He just replied, “I know you do” and went about his day.  He’s pretty unbothered by the things I do

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Antiques

Arranging linens, silver and ironstone…

As I was preparing for Christmas day, I realized what a mess the cabinets, drawers and shelves where I keep my tableware, serving pieces and linens were.  After a few years of buying, making and using things for photo shoots and then shoving them in no particular order behind a closed door, it was hard to find anything.  Linens were balled up, unorganized.  Serving pieces were stacked, balanced and piled haphazardly.  It not only looks messy, but it’s very inefficient.  I had to hunt and dig for things. I started purging and organizing this fall and have continued with a drawer here, a cabinet there.  After experiencing the frustration while setting the table for Christmas, I was motivated to deal with it.  I also needed to clean out the hutch in the living room, since a buyer is coming for it on Sunday.  So, I started with the corner cabinets

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Dining Room

Dining Chair Slipcover Tutorial

I wrote a tutorial on making dining room chair slipcovers years (and several dining sets) ago when I was a contributor to Cottages & Bungalows magazine.    It’s so neat to see how far I’ve come in my sewing, photography, writing, styling.  I’ve really grown a lot.  Anyway, since I’ve improved in a few departments, I thought it was time to make a new tutorial as I worked on my last dining room chair slipcover.  The one I made for the tutorial looks like this… But you can also adapt this tutorial for a chair like this… The idea is the same.  Just create an extra slit for each arm and double the amount of ties.  You can also adjust the kind of skirt you have on the slipcover.  I like the ruffles, but you can do knife pleats, box pleats, no pleats…whatever floats your boat. I always use the

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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