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All Things Home

White & Wood Winter Table | $100 HomeGoods Giveaway

The Farmhouse Holiday Decor Series is back and today I’m sharing a winter tablescape.  I’m not quite ready to break out the Christmas decorations, especially since I use a lot of fresh greenery, but I like the idea of a festive winter table to fill in that decorating gap. This week’s “theme”, a holiday/Christmas tablescape, was sponsored by HomeGoods, so I drove out to the nearest one with my mom last week to stroll the aisles and pick up some goodies.  Now, when I go to HomeGoods, I need to carve out at least a couple of hours.  There is no “popping into HomeGoods real quick.”  That just isn’t possible for me.  It may be because I don’t live very close to one, but, more likely, it’s because it’s a place I need to really comb through to make sure I don’t miss anything. I had a few things unrelated to this post that

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Family Room

family room rug victory

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  We had absolutely perfect fall weather here in south central PA and we took advantage of it.  We have needed to get some things done around the house, so we had a Parsons’ family workday.  The four of us worked together to clean the basement workshop, the shed, and the yard.  Jeff got a fire going in the fire pit and we burned all of the scrap wood in the workshop, last year’s Christmas tree that was sitting in the compost heap, and he decided to literally chop the rotting playground into pieces and burn that as well.  We have a pile for Craiglist, a pile for the trash, and a tidy shed and workshop to show for our hard work. Towards the end of the day, as Calvin and I were sweeping up the last of the sawdust, he looked over

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All Things Home

farmhouse holiday series | fall porch

It’s time for our last fall post in the Farmhouse Holiday Series – the fall porch, but we’ll be back again as the Christmas season gets underway!  I have to say that I really worked at gardening and our outdoor spaces last year.  I found it rewarding and we enjoyed sitting on our deck for the first time in the almost 10 years we’ve lived here. This year?  Totally different story.  It was hot and dry and I was really busy and our outdoor space was neglected.  I would get about a D+ if I was being graded.  And the + is only because I had some beautiful crabgrass that thrived on just the right combination of drought and neglect. Anyway, cooler temperatures sweeping into our county have coaxed me back outdoors to spruce up the space, so we could enjoy some al fresco meals and observe soccer practice in the

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Family Room

the fate of the leather sofa

Many people have asked about the fate of the leather sofa and for a few more details about why I swapped it out, so I thought I would answer that question in a post, especially for those who are weighing their sofa options for a purchase. The leather sofa is the Brooklyn leather sofa in Toffee from Pottery Barn.  I bought it a few years ago using gift cards, redeemed credit card points, and profits from things I purged from our house.  (If you’re interested, you can read the details on that HERE.) We love that sofa and the recent switch doesn’t have anything to do with not liking it. Earlier this year, I rearrange the furniture in the family room.  All four of us had been sitting on the leather sofa together when we watched movies and, with two growing boys, it was feeling a little tight.  I knew

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All Things Home

Pillows for the Family Room

I shared a couple of days ago that I was going to make some custom pillow covers for the family room sectional.  It came with pillows, but they weren’t my style/colors.  Making pillow covers in fabrics that tie my style and colors with the sectional is a great way to make something feel a little more custom and cohesive. I already had the checked blue pillows, so I kept those and made some more out of antique linen tea towels with blue embroidery and Waverly’s Country House Linen Cameo Toile. (I was going to add the gray linen in there as well, but decided against it.) Kriste made the piping, cut out the fabric, and pinned the pillows and then I sewed them together (more tag-teaming on this project!)  We worked together to get them all hand-stitched closed.  I know I should put zippers on my pillows, but I just don’t

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Decorating

Pillows for the Family Room

I shared a couple of days ago that I was going to make some custom pillow covers for the family room sectional.  It came with pillows, but they weren’t my style/colors.  Making pillow covers in fabrics that tie my style and colors with the sectional is a great way to make something feel a little more custom and cohesive. I already had the checked blue pillows, so I kept those and made some more out of antique linen tea towels with blue embroidery and Waverly’s Country House Linen Cameo Toile. (I was going to add the gray linen in there as well, but decided against it.) Kriste made the piping, cut out the fabric, and pinned the pillows and then I sewed them together (more tag-teaming on this project!)  We worked together to get them all hand-stitched closed.  I know I should put zippers on my pillows, but I just don’t

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All Things Home

DIY window valance

Good evening from New York!  I spent the better part of the day driving through the rolling hills and small towns of PA and NY and even got to stop in at an antique store and eat dinner at an amazing restaurant, so I can’t complain. Anyway, earlier this week I worked on a valance for the dormer window in Calvin’s room and I thought I would share how to make this simple window treatment… (I’m still figuring out the cord situation in this desk area, so don’t judge!) I started out by cutting a board the width I wanted the valance.  In my case, it was the width from one wall to the other, since it’s a dormer window.  I just used a scrap board, but a 1 x 2 would be perfect. I then cut a piece of fabric about 3″ longer than the height of the window

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All Things Home

Furniture for the Family Room & Calvin’s Room

A few days ago, I shared the new arrangement in our family room as well as the progress on Calvin’s room.  I said I would give all of the details on the new pieces of furniture and this post is making good on that promise! Now, I admit, furniture stores have never been my thing.  Give me a flea market, antique store, thrift shop or yard sale!  That’s where most of my pieces have been found and I’m pretty proud of my resourcefulness and ability to make-do.  But there are some pieces that can be difficult to find second-hand and it’s also nice to mix in the new with the old to make a home a little more comfortable, functional, or hard-wearing. A few months ago, I rearranged the furniture in my family room to a two-sofa setup in an “L” shape.  One sofa was leather and another wore a white

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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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