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My House

All Things Home

learning to garden | tips for beginners like me

Let me start off by saying that I have never been a gardener.  I would look with envy at beautiful yards, edged, green, blossoming, arranged in wild perfection.  I never “got” gardening.  It was too unpredictable and high maintenance and required too much patience for me. When you drove up to our house, it was pretty evident that we were “inside people” and I always felt like I needed to preface our house with, “just wait until you get inside…”  When we put our house on the market last year, our realtor felt the same way.  She put out an “I’m Beautiful Inside” sign in the yard.  That’s realtor speak for, “It’s gets better once you walk through the front door.  Don’t pay attention to the pathetic attempt at flower boxes, the overgrown bushes and the bald spots in the grass.” As we’re nearing the completion of the inside of the

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All Things Home

Lucketts Finds 2015

Between the heat and humidity, bruises and goose-eggs from moving furniture, early mornings, and take-out and fair food, my body was crying out for rest, healthy food and a bit of pampering.  I’m finally starting to feel a bit more like myself this afternoon.  I slept in, spent the morning unapologetically binge-watching Masterpiece Classics, ate mixed veggies and baked chicken for dinner and even soaked in a lavender epsom salt bath.  I could probably spend a few more days like this, but there are deadlines and things to be done, so Kriste and I are back in the studio tomorrow. We literally dumped everything from Lucketts on the studio floor.  The things that didn’t sell and the boxes, bags, tents, tarps…it’s all haphazardly cluttering up our creative space, so we need to get things sorted and organized.  I also want to inventory what’s left, so we can put it up for sale. Since I’ve

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All Things Home

and at the house…

While all of the preparation for Lucketts has been going on, I’ve been working some on my house for an upcoming photo shoot as well.  (And 10 Christmas freelance articles, but that’s for another post.)  April and May are just busy months for me, as I’m sure they are for many of you as well.  It’s just how things stack up and it seems to happen this way every year.  So, we buckle down and push hard, knowing it’s just for a few weeks and then things will get back to a more manageable pace. I think spring is pushing along my desire to feather my nest, despite the pressing to-do list for work.  I have never been much of a gardener, but I think it’s because I never really put forth the effort.  I’m really trying this year…inside and outside the house.  I’ve brought in a few live plants

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All Things Home

pennants + golf club = window treatments

I made a few updates in the boy’s room over the weekend.  All three of my boys (including Jeff) have been sick, so I’ve been playing nurse most of the time, but Sunday afternoon was so beautiful and the sunshine and warm weather gave me a boost of energy.  I threw open the windows, so my “patients” could benefit from it as well after hanging out under blankets in dark rooms for a couple of days.  So, with this boost of energy, I decided to do some cleaning and “playing” in the house (while movie-watching and napping was happening elsewhere.) I’ve been collecting a few things for the boy’s room and I decided to put them into place. I wanted some window treatments that would fit with the vintage sports theme I have going on, but it’s taken me a while to figure out exactly what I wanted to do.

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Bathrooms

a quilt, a step stool & a trip

We had a beautiful sunny weekend that was warm with a cool breeze and it put me in the mood to freshen up a few things around the house.  (I would’ve loved to go on a hike or have a picnic at a playground, but the Parsons’ boys were all sick, so my “playtime” had to be around the house.)  Anyway, I don’t really decorate for the seasons, but I do like changing around accessories and decor to suit the seasons. I was cleaning up the guest room and putting fresh sheets on the bed and decided to add an antique wedding ring quilt.  (The quilt belonged to my husband’s grandmother.)  The pretty pastel colors in the compliment what’s going on the room and add a “springy” feel. The layered quilts were looking a little flat, so I folded a feather decker (duvet) under the gold quilt to give it

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All Things Home

how to gold leaf a frame

 When I was out shopping for the upcoming Lucketts Spring Market last week, I was looking for artwork for my living room as well.  I was really hoping for a pair of charming paintings, but I didn’t have any luck.  I did find two vintage Currier & Ives prints, though.  They were sweet farmhouse scenes and I thought they would work well with a new frame and mat.  The frames they were in looked a little dated and didn’t showcase the prints very well. I had a couple of black resin frames I bought on clearance a few years ago that were the perfect size.  The black looked too dark for the prints (and my room), so I decided to gold leaf them. This is what the frames looked like before.  They were a bit dusty, so I cleaned them off to get them ready for the sizing. When applying

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All Things Home

swapping chairs

Sooo…I’ve been know to rearrange, trade and swap furniture in my house.  I’ve always done that, but it’s so much more tempting (and easier) when I have a steady stream of awesome furniture coming into my possession as I’m getting ready for an upcoming antique market.  Sometimes I need to love a piece for a while before I send it off into the world.  There are other times when I trip across something I’ve been looking for and I know right away that it’s coming to my house. That was the case with these chairs… I have been looking for end chairs for my dining room for a while…over a year, I think.  The current end chairs are almost exactly like the side chairs and it looked a little “one-note.”  I felt like some really great end chairs would add a lot more interest to the space.  It’s the kind of

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My House

home gratitude

“Your home is a gift and a blessing.”  Those are the words that lead off day 1 of the 31 day challenge in Loving the Home You Have, a new book by Melissa Michaels of The Inspired Room.  Reading those simple words pushed me into really thinking about my attitude towards my home. If someone asked me, “Are you thankful for you home?”  I would answer without hesitation, “Yes.”  But if someone asked me to give them a tour of my house, I would most likely point out all of the things on my to-do list, the plans and the I-haven’t-gotten-to-that-yets.  I would also be quick to say that we’re hoping to move in a few years, putting it out there that this isn’t my dream house.  Gratitude might not be evident in that tour.  And, I hate to say, it might not always be evident here on my blog. So,

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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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May 20th, 2026 at 1pm EST

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