Halloween Candlelight Tour

Welcome to our cottage candlelight Halloween tour. We are a bit Halloween crazy around here, but we have two boys that are young enough to have sleepless nights if things look too creepy. So we go with classic Halloween colors, with a touch of cutesy and glitter. Of course lots of pumpkins everywhere. 

Our fireplace dressed with small pumpkins and gourds. My white owl vases, a white trellis I borrowed from the pouch, candles and a Halloween bunting that I picked up at an after season sale. 

I found these cute "haunted house" votives in a store on the island.

A touch of glittery spiders.

I switched out the vinyl ottoman for my hubby's wood trunk. It's wood adds some fall color to the room and it has great storage. More little pumpkins and my Pottery Barn napkin pillows. 

I use mostly LED candles. With my curious boys who like to experement by putting random things into flames, I only light real candles in high places, or after 8:30 P.M. So these candles are my friends, I can have the cozy glow anytime of the day, worry free. These happen to be the remote controlled candles from Costco, I'm pretty happy with them so far. 

The china hutch has been turned into a Halloween village. I collect Department 56 buildings and I love how they look at night. They also make some spooky sounds, so no need for a soundtrack if you have a Halloween party.

The nook's table is kept simple. A poison place mat and some leaves added to our lantern. The boys regularly slather the table with maple syrup, so I need the surface to be kept clear for wiping down. I have a black lace "spiderweb" table cloth I can put on it for a spooky dinner. 

Behind the sofa, more fall candle holders on top of a spooky runner. Can you spot the friendly ghost on the shelf? 

The old sewing machine has a friendly witch, and a spiderweb cauldron candle holder. My glass cabinets have some ceramic pumpkins added to the white and china.

And more ceramic pumpkins on the other side of the kitchen.

The stairs are decorated with a bit of creepy cloth and a garland. The entry table holds a friendly, glittery witch with her cauldron (really a scented wax warmer) a spell book that actually holds candy. One of the Pottery Barn napkins for color and some real leaves from our maple tree.

Thanks for visiting, come back soon for look at our outdoor Halloween decor. Check out our trip to the pumpkin patch too. 

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House Spy Friday: Seattle Tudor Cottage

This Seattle Tudor caught my eye this week. The street appeal is fabulous. It even has some tastful pumpkins in the photo. Perfect subject for today, it's actually got a bit of a fall feel in the air after our odd summer in October we have been experiencing.

The front yard has perfect landscaping, the window boxes and the vines give it that storybook feel.

I love the wood details on the front porch and the rustic wood door.

The celing has box beams and the old world fireplace is beautiful.

Light and bright kitchen with pretty windows.

I love this staircase. The cut out spindles, I would love do do something like this in our home. 

This pretty blue bedroom has a romantic fireplace and practical and pretty built in shelves.

The back yard is small, but it feels private and is nicely landscaped.

Overall it feels a bit English cottage. I love a house with interesting details.. I would love to see it done up for Christmas.

Making Pillows From Pottery Barn Napkins

I love Pottery Barn's seasonal pillows. They always seem to have just the fabric and print that I would love adding to my home. This year they offered their "painted pumpkin" accessories and I fell in love with how soft the colors were, and how well they would transition from Fall to Halloween to Thanksgiving. Three months of use for that print. Perfect!

 Not so much the price. I didn't want to buy the outdoor pillows, I don't like storing pillows with built in inserts, takes up way too much space. I would have to spend over $60 to get two pillow covers for my sectional. In looking at the other items in that line I noticed they had a set of 4 napkins. And they measure 20" square. Plenty of fabric for a pillow. The napkins cost around $25 ( they are sold out now)

I picked out some fabric from my stash for the back side of the pillows. If you wanted you could simply sew two napkins together and stuff with an insert or poly-fill, but I wanted a cover I could remove and adding a simple back allows you to make 4 pillows. (or use the other napkins around the house) In this case I picked a natural colored linen blend. I already had it, so it didn't add cost to this project. 

Next I cut two pieces of fabric the same height and about 3/4th the width of the pillow. I'm making an envelope opening, no need to fiddle with sewing zippers or buttons. 

Next I did a double fold and sewed a seam to cover the raw edges that will be the opening side.

I sewed this seam on both back pieces. I then lay the pieces over the back side of the napkin and pin in place while turning the edges over. I pin it so the edge just covers the seam Pottery Barn put when the finished the napkins. 

The two pieces will overlap in the middle and I simply tuck the top edges under each other and pin.

Using my machine I top stitch over the original seam. This seam will now look like a small flange on the finished pillow. Go slow.. don't forget to remove the pins on the underside as you go.. and I use a finger pressed on the seam to make sure my fabric is still under it while I'm sewing.

The end result is a pillow that fits an 18" insert well. 

The back side.. (needs an iron)

I made a second one also, choosing one that showed more of the orange pumpkin.

If you wanted a 20" pillow you could pull out the napkins finished edge and sew a regular edge.. I may do that with the other two. For now I will enjoy my two new pillow covers and use my other napkins around the house. 

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The Charm of Home

French Country Cottage

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Domestically Speaking

House Spy Friday- Bremerton Beach Cottage

Bremerton Wa. is located across the sound from Seattle.. and only a 45 min ferry ride. It's actually a reasonable choice if you are wanting a waterfront summer cottage. As the home prices are much more reasonable vs Seattle area. In fact we were tempted by a few of them ourselves while house hunting...and if it wasn't for the longer commute for hubby and the fact that some of the schools are rated fairly poorly, we may have bought one.
Today's little gem is in Bremerton and it is waterfront, though not on the main body. I actually had this house in my favorites a couple years ago, and I found it's back on the market. Maybe if it's back by the time we retire, we will go look at it.

The color is perfect for it.. the marine blue shingles, the white trim and shutters and bits of color in the patio furniture. I love the mature trees and shrubs, they look well cared for, but not formal.

I'm usually not a huge fan of this much wood. However in this cottage it feels very sweet and cozy. The rustic built in's next to the fireplace, the huge amount of windows. I LOVE the dutch door!!This feels like a room meant to curl up with a good mystery and a cup of tea and listen to the rain pattering outside. 

And you can gaze outside and watch the weather on the water.

The dining area has more of the paneling... I could see this cottage going two ways. You could go with rustic and keep the pretty knotty pine. Or you could white wash, or paint the trim for a crisp nautical look. Either way would look really cute. The wood floor in here is fabulous, it looks like reclaimed barnwood, it's kind of peiced together in places. This cottage has tons of character. 

Top it off with a bright white farmhouse style kitchen. It looks like it has a nook to one side. Large pantry cabinet and I spy another dutch door! swoon..

The doors look original with crystal knobs. I see bead board in the bath and maybe hex tiles. I'm not fond of the ceiling tile.. but that could be replaced by plank or bead board. 

This master is adorable. Look at the scalloped edge wood trim, again you could keep it cozy wood, or go painted. I spy a hidden door under the window, do you see the little knobs. Again ceiling tile needs removed and a plank ceiling would look cool in here. There was actually another view of this room, it's bigger and there is a sitting area to one side. Again.. just loads of character!

A romantic little fish pond, fire pit for s'mores and a beach. 

Down on the cove, the tide was low when the photographer came.. I spy some other cottages around the water, looks like a sweet little neighborhood and good place to putter around in a kayak. 

The Kitchen Nook

Welcome to our kitchen nook, just a little area between the kitchen and living room. It is our only dining space at the moment, and also double as our homework and board game headquarters.

When we bought the house.. the space looked like this.

It had a very vintage bronze and china chandelier. that threw up some very odd shadows on the wall. Seriously the shadow was the same shape as a certain body part.. I won't even show a photo of it. 

Anyhow.. it was on my list of things to go, even without the x-rated shadow. 

This is our breakfast nook now. The light fixture is from HomeDepot and I bought the coordinating light for the kitchen. They are an antique gold color with glass beads and they cast very sparkly affects on the ceiling. They look very nice with the Rejuvenation crystal knobs and brass pulls the kitchen already had. 

I havn't put a carpet in here yet. I'm a bit undecided on what would fit the space. It would need to be super hard wearing as the door to the back yard is right here and the dogs and kids go in and out quite often. For now just sweeping and damp mopping the space seems to be easiest.

The wall space next to the counter wasn't large enough for the china hutch, and it also doesn't have a wall outlet for anything that has lights. For the moment my antique singer treadle machine is living here. It actually sews, and dosn't need to be plugged in. Above is my thrift store chalk board where we write out our weekly meal plan. 

The full french doors give good daylight for spreading out weekend homework or playing a game.

Chalk Painted Windsor Dining Room Table and Chairs

Our house has a dining space between the kitchen and living room. Basically the breakfast nook, though right now it's our only dining space. We had a formal dining room in our previous home, and it was used for meals probably once a year. This home also has a room intended as a formal dining, it's a pretty nice room with good windows. But as we downsized homes, I needed a space for my sewing room and office. So for now, our breakfast nook is our dining room, and homework hub. Our dining furniture is around 10 years old, we bought it before kids. It's seen quite a bit of abuse from them, there are marker stains and some dings and gouges, and frankly I'm just ready to have a new look.


 In my quest to lighten and brighten this house in the woods, I decided to simply paint it white. I did consider more Duck Egg or even Provence. However I needed to actually pick up some paint for this project, not having enough on hand. I ended up buying a new brand of Chalk paint to try out.

Country Chic chalk paint. They have a ton of really cute colors.. including a more "pink" pink (Annie Sloan has a more salmon pink) They also do seasonal "limited edition" colors. They tend to run about $10 cheaper a can, locally, than AS paint. They are made in Canada.

I started with my chairs. I painted two in one day. I wiped down the chairs and scrubbed off any sticky bits. I didn't sand or prep. I usually don't with AS, and I wanted to see how this paint would preform. I found that I had to wait a bit longer between coats with this paint. It has a different feel, it's a bit thinner and kind of slippery. I ended up putting on three coats to get a sold covering, however the paint has a much smoother feel and look than AS. You could almost go without sanding if like. I wanted to distress a bit to allow some black through.. this is were there is a big difference between this paint and AS. I usually lightly sand AS before wax, and it turns to powder and distresses easy with a sanding block. I tried the same on this paint and I really had to put elbow grease into it to get it to show any black at all. So the You Tube tutorials say to use a wet cloth.. well I wet a cloth and the strangest thing about this paint is when you get it wet it kind of turns back into paint... so it kinda jells up after wetting but still wasn't easy to just rub off. I ended up wetting my foam sanding block and then scrubbing quite hard.. it would distress...but it was hard to predict how it would react. Some places I hardly wet and I would get a mass of paint removed, others I scrubbed forever and hardly any came off. In the end I actually ended up with a very "chippy" look. It looks good...however I usually go for more of a "rubbed" effect. 

Here is a painted -vs- unpainted shot.

I decided to leave the cherry top and seats, for now. The wood color compliments the kitchen.

I't took me two days for the chairs. I would do one set a day. I wanted to make sure they were ready to go by the time the kids got home and needed to use them. I put two coats on the table the first day and a another coat the second day and then used the Country Chic wax to protect the paint. I'm a bit worried on how they will hold up around food and drinks, being that they re-liquefy when wet... but hopefully the wax will be a good hardener. The wax, by the way, is natural and non-petrol based. It has no smell at all and though it's a solid, you rub your brush around on it... then work it into the wood. You can see it go on with a nice sheen and I buffed with a bit of scrap flannel. It feels silky smooth.

Here it is all finished. I do love the white in this space, much more cheery and happy.

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