random pictures . . . because I am too tired to think

After weeks of preparing for my Mad Tea Party, it is over and I am exhausted.

I am relaxing - after baking last night night until 1:30 a.m. and making tea sandwiches at 6:00 a.m. this morning - by looking at and editing photos that I have taken over the last few days . . .

 a lovely orchid, a gift from my neighbor Steffie, in the bathroom . . . 

 a gorgeous bouquet of sunflowers from my friend Lanette . . . 

a simple can holding a mini rose bush . . . 

a quilt that had been hiding in the attic softening a bench in the garden . . .

a patriotic display for the upcoming holiday . . . 

a plant from Trader Joe's - don't know the name, but I love the sweet flowers . . . 

dried lavender also from Trader Joe's . . .

Meyers lemons and veggies hand delivered from Sandy & Manny's garden . . .

an alphabet plate I finally made after reading about the method on my friend Leslie's blog, Gwen Moss . . .

a clean house and nothing I have to do tomorrow . . .

I said I was too tired to think, but as I scrolled through my photos and previewed my post, I noticed something -

nearly every photo I chose to edit tonight has flowers in it.

Okay, that's enough thinking for one night!

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More dishes ?

I found these cute anchor dishes at Tuesday Morning and debated with myself about buying them - love won out over need.

I didn't argue with myself over these little square dessert plates because I will be using them at my Mad Tea Party.

But, it is difficult to justify the purchase of more plates when our limited cupboard space is taken up with rarely used dishes.

The winning argument of "silly self" over "practical self" was that the anchor dishes are perfect for a beach house and if I passed them up, I would never find them again.

Last week, I did a simple red, white & blue table setting and used the square blue plates for our dessert.

This week I stopped in at Paper Source (never a cheap move) and spotted this anchor stamp.

My thought was, "how cute would anchor napkins be with those anchor dishes!" so I brought the stamp home, made napkins and stamped a couple little bags.

From one Friday to the next, the table setting changed considerably even though the same dishes were used.

I frequently use dish towels for place mats and like the horizontal stripes on these towels.

Of course the wine bottle doesn't exactly go with the anchor dishes so red napkins were used to hide the graphics.

I usually have flowers as the centerpiece, but yesterday I went for a sea theme.

Starfish candle sticks came out of the cupboard, bits and pieces of my shell collection filled up some fish containers I just purchased for my upcoming tea party and the base was another dish towel with horizontal stripes and no graphic.

You might be asking, what about the anchor stamp and the napkins?

Well, the ink on the napkins was the wrong color and the bags just didn't work, but

I just found these cute sailboat dishes (which I couldn't pass up)

and some new pasta bowls so I know the anchor napkins will be used soon.

 I had a lot of fun playing house yesterday.

Once the table was set, I began moving things around the house.

Pitchers from the entry way ended up on the dining room shelf and

wire baskets from the dining room ended up on the entry way cabinet.

The dining room is definitely sporting a blue and white motif and

the entire house is looking ready for summer.

Yes, this little seaside cottage is definitely ready for a Mad Tea Party on Monday.

And, as I sit at the dining room table putting the finishing touches on this blog post, I am struck by the message on the dining room table -

"if you are lucky enough to live at the beach, you're lucky enough" - and yes, I am lucky enough.

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Boogieboard Cottage - Masterpiece Monday

Patriotic Projects

The best part of signing up for Where Bloggers Create is cleaning up my creative space and finding long forgotten bits and pieces.

I found this wreath - I wrote about making the wreath here - and this little wreath led to a day of "patriotic" projects.

The first order of business was to paint a wooden board.

This Tic Tac Toe board, picked up cheap at Big Lots, worked for a fall vignette, but it has been sitting on a shelf since November.

To make the board fit my color scheme, I simply taped off the colored lines and slapped on a coat of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Old White.

Even painted white, I wasn't thrilled with the board's colors so all the lines were painted red and now the board actually looks good with the X's and O's that came with it.

I love the little wire wreath and don't know why it was stuffed into a cupboard,

but now with a red, white & blue update, the wreath will be out all summer.

The plan was for the wreath to hang on our red Dutch door,

but the poor little wreath was totally out of proportion with the door - maybe I need to make a large wire wreath.

So, the little wire wreath found its home in the dining room window.

I found the red and blue metal stars on a shelf in my work space so I created a patriotic display in the hallway.

I was excited to find some of Steve's left over canvas when I was looking for ribbon - I thought I was all out of canvas.

At 5:00 yesterday, I set down my book and decided I had time for one more project while Steve cooked dinner - believe me, no one wants me to cook any meals!

While the paint dried, I put the zipper on the backing and by 6:30 an American flag pillow was ready to be mailed off to a blogging friend.

With all my patriotic projects finished, one would think I could take a day off today, but last night I saw this cute little stamped bag at Paper Source.

The anchor stamp came home with me and today's order of business is to stamp napkins to match the fun dishes I just found at Tuesday Morning.

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