Outdoor Living

I am happy to once again be joining a fun group of bloggers for a Pinterest Challenge.

Thanks Cindy of County Road 407 for hosting each Pinterest Challenge.

If you are visiting in order, then you were just at the home of my friend Julie who is full of inspiration.

Th inspiration photo for the month of May is from Brie Hammel Interiors.

Our porch is tiny with no room for sitting so I wasn't sure about joining the challenge this month,

but we do have a strip of flat concrete where our old garden bench sits.

 I decided to focus on 3 elements in the photo - the tree, the bench and the table.

The only thing I bought for the challenge was a plant because a tree would become too heavy to lift - the bucket is sitting on top of the can I use to hide our hose.

 We made a coffee table out of an orange crate (from my childhood when I lived on an orange grove property), but it was too low so it's been sitting in the shed.

We have had the bench for years - free from a neighbor.

I know it's time for patriotic colors, but I wanted to use these pillows I recently made out of an old tablecloth.

The other thing I wanted to use was my Colorku game board - I love color and balls so of course I love the look, but it's also relaxing and will be nice to play outside.

The window above the bench got a bucket full of blooms and faux greenery - yes faux because climbing on the bench to change out the greenery every other day is a pain.

I wasn't sure what Steve's reaction would be to the change, but we both are enjoying having a table.

I really love all the blue and yellow in the garden right now,

but Memorial Day arrived and I needed to see red, white and blue.

It was a quiet day here on Memorial Day.

We sat on the bench after a walk on the beach 

and the table was great for drinks while we read in the garden.

Our outdoor space is the biggest "room" in our house -

can you tell that we like to spend our days outside?

I love the yellow and blue pillows, but they shout spring and Memorial Day always feels like Opening Day for summer.

So, red, white and blue will be hanging around for quite awhile.

And now I send you off to the home of my friend Lora who is always up to something fun.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Wiggle Room

I started purging in 2016 and I thought I was done in 2019, but most of the purging came from the attic and I still have too much stuff.

I need "wiggle room" in my cupboards so in February, I got serious and asked myself if I was really going to use each item.

I started the process with our dining room plate racks.

Everything came off the racks and I either put items back on the rack, into a cupboard or in a donation pile.

Once the racks were decorated, I moved onto my grandma's step back cupboard in our entry.

I emptied everything out of the cupboard - remember that arrow because it led to yesterday's project.

I posted a pic of the cupboard on Instagram on February 20, when I began writing this "Wiggle Room" post, but life got in the way of finishing up the cupboard.

When I first painted the inside of the cupboard blue, I only had the top part of the cupboard and when I painted it, I didn't even notice that I had left the ceiling unpainted.

I literally didn't see the problem until this feature came out in Cottages and Bungalows magazine in 2017 - yes, it's taken me that long to fix the problem.

Health and the lockdown (couldn't get the paint) kept me from finishing the project, but yesterday things came out of the cupboard once again.

After I finished painting the ceiling, I decided that to make the cupboard more functional and give myself a little wiggle room in the hall cupboard I would add runners and tablecloths to that top shelf.

If you are wondering what those red sticks are on the second shelf,

they are the sweetest vintage utensils sent to me from Rita of Panoply.

I put everything back and planned to wait on the bottom cupboard until today, but there were wind warnings so I stayed inside and tackled the rest of the job.

When I painted the top part of the cupboard, the bottom half lived with my daughter in San Francisco and she painted it yellow- notice the remnants on the open cupboard door.

It's been organized since February, but finally the interior is painted white and that is checked off my To Do list.

Now that I am finishing the post, I must show one change I made in the plate racks.

I had Steve hang cup hooks -

 removing the cups from the cupboard gave me a little more wiggle room.

I didn't want the before photos of the dining room and entry to look exactly like they did to start with so I made my first visit to Trader Joe's in 11 weeks.

It was wonderful to pick out flowers in a nearly empty store

and to come home and create arrangements for both the living room and the entry.

What I mean by wiggle room is that I have space in the cupboards and on the plate racks for that perfect piece of ironstone I can't pass up

I just need thrift shops, vintage shops and pop up markets to fully open.

Making the Most of My Time

Due to my age and severe asthma, I'm "Sheltering In Place" for the long haul, but I'm making the most of my time at home.

I feel badly for all the small shop owners I have gotten to know, so I've been trying to buy from those who do curbside pickup.  

I was excited to find out that Karen of @whimsyantiques still had the blue buffet available and we picked it curbside- boy would I have liked to stroll through the shop.

Another friend with a shop, Donna of Lily Fields Vintage, posted an old newel post in her stories and I have wanted a chunky column for a long time.

I spotted the large urn at @abeautifulday.ventura a week before the SIP order and was so happy to see on Instagram that Jocelyn was doing curbside pickup - I didn't know she had 2 sizes.

I just love the big urn - this is the view I see from my window seat perch when the door is open.

The smaller urn is perfect for flowers from the garden.

I miss going to Trader Joe's for fresh flowers, but this greenery I purchased from Purple Rose Home paired with dried roses is keeping me happy for now.

I also bought this Lamb's Ear garland from Purple Rose Home to dress up the headboard in the guest room.

Within days of staying home, I decided it was time to replace our Rugs USA jute rug - the Boss agreed.

We went with navy jute this time and of course furniture got moved around.

As you can see, the Boss likes the new arrangement.

My set of bistro chairs got bumped to the hallway when I was rearranging furniture in the living room.

The newel post from Lily Fields Vintage is standing by the chairs for now.

Yes, I'm aware that birds don't have 4 legs, but in my attempt to do 3 things at once I broke one of the rockers off the bird - I guess even a rocking bird is strange.

I have spent most of my time the last 9 weeks working in the garden and we were excited to buy a dwarf Meyer Lemon tree.

We moved the tree around the garden to find the right spot and yesterday we finally got it into a pot where it gets sun about 10 hours a day.

Today I plan to play with these seed packets and our old wheelbarrow.

The blooms in the wheelbarrow are looking pretty scruffy.

But with this view from my chaise, it's possible I will just sit in the garden and read.