Happy Valentine’s Day & See Ya!

Hi everyone! Just wanted to pop in to let you all know that I’ll be back in March or there abouts. I’m in the home stretch as far as getting my house ready to list and I really need to concentrate on finishing up my bathroom remodel and then just cleaning and depersonalizing.

I'm not packing up my stuff yet so here’s a little bit of Valentine's decorating that I did do. This is my foyer tree this year.

I used the same sticks from last year!! But this year I used fabric hearts instead of the scrapbook paper ones I usually use -  How To Make Hearts From Cereal Boxes.

I replaced my mitten garland with this fabric heart one.


This is not VDay decor but I wanted to show you anyway. I found some vintage potholders last week and I pinned the prettiest one to the center of this pillow. How cute is that! Vintagey toile goodness! LoVE it!


I hope to start looking at houses in a few weeks as well (I need the motivation to keep up this pace)! I’ll do my best to take pics of the contenders! Probably won’t post them until I get back to blogging though.



So, Happy Valentines Day, thank you so much for stopping by and see you in a month or so!

Organizing My Utility & Linen Closets

I thought I’d show you all my utility and linen closets that I re-organized. I have lots of painting to do but it’s been too cold to have the windows open (even with using low VOC paint). So I’ve been organizing and decluttering since I don’t want to move with junk!
This is the utility closet door before. I really liked my shoe organizer. It was a great way to keep things organized and I could easily see what I had. It was also a handy place to stuff plastic bags. I do have re-usable shopping bags but often forget to bring them into the store – therefore the plastic bags!
So now I have a couple of aprons and a cute plastic bag holder  from etsy on the door because my husband always hated that shoe organizer AND I don’t want to give the impression that there’s not enough storage in this house. People do look in closets when shopping for a home!

This closet was also pumpkin orange! Actually I don’t have one white closet. ALL my closets are painted a color on the inside. The inside of the door was yellow as you can see in the photo at the very top. 

Now the inside is very light blue (sigh…because when I tested this color on a bedroom wall it was practically white but without any natural light you can see the blue – but it’s less noticeable than bright pumpkin orange). The inside of the door was painted white.
The vacuum cleaner hose holder is from IKEA. I have a few photos of some organizing things from IKEA at the end of the post (long post – this is what happens when you only post once in a while).

I have plenty of room on the shelves!

Now for my hall linen closet!

As you can see it’s not all that big! Anyway it was a mess. Below is the after!

Here’s the heartless truth. If this is all the space you have than this is what you have to work with. The only way to have it organized is to get rid of stuff you don’t use/really need. (I do have a couple of towels in the dyer but as you can see, there’s plenty of room for them.)

Things I got rid of – Christmas and Easter towels. Yes, at one time in my life I used to change my entire hall bathroom at Christmas and Easter. I had holiday shower curtains, towels, bath accessories  - you name it  I had it. It was fun when my daughter was little. I also still had a stack of the little facecloths I used for her when she was a baby! She’ll be 19 this month. Time to let go of those baby cloths I think. I got rid of ratty towels (donated them to my vet and cut some up to use as rags). I do a load of laundry every other day – I don’t need to keep a whole lot of sheets and towels. I got rid of (donated) tablecloths that don’t even fit the table I have now (why was I keeping those?).

I put the washcloths in a container (also from IKEA) and the hand towels next to it. As you can see this closet is still pumpkin orange! The wallpaper on the shelves is the one I had in my kitchen in my first house in Georgia. I papered those shelves 11 years ago!

Do you see that I have an entire empty shelf now that I got rid of stuff!!! I keep my daughter’s sheets in her room’s closet but I may move them out here. Also, I only have one set of guest room sheets and they’re of course on the bed. I do have some extra pillow cases for that room and I keep those in a container in that room.

Well that’s two closets done – four more to go!

For some reason I wind up in IKEA every January! Here are a few photos of some of their organizing systems.









I'm motivated to declutter and organize since we're selling our house but I must say it also just feels freeing to have less stuff!

Thanks for taking the time to drop by and have a wonderful weekend!

Happiness is…..

 
Little things like…the morning sunlight shining through my favorite drapes

a pretty vintage tea towel

fresh sheets on the bed

Blooming bulbs! Did you force any bulbs? I did two pots of Narcissus. (You “old timers” – notice anything different about my deck?)

I know some people don’t care for the smell of paperwhites but I love it! Every Christmas Target sells various containers of the bulbs and I always buy some at the after season sale (they’re pre-chilled and most of them have already started sprouting by then). Makes it easy to force bulbs cause all the work is done for you!

a bottle of moisturizing handwash with a pretty label that brightens the sink area (I always buy them at TJMaxx – they have an unusual selection and they’re not expensive)

Happiness is…..finding the first bits of green in the garden after a long, cold, (very cold for Atlanta) winter! Is spring here?  Now that would make me very very happy!

Those are just a few little things that make me happy!

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Wren Bay Winner & Other Stuff!

Hello Lovelies! The winner of Wren Bay is……..
Marcia @ Blessed Mom's Simple Home!

Congratulations Marcia! Please go visit her blog (it’s one of my favorites btw) when you get a chance and congratulate her.

Thank you to all of you who entered! I know Clarice was encouraged by the lovely response. You guys are the best!
Other Stuff….
I just had to buy some daffodils when I saw that our forecast calls for possibly more snow next week. I can’t take it anymore! Really.  We moved from New Jersey to Georgia to get away from that white stuff!


I re-potted them into this cute bowl that I got at TJMaxx.


I can have a bit of spring inside if I can’t have it outside!


At least it’s sunny today!

Also, for all of you who love BBC programming (like me) or who love Victoriana or maybe you’re just a history buff, there are clips on You Tube of Victorian Farm! I spent waaaaay too much time watching them yesterday when I was suppose to be painting doors! Just fascinating stuff!



I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Wren Bay The Story of Making A Home - Give A Way

Hi everyone! Have you ever wanted or thought you could write a novel? Well my amazing friend Clarice has written and self-published her first  book and you have an opportunity to win an autographed copy!

It only took me two days to read her book. I couldn’t put it down! I was captivated by the charming story, the lovely characters she created and the delicious recipes! If you love homemaking you'll love this book! I could go on and on but I’ll let her tell you a bit about it.

Wren Bay, the story of making a home is just that, a story about homemaking, about taking a house (a charming, old stone house at that) and turning it into a home! This is Wren's dream. Wren Bay is a newly married, Boston socialite, who is wondering how to find her place in this new world, Bay Farm, her husband's 200 acre estate and dairy farm in Massachusetts. She knows nothing about dairy farms but she does not need to, she has the Harrison family. They are the caretakers of Bay Farm.
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Wren is intent on using this time of separation from her husband, Devlin, who is serving in France during WW1, to learn the skills of homemaking. She wants to be able to conserve, reuse and make the most of what she is gifted with. Wren has been taught the joy of cooking with perfect ingredients from her Madame Mimi. She has also been gifted with a creative eye from her eccentric Aunt Sophia, a milliner in Boston. Even her deceased mother-in-law's herb garden provides new ideas to help Wren fill her pantry. She was raised to find her bliss with fierce passion and to never let fear pull her down. Wren Bay is hoping her creativity will serve her well as she finds a way to put her own, unique fingerprint on this dairy farm.

My novel Wren Bay is a fictional form of my blog Storybook Woods. I was interested in taking all the subjects I blog about (such as baking, crafting, whole foods, self education, upcycling and more) and turned them into a fictional story. My blog is about taking the simple things in life and making a celebration out of them and Wren Bay reflects this. As Wren grows and learns new skills and ideas, so will you! You can read a sample of the book and see the list of recipes in my shop here and on my blog here. 
 

Enjoy and thank you Clarice

Clarice is one of my oldest blogging friends and she (and her girls) have always been such an inspiration to me. So I’m really delighted to be able to have this give away for her!

All you have to do to enter is to leave a comment on this post  by Friday evening and a winner will be picked randomly and announced on Saturday. Everyone can enter including all of you outside of the U.S. Clarice will sign and ship Wren Bay directly to the winner.

Thanks for stopping by and good luck!
******Thanks everyone! Comments are closed check back Saturday for the winner!******

What I Did During the Snow Storm

Well I did quite a bit since we weren’t able to get out of the house for four days!

Here’s one thing I did – I changed a few of my candles and candle sticks on my fireplace and…

I made 33 felt circles into a very colorful garland for my fireplace! We needed something happy and cheery to look at as it was so cold and gray outside.

This is the first time I ever did the blanket stitch so some of my stitches aren’t that even :) But that’s the fun thing about handmade items…they don’t have to be perfect to be pretty!

This project is from a tutorial by Anna Maria Horner from 2006 (this is why I have a mile long list of projects I want to do). I’ve been meaning to do it since then!

Since we couldn’t go anywhere I thought it was the perfect time to do this project. All you need is felt – I know 4 squares of felt are $1.00 at Hobby Lobby and some embroidery floss. Last time I bought embroidery floss it was 35 cents a skein at HL. I already had all the materials which was good since I wouldn’t have been able to get out to buy anything anyway!

Here’s the link to her tutorial for the Felt Garland. She has photos and very clear instructions so I won’t bother to do one too. This does take time! Time to cut out the circles and time to stitch them together - but I had nothing but time! I think I've watched about 7 movies this week!

May you have a happy and colorful weekend!