It's a Harper's Ferry weekend...what will I find for LeBlanc Lapin?

I started going on weekend trips throughout the mid Atlantic area since around the age of 10.  One of the coolest day trips my Dad ever took me on was Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. I remember the hot day, the paddle boating and walking around the town.  I was fascinated by the Main Street shops and wanted to go in every one of them but because of my Dad's impatience I'm quite sure my entre' into the last shop was vetoed!

I also remember my want and need to buy; that need is still very much alive today. I buy and sell, I buy and sell, and then reflect on where my bank account is and if I want to travel internationally that year or not!  I started selling furniture and related home decor recently out of my new home and it feels great, it really does it's just that I'm not done yet.  I'm never quite done looking for that unique find or fit for my home or someone else's.

This trip to Harper's Ferry is a trip back in time but it's also an opportunity to search for McCoy pottery, barn tables and chairs and anything that speaks to me.  It has to be good quality, it has to be timeless and it has to be unique, just like me.  I guess that's what I love most about decorating....you create it with history in mind, family photos and antiques, and also what you love the most. What do you love the most in your home? Is it the rugs that grace your walnut hardwood floors? Is it that old distressed hutch you bought on a whim and couldn't figure out how you were gonna squeeze it in the car? Or is it your kitchen where warm meals make the ones you love most happy? Maybe it's all of those things. Whatever it is, tell me about it, your story matters.

My favorite and only piece of Wedgewood china, the platter. Background: linen, my favorite fabric!

Day Trips and Decorating Buys!

Whenever I'm about to get very creative......I have to flee my town and go exploring; exploring to find buys, great buys, unique deals-antiques, drink coasters...............

The photo above was taken in the Hudson Valley part of NY on my 39th birthday. I dragged my hubby and twin daughters to the vineyards near Woodstock. I debated with myself for like five minutes over whether this would be a disaster and if my kids would suffer from my selfish Saturday but after I packed up the car I just knew my road trip would pay big beni's! (benefits)

At the first vineyard the wine was great but the inventory was even better.  As I looked around the tasting room, I was happy to see wine gifts for the whole family and I also thought this was the perfect opportunity to purchase holiday gifts while I was there!!!  Cha-ching!!

 

My first purchase, not including the tasting fee for two, was a set of retro drink coasters.  Don't you just love this one-where the slogan brings one back to when parents were rocking polyester in the 70's and kids played outside, when life was simple and you didn't require an app for that-

I also love finding items that will remind me of my trips to special places. When I look around my home I see beauty and adventures but I also see function.  Each room has to flow and serve a purpose. We just recently had a dinner party at our home and two of our neighbors that joined us said "our home was warm and welcoming."  I bet if she saw this coaster on an end table she'd laugh and that would spark a conversation about mom juice or antiques or even tactless drink coasters or maybe just possibly we shall talk about Woodstock and when she was younger and how she lived through the 60's and survived.  I have to have this woman over again, she loved her red wine and she laughed a lot.

It was a huge compliment that our now retired neighbors loved being in our home. It keeps me running to Home Depot, Home Goods and beyond......because I love to decorate, shop and make people smile with a side of Mom juice!!  Enjoy your day always 

Goodwill Hunting! My trips to the Goodwill Store and Craigslist.

My trips to Goodwill are soooo exciting that when I pull into the parking lot I already know I'm walking out with something to adorn my home. The last time I was there, incredulously one month ago I saw a large doll house, made in America by KidKraft.  It just so happened I was already searching on the Internet for dollhouses, Craigslist, my sister in law and nothing was working.  I just kept thinking, I'm not paying full price for a dollhouse that maybe my kids will play with for a second.  They are four but they also love being outside and if I love a product, I'm putting my money down at a 100% bet they won't play with it.

Those thoughts kept me from paying over $100 for a doll house that maybe they would play with in the future. One sunny morning after the purchase of a delicious DD (Dunkin Donuts coffee) I convinced my husband (not a lot of convincing really, I'm lucky he loves to shop!) to stop into the Goodwill store with me.

Would you believe right in the front of the store to my left was the Savannah model, just the Kidkraft doll house I was looking for; elevator, southern style front porch, the height I wanted, some accessories!  I was blown away, how could this be?  I brought this dollhouse into my psyche and it appeared!  There was only one problem, the stairs leading throughout the house were split in half!  Yikes!  My husband quickly vetoed the purchase and as I actively tried to convince him that I could possibly fix it, he said once more, "For $50 it's not worth it.  We can buy a brand new one for like $75."

I already knew the dollhouses I liked with the accessories I liked (doesn't this sound like it's a toy for me?) and they were in the $100+ range.  Uh-oh. Keep looking I say to myself.  I was a little rebuffed but I thought I'm not willing to repair the stairs and even if I did, my girls could demolish the stairs within seconds of my adhesion!

After just a few days or so, I found a beautiful dollhouse made by Kidkraft on Craigslist in Frederick, MD.  Just a half hour from my parents home, I could pick up the doll house and head to lovely Virginia for the weekend with my get ready for this.......$50 purchase!!!!!  The dollhome I found on Craigslist was the same price as the one I found at Goodwill but better it was like brand new!  Nothing broken!  Yah!

Goodwill certainly has an array of items for purchase that can and will be useful to any home; I just couldn't and can't be impulsive anymore.  Frugality is key but waiting patiently on an item is also important.  Aren't these lessons also important in parenthood; teaching our children that waiting for the right time for anything can be worth the wait and buying something of quality means we can and do deserve something good.  Lastly, I still love Goodwill and I gotta a 20% coupon burning a hole in my wallet!!

A close version of my daughters' dollhouse.  Lovely.

Refinishing Furniture....... the joy it brings, renewal.

I've been refinishing furniture for years now, probably 10+ years and let me tell you if I find an old piece of furniture and it has good bones, looks good, and can serve a function or two, I'm buying it and refinishing it!

I LOVE IT.  I actually think I love furniture.  My grandfather was a carpenter.  He built homes.  He loved flowers. I love flowers.  When something is natural and apparent to me, I just go for it.  That's how I feel about furniture and flowers.  I prune and I paint.  Here's an Adirondack chair (thank sister in law here) I received the pair

Do you just love this chair?  It's begging for some stain so I added white paint.  My favorite pristine white for an Adirondack chair.  I love the way it turned out.  Our view here faces the US Naval Academy.  I thought it perfect for a view of the coast line, even if we aren't the Hampton's or the Cape (Cape Cod that is).  These chairs are comfortable and they were free.  It took me a couple of weeks to get them prepped, sanded, and painted.  While I painted in the garage, my neighbors commented on how long I worked on these chairs.  (I really didn't put in strenuous labor, it just looked like I did).

I think what amazes me about refinishing furniture is the sheer pleasure I get from taking something old, something maybe you would throw out and making it come alive again.  We are the culture of renewing, recycling, and refurbishing.  Mom (my Mom) told me that former US President Jimmy Carter's non profit Habitat for Humanity fame has a store in Leesburg, VA.  There they take items from people's old homes, items they didn't have a use for, flooring, sinks, and kitchen cabinetry and they sell it on a deeply discounted ledge and the profits go back into Habitat for Humanity.  Amazing.

I LOVE THIS IDEA!!  Our world is shifting.  We can teach our kids that loving something old is not a bad thing; that you don't have to shop at Crate & Barrel to have the best dishes, tables, or CHAIRS.  I'm teaching my four and a half year old twin daughters that because something is rough around the edges doesn't mean it's not worth saving. By the way they helped me paint the chairs; they were good at it too, minus the drips.  Girls' watch those drips!!

Sophie if you sat in Mommy and Daddy's chairs, would you get a splinter?  Yeah, you just might. It won't hurt you.  Don't blame the chair.  That's Mommy's chair and it only cost me two cans of spray paint ($8.00) 

Give me your beautiful finger and I'll take the splinter out and we'll start all over again.  Let's look at the stars together and I promise you won't be disappointed.  We will watch the stars in this beautiful white chair and it will deliver, splinters included.  Anyone got a band aide?  

Thank GOD for IKEA

This may be my first post for this blog and I didn't anticipate blogging about various brands and then I thought, why not share my thoughts on decorating by sharing my secrets on decorating your home, your life, etc. 

Jimmy Falon says be happy, we'll sort of and when my house or home is decorated I'm thoroughly happy and when it's not, I become unglued.  This is my story about thanking GOD and IKEA for helping me through the home renovation process.

January of this year, we moved back into our new home?  Yeah that's right.  Back into the home we built in 2009, rented to another family in 2010 and came back to in 2014.  Funny.  It wasn't supposed to happen that way.  We relocated to the Hudson Valley part of New York, thinking we were going to be there for a while and as fate would have it, moved back due to my hubby's job.  His job still not in Maryland where we currently reside in our new-old home but his work is in Pennsylvania.  Needless to say we spend a good deal of time shuffling kids from one store to the next or running to the grocery store for who knows what and in between all that time, we are trying to furnish the new house we built five years ago.

It's bitter irony.  I wanted to stay in NY renting (can you believe this) a 5,500 square foot home we couldn't afford to decorate and he, my brilliant sales exec husband wanted to come back to our new-old 3,400 sq foot home and affordably decorate that one!  He convinced me by moving back south we would save on many things including the oil we needed to heat the NY winters that were killing our household budget.  I agreed and in two months we were moved.


We left a good nursery school, my work and volunteerism, and solid friends.  I was sad but hopelessly looking forward to decorating my little farmhouse; the house we brought home our brand new twin daughters to.  Little did I know what I would be walking into when I first entered the door of my new-old home on Friday January 3rd, 2014.  Nothing could prepare me for it: dog smell.  Yuck and old toilet smell, gross and vastly dog ridden walls with scratch marks as far as the eye could see, blotched hardwood floors and just grossness.  Our renters, yes paid the mortgage for four years but left us with four years of their stuff on the front lawn, the back lawn, the deck.  It was a plant invasion of vast proportions!!

I was immediatly taken into the twilight zone of new homeownership.  I wanted to run back to Pawling, NY as fast as my short legs would take me, back to my rose bushes, my front porch, my bird feeder, but it wasn't my house.  I had to remind myself.  Bummer.  Back to new-old-home-rented by-weirdos-itis.

We began painting, scrapping, wiping, and buying lots of repair items.  Home Depot seemed to be loosing their patience with me and I was not amused and neither was my husband.  We eventually gave in and found an inexpensive general contractor to help us with our rennovation.  I use the word "rennovation" loosely because to us our home was not new anymore.  It needed a MAKE OVER and BIG TIME!!!!

I'm at the airport: our plane to the Bahamas for a weekend trip has been delayed.  Thank GOD for that too.  Last night's windstorm had me shaking in my $5 Target booties!  I told my hubby I will not board any plane if it's that windy in the am.  He laughed but I was not kidding.  I'll stay home and commit myself to more shopping, more nails and hammer action (you know those frames aren't going to hang themselves!).  Forget it. Ill blog.  My flight to Atlanta has been delayed two more hours.  I've got time to think about how much I love Ikea and how it saved my budget and beautified my home.

This past weekend at the beloved Ikea I completely changed the look and vibe of my dining room for $225-that's it.  It's beautiful, dreamy and will be the perfect setting for our Easter gathering.  Thank you Ikea.  I love you and I will definitely be back