Sunday, November 30, 2014

Dining Room Makeover and Thanksgiving Day

Our dining room has been undergoing a few cosmetic changes in the 
past few weeks.  It all started with getting the enormous purple turkey
platter to add to my transferware collection.  I decided to take down the
mirror in the dining room and put more of my transferware on the wall.
After the purple was added, the blue opaline chandelier clashed, so I 
decided to finally hang up a different antique chandelier I had been hanging
onto for over a year.  "Not for sale" was the tag on it, as I used it in my shop
for adding ambience.  I planned to hang it someday, but didn't know where.
Do you buy things because you love them, and then hold onto them until
the perfect place presents itself it? On occasion I do, particularly with antique
chandeliers.  We will move one day, and when we do, I will pull an Ernest Hemingway's
wife move, where she took down all his ceiling fans in his Key West house and installed
her antique French chandelier collection while Ernest was off on a fishing trip.
But I digress...So gone was the beautiful blue next to the dramatic purple, and 
the room was feeling better to my eyes.  Purple is a tricky color to use in 
home interiors, too much is too much!! Purple plates on the wall feel just about 
right.  I may be adding a purple damask, toile or checkered roman shade or swedish
shade in the windows, but thats about it for adding more purple.
Sylvia and Tobey always run into the room when I start snapping 
photos.  Everytime. Finally they get bored and toddle off. So you may
see bits and pieces of them in these shots.  Dillon is too mature to care 
about trying to get into any photos on the blog.  So while I was switching out
chandeliers, (or should I say Mr. Maison Decor was doing that), I was
also happily working in my new vintage French Settee for seating.
But after I added that, I hated the chairs I had. They were too low in
profile and didn't feel balanced opposite the taller cane back settee.
See what I mean?  One chair was being painted, but since I wasn't
feeling it, the rest stayed in their natural state until I could get excited 
about keeping them.  And so the day before Thanksgiving I saw a post 
in Facebook by one of my customers who paints furniture with our 
Chalk Paint.  She was selling a set of 6 French Provincial cane back chairs!
I sent her a private message on Facebook, and in 3 hours her hubby was
delivering them into my house!  Hehehe...yes a LOT of planning was 
involved. NOT.  I just knew I would love them, so I bought them, and I was
also happy to do business with another small business owner, who happened
to be a good customer of my own shop.  Her business is called Melissa's Perfect Piece
Melissa paints furniture with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, 
and sells from her home and markets her furniture 
on Facebook if you want to look her up.
So I had my FP cane back chairs to go with my French settee I bought
from another small business guy, designer/stylist Matthew Mead.
But Thanksgiving was next up, and so I pushed the settee in front 
of the backyard window, and used all of my chairs for the 8 or 9
we had coming over for dinner.  I was already plotting on the new
floor plan after this holiday was in the books.
This morning I had Mr. MD help me remove the extra table leaf
and then switch the settee and the chairs around.  I took the solid 
cherry chairs to my shop where they are now for sale.
 I love this settee! And my purple plates!
I put two big linen pillows and one small 
quilted purple velvet pillow on the settee.
There was one other thing I did the day before Thanksgiving...
It involved breaking out my Annie Sloan paint....
I couldn't have the library/office cabinet stay 
that soft blue color anymore...it had to go!
So French Linen to the rescue. I am still in the process of deciding what
else I want to do to it, but I like the darker grey in the mix.
And it all started because of a Turkey plate and a French settee....
I never got a family photo taken during the holiday.
But we had a great time, and hope you did too!
 One last thing...I like having some greenery in this room.
So there are various urns and containers carrying plants 
and orbs with lights.  I may have just the perfect French bistro
side table to put here to hold them all...
 If I can squeeze it in and it looks right, I will show you next time.
But its time to move onto Christmas decorating isn't it?
Looking forward to decorating a little bit more with naturals
this year, and some sparkle of course. Thanks for reading the blog,
its fun writing it, and I get a kick out of having some of my 
blog readers come by the shop to say hi, some of them
from across the country, like yesterday!  So this is a special
hello to Yolanda and her awesome husband and daughter
from Indiana.  You guys rock!!

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