My tidy little purple and green Christmas kitchen

Well of course its not really a purple and green kitchen. 

It's a white kitchen.  I painted my cabinets three years ago

with Annie Sloan's wonderful paint in Old White with wax finish.

When you have a mostly white kitchen you can transform it 

in any way you like, pretty quickly too.  I collect purple

dishes, called transferware.  All kinds of patterns, and I mix

and match them.  For the holidays I put some green clippings

around them and it really looks great with that color.

 I have a few accents in granny apple green and that combined with 

the purple dishes makes for a pretty look I think.  Green hand towels

and a moss monogram for the cook from HomeGoods 
are a few new accessories I added to my kitchen to freshen 
it up for Christmas.  I had an idea of creating a garden style 
window for Christmas and planned on putting

a big wreath in the middle of the window that had a kitchen feel.

So when I saw that Matthew Mead was having a wreath workshop

I was excited because I knew just what I wanted to make and where

it was going to go after I created it!

Yesterday was the workshop at his studio in New Hampshire.

He also had a pop-up shop with antique and repro goodies that the students

could shop at after the workshop was finished.  Don't you know he had

a bunch of purple transferware! His mother used to collect it and they 

had it as their holiday dishes.  The pattern name escapes me, but I 

loved hearing that his mom loved the purple patterns like I do.

You can see the platter sitting in this vignette in Matthew's shop.

The platter is now hanging over my kitchen stove!

 Its really quite beautiful with all of the intricate pattern designs and 

the older the platter, the better I seem to like them.

This little display area is above my stove. 

I removed the cabinet doors and lined them with beadboard

wallpaper when I painted the kitchen

so I could use it as a mini hutch for my growing collection, as well

as to provide a little personality to the tiny kitchen.

 At the workshop I made a boxwood wreath and filled it with 

natural looking things, like granny green apples and lambs ear and moss.

I intended to hang it in the kitchen window, and I am so pleased

at how it created a focal point over my big white sink.  Some 

little transferware pitchers from my collection

were filled with cedar clippings and set about the window with a 

Christmas window candle that I painted grey.

 Tiny white lights surround the window giving it

the holiday spirit.  I love little white lights, they add

such an enchanted look to just about any setting.

Decorate with the things you have and love and create

a little bit of Christmas in your own kitchen. 

It's easy and uplifting!  I will share the holiday workshop 

on my next blog post, so you can see just what we did with Matthew

at his very cool studio.  It was a total experience, for all the senses

and it sure put me in the Christmas mood!

You won't want to miss it!