The Lake cottage, White kitchens and the Wedding painting

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The lake house is in the beginning stages of planning!

 Our rustic unheated 1910 fisherman's shack is

going to get torn down and a year round home will take it's place.

I haven't blogged at all about the lake cottage, but that soon will be 

making its way to my blog as we get ready for the next phase of life in retirement mode,

as we plan to move into it after selling our Boston area home.

White kitchens have always been a favorite of mine. 

 I think they are timeless and 

so the new cottage will have white cabinets.  While looking for inspiration 

I found some pretty examples on Traditional Home magazines website,

so lets take a look!

Rarely do I see a French Country kitchen anymore, so this was surprising to see.

However our kitchen and cottage will likely be less "Frenchy", and

more of a blend of traditional, craftsman and cottage styles.

 Another white kitchen from Traditional Home with color on the ceiling.

This kitchen is actually on a lake, and I love all the choices I see here.

 A creamy white cabinet color with marble and butcher block.

Views to the lake is driving the design of our cottage

so we can take advantage of having a home on the water's edge.

You would never getting tired looking out of the window at the kitchen sink.

Double islands in a fun color in an otherwise white kitchen.

Our kitchen will be modest in size, but in an open floor plan

to the living space which will give it an open feel. We will have

an island and have toyed around with color ideas.

This is our current kitchen as seen in Nora Murphy's Country House Stye book.

Because it is in a contained space it feels small. 

I painted my maple cabinets white years ago and still love the look.

They say you can tell the decade a house was built just by looking at 

the kitchen cabinets.  Knotty Pine, Golden Oak, Cherry, Thermafoil...

they all have had their time being popular, and then falling out of favor.

White kitchens are timeless!  A quick change of accents and hand towels,

and you have a whole new feeling for your kitchen.  

 Last but not least,  the wedding painting!!

I wanted to show you the finished painting of my son Brandon's wedding

to his bride, Mimi.  Live event painter, Sheila Foley started this painting during 

the outdoor wedding we held in our courtyard under a tent,

and finished it in her studio and called me about a year later to say it was ready.

It was worth the wait!!

We now have a unique memento of a special day for our family, and it 

captured the wedding festivities and mood so well! 

The attention to detail, and capturing peoples likenesses was unreal!

Simply amazing!

This was taken an hour before the guests arrived for the wedding,

where Sheila had started the background of the painting.

To see more about the wedding day 

and the painting in progress click here.

For more information on live event artist  Sheila Foley, click here.

A FANCY French Dollhouse Kitchen

 It's already the first remodel, and I only began my dollhouse pursuit a few months ago.

The kitchen needed an upgrade, when I decided to move the cooker (thats what they

call the fancy European stoves) over between the countertops.

After I moved the cooker to the cabinet wall, I moved the bakers rack I made

over to the same wall, and hung it above one of the base cabinets.

 This was the layout before, a simple country kitchen for the servants. 

 Hahah. There is always a

running story behind every dollhouse, don't you know.

The before layout had the bakers rack over the cooker.

Which in real life would be FOOLISH because all the cooking grease and 

steam would go over all the copper pans and utensils. So I decided to 

make a European style fancy vent hood to go with the fancy cooker.

 It was built from balsa wood scraps and a piece of heavy paper for the curved part. 

Store bought miniature corbels were added to the bottom for that fancy old world flair. 

 I primed the wood with gesso and then I noticed after I sprayed it with the shiny green paint

I had used for the cooker, that there were splotchy shiny areas and the paper was mostly dull.

It occurred to me that anywhere the gesso had touched the paper, that was where the paint did its proper thing and had a glossy shine.  So I went back and primed the paper area of the hood with the gesso, and then sprayed again with the Krylon seafoam green paint.  

Then I applied "brass" strips to the hood using card stock that had been wrapped

in gold metallic paper and tacky glue.  They looked awesome!!

The thing was FANCY!!! It made the kitchen way more FANCY!

 But something wasn't fancy at all....

 The hanging light was NOT fancy. 

It was a simple country kitchen light fixture. It had to go.

Goodbye tiny copper lantern.

Hello big French chandelier! 

The kitchen also finally got a refrigerator and 

another bakers rack to hold more copper and our farm fresh eggs.

One more look at how amazing it looks from EVERY angle.

And....

The Kitchen Aid mixer got upgraded to the copper version like the one in 

my own tiny real life kitchen.  

You see that is the fun part. Making

things resemble your favorite parts of your home, and then adding 

FANCY things you WISH you had, but sadly DO NOT.

And while I tried to take a few quick pics with my FANCY camera,

a little hand snuck in while my eye was firmly resting on the camera.

As I snapped the pic, I heard her say in her little voice: 

"Broken"

I popped my head up and saw that she had yanked off the cabinet door.

You see the doors and drawers are false fronts and she is very intent on

opening and closing anything she can get her hands on.

I told her, "Grammy will fix it." 

And then quickly ushered Reeve right back to her own little dollhouse.

It is filled with colorful inexpensive vintage dollhouse parts I have been

finding with the help of my sister, Ellen. 

 It is everything a little girl would want.

Where she played happily for quite some time,

and only broke a few things.