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!

Read more »

Starting Christmas....

Do you start your Christmas decorating a few boxes and

bits at a time like I do?  After Thanksgiving passes I get excited

to switch to the Christmas season, but we don't add our tree right away

as we do a fresh tree and it won't last more than a couple of weeks.

So I pulled out a few things and started on our main rooms.

 This potted tree lights up the small painted desk

in the corner of the dining room.  I really am loving the 

more natural look this holiday season.

A few tiny faux wreaths on the backs of my new old dining room

chairs, a few tiny lights strung around my HomeGoods orb and placed on

a garden urn are some other holiday elements in the dining room.  

I plan to add large wreaths to all of my windows
 hung with green silk plaid ribbon.

Note: This post is partially sponsored by HomeGoods as part of my participation in their Pinterest Designer program. Follow our Happy by Design Pinterest board for tips and tricks by HomeGoods Designers, like me!

Read more »

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!!

Read more »

Palace Doors~Make your own!

After visiting Versailles I came home quite inspired.  

This is a room in Marie Antoinette's casual palace, the Petit Trianon. 

As you can see its more formal than how most of us live, 

but if you could take away one decorating idea, 

I think it would be the molding.

Look past all the gilding and brocade and you will see 

the most beautiful moldings on walls and doors and fireplace surrounds. 

The moldings in the small country palace were painted in muted colors

 with the raised relief in white.  This inspired me to want to build my

 own palace door as a wall decoration.  Why not?

 Large artwork is hard to find, 

and I like the idea of hanging a door on a big wall, 
or propping it up as a display piece as it makes a great backdrop
for that empty corner of the room.  

I had a few old doors in the shop and last week  I transformed

 it into a Palace Door using Efex appliques and Chalk Paint. 

 Check it out!

 This is a finished shot of the bottom of the door. 

This shows how the Efex appliques look after we attached them

to the door. 

 Another view looking at the bottom of the door.

 The door was an old white door,

we did not prep or repaint, we used the white base

as our starting point. 

You can use scissors to trim the pieces to fit perfectly.

 After coming up with something we thought

would look good, we painted the Efex with Pure White

Chalk Paint so it would match the door color.

I don't have pics of that part. We added some

texture using crackle, but that is an optional step.

The Palace Doors in Versaille were really

not very crusty looking!  I just like things a little

bit more rustic, so we added some texture with

a crackle medium. Then we applied a custom mix

of Paris Grey and Pure White over the entire door.

 Its pretty amazing how you can transform something using these Efex.

This is my mantle, and it is done in a traditional, not rustic style.

It is a Benjamin Moore paint over the entire thing, in a white semi-gloss.

See the options you have to create different looks?

 We love our Palace Door. 

You can create the door of your dreams.

Read more »

Incredible Painted Finishes! Segreto Style!

I like to think I know a thing or two about painted finishes...I

 have been working on them for years now and am

 always turned on by a nice looking paint job! 

 Some of the nicest finishes are the ones that don't hit your 

over the head, but instead lure you in closer, asking for a second

 glance or the brush of your hand across the loveliness.  

In this category, the painter standing at the 

top of the heap is Leslie Sinclair. 

 She started a decorative painting business 

which is now recognized as the best of the best, 

and lucky for us, she has captured her work in book form.  

Luscious thick glossy pages holding beautiful images 

of real homes by real designers with her amazing painted finishes. 

The book cover alone is a knockout, isn't it? 

 Look at those cabinet doors!  Such fabulousness!

So who is this book for? Its not just for someone like me who 

is totally into painted finishes, not at all. 

Its for people who love beautiful homes, 

great design and tips and ideas on how to copy

 some of these same looks in your homes.

Hundreds of amazing looking homes, all shared in 

these lovely glossy pages.  I adore this huge book! 

 Beautiful kitchens....

 From country style to elegant and posh....

 rustically elegant dining rooms...

 stunning yet approachable.... 

 Over the top glamorous French style...

 Old world manor style....

 with decorating inspiration for all of your rooms!

 So take a trip through some of the most beautiful homes you have ever seen,

and learn how they came to look so amazing at the hand of Segreto.

You will see before and afters and learn what techniques were used 

in each of the rooms.  Leslie shares so much in these pages, it was 

so interesting to read an in depth description and not just a little blurb.

 She divides the homes into their style classifications

 and then the tour begins for each of the homes showcased.

 You will fall in love with this elegant and inspirational book!

I would order one for myself for Christmas, but I already have it 

upon request to write this review as I just adored her first book!

So pull a Secret Santa and order one for yourself :-)

Leslie shares paint colors and paint techniques for those of us interested,

and every page has full blown images of the most current design trends going.

Lots of stenciled walls, tinted plaster walls, cabinetry and furniture 

painted finishes~all of them more gorgeous than the next.

 This large beautiful design book has an interesting story

 that you may not know, and its that Leslie published it herself! 

 So it is a true labor of love, by a small business 

woman who had a vision for sharing her incredible work. 

 I love this part of the behind the 

scenes story, how she just decided to finance and publish it 

and hoped it would appeal to 

readers.  So you will only find it for sale in independent decor shops, 

antique shops and other small businesses who love Leslie's work

 as much as I do.  You won't find it in book shops or the big box stores, 

because it was published by an independent~Leslie!

 Leslie has it available online for purchase with ten dollars shipping, 

which is a good deal, because it is huge and heavy.

So open up the door and the pages to a world filled with beauty.  

Trust me, you will be glad you did. This is one book you

 will love keeping on your coffee table to grab for 

leisurely and pleasurable reading many times over!

To purchase Segreto Style from Leslie's website click here 

She has it on Amazon too, click here

Know that when you do purchase you are 

shopping small from independent businesses 

like Leslie and mine this holiday season.

And thank you for that!

Read more »