FRONT PORCH PARTY

Hello and welcome to my porch party being hosted by Rhondi of Rose Colored Glasses. If you click here you can go to her blog and get all the links who are participating. When I heard about Rhondi’s Front Porch Party. I was so excited about it. I have always loved porches and I’m so happy to finally have a house with a porch. Our first two houses only had small little porches not even big enough for a chair. When my husband and I started looking for our retirement home that was one thing it had to have. First on my list! This house has two so the one in the older part of the house we are going to turn it into a four seasons sun room. Perfect because it is south facing so we will be able to grow lettuce, tomatoes and beautiful flowers all year round. Well I just couldn’t wait to get started on taking photos for this fun post! I thought since our porch railings and my shabby white furniture was due a coat of paint this summer I would go ahead and do that before taking pics. Well just about the time I got all my materials ready to paint the sky’s opened up with rain, hail and wind, and it has been doing that for three days. We have had awful floods in WV from this and I pray for the people who lost so much! I thought I would wait until this morning to take pics when hopefully the sun would be shinning. I was up and out on my porch bright and early today and the sun was out but I never thought I would find the mess I did. It had rained so hard the porch flooded with water and mud. What a job to get that cleaned up before taking pics. Needless to say, no freshly painted furniture and railings and the floors are a little messy, cleaned up best as I could. But my pretty porch is still there and Oh how I love it! Take a look, please click on the pics so you can take a closer look!

Some close ups for my little table scapes!

We spend so much time on our porch, it's quite large so we have picnic's out here also. Sit and relax at every chance we get!

Most of the hand painted items on my porch were done by my daughter Jen from Jennifers Petal Palace.

A view from our porch.

Wisteria at one end of the porch. Really makes a cozy place to sit. When in bloom it's just beautiful with a heavenly scent.

Roses are just now starting to bloom.

A few pics of other season with our porch. This is a view from my porch during a cold snowy winter in the hills of West Virginia.

My picket fence was another must have for me, it took quite a few years to get hubby to put that in. Coming from a farming family he loves wide open spaces. He did not want any parts of a fence but now loves it as much as I do!

Below is the older porch on the pre-civil war part of the house, this is the one we are going to make into a four seasons sun room. We will put steps on this side so we can enter from the picket fenced area. Windows that we have purchased will be from ceiling to floor. We are going to keep the old wainscoted ceiling, we love it. We will be putting a fire place in here also. A very cozy place to sit in the winter while the snow is coming down! It has two front doors, one entering into the office and the other into our bedroom. The rooms used to be front and back palors. If you scroll down to my first post you can read about the history of our home.

A warm misty evening last summer!

Now how is this for a porch? This beautiful place is a resort in Bedford, Pa. My daughter works for this chain called Benchmark Corporation. My husband and I used to stop in Bedford on our trips to NJ and admire this beautiful place before Benchmark purhased and restored it over the past three years. We plan to spend a few days here later this year.

This is what it looked like before it was restored. My husband and I always stop at places like this, we just loved it here and hoped one day it would be restored. Our wish was answerd.

Thank you for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed this little tour of our porch! Now I'm going to take the rest of the day to relax with my kitties and puppies, take my lap top out and look at everyone else's porch. I'm sure I will get some wonderful decorating ideas. A home is never done!

I LOVE PURPLE WHEN THE LILACS ARE IN BLOOM

Hello, thank you for stopping by, I thought I'd share one of my favorite flowers with you. I don’t usually use purple in my decorating except as an accent in a floral arrangement but I love purple when the lilacs are in bloom. It seems every spring lilacs delight me with their intoxicating scent and colors in varying shades of purple, blue, white and pink. During that time I pull out all of my purple and lavender from around the house and make little displays on my kitchen window sills along with bouquets of lilacs. Please feel free to click on the pics to enlarge and get a closer look!

Lilacs can survive hundreds of years. The oldest living lilac in the United States is said to have been planted in 1750. There are more than 20 species and 1,000 cultivars of lilacs and all bloom at a different time so you can really extend the lilac bloom time well into summer. I plant a few every year and this year I planted two lilacs that re-bloom in summer. I purchased them from Michigan Bulb Company. As little as they were (only 7 inches tall) one of the plants arrived with little blooms on it.

In Kate Greenaway’s book “The Language of Flowers” she explains that in the Victorian Era they used flowers to express their feelings. The meaning of a purple lilac is “First Emotions of Love” and white lilac is “Youthful Innocence”.

My husband built me this cabinets under my kitchen windows, they are actually kitchen wall cabinets that he mounted on the floor under all four windows, they make a nice place for plants and seasonal decorations.

This cute little bear is made from a lilac print fabric. I bought it years ago and it's still one of my favorites.

These pretty little crochet lavender glass cozies I purchased on my last trip to NJ, I found some really nice antique malls that I go to on every visit. I always come out with some real treasures.

Some of the other jadeite on this cupboard I picked up on the same trip.

While I was in my purple mood, I pulled out this little Victorian cross stitch that I had done years ago and made it into a tote bag.

This pretty vintage crochet basket I picked up in the same antique store that I got the glass cozies at. I guess I was in a purple mood that day!

Of couse I had to have some bling so I used a vintage button with a little bling glued on top of it.

I love this print that I used on the inside, I have some left over that I thought would make some really pretty yoyo's for a quilt I'm working on.

My wisteria did not do to good this year because of a late frost but I did get a few blooms from it. This is the first time I’ve brought a bloom in the house, the scent was heavenly!

The next four pics are all my little clippings that I pulled out of magazines on lilacs, I have a folder full of them. They are nice to look back on when I'm in my purple lilac mood! If you enlarge these you can get a better look at some of the pretty clippings.

Well I hope you enjoyed this little visit of me while in my purple mood! Why not plant a lilac tree or two? I'm sure you will enjoy them as much as I do! Please stop by again!

Blessings, Shirl

THE ROSE ROOM PARTY

My friend Rachael at The Rose Room is hosting a big bash in honor of her 100th post!!!
She is having a "It's Nice to Meet You" party to help us all become better acquainted.
AND if you do a couple of easy things that she asks, she will enter you in for some fabulous prizes!!

Congratulations to Rachael on her 100th post and I wish you many hundreds more!

First thing that Rachael asks is for us to share where we do our bogging~~~

My blogging space is in my bedroom and is being remodeled right now, but I will still show you how it looks now and share with you about some of my new plans for this area. The border is coming down and I am putting up a pretty shabby cottage rose print wallpaper on the top half of the walls,(sample below) a white wainscoting for the bottom half, oak trim around the windows and door frame, since most the furniture is Victorian Oak reproduction. Then most important is some crystal chandeliers will make my bedroom into the shabby cottage look that I am after!
This is where I spend my time blogging! Please feel free to click on the pictures and have a close look!

I got this beautiful leather chair for christmas this past year and I love it but so does my sweet little kitty, he loves to sharpen his nails on it so rather than have it destroyed I'm going to use it in my sewing room for my sewing chair. I just purchased a smaller one for this room that I am making a pink slipcover with a long skirt for it.

I just painted this desk chippy white and put the pink crystal knobs on it.

I would was trying to come up with something to cover the wires under the desk, so I thought I would make a skirt to go under the desk on a tension rod toward the back. I put skirts on everything! LOL

I made covers for all the computer pieces, for when they are not in use. Which is not often!

I've been looking for a little table to put to the right of the desk to hold the router, desk has a small top. I'm going to put a chandelier above the desk. The old desk had a table lamp but it had more room on the top.

Shelf above the desk.

To the left of the desk is a door that leads out to a porch that we are making into a four season sun room. For now I don't use the door so I have a table full of pretties to look at and garden trellice with tags and banners.

Sometimes I take my laptop outside on the porch on a nice day or my daughter comes over we have it on the kitchen island to show each other what cute blogs we found the day before.

Below is a pic of the wallpaper that I purchased to put in this room. Wow I guess I put up alot of pics, I am a very visual person so I tend to overdo on the pics! LOL

Now for the 10 questions that we were to answer ~~~

1. Relationship: Happily married to Edward for 37 years

2. Children: Beautiful daughter and handsome son, and three handsome grandsons!

3. Pets: Two dogs ~ Molly ~ Landseer Newfoundland & Goldie Mini Golden Retriever ~ Cats Angel ~ Blue Point Himalayan & 7 rescued strays that are all precious to me.

4. Age: 56

5. Star Sign: Virgo

6. Fave Food: Crab Legs

7. Fave Drink: Coke & Earl Gray Tea~~~Take A Boost, a NJ thing!

8. House Decor Style: Country Victorian & Cottage Chic

9. Collections: Lenox Southern Belles, Vintage Samplers, Embroidered brush & comb vanity linens, Jadeite, pink depression glass, Cherished Teddies, Vintage Embroidered Linens, Totes, teacups, teapots, Holly Hobbie, anything with pink roses.

10. How Did You Get Into Blogging: My daughter sent me a link to Isabella’s Closet & Aunt May’s Cottage, I just thought they were beautiful and wanted to do something like that. My daughter Jen and my PRH sister Connie helped me to get this up and running.

Now click on the link here to go to Rachael's party on her blog & wish her congratulations!

Thank you for stopping by, please come back again! It was so nice to visit with you! Blessings! Shirl