Color Her Colonial – part 2

Thank you for all the comments on the last post. It means a lot to me that so many of you are enjoying my pictures of our little Angel. She certainly has changed our lives for the better. If you have followed me for a while now ( I am going to refer to you as peeps from now on instead of followers) you know how much I wanted to be a Grammy, but it is better than even I had imagined.

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Thanks for the help when my post went haywire. I figured out why it wasn’t placed in the center and fixed that, and then I found out that I really need to edit it more carefully in Live Writer because once it is published in blogger, I don’t know enough about HTML code for text wrapping to fix what I messed up!

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Well as promised, here are more pictures from my tweaking last week. In fact, this is a picture heavy post so settle in your chair, turn on your favorite music and grab a cool tall drink or hot one, whatever floats your boat. And a lot of us have needed boats this summer!

I should preface this by saying the living room rearranging started because I wanted to move this red chair from here…

and put it directly into the corner so it wasn’t against the railing. I kept having visions of someone sitting down, and sliding back wards despite the rubber pads under the feet, and going through the railing. I also wanted to treat the railing sort as a half wall of sorts instead of just the annoyance it is to me. So I moved the red chair into the corner. BTW, I am still often asked about my primitive portraits because I have so many new peeps. They are original OOAK oil paintings on stretched canvas of our children done in 1987 by my mom. She copied the bodies from some common primitives and used the kids school pictures from that year for their heads. They are my prized possessions! When we were interviewed for the Country Sampler and Mercantile Gatherings articles, I was thrilled she got credit and mention.

So moving that chair of course started a whole domino effect. Some things didn’t fit where they once were and needed to be swapped with something else, but about 2 hours later, I was very pleased where it all landed. And that is a good thing.

See the prim portrait to the left of my settle bench? It didn’t stay there because the day after I got all done taking these pictures, I decided to change the arrangement over my day bed from this…

to this….

Of course the primitives had been in two different places so that meant additional tweaking in the hall and the master bedroom. Once I hung the portraits, I realized that the long sampler was perfect to go over the doorway to the kitchen. Which was perfect because I had taken down this PRIMITIVES sign from that spot and moved it to the dining room last week.

The long sampler fit perfectly there over the doorway.

And a smaller sampler now works well to the left of the settle bench where the primitive portrait had been – see things just kept falling into place. Sometimes when we start tweaking we create new problem areas, but this time, it was just falling into place for me.

Isn’t that a neat effect photo effect?

And the large Harry Hargrove serigraph that was over the daybed went over of the bed in our room. Franklin had put it there the day of our CS photo shoot and he knew what he was doing. I should have left it there! You never got to see that photo because it didn’t make it to print.

Okay, are you keeping track of all that moving and switching? Have I confused you yet? Don’t worry, there won’t be a test later. You can relax.

Another room I tweaked was the master bathroom.

How much can you tweak in a bathroom without changing fixtures and painting?! LOL - Not much, but I found a few ways.

The colonial box on the top of the toilet came out of the cabinet I use to store things I am not using. It’s too pretty to hide away and it works perfectly here. I mean what can you do with a shiny porcelain throne after all.

I recently decided I am going to do some more stenciling in here. At one time, there was a lot more stenciling in our house. But I did it back when my colors were blues and barn red so most of it got painted over. But for the peep that asked about it, there still is stenciling in the kitchen…

in the dining room,

in the main hallway,

in Mr. Red Door’s office ,

( I wish I had done this darker and with

another stencil below it. I need to beef this one up)

and in the bathroom.

I decided I am adding more in some rooms too. Now to find the right stencils!

So that’s the last of the tweaking pictures for now. I think.

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It is a Wednesday, so what have I been working on? Well… I have been reading a lot, doing some volunteer work online, organizing drawers and closets, cleaning up my water-logged perennial garden, babysitting, and shopping with Liliana to get her some fall jammies and clothes. Oh my, they have the cutest softest things. I had to restrain myself!! Burlington Coat factory has an awesome Baby Depot. I wanted one of everything. I even found her some toys. Sure they say 6 months and up but she didn’t have anything but a few rattles and blankies and stuffed toys so I HAD to buy her a few. Shhh… don’t tell Grampy!! We had so much fun.

Let’s see, what else did I do… oh yeah, I patched all the holes in the walls and touched up the paint from all my tweaking of course.

And I am very excited to be getting ready for a weekend guest. My friend Jill is coming down from Maine for the weekend and I am readying my office as her guest room. Yesterday as I was getting ready to clean the office, I spilled my coffee on this desk. I have never done that before and of course, I had my calendar laying down and mail and coupons and notes from friends I wanted to save - all kinds of paperwork got wet. Thank goodness the keyboard is on a slide out shelf so none of the electronics got destroyed. Since I spent so much time cleaning it off, I took a picture for the peep who asked me about my desk. Many of you have seen it before. It is nothing fancy, not really prim or colonial. I added black to the space behind the monitor, a colonial wool runner to the top, and 2 canvas stenciled placemats to the desktop to prim it up a bit. I bought it when I was still working and running the preschool and took home a lot of work. I needed something quickly and we had 2 kids in college and it was inexpensive, so it did the trick. Now the storage on in the cubbies holds craft and card making magazines and supplies.

On Saturday we will spend the day out and about so I am planning our picnic lunch and other meals. Jill is a lot of fun to cook for and so plain old ham and cheese sandwiches just don’t cut the mustard!

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Despite the heat and humidity and bugs and other things I don’t like about summer, there are some very redeeming qualities. Most notably the flowers and fresh produce. Summer squash has long been a favorite of Mr. Red Door and I. ( I am copying other bloggers – and Mr. Red Door likes his new name!) We both grew up eating it often in the summer – fresh from our parent’s gardens. When we were first married, we would cook it and eat with butter and salt – instead of popcorn in the evening for snack. When bought our first house we planted a veggie garden and grew it tons of it. Fast forward to last summer when I found a great recipe for Summer Squash Patties. I made them again last night and they are just as good as we remembered them. Click here to see the recipe!

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If you are tired of baby pictures, you can exit now. For the rest of you, I will leave you with a cute little story that I sent my mom in an email the other day. Angela is bringing Liliana to lunch at my parents house next week for a quiet visit.

I thought my mom would get a kick out of Liliana ‘talking’.

"What? I am going to Holden? Isn't that where my Great Mamma and Great Bampa live with the big fat kitty named Muffy?"

"Oh this is going to be so much fun!!"

"I am getting more and more excited!!"

"YIPPEEEEEE!!

I love my Great Mamma and Great Bampa!!"

"Whoa - All that excitement tired me out.

I better rest up for the trip to Holden!"

♥ Dear Sweet sweet Liliana ,

Grampy and I love you right up to

the moon and back♥

Until next time – hugs, Grammy Linda