Bringing the Garden Inside

I probably won't have time to do the usual Inspiration Friday this week as I'll be gallivanting with my friends from San Francisco. So here are a few pretty "outside in" shots for Thursday. I love doing this kind of decorating, bringing garden items into the house - mine include old iron urns, stone balls, bits of old porch posts with peeling paint, bird houses, and of course my blue shutters and lots of fresh flowers. I've recently seen some of these old vintage green glass jars - with the tin lids - think I may get a few in different sizes.

Urn with woven balls on my dining room tableA favorite bird house - too tall for a shelf so sits on the floor.These iron urns are a perfect fit on the pine armoire - dried hydrangeas from last year's garden. I wallpapered the interior of the armoire some years ago. Postcards on door are watercolors of coastal scenes in Devon, England, my home - I enjoy glancing at them several times a day!
By next Monday I will be looking for a comfy chair like this to take a little break perhaps. Not for long though as we have more friends coming to stay for Memorial Day weekend!

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Cooking for Company

My long time best friend and her wonderful husband are coming to visit from California this Thursday thru Monday - can't wait to see them. She and I are both from England but met in Washington, D.C. in 1962. We discovered we grew up in the same seaside town and lived just a couple of miles from one another. We shared an apartment, bought a tiny British car, traveled to Canada for a weekend, danced all night in D.C. clubs, and did many crazy things I don't dare repeat! Oh to be twenty again!!
I'm so busy.........Spring cleaning, gardening, and now starting the cooking. Love to cook and try to get as much done ahead of time so I can spend more time with my friends. This Italian parsley is beautiful - it will be used a lot.
These gorgeous red peppers will become the Piedmont Roasted Peppers - to go with the penne with Gorgonzola and salad.

Here's the recipe - hope it enlarges when you click! It's from Delia Smith, a great British cook.
Will try to keep up with you all during this busy week. Hope everyone is having a great one.

Our Mothers are many.........

.........................and on Mother's Day we celebrate them all.

Always With You

Your Mother is always with you.

She's the whisper of the leaves

as you walk down the street,

She's the smell of bleach

in your freshly laundered socks.

She's the cool hand on your brow

when you're not well.

Your Mother lives inside your laughter.

She's crystallized in every teardrop.

She's the place you came from,

your first home.

She's the map you follow

with every step that you take.

She's your first love

and your first heartbreak......

and nothing on earth can separate you.

~~~~~~~~~~Author Unknown

A Mother laughs our laughter

Sheds our tears,

Returns our love,

Fears our fears,

She lives our joys,

Cares our cares,

And hopes our hopes.

~~~~~~~~Julia Summers

My Mother died in 2003, she was 91 and had lived an interesting life. Born "within the sound of Bow Bells" in London, she was a true Cockney, but she grew up in the beautiful town of Windsor where my grandfather was assigned to Windsor Castle as an officer in the Coldstream Guards. Her playground was the castle grounds, she and her twin brother would run up and down the castle steps - sounded like great fun in those days when children were sent out to play after breakfast and told to be home at dusk! She was sent to boarding school with her older sister and then learned her craft, dressmaking, and was apprenticed to a Royal dressmaker in London where she made gowns for Queen Elizabeth (the late, much adored "Queen Mum"). After moving to Devonshire where my grandfather had purchased a pub/B&B, she enjoyed life on the coast. At the start of WWII she joined the Royal Air Force and worked underground plotting positions of enemy planes crossing the English Channel. There she met my Father and they were married in 1942 - when the war ended they set up home in bucolic Devon where they remained, raising my brother and I. Times were tough following the War. Mother was a hard worker and a strict parent, I am who I am because of her.

Fast forward....................Mother said she would never have let me leave England to work in Washington, D.C., supposedly for just one year, if she thought I would never return to live. For forty years we traveled back and forth, "across the pond", never going more than a year without a hug and then another teary goodbye until the next time. I dragged my kids there loaded down with baggage including a suitcase full of cloth diapers - no Pampers in the sixties! She literally had to drag my Dad here, just once, because he was terrified of flying, but he had a ball whilst in the USA and spent the remainder of his life talking about the trip to anyone who would listen, including strangers on the street. Mother kept visiting here until she was about eighty. She loved everything about her visits, the long flight, the weather, the stores, the scenery, and of course seeing her family and all the many friends she had made here over the years.

My trip across the pond in March 2003 was expected to be one where I'd be spending a couple of weeks visiting Mother in the rehab hospital. She'd been a patient there since January after suffering a small stroke, and a subsequent bad fall, at home. On arrival at the hospital I feared I had made it just in time, and although she was unable to speak to me, she smiled and knew me, and I did all the talking for an hour or so before kissing her goodbye and promising to be back in the morning. The phone call came just as I was leaving the house.........I still rushed to the hospital. They said she had been waiting for me to come home and I know that all she needed was to see me one more time. I will always be grateful that I got to see my dear Mother that one last time..............................on her side of the pond.

I read the above poem "Always With You" at her funeral. I will be thinking of her especially on Mother's Day.

Inspiration Friday

Be inspired every day! Make the most of all those vintage finds - furniture, fabrics, books, china, jewelery. The possibilities are endless. Gather while you can. Then sit in your quiet place and create something special, something that is part of you. The cycle will continue and your vintage pretties will become someone's lucky vintage find in years to come.

Wish I had room for a little corner such as this - I would be truly inspired if I could sit here to work!

The house with blue shutters

I really don't know why I've become obsessed with shutters, especially faded, gently chipped, aged blue ones. I first realized that the invention of shutters was to "shut out" the heat of the day, and cool of the night, when in Tuscany a few years ago. Nothing excited me more than rising in the morning, pulling the windows in and then throwing open the wood shutters. Of course seeing the stupendous views beyond the windows didn't hurt either. Will have to dig out photos (pre-digital days) of that trip later. Hanging immobile plastic shutters outside American windows isn't really what it's all about!

Again I recall loving their look several years ago when I saw my dream house being built nearby - one of those multi-million dollar McMansions. Not that I would ever want a spread that huge (we cottage gals know what we really love), however it's a stunning French style house with lots of windows, each cozied by a set of gorgeous blue/green real wood shutters, complete with iron hinges and shutter dogs. I drive to this exclusive subdivision every now and then just to stare at this lovely home and the shutters!! Guess this would be an entry for the " 7 weird things about me" list.

While visiting my brother in the Minervois area of the South of France last Summer, I was in heaven - surrounded by blue shutters, most with that aged look. Then during a three day side trip to Provence there were more - here are some pics.

This building "HOTEL DE VILLE" (Town Hall) even had the perfect shutters!
Now these below I could actually view from inside as this is my brother's newly restored (four years of very hard work) 200 year old village house in the Minervois - I'm glad he decided to keep the old shutters. This window looks out onto the front garden. My granddaughter had just as much fun as I did opening the shutters.

Yeah! These are the old shutters I told you about - they were hanging about at SuzAnna's Antiques calling for a window to grace. Now they're hanging in the bedroom on each side of the bay window (yes DH did think I'd gone nuts, however he seems to like them too!), and I have my own version of the perfect faded blue, shabby shutters giving the room a bit of that old village look. I can at least look at them and love their chipped paint and wrought iron "dogs", even though I can't throw them open and see the 9th century Abbey and vineyards (like my brother in France), the olive groves and hilltop castle in Bagno Vignoni Tuscany, or the the red tiled roofs of Cortona, Sienna and Montepulciano in all those wonderful Italian hill towns.

Next project is to paint/age a wonderful old sewing machine table I inherited - going to use it here next to the bed in place of the round one. Also, have a sweet crystal "candolier" to hang in this corner above the table - aging it right now as it's too white. This is one of the pleated chiffon lampshades I made several years ago - can't part with it even though it's pale pink and maybe doesn't fit the new scheme perfectly. Perhaps I can come up with a new trim color!

Flagstone Pathways

Has anyone had success planting between flagstones? The pathway we had laid around the gazebo looks OK but I would really love to have some low growing, creeping plants as shown in this landscaping book. These appear to be creeping thymes which will take foot traffic. Yesterday I dug holes, added good potting soil, and sprinkled with expensive, organic, thyme seeds. My fingers are crossed. I feel this is a leap of faith. Will the squirrels dig up the dirt from above, or the chipmunks and voles from below? Will the rains come and wash it all away before the teeny tiny seeds have a chance to grow a root, a stem, a little leaf?

If the thyme grows I may try other low creeping plants and would love lavender and chamomile along the inside edges, perhaps some Irish moss - want the area to look more like a "Secret Garden", a little overgrown and faded by time. Actually some of the flagstones have already started turning a bit green where they remain damp - these pics were taken late last Summer when all was new and perfect!

Vintage Bird Prints

While on the popular Spring subject of nesting birds, I so love these amazing little cards (4X6) printed to advertise the Singer Sewing Machine Company in 1926-1927. My fabulous friends Susie and Anna at SuzAnna's Antiques showed them to me this week and I picked these to use on a six paned vintage window. Not only are the color illustrations of bird and egg just exquisite, the reverse side gives bird notes, and such an interesting article on the machines and sewing projects. Hoping they enlarge when you click so you can read.