Monday, December 29, 2014

Panoply 2014: It's a Wrap!

It's been a great year, a true panoply, and putting these collages together by subject matters that matter to me are my way of remembering the best of 2014. No lengthy descriptions, no links back, just headers to prompt my own recollection of the various subjects. If you're so inclined, you can type the subject into the search block just above my photo on the right sidebar (e.g., garden, tablescape, etc), and related posts will come up, and you can feel free to dig in. Enjoy!  
Garden Journal - the Four Seasons
Panoply Picks - Estate Sales, Auctions, Antique Stores, Curbside
Panoply Displays
The Year of Organizing & Purging: Paper, Bathroom, Closet, Kitchen Pantry, Dishes, Basement
Indoor Decor Changes in My Favorite Room - the Sunroom and the Four Seasons
Travel Adventures - B&B Water Crisis Getaway, St. Maarten, Grand Cayman, Boy Scouts National Camp, Alexandria/DC, Niagara, Montreal, Quebec, Acadia & Bar Harbour
Creating Tablescapes with my Dish Collections
Hosting Various Family Gatherings (and actually using those dishes!)
I've enjoyed meeting so many new friends throughout the year, and look forward to more of the same in 2015. Thank you to all my loyal readers, and for those who may be new, I hope you'll continue to visit. I love your comments and hope that you'll find my style approachable and welcoming.

Year-End 2014 Panoply Booth Vignettes

As if November and December are not busy enough months at home, my sister and I found ourselves shuffling arrangements within our antique mall booth spaces several times in these last two months. Here are a few shots since my last update of our spaces, and how we stand going into the New Year.
1960's vintage New Year's Eve noisemakers and party hats
This Finch Fine Furniture dining room mahogany pairing (below) is just wonderful, and the acorn and leaf detail of the hardware on each piece is unique. We were lucky to have scored these pieces at a bargain; consequently, our customers will enjoy a considerable savings passed on to them as well.
The Dining Room: solid mahogany furniture from our Black Friday Auction Deals
Beautiful acorn detail on the furniture hardware
A recent estate sale yielded the beautiful, antique settee below, petitely sized. I can easily visualize this in a foyer, under a stairway nook, or maybe near a fireplace. The andirons and tools are at the ready, as are a few vintage books for your reading pleasure, with pretty pictures and titles (such as "An Old Sweetheart of Mine" - indeed!). Or, a series of 1894 leather-bound books, "Great Men and Famous Women" could prove to enlighten you well beyond their originally intended purpose 100 years ago!
Perfectly petite, antique walnut settee in super condition
One of two upholstered chairs had sold from the blue chair grouping we've had a while, so the settee slid into place nicely.
Overall view of the dressier booth space
As I was drafting this post, I received two calls, one saying the stained glass in front of the mirror (above) had sold; the other saying someone purchased the buffet / sideboard from the Finch Fine Furniture dining room pairing. Wasting no time, we hurried into the mall on the 23rd and restyled the spaces again.

The 'dining room' has become a sort of keeping room, shifting the settee and a side chair in place where the buffet stood.
The 'living area' is restyled with a coffee table and wool, hooked rug, opening the space a bit.
Before & After: DR space
Before & After: LR space
Additionally, we've brought in a few additional quality smalls in the past couple of months.
Rookwood vase, hand-painted watercolor, and brass caddy
Italian religious triptychs and coordinating, Florentine trinket box
Waterford crystal, bakelite, and sterling tools
Smalls continuously get shifted around to accommodate showcasing, finishing a new vignette, or to make way for new things coming in.
Various smalls in stepback cabinet shelving unit
Vintage and antique mesh and beaded purses
Selection of jewelry and other vanities
Ink wells, crystal chess set, Russian hand-painted papier mache tea caddy
We'll be pulling all the leftover Christmas items down and boxing them up soon, but first we clustered them and discounted them deeply for last chance purchasing.
Christmas items, clustered, for deep discounting
January and February are (generally) fair months for sales, as shoppers take advantage of their Christmas gift money and even their early tax refunds. As vendors, we try to keep a stash of items, both big and small, to fill the voids of space and keep things interesting until our buying season comes into full swing again in late winter, early spring.
A winter frost collage of smalls
It's always exciting to find vintage and antique treasures that are well-priced and popular for resale, but even more exciting is finding items that are unusual or hard to come by, and know that others love them too. I always thought being a personal shopper would be a fun job, and that's exactly what the hobby of antiquing allows us to do. It also allows the creative license for shuffling things around for fresh looks, something I do a lot less of in my own home.

Do you enjoy the hunt for unusual things from the past, something that stirs a good memory? Or, do you prefer the "less is more" approach to styling yourself or the space you call your own?  New or old, what's your preference? Do you like shuffling things around at home for a new, fresh look?


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Monday, December 22, 2014

Holiday Recap 2014

With a recap from Panoply's holiday posts in various pictures and links back, I wish you a very Merry Christmas!
Traditional Holiday Home, Garden - 2014
Winter Frost Holiday Tablescape
Winter Frost Holiday Tablescape
The Little Things
The Little Things
Christmas in the Sunroom 2014
Christmas in the Sunroom 2014
Winter Woodland Tablescape
Traditional Holiday Home, Garden - 2014
Holiday Blue Light Special
Thank you to all of you who have become new friends during the year, and to those of you who continue being friends through this sophisticated pen pal system we call blogging. Our conversations are something I always look forward to, whether it's my topic or yours.

If you missed my other Christmas posts for this season, you can catch up here:
Traditional Holiday Home, Garden - 2014
Christmas in the Sunroom 2014
Winter Frost Holiday Tablescape
Winter Woodland Tablescape
O Christmas Tree, Have You Lost Weight?
The Little Things
Holiday Blue Light Special

Merry Christmas! 

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Holiday Blue Light Special

The holiday blue light special.....it lasts just five minutes at most. You have to be ready to jump on it. It happens at that time of the evening, just as daylight turns to dusk, best seen on mostly clear and sunny days.
There's not much time to run around and be indecisive. You have to be in the right place at the right time to catch it.
The light actually cools from clear to the palest of blue before the special commences.
Then, the light begins to intensify to a richer shade of blue and you position yourself to take full advantage.
That's the moment you cannot hesitate!
And then, the blue light special is over.

These photos of my home in its holiday attire were all shot within three minutes of each other this year, right around 5:30 pm, EST.  There were many fuzzy outtakes in between that were necessarily deleted. The blue light special is even harder to capture in my garden, but here's one from last year.
Is the blue light special something you chase?

Happy Holidays! 
Rita C. at Panoply
If you missed my other Christmas posts for this season, you can catch up here:
Traditional Holiday Home, Garden - 2014
Christmas in the Sunroom 2014
Winter Frost Holiday Tablescape
Winter Woodland Tablescape
O Christmas Tree, Have You Lost Weight?
The Little Things

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Monday, December 15, 2014

The Little Things

We all know decorating, especially around the holidays, doesn't have to be a big, whole house event. There are plenty of folks who could care less about a Christmas tree, garland, or even presents. Some folks can't afford to buy a lot of decorations. Others are physically unable to give what it takes to deck the halls (it's an Olympic sport, right?). And, sometimes simple really is better. I have several things in my Christmas collections  - little things, simple things - that make a big impact for me every year at Christmastime. Some of them are simply to enhance what's already in place.
When my landscape garden birch trees succumbed to birch bore a couple years ago, they had to be cut down. I salvaged the logs and created a couple of decorated vignettes in my home with them - one by the fireside, and the other by the sunroom doors. The trees are long gone, but their memory stays with me. After the holidays, I leave the logs in the containers and just remove the decorations.

For the fireside, I simply arranged the logs in the square wire basket, inserted some pinecones gathered in the neighborhood, one faux spray and one package of 14" silver-painted willow branches with battery-operated lights (from my local drugstore, $5 and $10, respectively).
For the sunroom, I arranged the birch logs in a vintage olive sieve obtained at the flea market, added neighborhood pinecones, one string of 20 electric, white lights from Big Lots ($5), and two oversized plastic ornaments (pkg of 5, $10, but I also saw them at the Dollar Tree).

Other little things that matter to me and make me happy during the holidays:
In my hard-working laundry room/mudroom/powder room, I have a collection of whisk brooms on a stepstool under the lightswitch, arranged in small, vintage marmalade pots (flea market). On the dryer, vintage, hand-crocheted potholders (a subcollection within my vintage textiles) fill an antique wash basin. I moved all the red ones to the top and stuck a string of battery-operated Little Lites into it (you can read more about my laundry room and the lights on the text hyperlinks). The red jingle bells, gingerbread men and tree are from Dollar Tree.

In my bath, I strung a different set of lights on my basket near the stool at the shower - they're vintage, hand-crocheted potholders shaped like lightbulbs, which I fell in love with! A little candle, a little Santa, a little bathmat - big Christmas impact!
In my TV/Family space, I have bookshelves that tend to be dark, so I lightened the space up with more Little Lites, pinecones, oversized ornaments, jingle bells, and birch logs cut into graduated risers. I used what ironstone I already had on the shelf, put a few lids away, and inverted one small tureen as a riser inside for a simple display.
There are other little things scattered throughout the house that make me happy each time I glance at them during the holidays. Most of the ornaments on our tree are little and take forever to position, but each and all bring back special memories of friends, family, and experiences, every time I unwrap them and find them a perfect spot.

Some of my little things are part of my ongoing collections, and some are brought out just at Christmastime, all of locations and people I want to remember. These are the things I keep.
Little lights, little things, little memories - scattered through our lives, throughout our homes. Big impact.
Happy Holidays! 
Rita C. at Panoply
If you missed my other Christmas posts for this season, you can catch up here:
Traditional Holiday Home, Garden - 2014
Christmas in the Sunroom 2014
Winter Frost Tablescape
Winter Woodland Tablescape
O Christmas Tree, Have You Lost Weight?