A Walk in the Garden Today

A soothing walk through the garden today after a very long, tiring week of missing in action......I took the hummingbird feeders down, hoping to move my little friends along....nights are cool, days are hot...I'm still harvesting my lavender...Indian summer.  A few photos from the last couple weeks......

I'll be back soon to recap the plumbing project and how I shuffled things around from room to room.  I'm liking things much better after the fact.  I even acted on a comment from one reader and re-rescued one table destined for the upcoming yard sale.  :)

Winner - Country Living Fair 3-Day Passes

As noted in my post last week, the winner of the pair of 3-day passes to Country Living's Fair (September 13-15, 2013 in Columbus, OH) was drawn after last night's deadline.  Kris Vavra is the winner, and has been notified by email.  Congratulations, Kris!

Photo Credit:  Courtesy Country Living Magazine

A special thanks to Country Living Magazine, a Hearst Magazines publication, for the opportunity to share the passes with readers.   Let the Fall Fun begin!

This Post is Ugly and I'll Be MIA

Some people thrive on demolitions, renovations, and new construction.  Not me.  I'm about to take on a little project in having some plumbing upgrades contracted - some main house water shutoff valves replaced and a few things changed in my guest bathroom - MY bathroom.  It sounds simple enough.  It's not.  I'll be MIA (missing in action) from most other activities for the next week or so for all the work leading up to the plumbers arriving later in the week, and cleaning up afterward.

My Labor Day was all that - I started in the basement, where one of the shutoff valves is located - moving 'stuff'.  In the photo below (remember, I said this post is ugly), see that tiny white arrow toward the top?  That's where the shutoff valve is.  See those HUGE black arrows on the floor?  That's where all my stuff was that I moved (the angle of the photo made it a little hard for me to actually draw an accurate line. That arrow on the right should be straighter, rather than angling leftward.

I put this off like one would put off doing taxes, but I think I was ultimately more efficient in my procrastination, as I was able to accomplish three things simultaneously:  1) organize some personal things into plastic tubs vs. boxes; 2) reorganize and condense some of my antiquing inventory; and 3) purge and segregate items for an upcoming yard sale.  The photo below shows a mish-mash of SOME of our personal stuff and SOME of my antiquing inventory.

From the left side to about the poster size photo (of Mr. P. as a little boy, saying, "I don't like STUFF!") is our personal section; from the galvanized trunk & suitcase over to the picnic basket and stack of boxes is inventory.  And then there's the yard sale stuff to the right of that:

Here's another view of the side of my basement I shuffled (I will be moving all this again, once the job is complete.  Mr. P & I practice ballroom dancing down here when the floor is a little clearer).

See all those boxes along that back wall (that I did not shuffle)?? Approximately the bottom half (the plastic tubs) is MY stuff that I moved into this house when my husband & I combined households ten years ago!  All the boxes on top of those bins is inventory.  I do have a system, in which everything is labeled, and I have Word documents that I can do a search on to locate things.  But the system breaks down when I want to gain access to anything on the bottom layer - or the ceiling.  Thank goodness I don't have to move stuff on the opposite side of the basement where the other shutoff valves are.  Yes, it is pretty full on its perimeters also - with mostly Christmas decor in huge, Rubbermaid containers, but the corner where the shutoff valves are is clear.

Next is the bathroom.  I'm having fixtures upgraded and caulking replaced.  In order to gain access to the fixtures, I had two choices:  remove the shower tile or have an access panel cut from the other side of the shower wall.  This is where I always comment, "Must've been a man who engineered that design".  I chose the latter (create access panel, so this design flaw could be corrected at its root cause), which involved moving this wall of furniture (see below).

See that chunk of a cabinet with glass display case on the far left?  And that display case on the right? They're all really heavy.  And so is the dresser, which is LOADED with vintage linens (no Martha Stewart empty drawer for guests in this guest bedroom).  The distribution of wall-to-wall furniture has begun.  So far, I've moved the two items on the left to my reading room:

These two items are totally in the way, but it's my room, and I use this room more in the winter vs. summer. I still have room to access the balcony door (follow the light) to be able to jump if I need to.
The small curio display on the right of the wall has been temporarily moved to my office / spare bedroom:

The wall-to-wall furniture is driving me crazy, and I'd really like to lighten the heavy load of its appearance after the project.  This display case is designed to be on a table, so I'm trying to find the silver lining to this dark cloud over my head figure out how I can rearrange things after the project.  It' a lot like the antique mall displays - you just know when it's wrong and when it's right.  This is wrong, and I need to find a better way to display my collection of antique purses.

Still more to do in this room, but I already like seeing the wall space much better.  I'll be storing EVERYTHING remaining away, covering the big items, and maybe even the chandelier in the mirror.  After all, when have you EVER seen cutting through plaster NOT make a mess?  This is sort of like deja poo - I've seen this crap before, as in when my floors were refinished two years ago.

If moving everything isn't draining enough (no pun intended), selecting hardware was only made less difficult by the fact that I wasn't replacing basins or tile, so my choices were narrowed to existing hole sizes - sort of.  We're going from these lavatory faucets :

To Delta's Lahara in brushed stainless steel, a transitional choice, with clean, classic lines:

The shower hardware was made difficult by a little known fact I soon learned:  two-handled faucets are becoming extinct unless you want builder-grade chrome fixtures (like I already have, complete with gross, moldy buildup behind the plastic handles.  Sorry, no closeups here - that's just too gross).  Replacement fixtures are the central, single handled types which are code-specific for safety in preventing scalding.  So, we're going from this:

To this:

 But, to make the conversion, we had to get one of these (in the brushed stainless) to adapt our old, two-handled fixtures:

And end up having to do this:

So, not only am I having to have the wall behind the shower torn out in the guest bedroom, I'm having to have the shower tile torn out as well.  Earlier, I stated I had two choices.  Little did I know I would get both. THIS is only one of the reasons I hate renovations and new construction - change orders on the fly.  Scope creep is the other thing I hate, worse than getting a crown on a tooth.  Mr. P. is all about scope creep.  He would've had not only my bathroom completely gutted and rebuilt, but he was ready (and is STILL) wanting to redo the master bath. I feel compelled to manage both the project and the scope creep.  

If you don't hear from me for awhile, I'll either be moving stuff, covering up stuff, selling stuff, or moving toward that light in the photo above that leads to the balcony.  I'll be MIA.  I hope to see you on the other side of all this.

Fluffing the Booth Spaces for Fall

This past week, my sister & I restyled our booth spaces to reflect signs of Fall and feathering the nest.....

We got news that our pie safe we set in July sold, so bringing in a new [old] piece of furniture prompted a major overhaul.

We had just sourced a fainting couch and, not only did we bring it in, we soon realized it sort  of clashed with the remaining styling of our cottage-themed space.  So, we did a complete flip of two of our spaces!

The so-called cottage space went from this (in July):

To this, ready for September and a more Fall appearance:

This Victorian look can come off as dark (not to mention the poor fluorescent lighting in the mall which always makes photographs a challenge), but once we lightened it up with the vintage crochet tablecloth and pair of floor lamps (only one is visible in photo above), it came together nicely.  We added the smoking stand, walking stick and top hat, and completely reworked the pegboard wall of prints.  To complete the vignette, we also moved the antique iron bed frame, vintage wicker table behind it, and all the wool area rugs from its prior location.  We placed the largest rug on the floor, tying it altogether.

And the previous area we called the "living room" went from this (note the wall of prints and bed with rugs):

To this (I apologize for the darkness of the photo. Among all the white pieces, the fluorescent lighting and flash/non-flash choice on my camera, I either get a total white-out or this.  I even adjusted the contrasts & brightness of the photos taken).

This is now the condensed version of the cottage scene.  And because the rug in the "living room" did not coordinate with the new and condensed cottage scene, we flipped the underpinning of this area (set just the week prior) from this:

To this:

And yes, that sewing machine is new [old] too.  It's a very nice Singer machine with 6-drawer cabinet, complete with all its attachments in the original dove-tailed wooden box.  Moving the cabinet & machine wasn't the easiest task, especially when we lift with heavy crocks, wooden boxes and lanterns in place, lol.  We're gluttons for punishment We love what we do when we style our space, and it's a good thing.

And because our antique mall sees more traffic during holiday weekends (we are at the junction of interstates I-79, I-77 and I-64), we moved in a few more items for Labor Day weekend.

This vintage scarecrow is wanting to feature (and sell!) the vintage, wooden box.  The box has some great parquetry in a nautical theme on it, as well as locking doors with shelves behind it.  

One more thing we styled around the primitive cabinet was this wagon wheel, with a great provenance:

This wheel was, literally, dug out of the dirt floor basement level of a local, 3-generation estate.  The family who owned and actually used this wheel was locally based, and we helped the person to whom all its contents were bequeathed upon clean it all out - what a job!  The house was built at the turn of the 20th century (we even have the original list of building supply materials), and this wheel (we sold the other one last year) was original to the family's means of transportation when the house was built.

So, we're set for the start of September, at least for another week - or until a major piece sells.  At which time you'll find us flipping vignettes, yet again.  

Meanwhile, I have fluffing to do here at home - company's coming for a gathering.  Enjoy the rest your long weekend..  And if you haven't entered for your chance to WIN a pair of 3-day passes to Country Living's Fair in Columbus September 13-15 that I'm giving away, CLICK HERE TO ENTER!

Giveaway: Pair of Country Living Fair's 3-Day Passes!

I've been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to allow one of my readers the chance to WIN a PAIR of 3-day passes to the Country Living Fair in Columbus, OH this coming September 13-15, 2013.  It is expected to draw over 25,000 attendees, and you & a friend could be two of them!  Read on to see how you can win!

This fair promises to bring the pages of Country Living Magazine to life, and it's got an all-star list of guests scheduled to appear, including CL's editor-in-chief, Sarah Gray Miller (pictured below), as well as many of the magazine's other editors and contributors.  (All photos in this post Courtesy of Country Living).

The Country Living Fair in Columbus will give attendees the chance to enjoy the Country Living lifestyle in a fun, festival atmosphere with cooking, crafting, and other DIY demonstrations, as well as fantastic local and artisanal food. In addition, guests will have access to a unique shopping experience featuring more than 200 vendors offering antiques, gifts, home décor, jewelry and more.

Special guests scheduled to attend the Columbus Country Living Fair and participate in book signings, demonstrations and panel discussions include:

• ·         Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell, of Cooking Channel’s “The Fabulous Beekman Boys";
• ·         Cari Cucksey, estate sale expert and host of HGTV’s “Cash & Cari”;
• ·         Faith Durand, executive editor of TheKitchn.com and author of “Bakeless Sweets”;
• ·         Allison Chapman, owner of Igloo Letterpress in Columbus;
• ·         Kelly McCants, founder of Modern June and author of “Sewing with Oilcloth.”

You can purchase tickets by visiting www.stellashows.com or call (866) 500-FAIR, but now is your chance to WIN a PAIR of 3-day passes to the fair!

Entries must be received by 11:59 pm (EDT), Wednesday, September 4, 2013 to be eligible.  One random drawing winner will be announced in a post sometime Thursday, September 5, 2013.  

I'm offering readers three separate chance entries into the random drawing in order to increase your odds of winning.  Here's how you enter:  

1. Leave a comment on this post, indicating you would like to be entered for the chance drawing.
2. Become a follower of my blog, PANOPLY, by either signing up with Google+ or email subscription.  Then please leave another comment letting me know you're a follower.
3. Share this giveaway via a link on either your FACEBOOK or HOMETALK page, and leave a comment indicating such so that I may visit your page and see the post while I'm there.

ONE lucky reader will win a PAIR of 3-day passes - one pass for YOU and one pass for a FRIEND of your choosing!  

Hurry!  Call your best friend and tell them about the fair and your chance to win!  Let them in on it so they can enter, and increase your chances of going together!  Can you say girl trip?!  

GOOD LUCK!

More details on the fair:

Location: Held rain or shine outdoors under tents, the Fair takes place at the Ohio Village, next to the Ohio History Center and located across from the Ohio State Fairgrounds at I-71 and 17^th Avenue in Columbus (800 E. 17^thAve.). Regular parking fees apply daily.

Hours: Friday, Saturday & Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; gates open for Early Birds at 8:30 a.m. Friday & Saturday.

Tickets:

·         Admission is $13 in advance and $16 at the door; three-day weekend passes are available for $15 in advance and $20 at the door;

·         An Early Bird 3-Day Weekend Pass is available for $40 (in advance only) and grants early admission on Friday and Saturday at 8:30 a.m. (no early admission on Sunday);

·         Children ages 16 and under are free;

·         Ticket prices include admission to the Ohio History Center Museum.

Go RVing and IAMS are sponsors of this year’s Country Living Fair in Columbus. The Fair is produced by Stella Show Management Company. 

This ticket giveaway is sponsored by Country Living Magazine, a Hearst Magazines publication.

A Peek into My Vintage Decor Preferences

I have yet to offer a tour of my home, but today I'm going to share a few of my preferences in choices I've made for my decor.  There are some recurring themes in accessory choices for me, all reflective of the vintage items I come across, collect and am consistently drawn to:  textiles (namely needlepoints in this case), statues, china, metals, and even lamps.

Our home decor is a very transitional style with some vintage flair, I would say.  By definition, this style type is a marriage of both traditional and modern flair, with clean lines and fabrics, [hopefully] classic through the years.  Undoubtedly, ours is a marriage of two households, as my husband & I literally did just that when we married.  Over the past decade, I have made several modifications to the overall look with my personal style approach - sleuth decorating as I like to call it - wherein I add little touches, usually before company comes. This seems to always help my husband in accepting the subtle changes more favorably, as most company will notice little things and compliment those they like, and he then notices too.

There's no question that I am a Flapper girl at heart, and this is consistent with the modern touches I inject into my decor, reflective of the women of the late teens of the 1900's into the 1930's.

My office/spare bedroom showcases a series of five Art Deco needlepoints I scored from a local woman's estate.  The beaded purse is just one of way too many examples I collect, and am continuously looking for new ways to display.  I have shown my guest room before; suffice it to say that it has become my purse museum.

Keeping with the Art Deco theme, here's my vanity valet that was just recently published in Flea Market Style magazine.

Along with my valet, I have a collection of several plates on this same bathroom's wall, demonstrating one of my cross-collectibles: my inner Flapper girl and my love of china / decorative plates.  The porcelain story plates below are four in a series of twelve, I believe, titled "Bains de Mer" (Sea Bathing).  They are from the Creil et Montereau French factory (pre-1920).  Both the plates & valet are from auction.

Plates and statues are a common theme scattered throughout my decor.  In my living room (which really should be called a keeping room because we pretty much just keep it, and don't live in it), we have a bit of an Asian theme going on, albeit transitional.  Another platter (below), this one is early 20th century Asian, signed in red on the back, although I haven't figured out its pedigree, if any (where's Antiques Roadshow's Lark Mason when you need him, anyway??).

And yes, that's a foo dog - a little feng shui never hurt anybody, and he's supposed to be a guardian against evil. Although he is not of a pair and is not outside my door, he is situated at a North facing entrance, which is said to be the correct position.  Reflecting in the mirror, you can see another bust I have on the occasional table.  On the opposite end of the oriental credenza, this lamp and vase are both items my husband helped select.

The vase is "the Love Birds", by Consolidated Glass, an estate piece.  It is hand-painted in colors we use in our decor.  The lamp was a super find in an antique store in Lebanon, OH - it is a Frederick Cooper vintage lamp.  The shade, on the other hand, is newer, selected with the help of one of my lamp aficionado friends.  He tells me Frederick Cooper lamps were once the Cadillac of lamps, and I scored mine for just $20.  The shade, on the other hand, was a different story in terms of cost.  We won't go there.
Another room, another platter. This is my favorite Fall decor platter, another estate sale find.

It is Johnson Brothers' Windsor Ware,  "Harvest Fruit".  It is a sizable 20" platter, and I love how it blends together my love of china, brown transferware and complementary colors in my decor.

Coordinating with my platter above is this subset of my brown transferware (below).  Whenever I find a piece of brown transferware that is attractive to me for its style (as in the Aesthetic patterns, which tie in with my attraction to some Asian design), its vessel (any unusual or hard-to-come-by serving pieces), or its value, I will take it home with me.  Hence, my [now] collection is pretty random.  For example, below you see a nice tureen and underplate, but no lid (which came from a family-tied estate pick that may still yield its lid someday).  I have dressed it for Fall, with mounded, preserved moss and deer antlers on the underplate.  The small plate is resting on a fork easel - clever repurposing from a silverplate fork.

In this same room, I display another statue, a salt sculpture rendition of "Three Graces" (below).  As a former ballerina, this statue is reminiscent of a role I danced with two others when I was pregnant with my first daughter, also a dancer.  It spoke to me when I spotted it in an antique store in Kentucky.

To the left you see another recurring theme I love in my decor, vintage needlepoint.  This time it's a pillow for the winged chair.  I love pillows in chairs as lumbar supports and/or lap props for books, magazines and portable devices.  This one was sourced in an antique shop in Abingdon, VA.

In another room, I have these two needlepoint pillows (below).  And while the needlepoints are vintage, they are reworked by Sharon Wollman of Wollworks and C'est Chouette, located in South Dakota.  I love her tag line on her website, "These may be your grandmother's needlepoints, but these are not your grandmother's pillows".  Sharon uses upholstery webbing, brush fringe and nice, zippered cotton and linen backings for her pillows in the Wollworks line; and adds satins & laces to her line in C'est Chouette.  I found Sharon through a Romantic Homes magazine ad.

I absolutely love these, and they showcase another of my favorite interests - landscape gardening.

And I cannot go without a nod to my love of vintage metals - mostly sterling and silverplate.  I don't know where this collection began, but it has grown to the point where it has its own cabinet.  I have a thing for napkin rings and baby cups.  And hotel silver.  And utensils.  And I use quite a lot of these pieces, some for their intended purpose, others in repurposing.  I like metals because they don't readily break.  They just bend (as in when you put them in the kitchen disposal).

In my sunroom, I have a  little bit of each of my collections in display, including metals (the wind chime below is from ReLoved Creations by Cindy Kelly).  Cindy is a beautiful artist, inside and out, located in Canada, and I have purchased several items from her.  She repurposes [mostly] silverplate utensils and vessels into jewelry & home decor.  Her packaging is also a reloved work of art too - she uses cereal boxes and newspapers.

In my sunroom, I have fun with seasonal displays, mostly with little nods toward my love of gardening.  I'm pretty much a sucker for old gardening hand tools, especially when they come in a cool box.

And I love vintage flower frogs, spigots, sprinklers, nozzles, plant tenders, broken wings....

And collected nests, eggs, shells & nuts.

And, of course, there's the recurring theme of statues........

And pillows.  This sunflower pillow came straight from one of Common Ground's Marketplace links,  featuring Janet Reddick's Etsy shop, Urban Farmhouse Chic.  Thanks, Debra, for featuring Janet!

To end this mini tour of my vintage decor preferences, I'll show you one more lamp (below), before turning out the lights on this post.

This little lamp is also a cross-collectible - statue and lamp.  I found the base in the same store in Lebanon OH as the the Frederick Cooper earlier in this post.  I love the romantic features of the little girl playing her violin.  And the cake top shade was chosen with the help of the same friend who helped me with the other lamp's shade choice.  Most expensive cake I've ever bought but, again, we won't go there.

Whatever your decor preferences are, I would encourage you to shop vintage.  You'll not only find uniqueness in your design decor by adding vintage pieces, but you may end up with a collection, or two - and, ultimately, renting space in an antique mall near you someday.  :)

With this post, I'm linking with these friends:

Savvy Southern Style

A Stroll Through Life

The Scoop

Common Ground
Jennifer Rizzo
French Country Cottage

And be sure to link up with Debra Oliver's blog anniversary giveaway on her latest post Be Inspired #154 - she's partnering with Elliott-Heath Designs for a pillow cover for some lucky reader!  And we know at least one of us will be going there, seeing as how pillows are part of the decor!