Grocery Store Invite

Do you ever do this?  Run into a friend in the grocery store and share the fact that you're both stumped over choosing something for dinner?  Then invite them to your house?  In TWO hours?????  I settled on steak shiska bobs and a spinach salad.  She'd bring dessert.  Fine.  Then, as she went down the aisle to find a pie, she said over her shoulder, "Can't wait to see what pretty table you come up with."  Okaaaaaaaay.  Wouldn't be a problem, but I won't lie......the kitchen floor MUST be vacuumed and mopped before company comes. 

These flowers were already in this blue and white pot in the bar, so, even though they weren't the very freshest, they had opened a bit and seemed lush and pretty to me.  That meant I would be going with blue and white dishes and I knew just which ones I wanted.  Scalamandre's Toile Tale (!!!!!!). 

So many evenings in Georgia are too hot to enjoy outdoor dinner, but we have seen a bit of a break in the temps, and so I chose the table on the lower terrace for our table for four.  Doesn't it look cool and welcoming?

Here's the flowers.  They didn't leave much room for accessories, but I didn't have time for fussing with them anyway. 

I picked up the coral color from the roses in the geometric patterned napkins.  I thought they made this china pattern seem a little more contemporary.  The blue handled flatware reinforced the blue, and the wicker charger made it seem a bit more casual.

I love this pattern.  Here's the salad plate over the dinner plate.  Don't you love the way the bridge carries over from one plate to the other?   You can see another table I did this spring with a lot of these same items, here.

And here's the dinner plate alone.  It's like a fragment of a Blue Willow pattern.

These stems are huge, so I use them as water glasses. 

This white butter dish is so cute, and it lends itself to almost any style.  Fortunately, I had some really yummy bread from Theo's in Alpharetta in the freezer.

Salt and pepper sit in this little French dish.  I keep it beside the stove top and easily dip into it as I cook.

The wine was served off of this stone wall.

Isn't this wine label great?  The wine's good too!

It was a beautiful night, but I had misjudged the fact that the sun is going down a lot earlier these days. 

The evening started out like this....... 

and ended up like this.  Disclaimer:  Mr. Pressed Pants went into the house and brought these out.  Green candles and all!!!  Don't judge.

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Brown, Green, and a Pheasant

We are expecting guests this weekend, so I set the table today, since I have plans the rest of the week.  I'm  loving the way the items came together for this semi-casual table.  The lime green and brown polyester silk runner is from the floral wholesaler, and it comes quite a bit wider than most runners.  These seem to be my go-to colors since we moved into this house.  It's a bit rustic, a bit woodsy, and still a tiny bit refined.

These plates make my little heart sing!!!!  My dearest friend from Charleston gave me these when we moved into this house.  You know me.......they're toile.......they're lime green and brown.  How I love them!  I have two set and each set has four different scenes.  I photographed this in the evening with the lights on, so I'm afraid that I'll have a bit of glare.

I also love these chargers.  They look like birds-eye maple and give a nice bit of pattern without overwhelming the toile.

Then these dark brown linen napkins with faggoting, a tortoise shell patterened napkin ring, and a bit of green hypernicum make the napkin work with this dark wooden handled flatware.

A green wine glass and an amber water glass continue the color scheme.

Can you see the etching on this?  It is from the Bobby Flay line from Kohl's.

Phil the Pheasant was the obvious choice for the centerpiece.  He's cast resin and I use him a lot.

I set him in this wonderful wreath I found at the floral wholesaler.  It is gold, green, copper, and brown.  It really makes this table sing.

See?  

These old barley twist candlesticks are work horses around our house, too.

I wasn't going to add flowers, but at Kroger this morning, I found one bunch of these Kermit mums.  I had already purchased the hypernicum berries.  I thought these tall, birch bark covered pots would look good with the similar votives.   

Here's the way the flowers turned out.  I s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d that one little bunch of mums.

Phil's black forest friend joined the table to serve the sugar for coffee.  I'll just use clear glass for cream and sugar.

I've had these chocolate brown plates from Target for years, and I pulled out this old antler-handled server for our pecan pie.

I expect this to be a cozy evening where we sit at the table for hours.

I left this woodland scene under this cloche on the chest.

Another corner holds this chalk and cement piece with a white pumpkin.

And I left the sideboard with our white and green vegetable vignette.  

Sorry, the color is very washed out in this photo.

This is better.  

Now, I'll cook on Friday and look forward to a relaxed, fun evening with special friends.  More to be thankful about!

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Finally! Re-do for the Laundry Room

When I found this fabric, I knew it was TIME!!!  I would finally re-do our pitiful little laundry room.  It's called "Turkish Toile" and it's part of the Colonial Williamsburg collection.  I had to work to find a way to introduce any fabric into this room, but you'll see how I did.

Then, as things sometimes happen, I found this Quimper plate the very next day.  I loved how it had that orange color, too.  You see, I've been dying to do an orange room and none of my design clients will listen to me!!!  No takers!!!  So.....I decided to please myself in my very own home and finally, finally, finally freshen up the laundry room.......in ORANGE!

Here's the way it looked before.  Saaaaaaad, isn't it?  It was a high gloss, blood red color with so many nail and screw holes that had never been filled and woefully inadequate storage.  Just this small cupboard above the washer.  This is really more of a laundry closet than a laundry room  The reason I never re-did this room is because the previous owners left their washer and dryer, so we sold ours with our old house.  (Now that house had a real laundry room.)  This set seemed to be inferior quality and I never expected it to last more than a couple of weeks.  I figured that I'd re-do this room when they were replaced.  Fast forward six years and they're still going strong.  So I'm probably jinxing myself, but I decided to refresh things.

Here's the way it looks now.  Mr. Pressed Pants went away for a weekend, and I got busy!   The color is Behr's Ultra in Marmalade Glaze from Lowe's.  It's just called that.  It's a paint, not a glaze.  It covered that awful red from the previous owner beautifully.  I built three shelves beside the cupboards which doubled my storage space.  Two of the shelves have wire baskets from Ikea with muslin liners and the third is curtained with the toile fabric.  I told you I would find a way! I toyed with buying a snazzy ironing board cover for pattern, but I really like a plain muslin one.  Just me.

There is another shelf behind this, without pretty baskets.  I just gathered the fabric on a tension rod and placed it closely under the shelf trim.  Man, this color is bad.  Refer to the first photo in this post for the accurate color.

Then I added a short closet rod for our hangers.  I'm pretending here,that I only use matching velvet hangers!  In reality, I like to stick with these, but Mr. Pressed Pants really likes his stuff on wire hangers.  I know.  That's weird.  But, hey, I like to make the man happy, so I have wire hangers, too, and some plastic tubular ones.  But, for the sake of this post, I'm coordinated, right?

The hardwood floors and the fluorescent light fixture stayed.   I was able to get rid of that thin rolling shelving unit and chose a muslin lined zinc style waste basket that could go in it's place.  Much better! 

This photo gives you a better idea of the way the color looks.  It's a really relaxing orange, almost a bittersweet.  I remembered that I had these old, old handmade wooden clothes pins.  Aren't they neat?  They made the plate look a little less lonely and random.

Working around the light switch (sigh) I changed up the frame for the cork board and the little wooden sewing cabinet.  This just contains a few spools of the most common thread and some buttons, etc, for when I need to do a quick mending job.  (I have a sewing room downstairs that I'll show you someday.)  I just went to check to see if this little cabinet is really this crooked, but it is just the photo.

I think I've done about as much as I can do to this room.  When we first moved in, I toyed with taking room from the garage and enlarging this, but I'm glad we didn't.  It's so small that it forces me to get all of my laundry done at once, since there's no way to hide things mid-job.  Oh well, there's just the two of us here, and I'm not doing all that much laundry, so I'll keep on keeping on. 

Have you ever waited six years to re-do the last room?  

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Neiman Marcus or Target???

Neiman Marcus?

Or Target?

Neiman's in Atlanta has on display this wonderful toile pattern dinnerware made my Juliska.  Here's how they describe it:  "quintessentially British stoneware pattern joyfully depicts the narrative of English Country life in a way that is both engaging and timeless".   That's exactly what I was going to say!

The different pieces depict the lovely "Main House" on the dinner plates, the "Conservatory" on the dessert plates, the tranquil "Boathouse" on the pasta bowls, and here you see the "Kite Fliers" in this serving bowl.

The color of the design is called Flint, but it can read as grey, brown, or aubergine.  I love it here with this dusty turquoise.  I've admired it for quite a while, but at $180 for four plates, etc., I've wondered if it is versatile enough to invest in.....especially since I know I would want all of those yummy serving pieces.

THEN.......I saw these plates at Target!!!!  Bingo!!!! Here's my (very) low cost alternative.  I grant you that this is not nearly as fine or beatuiful, and it has no serving pieces, but these plates will certainly give me the basic feel and will be very fun to work with. And they are melamine. Sorry there is such a glare on this photo.

They are called "Toile de Privet" and are from the Privet House designs that Target has introduced in their stores recently.  They are shown on the end-caps of the tableware department with some very cool orange and lime green designs with great graphics like wicker cane.  This Delft-like style is on a cream background with a color that can be interpreted as brown or aubergine, and the back is this great emerald green.  I show it here on a purple(ish) tablecloth that I also found at  Target. 

 I can promise you that you'll be seeing it soon in the garden.  I'm not regretting my decision to pass on the Juliska and "go Target".  It was the right thing to do.  After all, there were lots of other things that called my name at Neimans!

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