Is it a catastrophe or an opportunity?

Until yesterday afternoon, this was what the wall adjacent to my front door looked like (well, not exactly like this because this photo is several years old but the arrangement on the wall is just the same):

I found the trio of antique oyster plates back in 2009 at a thrift store. I seriously love these plates even though I've never eaten an oyster in my life (unless you count Rocky Mountain Oysters--those I have eaten!) They have an awesome scowly Neptune face at the bottom and then mermaids around the sides. I looked high and low for the fourth plate but never found it, though it all worked out in the end because I was able to use the three plates in a nice symmetrical arrangement.

The mirror in the middle of the wall arrangement was an early thrift find when we'd just moved into this house nine years ago. The small silhouettes are actually John Derian coasters from Target that I have stuck with poster putty to some of the saucers from my wedding china.

Yesterday afternoon I was in the kitchen when I heard an almighty crash from the front room, and walked in to find this:

Somehow the mirror came off the wall and took out an adjacent oyster plate on its way to the ground. The plate shattered into a zillion pieces and the corner of the mirror made a nice series of gouges and paint marks on my wood floor. Boo!

I'm bummed to lose one of my pretty oyster plates and now my nice symmetrical arrangement is toast too. I suppose I could move the top center plate over to the side and find something new to fill its space, and I may just do that for a while but I think actually that I might be ready for a change! I'm bored with that mirror and I wouldn't at all be opposed to sending it right back to the thrift store--it has been nearly nine years, after all! I bought a new chair last weekend at World Market so I'm in the mood to switch things up a bit. I love a new decorating challenge so maybe losing one of my pretty plates isn't such a bad thing, after all!

Chalk art

First of all, this is my 893rd post! That is a whooole lot of yammering on in six years. I do believe that a giveaway or something fun is in order when I hit 900 posts, so stay tuned for that sometime in the next week or two.

Back in February, The Nester (one of my very favorite bloggers) shared the work of a chalk artist namend Dana Tanamachi. I had seen the Oprah Magazine cover that she drew (and admired Oprah's gorgeous outfit) but had no idea that was all done by hand! Ms. Tanamachi's work is incredibly beautiful and detailed. I love the mixture of typefaces that she uses and I love the dusty background that comes from the chalk being erased on the board.

I have a cool vintage chalkboard that I bought when I supposed to be Christmas shopping for other people (oops) but I never liked where I had it hung in my family room. Couldn't put my finger on why, exactly, but somehow it just looked wrong. Back in January and February when I went on a redecorating spree, I moved the chalkboard to a different wall and suddenly I loved it! And when I saw The Nester's Chalk Art post, I couldn't resist trying it out myself:

I loved being able to erase easily when I messed up. ;) Or when Maren decided to 'help' me by drawing on the board right next to the part I painstakingly drew.

I love that it is a handmade bit of art in my family room and I love that I can change it anytime, for free!

One other thing I did to change up my chalkboard a bit was to thread some of my all-time favorite Stampin' Up! ribbon through the holes on the top of the board. I secured the knot to the wall with a pretty beaded corsage pin.

The chalkboard is actually hung by small nails that go through the holes, but the ribbon camouflages them and adds a little bit of extra style. I once read on someone's blog that she likes to have just a bit of black-and-white-striped something in each room, and I wholeheartedly agree!

3 Picture-hanging tips

My recent decorating spree has included finally hanging pictures on my walls and moving some existing pictures around. Hanging pictures doesn't seem like too complicated of a DIY endeavor, but for some reason it always seems to go a bit pear-shaped for me. I hate making extra holes in my walls, because that means filling them and touching up the paint, which means multiple trips to the basement, and I'm just lazy. We do actually own a laser level, which I have never ever used because we have no idea how and have lost the instruction manual. For crying out loud.

Anyway, I found a couple of tips that made things easier for me so I thought I'd share. One involves a very high-tech tool:

I used this little trick on a grouping of three silhouettes that I hung in my front room. Instead of measuring and marking for all three, I simply placed a tiny dot of toothpaste on the sawtooth hanger and pressed the frame up against the wall where I wanted to hang it. The toothpaste left a tiny mark on the wall where the hanger touched it. I hammered in the nail, wiped off the remaining toothpaste, and was done!

I'm sorry, I just have to add this wherever I can because would you just LOOK at those sweet curls on Porter?

Another tip involves larger frames. I recently had some family portraits blown up and put into large, heavy frames that I purchased at Michael's. The frames came with two rings on the back for hanging. I knew that would be a hassle, because now I had to get two nail holes properly spaced and level for each picture frame, and that was assuming both hooks were installed evenly on the frame itself. I was talking about this to a friend, and she suggested that I use the hooks to install picture wire instead.

I'm so thankful to have clever friends! I just so happened to have picture hanging wire in my stash, so it took no time at all to convert the frames.

Because the toothpaste method doesn't really work on frames with picture wire, I use this slightly more high-tech tool instead:

This is called the Picture Placer. I bought mine on clearance at Target or JoAnn's or something a few years ago and it's meant for hanging large pieces that use a picture wire.

This is what it looks like out of the packaging. You place that center piece in the top middle of the frame, and then hang the wire in a little groove on top of the round piece on the bottom and pull the arm up tight until the wire is taut. The little round piece has a tiny point on the back, so when you press the whole contraption up against the wall where you want the picture to be, the little point makes a small divot in your drywall, which shows you exactly where to place your nail! It really is ingenious and works every time.

For smaller frames without wires, you could use this clever homemade tool that is floating around Pinterest:

Pinned here, Original Source: http://mmscrapshoppe.blogspot.com/2011/07/picture-frame-hanging-tip.html

It uses the same principle as the Picture Placer tool. The hardest part would be getting the nail straight through the clothespin!

Do you have any helpful tips for hanging pictures right the first time?

Recovering a vintage chair with a tablecloth

There may be a few of you out there to whom this post may cause actual, physical pain--I will just go ahead and apologize in advance. :)

I found this old oak chair at Goodwill for $7 to replace the cute desk chair that I completely destroyed last summer.

It's nice and sturdy and the perfect size, but it had an ugly fabric seat. I knew that recovering it would be a quick fix, but I didn't want to purchase any fabric for the project. While rummaging through the VERY full dresser drawer where I keep my collection of vintage tablecloths, I happened upon this beauty:

A darling square cloth with a yellow border and a pattern of red tulips. It's charming but unfortunately is also very faded, so I didn't feel quite so guilty about cutting it up! Plus I thought it was fun with the curtains I have in the office:

A hot steam iron, a pair of shears, a staple gun and 15 minutes later I had this:

I know that to some of you, cutting up a perfectly good vintage tablecloth is tantamount to painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa! I won't lie--I had to take a deep breath before I made that first cut. I figure that this way, I can actually enjoy my pretty cloth on a daily basis instead of having it tucked away in the dresser in my guest room, rarely to see the light of day. I'm not saying that I'm going to get all scissor-happy with the rest of my beautiful collection, but I don't have any remorse for cutting this one at all!

The power of spray paint

Since I've been on this redecorating kick, nothing is safe! We had near-70-degree weather on Monday and Tuesday, which meant it was finally warm enough for spray painting! I'd been eyeing a shelf in my kitchen for a few days and figured that it was high time for a change.

The shelf is nothing fancy. It was constructed and put up by the previous homeowners and because I'm always short on display space that is out of reach of little hands, I left it up. It sits above the pantry in my kitchen and there's really not a whole lot of clearance between the shelf and the ceiling, so I am limited in what I can display. The shelf was just a sort of nondescript golden brown, a color I have in abundance in the kitchen because of my golden oak cabinets and honey-colored wood floors.

When we first moved in, I had a cute display of vintage red wooden-handled kitchen utensils, a green Pyrex bowl, and my grandma's old BHG red gingham cookbook. When I found my huge Jadeite score back in 2008, I decided to use the shelf to display some of the pieces in the collection.

I combined the Jadeite with some of my Ovenex starburst pans and posted about it here. (Ironically, I made that post on March 6, 2008--so almost exactly 4 years ago, as I am writing this on March 7, 2012!) And that is pretty exactly much how it has looked since then.

On Monday afternoon, I unloaded all of the Jadeite and gave it a good washing (even though it's not anywhere near the stove, it still had a layer of that greasy dirt that stuff in the kitchen seems to attract). I took the shelf outside and gave it a few coats of black glossy spray paint. Easy as pie!

When I put the shelf back up and loaded in my Jadeite, I decided to try it without the Ovenex pans. It looked too naked, but I remembered some of the red and white polka dot melamine plates in my cupboard and set a few of those up there instead. I love how it looks! I've always wanted to add more red to set off the Jadeite green but couldn't figure out how to do it before. I like how crisp the black shelf looks with the pale green and bright red. It was a fun, no-cost, simple change but it makes me so happy to look at it. Hooray for the power of spray paint!

Is there anywhere in your house where a bit of spray paint and little rearranging could make a big difference?

Pinned it and Made it: Fishnet stocking pumpkins and 2011 Halloween decorations

Once I finally finished painting the china hutch black, I could hardly wait for the paint to dry so I could load it up with my Halloween decorations! They'd been sitting in my front room for two weeks and it was already the middle of the month so it was about time. I do wish I could have gotten it all done sooner, but it was worth the wait--I love how my Halloween goodies look in my new black cabinet!

I incorporated a Pinned it and Made it project into my decor: fishnet stocking pumpkins, pinned here. Last year I bought several pairs of black fishnet stockings when they were 75% off at Target, where they had a whole endcap full of them.  The pumpkins were leftover from an unsuccessful project a few years ago and were already painted silver.

I used a pair of ladies' one-size-fits-all stockings for the larger pumpkin

and a pair of kids' stockings for the smaller one. Was I really thinking of putting black fishnets on my 6-year-old daughter? Sheesh. This isn't Toddlers and Tiaras, for crying out loud. I do like that pair better, because they were black with silver threads running through and they look really great on the silver pumpkin! For both pumpkins, I simply stretched the leg over the pumpkin, with the toe hidden by the underside. I cut them off and used a small rubber band to attach the stocking around the stem, and poked in a couple of vintage foil leaves. A real pumpkin with a larger stem would have made that a bit easier. I do love how they look! Easiest pumpkin decorating EVER.

Here are the rest of my decorations. Since I had already taken everything out of my hutch to paint, I left it empty and filled it with only Halloween, which I like. Normally I have to decorate around the stuff that's already there.

It's a pain to load everything in and out and carry it up and down the basement steps, but I think I'm going to clear it out for Christmas decorating too. There's just so much more space.

I added a pair of orange and white polka-dotted melamine plates to either side of the big turquoise jack-o'-lantern plate and I LOVE how they look against the black and white checked background! I really wanted to emphasize the black and ORANGE with my decorating this year.

I kept things simple on the top of my aqua dresser. The Halloween lollies are another Pinned project that I may or may not get around to sharing this year. Those might have to be saved for 2012.

I added one of my big black sparkly flower pins to my orange and white striped pillow.

The display on my little ottoman is simple but again emphasizes the orange.

The family room got a little bit of decor, with a trio of estate sale vintage die cuts hung on Command hooks and a banner I made last year hung on the chalkboard. I have a display started on my sofa table but I got sidetracked so I'm not sure I'll get it finished at this point.

It took a little longer than usual this year, but I'm happy with how it all looks! Now my next task is to finish up our costumes...

Did you incorporate anything from Pinterest into your Halloween preparations this year?

Painted china hutch transformation

One of the (many) things that makes The Mister a saint for putting up with me is my propensity for getting hare-brained (but potentially awesome) ideas at the most inconvenient times, and I managed to keep up my track record with this project. Back in the first week of October, I dragged all of my Halloween boxes upstairs to the front room, determined to get things decorated so I'd be able to enjoy them all month long. I was on the ball! For once!

Enter the hare-brained idea: I remembered that I had been intending to paint my china hutch all summer long, but had never gotten around to it. I knew that if I loaded it up with all of my Halloween stuff, I wouldn't want to unload it all to paint, and if I waited until after Halloween was over to paint, it would be into November and too cold by that time. So I decided that I needed to get it done RIGHT THEN, because it was now or wait until next year.

Let me back up a bit--earlier this year, I decided that I have hated this hutch for so long that I was finally going to do something about it. I didn't want to pay big bucks for a new one, so I figured I'd find one cheap at a thrift store or on Craigslist and make it over. A friend asked me what size/shape of hutch I wanted, and I told her that I wanted one to be the same size and about the same shape as the one I had already. I like the flat top because I use it for decorating and to bring height to that room, which has two-story ceilings. However, I was having a hard time finding one that I liked that was the right shape, size and price. My dear friend, thank heaven for her, said, "well, why don't you just paint the one you have?"

She was right, of course. I decided to paint it black and change out the knobs and figured it would give the piece a whole new look. Last year I started the transformation when I put $5 worth of black-and-white checked scrapbook paper over all of the mirrors.

I knew that paper would look great with black, and most importantly, I knew my Halloween decor would look especially great in/on a black hutch! Priorities, you know.

My original intention was to spray paint this beast. I'm not so good with the brush & latex paint on furniture and Mandi over at Vintage Revivals spray paints furniture all the time with awesome results. I forgot one tiny little detail: this hutch is a monster and weighs about 5000 lbs. It comes apart into two smaller but still massive and heavy pieces, and in order to spray paint them, I'd have to find myself a couple of burly dudes with a furniture dolly who would be willing to haul these out to my garage, and then back into my house when I was finished painting. Plan B was to paint the darn thing in situ with latex paint and my mortal enemies, the brush and roller. I bought a quart of Valspar's Cracked Pepper latex semi-gloss and a quart of Glidden Gripper tinted primer on this recommendation, because sanding in my front room was not really an option.

Let's just say that I do not have a future career in furniture refinishing.

Because of all those pieces of trim around the doors, most of the painting on the hutch had to be done with a brush, and I ended up with crazy brush marks no matter how hard I tried to keep things smooth. The sides of the hutch where I was able to use a small foam roller are not so bad, but everywhere else is a hot mess. I tried sanding lightly between coats of primer & paint, but it just didn't help enough. I also made the stupid mistake of deciding to paint the interior ledges where the glass shelves sit. I wasn't sure that I would like the brown interior with the black exterior, but it was a ton of work because I had to do it all with a brush as well and it was tricky to maneuver inside the cramped space.

I'm normally something of a perfectionist, but this was one project where I decided it was better to be done that perfect. I do really like the final look--I think the black updates the piece to the point where I don't completely hate it and I love the contrast with the red walls and the wood floors. And I have to admit, it looks awesome filled with my Halloween stuff! I'm not saying I still wouldn't like someone to gift me with the perfectly-painted, distressed, vintage-style china hutch, preferably for FREE, but until that day happens, this will do the trick. Just don't look too close if you come over for a visit!

Powder room Re-do

Since this Spring, I've been working on an ongoing redecoration of pretty much the entire first floor of my house: the front room, living room, and office have all seen work, and I've got a few ideas rolling around for the kitchen as well. I've shown a few bits and pieces here on my blog but not any completed rooms because, well, I work very slowly when it comes to redecorating and I don't feel like anything is finished yet! Someday, right?


In the middle of all of that, I realized that the powder room that sits off of my front room needed a little makeover to match the new colors I've been using. The main walls in my living room are deep red and in my living room they were navy. The red walls have stayed, but you might remember that I painted the family room aqua. I also painted a yard sale dresser that sits in the front room a similar aqua, so I wanted to bring the aqua into my powder room as well so that all of the rooms on my main floor flow together color-wise.

Previously, I had a red & navy thing going in the powder room. I didn't think to take any Before pictures, but on the walls I had a delftware plate (brought back by my mom from St. Maarten, I believe) and a navy-painted frame containing pressed, dried sunflowers. The throw rug was a pattern of squares in red, yellow, green, brown and blue, bordered in navy. The previous owners of this house used a nice framed mirror and a pretty light fixture and the paint color is a neutral, so all I needed to do for this update was replace the rug and wall art. I looked and looked for a rug in the colors I wanted (red, brown, aqua and maybe green) with no luck. I finally found this rug at Ross for $10 and called it good.

I'm not completely in love with it because I'd really hoped to find something that brought in the red, but it was cheap enough that if I find something I like better I don't feel bad replacing it.

For the walls, I simply shopped my basement! This is where being a demi-Hoarder totally works to my advantage. :) Once I had collected the items I wanted to use, I traced them all on newspaper and used painters tape to arrange them on the walls. My walls are orange peel textured and therefore it's a pain in the booty to fill nail holes, so I try to keep extras to a minimum.

I labeled each piece so that I would remember what was going to be hung there. I measured the hanger on the back of each item and marked it on the newspaper, then drove the nail right through the paper and tore it away. It worked out perfectly! No measuring, no guessing. Here's the finished arrangement:

I didn't originally include that square frame with the G, but once I got everything up there it felt a little droopy to me and I wanted to balance the piece of molding that hung down with something that stuck up a little. I rummaged around in the basement and found the square frame, which was originally a) a tabletop frame and b) painted pink. I ripped the easel off the back, glued on a sawtooth hanger, and painted the wood using a combination of Heirloom White spray paint, aqua acrylic craft paint, and burnt umber acrylic for distressing. Here are the other things on the wall:

and

Don't forget that you can click on the pictures to get a larger view! The only thing I actually purchased for this project was the aqua plate with the brown pattern, which I LOVE! It was less than $1 and I don't think I even bothered to wipe off the price marking on the back. It was fun to finally find a use for all of these things that I loved, but were just gathering dust on my shelves. One other item that is not shown is a large aqua plate that I purchased in Target's $1 Spot several years ago; that's on the opposite wall with the light switch.


I purchased a few new hand towels from the Better Homes & Gardens line at Wal-Mart (this one and this one) and they're just the perfect colors for the room! I'm happy with how the whole thing turned out. I get to enjoy some of my fun finds and the colors of the room flow with the rest of the house. And it's a room that is actually done, which is more than I can say for the rest of the house!

In which I finally use my wedding china

And the winner of the Spark goodies is:

True Random Number Generator
  Min: Max:  
Result: 4 

Commenter #4 was April, who said:

April said...
Organizing my craft stashes. I have enough stuff- just going through it gets me excited about working on a project. Collecting too- being at the beach or hiking and finding nature's treasures.
:)

9:11 PM

So hooray, April! Email me your address (there's a link over there to the left) and I'll pop your package in the mail! Thank you all for your comments.

I had a busy but productive weekend! I didn't get the Halloween decorations out yet (still waiting for a few more messes to be cleaned up first) but I did manage to makeover two cardigans, two tank tops, made five flower pins, a headband, a cuff bracelet, remade necklace, painted a chair and recovered the chair cushion. Whew! I was totally on a roll yesterday; I haven't finished that many projects in weeks so this was a big accomplishment for me. I'll share pictures later this week.

When I got married, like many of you I registered for a set of beautiful china. It is displayed in my china hutch and although I've mused about using it more often, I've still only pulled it out for holidays and special occasions. Last week I found a fun new use for my china: I hung some of it on my wall. Plates on a wall--very original, right?


It all started when I got these darling silhouette coasters designed by John Derian for Target:

I've been looking for some silhouettes to complete a wall grouping in my front room and these were inexpensive so I bought them with big plans. When I got them home, I realized they were really too small on their own and they got lost on the big wall.

I was pondering what to do when my eye caught on a stack of plates in my china cabinet. I pulled out four of the saucers (pieces I will never, EVER use since I don't drink tea or coffee) and found that they are the perfect size to act as frames for my silhouette coasters! Even though I'll never use the saucers, I didn't want to mar them so I used poster tack to adhere the melamine coasters to the plates.

I purchased four plate holders from JoAnn's but I accidentally bought white and I didn't want to go all the way back to exchange them, so I used a can of silver spray paint to spray the tips silver so they would disappear into the platinum band around the edge of the dishes.

To hang the plates, I wanted to try a trick I read about somewhere to avoid making numerous nail holes in my wall and to avoid measuring because I'm lazy. :) I made a little roll of masking tape and stuck it to the hanger where the nail would be, then I just pressed the plate to the wall. The tape came off the plate and stuck to the wall and I hammered the nail right through the center. It worked like a charm! And then I realized that I was going to have to measure anyway if I wanted the plates on both sides to be symmetrical. Drat!

I managed to get them up with only one erroneous nail hole in the wall and I like how they look (although now that I see this photo I think I need to move that top oyster plate up a scooch--one more nail hole in my wall, sigh). They fill up the space well, I like the glint of silver on the rims of the plates and I finally got some more use out of my wedding china--a successful project all around!

Decorating Above Your Kitchen Cabinets

I've mentioned before that I love watching the online version of Studio 5, a lifestyle show produced by the local NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City. Almost every day I find inspiration there, whether it's crafting, decoration, or fashion. The other day, they showed this segment about decorating the space above your kitchen cabinets (I can't get it to embed, so just click the link).

I also have that dead space between my kitchen cabinets and the ceiling. Here's how the previous owner of my home had it decorated:

Lots and lots of fake ivy. It didn't necessarily look bad, it's just not my thing. I wasn't really sure what to do with the space so I started using it as a display area for some of my vintage kitchen finds. Here's what it looks like now:

Blech.While it's useful to have display space for my vintage finds (because really, I have no place to put them otherwise and I really don't want to just get rid of everything) but I kinda hate how it all looks just lined up like that.

There are a couple of other problems I've run into regarding using that space for display. The first is that the top of the cabinets is actually set quite a few inches below the top of the molding. This means that you can't see the bottom few inches of whatever you put there, unless you place something underneath to raise it up higher. I started out using a bunch of books we never read, but that has become an issue because of problem #2: everything I place up there gets coated with a layer of grease and dust. I truly don't cook a lot of greasy foods, so I'm not sure why things up on top of the cabinets get so very nasty, but they do. Perhaps I need to be using the vent hood on my stove more often?

At any rate, I need to make a change to that space. My kitchen always feels cluttered, mostly likely because it IS cluttered! I have a difficult enough time controlling the junk on the counters and table and front of the refrigerator. I know that I could make my kitchen less visually cluttered by reducing the amount of "stuff" that I display atop the shelves. It may be time for some tough decisions on how much I truly love and need to keep the items I currently have up there, and what I could ~ahem~ re-home. (somewhere, my husband just got happier, and he doesn't even know why. ;D)

Do you have anything displayed above your kitchen cabinets? Do you have any tips for me as I begin my makeover?

Black and white and tan all over

I don't tend to gravitate towards neutrals in my decorating--my front room walls are deep red, the family room is navy--and although I love the serene visuals of all-white rooms I see in magazines, that's just not practical for my life (and to all those people who say all-white homes with kids and pets are just SO simple and livable and easy--I say, liar liar pants on fire).

So it's different territory for me to be in a black and white phase in my front room, the location of the hutch from yesterday's post. I was feeling it even before Christmas, when the lovely creamy package I received from Kelly in the Sparkling Winter White swap really spoke to me in the midst of the the colorful Shiny Brites that spell holiday decor in my home. Even though I decorated with traditional reds for Valentine's Day, I couldn't shake the neutral color scheme rolling around in the back of my head, so as soon as the hearts and cupids were put away, I broke out the beige.

I kept the mercury glass candlesticks and white pillars from Valentine's Day, but replaced the red ribbons and heart ornaments with strips of burlap (left over from my cork board makeover) and various black and white ribbons from my stash.

I filled one glass jar with old spools of brown and black thread, and a larger apothecary jar on the other side with Styrofoam balls that I wrapped with jute twine while I watched ice skating on the Olympics.

I saw that idea somewhere on a blog but I can't remember where to give credit, I'm afraid. They were easy enough (various-sized thrifted Styrofoam balls, a $1.99 ball of jute and a tube of special glue for Styrofoam) and kept my hands busy. I had planned to make more of the larger size, but once the twine was glued on they were too big to fit through the opening of the jar! The little white ceramic birdie was from JoAnn's before Christmas.

On my little white dresser I have a few more silvers and whites, nearly all thrifted. The silver bowl atop a silver tray is filled with dried white beans that support an antique photo of a baby in a white knitted snowsuit & hat, a card of vintage black buttons with the greatest "Paris" graphic, and an old silver baby cup.

The large jar holds a grouping of white balls of crochet thread, all of which I purchased for a dime or a quarter apiece at one of my favorite small-town thrifts in February.

Next to the jar are two thrifted, lidless silver sugar bowls. One holds a collection of silver spoons, and the other holds the one thread ball that wouldn't fit in the jar!

On my white bench I have a skinny metal basket filled with an antique ironstone pitcher (bought to sell someday, but I love it too much right now), my two silver trophies and a pair of candy apple-red frames that add a fun surprise of color in all the neutrals. I found the frames on clearance for $1.20 each at Hobby Lobby (cheaper than the thrift!) and they still lack photos in them more than a month later. Whoops.

The last bit of my neutral decor is on the round table in the room. I haven't had my beloved (thrifted for $9, and YES you may be jealous of me) cloche out for a while so it was high time I used it again. On the zinc platter is a crocheted doily The Mister brought back from Portugal, an old ironstone bowl filled with Scrabble tiles, and a nest containing a sweet silver mercury glass birdie. To dress up the cloche itself I used scraps of black and white ribbons (to mirror those on my candlesticks), jute (to mirror the jute balls), a tiny silver spoon, a chandelier crystal, and a curtain ring clip attached to a vintage-style flashcard that I bought from Andrea a few years ago.

The neutral thing won't last forever with me--I'll be back to my favorite bright reds and turquoise blues soon enough, but it's nice to try something new for a while, isn't it?