"Cherish" Room - Day Three!

My car was filled to the brim as I pulled out the driveway! One thing you get good at in this business is creative and strategic car packing.  The old spring mattress was the first to go in with a packing blanket on top since I was going to have to put my little black table upside down on top of it and I didn't want the table to get scratched!  More packing blankets topped the table and then the frames lay nicely on top of it. The painted letters all sat on the front passenger seat.  I brought along a few more seasonal items for my display and and a box filled with my tools for the day.

It was so nice to be greeted by a newly painted room!  I decided to start with arranging my frames.

The slender part of the wall was a perfect fit to start hanging the frames. Empty frames, both simple and fancy, are often requested by customer, with numerous creative projects found on Pinterest these days!  The most popular projects are chalkboards and bulletin boards.

Frames can also be used to create architectural interest on bare walls, and then filled with other wall art such as letters, mirrors, and wow! Actual artwork!  I try to create displays to give customers ideas of how to decorate their own homes.

Next up the letters! Now you can see what I needed them for!  I wanted to spell "Cherish" but I didn't realize I was missing the "C" so I decided to go with "Wish" for the Christmas season! Hopefully my "C" will come in by the time the holidays are over!

To create the feel of the holidays, I like to use fabric backdrops to add some drama to my space.  I found this amazing fabric which looked like a wood pile and it immediately said 'winter' to me. Using just safety pins, I folded the edges in to narrow the fabric width in order to match the space width, then folded the top over a dowel and safety pinned the fabric along the length of the dowel.

 Using safety pins instead of actually cutting and sewing allows me to use the yardage for another purpose once I'm done using it for a backdrop.  I screwed two garment hooks into the wall for the dowel to rest on.

 Luckily, two coworkers Karen and Betty, were there to help tell me when it was level - otherwise I would have had to climb up and down that ladder a million times to check and recheck.

I placed my little black table just in front of the backdrop and put a piece of burlap down to protect the top.  I purchased an artificial Christmas tree at Smith and Hawkins when they were going out of business and this will be the third year it has been my display tree.  I plugged it in to check the lights before putting it up and once again they all lit up, so five minutes later the tree was up and sparkling.

Wow - I guess I didn't focus well enough! The old eyes just ain't what they used to be! I'll get a new picture and replace this one as soon as I can! 

The black chalkboard to the left was the starting point for this grouping.  Paring the black metal pieces with the more rustic frames, echoed the black background and wood in my back drop fabric. 

 

With everything I brought put up, it was time to head back home to get some more painting done.  It's finally starting to look like I have accomplished something!  All the wall items need to be in place before bringing in the furniture as it's much harder to deal with hanging pictures, etc. when you have to move everything in front of it - that is one nice thing about starting a space from scratch!

Here's one more look from the doorway - I just noticed the oval mirror inside the large white frame repeats the oval of the white frame - glad that worked out!  The furniture in the bottom right of the picture still needs to be moved out of the space and then I can start working on the next two walls. Thanks for following along so far - more to come tomorrow!

"Beachy Blues Buffet" Tabletop

Sometimes a piece of fabric can inspire a table top!

In this case, a piece of Hawaiian print fabric in a variety of blues just happened to be what I needed to set the tone for a casual beachy buffet I hosted recently.

The yardage was one of the last things left in my mother-in-law's house when we were moving her to her new home.  I loved the various hues of blue and I thought the batik type print gave a Carribbean vibe.  The beachy buffet was held to thank those who had donated to my son's recent humanitarian trip to Haiti!

The colors in the fabric matched a lot of my depression glass that I had been collecting over the years so I gathered some pieces and put them to use.  The dark blue apothecary jar was my most recent find!

 I chose yellow and white daisies to contrast with all the blues!

The napkins were rolled up and encircled with jute napkin rings and placed in my cherished vintage sand bucket found at the Sacramento Antique Fair.

The light blue milk glass pedestal bowl was a gift from my husband - filled with lemon heads to carry the yellow through the table scape.  The vintage paper fish coasters were thrift store find, as was the blue cut glass handled bowl they are nestled in.

Here's a close up of the milk glass - I just love the curves in the pattern! 

They remind me of the ocean waves!

The tiny seahorse slat and peppers had to be included!

After adding the little starfish and some silver glass glitter to the edges of this sign found at Marshalls, it was ready to welcome the guests!

I placed the blue vase filled with daisies atop a vintage soda crate to create some height, added a couple of blue and yellow candles in a pair of milk glass candlesticks, a few seashells, and the "Beachy Blues Buffet" table top was complete!

I'm linking up to Tabletop Tuesday!