Lisa Leonard is having another awesome giveaway

On my wishlist is jewerly from Lisa Leonard. I love the simplicity of her designs. She has designed angel wings... I've waited for those since I lost my daughter Grace. She is having a contest and I am crossing fingers that I win! Isn't this just divine!





http://www.lisaleonardonline.com/blog/2010/12/17/my-heart-is-full-giveaway/#comment-146272

My First Christmas Tea

Every year our church has a Mother/Daughter Christmas Tea. Both my daughter and I were thrilled to sign up this year. I did last year, but she ended up with a bad cold. As I was buying my tickets, the Pastor's wife asked if I wanted to host a table. Host a table? What does that mean? She said, you bring in your own china, glasses, centerpiece, etc. and set the table up however and in whatever theme you would like, making sure your decanters stayed full of hot water/chocolate.

My first thought was a vintage Christmas table using my Great Grandmother's antique Imperial Candlewick dishes. I never use them and thought this would be a fun time to. I inherited my Great Grandmother's set when my Grandmother passed away. I've heard many stories about Great Grandmother using them and how she would save for months just to purchase the next piece. The original butter dish to the set was round. In California, back that time ago, the butter did not come round, it was rectangle (a tad smaller), like we have now.

She wrote to Imperial and told them that she was buying the entire set but the butter dish did not work for her... They designed a special rectangle butter dish just for her and gave her the piece for free. The letter from Imperial stayed in my family but was lost some years ago. So for those of you who may also collect the set or have a few pieces... now you know the history of the rectangle butter dish and who inspired that design.

Our daughters rang bells to Christmas songs. They were so cute and so fun to watch.

The church had a backdrop set up to take mother/daughter pictures. I borrowed the seat and snapped a photo of my daughter, Emma. It was a fun day. I enjoyed the special time with my daughter, the fellowship with other mom's and sharing and using my Great Grandmothers dishes.

PS: I'm still painting....

The Verdict.... White

After much thought and furniture blog lurking... I made my final decision to paint Emma's dresser white, yes, just simple clean white. I thought about other colors that would look cool with lavender, like a cool vintage green, turquoise or a pale blue... but after seeing a dresser like hers done by "The Frosted Gardner", I knew her dresser would be perfect in white. I just recently found their blog as they were featured on another blog I follow. Here are a few of their pictures that inspired me.

Love this piece!

Furniture painted by "The Frosted Gardner"

http://frostedgardner.blogspot.com/

If you have not seen "The Frosted Gardner" blog, please do visit their site. They do wonderful work with pieces of furniture and give them amazing new life, they are really nice people too :)  I spent hours browsing their before/after pictures! Such wonderful ideas and gave me so much inspiration.

My friend Laura from Laura's Rose Garden (http://laurasrosegarden.blogspot.com/) also shared a link from her blog where she too had painted a dresser like ours in white and it was simply divine! She has a beautiful site and amazing taste in vintage cottage shabby goodness.  

So, here is the dresser and what I started with today.

I really wasn't very sad about painting the piece. It was a $30 Goodwill find. As you can see the last owners weren't too gentle with the top and it also went through my daughters stage of thinking any surface is her art canvas. So... on went the primer and 2 coats of white paint.

It will need another coat or two tomorrow but I'm really happy with how it's turning out and especially against the new lavender paint.

This is what it looked like outside of Emma's window today... It was a good day to stay inside and paint.

The bedroom makeover: to be continued.......

Lavender

When I was pregnant with my little girl, 7 years ago, I dreamed about how cute and girly I wanted her bedroom to be. Since I had two boys, I was really looking forward to some femininity and pinkness. I remember scanning through a Pottery Barn catalog and falling in love with a paint scheme they did in one of their furniture ads. It was a soft cream color on the top half, pale green on the bottom half and the palest of pinks on a wood moulding to divide the two colors. She's had her room those colors since she was born.

I've been thinking lately about changing her room a bit. I looked at the Better Home and Gardens paint colors and liked this lavender color. I was a little nervous about painting her room all one color as it's always been divided. Here a few pictures of before. Now, please note that her room isn't always this much of a disaster. I remembered to take the "before" picture after I had already shifted all her things to one side. But you get an idea of her colors.

Before

Before

As I started to put the first coat of lavender over the cream and green, my first thought was uh oh.... what did I do? I wasn't too sure of the color and wasn't liking it too much. I know that's common and I told myself (even though I kept thinking that I could easily put the moulding back up and could touch up the area I just painted) just keep going, just finish one wall and see what you think. I still wasn't liking the first coat...

First coat...

But I continued to paint. Once I completed the first wall with 3 coats, the color started to grow on me.

I finished painting her entire room last night. I started first thing in the morning and finished about 8pm. I will post more pictures of the finished walls and thoughts about painting her furniture in my next post :)