living simply and embracing imperfection
There’s a lot out there in blogland showing all kinds of handmade wreaths, painted pots full of faux bird’s nests and fanciful eggs, and lots of fun fabric decorations for spring porches. But what if you don’t have time for that? Or don’t want to invest the time or money (no matter how inexpensively it [...]
Do you remember how I went on and on about much I liked this canvas-word art-from-thrifted-painting I made? I think I mentioned that it had become the centerpiece for our early spring mantel, too, and I thought I’d take a minute to share with you how it all came together. I took cues from the canvas and limited [...]
About the end of February, I’m past all the cozy-blanket-and-warming-fire thoughts and am ready for spring – enough with the cold and gray days! After creating my weird cute little pom pom flowers and the bright green runner, I thought it would be fun to use them for a simple early spring table setting. Since [...]
Happy Friday! I’ve been wanting to share with you our winter decor – just some simple changes I made using what we had (which of course include thrift store finds - see if you can spot the items I’ve mentioned here in the past!). Here we are in the middle of January, a time each year [...]
Happy day before Thanksgiving! I thought I’d share with you my Simple, White, and Natural Thanksgiving tablescape so you could see that a beautiful table doesn’t have to be: expensive complicated over-the-top take a lot of time Of course it can be, but that’s not what we’re about here at AOC! We like things simple [...]
As if rustic turkeys, mercury glass pumpkins, and shelf-styling ideas wasn’t enough, I was inspired yet again by the October Pottery Barn catalog to transform a lowly green plastic pumpkin into an upscale addition to our fall mantel by breaking out the mod-podge. Yep, a decoupaged pumpkin. But not just any decoupaged pumpkin: this is [...]
This is part two of copying catalog styling with thrifted items – see part one here. In the last few years (thanks to Pinterest and the lovely blogs I read) I’ve enjoyed changing out our mantel for the seasons. I use the same steps in mantel styling that I do for shelves – find an [...]
When I painted the ceramic turkeys and transformed an orange pumpkin into mercury glass, one of my goals was to use them to decorate for fall – on tables, shelves and our mantel, like I had seen in catalogs and magazines. Table and shelf styling doesn’t always come naturally for me and I like to [...]
This mercury glass pumpkin makeover is another thrift store transformation that was inspired by the fall PB catalog. Honestly, I don’t normally get so many ideas from one spot, but this was just one of those catalogs that had me going, “oh- I can find that easy!” or “what a great idea” and so on. [...]
Like my fall mantel the inspiration for this thrift store transformation came from the October 2012 Pottery Barn catalog – specifically this guy caught my eye: He’s listed as a rustic ceramic turkey and he’s big – 15″ high – and comes with a big price: $159.00. Ouch. Surprisingly, he’s not available anymore and it’s [...]
Hey there! Are you decorating for fall yet? I’m happy to report that our Fall 2012 mantel is done. Or maybe I should say it’s a work in progress, ’cause I’ll probably be adding (or removing) things over the next month. Oh well, for now it’s good. Along with using garden flowers and produce to [...]
I really enjoy the change of seasons and fall decorating is a fun way to celebrate the shift from summer. There are some things I grow in my garden and vegetable beds specifically to decorate with in the fall: White pumpkins. Orange and green pumpkins. Although to be completely honest, I wouldn’t grow the orange [...]
Do you have an outdoor area you could turn into a “room” that would act as a sort of getaway right in your own yard? We inherited a structure in the corner of our huge, rotting deck when we moved to this house that I’ve dreamed of turning into a place in it’s own right. [...]
Last weekend Brian’s folks gifted us with this antique sewing machine that had been used by three generations since his great-grandmother purchased it more than 100 years ago. It had been stored in their basement after being used for its original purpose into the 1970s. When Brian’s mom offered it to me, I couldn’t let [...]
The other day I found a package of Martha Stewart chalkboard labels that I had bought more than a month ago with a 40%-off coupon for about $3.50. I don’t know why I hadn’t used them yet, but it probably had something to do with the fact that I didn’t know where I wanted to [...]
Note: I originally wrote about our house’s transformation from a 1980′s ranch to a “what-year-was-this-built?” cottagey-farmhouse in a multi-part remodeling series three years ago. I will be updating these posts over the next few months by showcasing the “before and after” of each room and going into more details (Want to make sure you don’t [...]
We finally completed our mudroom shelves! This room actually serves as both a laundry room and a mudroom and after organizing the laundry side a few months ago, I was anxious to tackle the gardening shelves on the mudroom side. Uh-em…”anxious” here being a relative term since it was a few months ago. But (hopefully) [...]
You might not know this about me from reading this blog (which is all about doing things…) but I’m actually NOT one of those people who like to change things around all the time in their homes. Really. The pillows on our sofa are the same since I wrote about them two years ago. Our [...]
I have been searching awhile for French-style chairs. Though I probably should clarify that I mean chairs I could afford, because I know that Ballard Designs sells these similar French chairs on sale for $449.00. {cough} So of course I turned to Craigslist. Only to discover that the used French-style furniture that seems so [...]
There comes a time in your child’s life when you are faced with the moment you’ve been dreading anticipating preparing for: your little baby is a preteen or teenager who has outgrown that little kid room you always thought was so cute. It happens in every child’s life – they want their room to reflect [...]
Looking through the photos for my article about updating and refreshing my workroom, I realized that I used many of my favorite vintage finds to organize all the little things that are a part of most offices and studios. Most of the things I now use as containers were purchased super-cheap at thrift stores and [...]
Ahhhh…. That’s me breathing a sigh of relief every time I walk into my workroom now- a room I walk into every day, so you can imagine the impact this has made on me. OK, that sounded way out of perspective – it’s just a clean and more organized room, after all – but what [...]
I love ten minute crafts, don’t you? These candles I created for our Simple Spring Mantel were so easy to make by wrapping plain pillar candles with burlap. I also used this same idea for our Christmas mantel, except I wrapped the candles in book pages- so you can see how flexible this simple idea [...]
Sometimes it takes awhile to come up with the perfect solution for a problem area. Or maybe that’s just me. Whatever. Anyway, this wonderful old dresser and mirror had been gifted to me last spring by a dear friend (when our kids were little I had asked her to think of me if she ever [...]
Since I loved my winter mantel so much, I haven’t wanted to change it out before now. The daffodils started blooming in our yard this last week and that prompted me to finally give the mantel a new look. I kept the background black window, shopped the house, and did a quick and simple craft [...]
I’m happy to say that the gallery wall I’ve been working on for a couple of months is finally finished! It’s a bit different than other gallery walls I’ve seen, though I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use a lot of things we already had. To that end, I went looking for [...]
I’m loving my simple winter mantel right now. Seriously- every time I walk by I think how much I love it – which is something considering how simple it is. Maybe after all the holiday decorations, I was just ready for something quiet and beautiful. Actually, all of these things were a part of our [...]
Want an easy way to refresh your bathroom? Change the shower curtain. It’s by far the biggest thing in the room, so it usually sets the tone for the rest of the room. Unless the rest of the room is a loud, colored tile– that would pretty much grab all the attention. Unfortunately, shower curtains [...]
After noticing that most of my Christmas board pins at Pinterest were decorations that used vintage book pages and music sheets, I realized I had a theme going on. I’m not trying to say I’m unique here- seems lots of people with blogs are making decorations with book pages. I noticed that some posts I [...]
When we started decorating for Christmas last week, this is what our mantel looked like. My daughter and I collaborated on it – well, it was mostly my daughter, because I was busy making new ornaments and decorations (more on that tomorrow!) However it got done, I think it turned out nice. Last year we [...]
I really wanted to do something special and different with these garage sale chairs when I decided to redo them (see the before and after of the chairs here). Painting them something other than white (my go-to color) was the first step. Covering the seats with burlap (really popular right now) was the second step. [...]
Finally! We were able to pull out all the hideous, stained, tannish-white, 20-year-old carpet and replace it with a prefinished, engineered wood floor. I cannot explain to you how happy and relived I am to have that carpet gone. Relived? Yeah- I seriously didn’t know what was lurking in that carpet. It just really grossed [...]
In the first part of Frugal Cottage Ideas, I used a list from the Better Homes and Gardens website to see how our Oregon Cottage does interpreting the “cottage look.” In this second part we’ll look at the rest of the items on the list. So far, it’s been a lot of fun for me [...]
One of my favorite magazines has always been Better Homes and Gardens. I love the accessible decor, food, and crafts. Their website has always frustrated me, however, with articles and pictures that were slow to load on individual pages. I was so glad to read that they had updated and revamped their site, so I [...]
My daughter and I bought the material for this project last November. How does this much time go by? Ugh. She’s been very patient, and I finally finished it today. Seriously. She gets major kudos for not bugging me weekly about it, because she was very excited about it. Back in November. Um, well…I think [...]
While I’m working on a detailed post about how we retrofitted our cabinets for our over-the-range microwave, I thought I’d ask for your feedback on our mantel. I saw a picture of a mantel with a pair of wonderful black lanterns (in PB catalog? on a blog? I can’t remember…) and thought something like that [...]
Oh, don’t worry, not anything big- just decor changes. It’s almost Christmas Eve after all, I don’t want to rock the boat too much! You may remember a few weeks ago when I posted this picture of our Christmas tree: While there’s nothing wrong with it, we’ve had a white/silver/gold tree for a few years [...]
I’ve been enjoying looking at people’s holiday decorations around blogland recently and was inspired to post some pictures of my own. Here’s a quick glimpse of our holiday decorations this year: Our mantel is not too different from last year, but it does look more lush, and that would be thanks to my teenage daughter [...]
For more than 10 years, we have been “borrowing” a dining table that belongs to Brian’s sister. It’s a mahogany, shiny-topped pedestal table and it’s a beautiful vintage piece, too, so I loved having it to use in our other house where we had a dining room and a breakfast area. We’d use it once [...]
Our daughter is spending a week with her grandparents and we are redoing her room while she’s away. When we mention this to people, most ask if it is a surprise like our son’s bedroom makeover.Uh…no. Unlike our son, our daughter has definite ideas about what she likes and doesn’t like and we’re way past [...]
I’ve always been drawn to amateur paintings at thrift stores and garage sales. Maybe it’s because I can’t paint worth a dime, but I like to think it’s because I find them pretty and I’m “rescuing” them from the trash pile. Not to mention that they are as close to owning “original artwork” as I’m [...]
June 2010 update: It did work!! I just didn’t wait long enough for the poly to dry- after waiting the recommended time before adding furniture, most of the wrinkles were smoothed out and the ones left were just part of the effect. See the room makeover reveal where my son says “the cool floor is [...]
We are in the process of redecorating our son’s room which we are documenting with a video camera to share with you all next week. In the meantime, I had to share some pictures of the solution to the lighting problems in the room. The lighting in this room was either cheap-looking or really dated. [...]
After doing the first part of the living room makeover, continuing onto the bookshelves, and bringing the entryway into the same scheme, it’s time for the foot stool we use as a coffee table to receive a facelift. Sometimes I’m seduced by magazines and catalogs that have wonderful, chunky wood coffee tables in front of [...]
I documented how I started a small makeover of my living room by changing some pillows and a lamp last week. It’s amazing to me how such a small change: Made me happy whenever I saw it. Provided the impetus to continue making changes. So last weekend I tackled the bookshelves on either side of [...]
I believe a cottage can be anywhere or anything (condo, ranch, farmhouse) as long as you have a "cottage mentality" which puts people above things, celebrates imperfections, embraces simplicity, and finds joy in everyday life. Thanks for joining me!
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