Swinging Beds - Nap on the Porch

I have not been thinking about getting a swinging bed.  But today one of my friends on Facebook shared a blog post she did a while back about porch swings, swinging beds and swinging chairs.  One room or porch was prettier than another.  With summer approaching I am thinking it would be so fun to take a nap on a porch or deck in one of these.

Swinging Bed in the Bedroom

My favorite is the green one below.  This one is actually in a bedroom.  You can see a better picture of it at Dishfunctional Design's Blog Post.

Day Bed Swing on a Porch

Here is a day bed swing.  Doesn't it look cool and comfy?  Can you imagine laying there with the flowering vines above?  Pure bliss!

Full Size Swinging Bed on a Screened in Porch

How about a full size bed on a screened in porch?

Full Sized Swinging Bed in Bedroom

I think the mural on the wall behind this swinging bed is amazing.

Comfy Swinging Chair

If you don't have room for a day bed or regular bed, how about a cozy swinging chair?  Bring a good book when you sit here.

All of the photos in I posted here are from Houzz.  I discovered this website today, and can see I will spend lots more time there.  It has all kinds of decorating ideas, and you can set up idea books with photos of the things you love.  That sure beats the way I did this years ago.  I would cut pictures out of magazines and tape them into notebooks.  I must admit I still have some of those. :)

P.S. Speaking of naps on the porch, I also subscribe to a delightful blog called Between Naps on the Porch.  She has a good post on what it costs to add an enclosed porch to the house.  You probably will want to read many of her posts.  They are excellent.

Do you have any fun relaxing furniture on your porch or deck.  Let us know about them in the comments here.

Decorative Boxes Add Flair & Function to Your Decor

A collection of my decorative boxes

Decorative boxes capture my attention.

One type of decorative box that I really enjoy collecting is the paper ones in all shapes and sizes.   I find these at a variety of places.  My favorite places to find them are at antique malls, flea markets and garage sales.  Surprisingly, I have found many of these in perfect shape for rock bottom prices.  Sometimes I pay 25 cents, and sometimes $2.00.  New decorative boxes are also wonderful, and I sometimes buy them at gift shops. Joann's, Hobby Lobby and Michael's also carry beautiful decorative boxes in all shapes and sizes.

Here are photos of my paper decorative box collection.

These decorative boxes are displayed on the window seat in my bedroom.  I never sit in my window seat, so I use it to display some of my larger decorative boxes. 

  I love the blue and green color combo.  These are nesting boxes.  The small ones fit into the next bigger size until it looks like one large box.  I like to stack nesting boxes for the full effect of the patterns on them.

Blue and green nesting decorative boxes

This elegant soft green box with a black silhouette of a lady also sits on my window seat.  I found her at an antique mall in Fort Collins.  Tres Chic!

Tres Chic - silhouette of a lady and her dog on decorative paper box

 This decorative box features lovely hyacinths on a large square box.  It was one of the first decorative paper boxes I bought at a gift shop in Nashville, Indiana.  Nashville is one of my favorite places to spend a day, but it is no longer close enough to my home to go there on any regular basis.  I have used this for years now to store cute greeting cards that I use when giving gifts and sending out notes to people.

Beautiful hyacinths grace my decorative box for my greeting cards

The rest of my decorative paper boxes are used throughout my home.  Some contain things, and others are used purely for display. Enjoy looking at these and more on my Pinterest site.

Planting Seeds Indoors is Child's Play

Planting seeds indoors is child's play ...

when you get to do it with your 4 year old grand-daughter.  My grand-daughter spent the night with us on Saturday, and on Sunday she and I got to work planting flower seeds in preparation for this summer.  We had a good time together.

I purchased a variety of seeds, a large tray of starter peat soil pellets from Jiffy, and some plant markers.  Maggie, my grand-daughter, had fun pouring water all over these pellets so they could get moist and puff up.  We did that before breakfast, and by the time we had eaten our yummy pancakes, the starters were ready for us to plant the seeds.

Let the planting begin ~

Maggie took a pencil and placed a hole in each of the starter peat soil pellets.  I carefully cut open one package of seeds at a time.  We had a total of 72 peat soil pellets to use.  Imagine my surprise when I only had 8 seeds in the first package of seeds.  They are wave petunias, and were the most expensive of the lot.  I guess you only get a few because the wave petunias are still a newer variety of petunias (well not really, I think they have been around for about 10 years).  Anyhow Maggie planted those first and since I told her to place two seeds to a pellet, she didn't even get one whole row out of those.

We moved on to the other seeds which were much more abundant than the petunias.  Maggie and I marveled over all the different shapes and sizes of seeds.  The marigold seeds were long and skinny.  The coleus seeds looked like extremely tiny poppy seeds.  Each flower's seeds are unique.

Of course, Maggie got a little tired of planting seeds before we finished all 72 soil pellets, so grandma finished the job while Maggie munched on some popcorn left over from Saturday night.  It was still surprisingly fresh tasting.

Plants in their temporary home

The whole tray went downstairs to my family room to place in our big window there that faces west and gets lots of sun.  A plastic dome lid went over all to keep the moisture in. Now it is up to me to keep up with this every day.

Planting seeds is so much fun that my husband and I plan to start some green beans and sugar snap peas indoors as well.  Do you ever start seeds indoors?  Leave a comment with your tips and experience.

Sewing Scissors Trivia

Did you know that scissors were invented around 1500 BC in ancient Egypt? They were forged into a U shape, and you pressed the ends together to cut something.  These scissors were forged from bronze.  Later around AD1000 the Romans introduced cross blade scissors.  Thank goodness for that.

Anyhow,  you may wonder why I am writing about this.  I have become interested in sewing scissors in particular since I started creating beaded sewing scissors lanyards for one of my customers.

As I started searching the web for pictures of sewing scissors, I found many pairs of them are "stork" sewing scissors.  The history of these is a fun piece of trivia. Midwives in the 1800s would keep a pair of these "stork" scissors in the sewing baskets.  They were actually used by the midwife to clamp off the umbilical cord after birth.  They were not intended to be scissors, but were clamps.

Because they were in the sewing boxes, manufacturers began making stork sewing scissors.  These are small sharp scissors most often used for embroidery work.  Stork scissors are still made today for embroidery.

Many of the scissors made in the past are absolutely gorgeous.  Some are even made from sterling silver. Those in the picture here are from 1890.  They have a sheath to protect the blades.

I have been creating beaded lanyards for scissors for one of my customers, and now have made some of them to sell to anyone interested in them.  I will bring you pictures of these next week.

Meanwhile, visit my Pinterest board where I have collected many pictures of sewing scissors.  Some have storks, one has a swan, one has an owl, and many are elegantly decorated with lots of swirly patterns.

Tomatoes - from Garden to Marinara Sauce

We grew lots of tomatoes this summer.  One of the plants we grew were Roma tomatoes.  These are the long tomatoes used for Italian sauces.  We kept harvesting them until I had enough for a pot of marinara sauce.   I had 4 1/2 lbs of these tomatoes to make the sauce.

Earlier this year I purchased a Juicemate at a garage sale.  This is a juicer type of machine that is hand operated (no motor).  It looked like fun, and it actually worked very well.  Bill and I worked together to create the tomato puree which was the base for the marinara sauce.

I sliced the tomatoes, and Bill turned the handle to crush the tomatoes into a puree.  We used the pumpkin sieve to do this because we did not want tomato juice.  We wanted a puree.  Using the pumpkin sieve allowed the seeds to go into the puree.   It was fun to see the skin come out one side of the machine, and the puree come out the other.  When we were done we had about 2 quarts of tomato sauce/puree.  It was thinner than tomato paste and thicker than tomato juice.

 I then sauteed two chopped onions and chopped garlic, added the tomato puree, added one cup of chopped basil and cooked over a medium heat with no lid for 45 minutes.  At that point I added some sugar, salt and pepper to taste.  Mmm! Good!

This, a salad, and some garlic bread made a yummy dinner last night.

Garage Sale Finds for the Bedroom

Garage sale finds make my heart beat a little faster.  Like so many of you I head out into the community every week to see what treasures I can find. Most of the time, I don’t have any specific items for which I am searching.  I do enjoy finding something to decorate my home. 

I am also always on the prowl for items to make and display jewelry.  I would love to find a mannequin or mannequin head in good condition in a flesh color.

Recently I located some excellent bargains for my bedroom.  I have wanted to change out my bedding to a celery green and soft blue theme.  I had already purchased a set of green and blue decorative boxes last year at a garage sale.  I wanted to place them in the window seat in the bedroom, but they simply did not coordinate with the room.  I could not justify to myself purchasing a new bedspread and pillow shams just to coordinate with the boxes.

Last week I scored!  I located a beautiful green Pottery Barn brand new bedspread and pillow sham set.  It is the exact shade of celery green that I wanted.  It is a full/queen size and works very well on my full size bed.  I believe it is an older version of the pick stitch quilts now sold by Pottery Barn.  It is so soft and light weight for summer.  I also found a cute small pillow in a slightly different shade of green at another sale.  That works as a throw pillow.

As I went from sale to sale I found one more item to use with the ensemble, a lovely off white feminine lampshade to place on my bedside lamp.  This bedroom is feminine and kind of cottage chic.  The white wicker headboard and the pictures above the headboard were also garage sale finds within the past few years.  My most expensive purchase here was the Pottery Barn quilt set for a sum of $30.00, brand new.  Each pillow sham was originally marked with a $39.99 tag.  What a deal!

What treasures have you found at garage sales or flea markets?

Frog Fun

Frogs are fun and can bring a smile to my face. We have been collecting different decorative frogs for the last 10 years or so.  Not that we go overboard, we get one or two new ones each year.  Most of them stay outside.  But a few have found their way into the house to add a little humor here and there.

My husband is the one who started this, but I get a lot of fun out of it as well.  We are always finding cute frogs at Hobby Lobby.  Here's a set we found this spring.  They live out on our deck by the flower pots.

The sweet potato vines are always trying to cover them.  Or then maybe the frogs want to hide.  Who knows?

Lavish Blooms in My Front Yard * Iris

Look at the beauty in my front yard.  Spring has finally come to Northern Colorado.  It has been a cold May, but we are starting to see warmer temperatures and some sunshine.   Irises are blooming in abundance.  The man who lived in my home before we purchased it last year planted lots of perennials.  These are some of my favorites.  Enjoy!  Let me know which you like best in your comments.  Hope your Memorial Day weekend is fabulous!