Brown Transferware

It's been a while since I have had a change to post anything. I totally dropped the ball on posting a few Christmas projects. I will save them for the 2010 holiday season! So, I decided it was time to share some of my other collections! I collect brown transferware! It all started with this set of brown transferware that my mom had when I was a kid! She passed it on to me! Funny thing is I hated it when I was a kid! I thought it was UGLY and know I appreciate it and value it like I never thought I would!

I have the transferware from my mom in the kitchen area! It is in the small hutch you saw in the first picture. The hutch belonged to my husband's grandmother. I also have some of the transferware behind a glass cabinet in the kitchen.

Here I have some of the serving pieces hanging on a wall in the kitchen. I love this stuff!

Here is a mixture of 2 pattens that hang in my bathroom. The small ones with more white on them are small bowls! Many of these came from The Gresham Barn Sale I am always talking about.

This pattern of transferware hangs over my magazine/book holder in my toilet area! These came from Roundtop!

This little trio came from the Barn Sale too many years ago! They hang to the left of a mirror in my bathroom!

These are 3 of my favorite and they hang above my nightstand. I have the same three handing above my husband's nightstand also! So, there you have it. . . another thing I like to collect and collects dust! :)

Vanity Trays And The Gresham Barn Sale

I thought I would share a small collection I just completed and finally hung up on a wall by my bathtub. For several months I have been looking for vanity trays of all shapes and sizes. This idea started in April of this year when I purchased my first several vanity trays at the biannual Gresham Barn Sale. I go to this sale twice a year and find lots of the treasures in my home there.

If you live in the East Texas area you will not want to miss the Gresham Barn Sale. It's October 15-17. Be sure and click on Gresham Barn Sale or the picture above and see the blog for the sale and get more details! I can't wait to go and find my treasures for myself and others next week! Will I see you there?

A Closer Look

Ok, here we go. Let's take a closer looks at the vintage baby shower I shared with you the other day. These next few things have to be some of my favorite things. They can be used for baby showers, wedding showers, a girly luncheon, or whatever.

Notice the tall stack of plates behind the cake to your left. . . . .

I have been collecting dinner plates, salad plates, and dessert plates for nearly 2 years. They are all different patterns. My rule for collecting them is they have to be white/cream with pastel flower patterns on them. I have found them at Round Top, Canton, & Resale Shops. It's so much fun hunting for these treasures. This baby shower was my first opportunity to use them! It was so much fun! I have enough of each plate right now for 26 people. My goal is 30 so just a few more to go!

Rose growing is very popular this time of year where I live. People just sell them on the side of the road and it's only $2.50 a dozen. So, for my project I needed 9 dozen roses!

So, at the biannual Barn Sale one year I bought 3 candelabras like this one. I had a great idea a few weeks before the shower. I wanted to find pegged votive holders to put in the candle stick area. Easier said than done. Finally found enough online and had them sent to me.

Instead of putting a votive in the pegged votive holders, I had this idea to put roses in them. I think it turned out pretty cute! What do you think?

Warming Things Up

It's been a while since I have posted anything, but I have been swamped with a project that I will not yet reveal to you until sometime in August. Here is a small task I took on recently. We have a traditional home and on the front porch we have 2 porch swings and 2 rockers. One of each on either side of the front door. One day I decided the furniture on the front porch could use some warming up, it needed pillows! So, I ran up to the attic and got down the some scrap fabric I had from another project, ran to Ross and bought some down decorative pillows to use for my pillow forms, and a then went to Hancock Fabrics for some zippers. One evening cut out all the fabric and the next evening during Grey's Anatomy sewed them all up! So, presto-change-o, we now have pillows we don't NEED for the front porch!

This week I decided the back porch needed warming up too. So, when I was at Canton on Sunday I bought some new wire plant stands to mix in with some other pots I already had. Took a trip to the plant farm south of town with the kids and again presto-change-o, a nice inviting back porch retreat. . . until the Texas sized mosquitoes come to make themselves at home there! :(

I really thing I could use a rug back here to finish warming things up! Haven't convinced the husband of that yet! In due time, my friend! :)

Easter Decorating (Do I really have enough to even call it that?)

I hate to disappoint you all, but this is it! This is all the Easter decorating I do! It's practically nonexistent!

Do you remember this scale from Christmas? It had red ornaments in it back then. Well, it has fake eggs in it for Easter! Orignal, right???

By my laundry room there are some cubbies that we put our shoes in and hang our backpacks, etc. in. Well above the hooks we have these little cubbies I have never put anything in yet. So, I put all of the cute little stuffed bunnies and chicks we have gotten from grandparents and other loved ones over the years.

It is all kinda tucked away from the world, yet the kids can enjoy all that the pastels have to offer during this holiday! Do you decorate for Easter and if so do you do a bunch?

Pillow Parade

So, Kari & Kijsa are hosting a pillow parade that I found out about on Girly Stuff's blog. So, I decided to join the parade.

I have a ton of pillows I really love in my house for many different reasons. I just picked a few to share with you today.

This is one of two pillows like this in my guest bedroom. The quilt on this bed was made by my husband and yours truly years ago. When we moved into this house we had a seamstress turn the quilts into duvet covers and in the process I had her tear apart two shams I had made with this center hidden star and make two new shams using scrap fabric from the drapes and bedskirt! I really love this one and I love that there is an identical one to it on the bed beside it! Twice the enjoyment! :)

Now this is one of the pillows on my couch in my living room! I love it too because it has scrap fabric from the shower curtain in my guest bathroom on the back side, scrap fabric from the curtains in that living room, scrap fabric from chairs I had reupholstered in my bedroom, and I ordered a yard of the fabric my couch was made out of and that fabric is on there too! I also like that it have our family monogram on it!

This one is in the living room too in a recliner and it has the same scrap fabrics on it just all arranged differently!

The big euro pillow in the back in this picture is on of Baby Girl's three euros. This one I like because it is different than the other two and it has her monogram on it! I also love the little rose flower pillow that was $6 at Ross! :)

I really like all of Baby Girl's pillows on her bed so here they all are for you to see! In case you are wondering my 5 year old is trained to put her pillows on her bed exactly like this! She is a natural!

Mulberry Transferware

I have to say I absolutely love my Brown Transferware that I will share with you later, but I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, Love my Mulberry Transferware more! I don't have very much of it, but what I have I adore!

They call it Mulberry Transferware, but it is really a black color.

It all dates back to the late 1800's and it is harder to find than Brown Transferware and Flow Blue Transferware. I lucked out and found a lady that had downsized and needed to unload a few pieces of it! Five pieces to be exact :)

Pack Up

It's been a little while since I posted. A while back I started sharing my collections with you. I showed you my globe collection and my tole tray collection. Here is my antique suitcase collection.

This collection of suitcases is on top of the cabinets in my utility.

These are on top of my entertainment center in my living room. There are so many that I love I can't decide on a favorite. What kinds of things do you collect?

Lending A Helping Hand

So, I have a friend that needed a window in her bedroom treated. She has lived in her house for almost a year and is trying to finish up some final decorating loose ends. This was one of the things to do on her list. So, she asked me to help her make a fabric selection and I had my seamstress I use whip up a cornice board with swags and cascades for her bedroom window. I think it turned out very nice.

Before

After

Where In The World Did The Worlds Go?

Do you remember this piece of furniture from last weeks post? It has been now retired to the garage and will be going to the resale shop this weekend! Anyway, this post is not about the entertainment center! I want you to look at my globe collection on top of it! I didn't mention anything about these guys last week! Were you wondering where they went to????? Did you think maybe they went to the garage too????

Here they are! They are in our office on top of the cabinets in there! I always new that when we rearranged the game room, they would end up living in this room! I think they are just as much fun in here as they were in the game room! What do you think about them?

What's Your Favorite Game

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas we rearranged our game room in preparation for Santa bringing a Wii! So here is the before and after pictures. . .

BEFORE. . .I love Pottery Barn! However, I do not love the price! So, I met a man from Oklahoma that can build Potter Barn knockoff for a fraction of the price. I had him build these cubbies 2.5 years ago when we moved in this house. This wall has housed the cubbies all this time. Check out the picture below to see the AFTER of this wall. . .

AFTER. . .We found this all leather couch at Pier 1 to go on this wall and I found a few more game boards at our local biannual Barn Sale. We lacked seating in this room until now. The next picture below shows the BEFORE picture of the wall directly across from the new couch.

BEFORE. . .So, before this wall housed an entertainment center we bought early on in our marriage. It's been a good old faithful, but we have been ready for a change for quite some time. Check out the after of this wall below. . .

AFTER. . .So, after moving our old faithful entertainment center out, we moved the cubbies to that wall and reconfigured them for a flat screen T.V. to hang on the wall. I bet you were wondering if I had moved the cubbies out for good. . . nope. . . kept those multipurpose little friends! They have a lot of life left to give us over then next several years!

After our transformation of those two walls, I took some croquet sticks I had laying around and mounted them above the window in there.

Last spring we finally got rid of our 1st couch we ever bought and got these two chairs. The ladder over in the right corner is still on the bubble. I haven't decided to hang it, leave it like that, or pull it out of the room. What do you think about the ladder? This is one of my favorite rooms in the house because it is for my kids! I love all the old game boards I have found! What is your favorite game to play?

Tole Trays

As we were cleaning out our attic this weekend, I went through tons of Rubbermaid's that were filled with things I have collected over the years. Most things were from childhood like old Cabbage Patch dolls, New Kids On The Block dolls, posters, VHS, trading cards, Care Bears, Annie dolls, and the list goes on and on! Don't ask me why I still have all this stuff because I won't have an answer for you. All I can say is that it is all organized nice and neat in a labeled Rubbermaid on a metal shelf in the attic! Now that I am all grown up (NOT) I collect things that are much different than the stuff in the Rubbermaid's upstairs. I collect things to decorate my house with. Today I want to share one of my collections with you. It is my collection of tole trays. . .

This collection of black tole trays was a gift on my 29th birthday form my sweet husband. Every single one of them came from eBay. He shopped for a month or more before my birthday to have all of these in time for the big day. One day I was home and it was a blank wall and then by that evening before I could get home, he had come home without me knowing and hung them all up for the big birthday surprise! This is my favorite collection of tole trays and I didn't even have a hand in hunting for them!

This tole tray came from our local biannual Barn Sale! This one is in Baby Girl's room! I think it is beautiful!

These two tole trays belong to Baby Girl too! The larger one came from the local Barn Sale and Daddy bought the small one for Baby Girl on eBay when he bought my birthday collection! He loves both of his girls :)

This collection of 4 small tole trays hang above Baby Girl's doorway! I found them for $8 at Canton! What a steal!

These two have to be my next favorites! They hang by the vanity in my guest bathroom! They were a find from Round Top!

This one is on the dresser in my bedroom and for the life of me I can't remember where it came from, but I do remember it was cheap!

Well, these are my tole trays! I really do enjoy them when I see them around the house! What kinds of things do you collect to decorate with????