Dark Walnut Bed is Sparkling!

Love our little back bedroom in the shop with these two sweet antique French nightstands on either side of it. Love the chocolate silk matelasse blanket folded over it with cream crochet pillows on  top. My most favorite thing is the delicate crystal chandeliers hanging over it-a collection of sparkling light.
How sweet these would look in a bathroom, over the head of a bed, above a baby's bed or in a little girl's room!

Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread

Okay my friends it will be 83 degrees next weekend! Let's celebrate by making pumpkin bread....
INGREDIENTS:
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
3 cups white sugar
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Review: "Excellent. I followed the ingredients and directions almost exactly. The only new things I did were add a teaspoon of vanilla and 1 1/2 teaspoons of pumkin pie spice(I did not have any cloves). I also used one cup of packed light brown sugar and two cups of regular sugar. I baked mine in one pyrex loaf pan(only one I have) and also made 12 muffins. The one cup of oil was not a problem for me at all, nothing came out greasy. I also sift all my dry ingredients together(not sugar). I will be making this again for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Update: 11/3/06- This was so yummy my husband actually asked for more the other day. This also freezes really well. I froze most of the 12 muffins I made and when defrosted, they were still really good. 11/26/08- Yes, I am still making this recipe, today in fact! We now like to add chocolate chips. About 1 cup does the trick, as we don't like many, just enough to give it a chocolate taste. Tip: Freeze the chocolate chips before hand if you want them to retain some of their shape when done cooking."

Fall Leaves, Bittersweet & Lanterns

Love our wonderful French table filled with beautiful glazed pottery and large rustic metal lanterns! Rusted leaves and bittersweet are scattered on top of it and stuck here and there...Mounted european antlers are tucked in the setting...

These glazed pots are so beautiful the large lustered jug is a handmade vietri piece so beautiful for Fall...

  Here are the lanterns up close they are filled with a carved ram head and another small euro mount. A collection of these antlers on a wall is so beautiful especially when they are surrounding a large feature such as a deer head or for me a javelina pig mount. Rustic yet you can achieve a refined look with them!
The French table is for sale as well very pretty table!

Limelight Sweet Potato boxes

Loving this limelight sweet potato vine overgrowing in our windowboxes at the shop. Just beautiful with the peocock blue shutters. We have recently done stucco and stonework on the outside of the shop and recovered the awnings. Makes a nice touch don't you think? When in doubt to know what to plant sweet potato vine is your answer!

"We are friends and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often.” 

-Jeanette Winterson quotes

Well Miss Venita has moved and I have taken many pictures of her work in progress "Jack Arnold" inspired home. So please stay tuned as I post some of her "vignettes" in her beautiful home! So sad to see her move(yes I lived next door) but lucky me we did a sort of a house swap. We bought her 1928 english-style home which is where I grew up. Will try to keep you updated on projects and what we are working on....
Thanks for being patient on our postings!

Fall Is In The Air...

So many goodies are coming in for Fall. Makes me ready for crisp nights and a crackling fire in the fireplace! The Aromatique Cinnamon Cider pottpourri is the easiest & fastest way to "Fall" your house up. It's warm inviting fragrance of cinnamon apples is wonderful! Loving all the beautiful Fall florals coming in as well-burnished sunflowers and orange Fall garlands. Drop by we can help you design your Fall feel!

Rocki Gorman Large Silver Cross

We cherish Rocki Gorman's jewelry and her creative flair! We have some wonderful selections for this Fall. One of our most favorite pieces is this extra large sterling cross with Navajo inspired stamp-work and extra large bell. This is definitely a statement piece as it measures around 5" tall. It would look stunning with this River Rock Jasper and "vintage" cross sterling earrings! Please feel free to email us for more information on these pieces....

Virginia Barn Makeover

I've always been intrigued by certain structures/buildings being transformed into homes such as old school houses and barns especially. I love how this interior designer looked to it's past history and stories to build a look!

"Steven Gambrel, one of America's top-tier interior designers, recently had a chance to consider the question. Although he lives and often works in the most urbane precincts of Manhattan, Steven grew up in Virginia and still has ties there. When the owners of a Middleburg horse farm asked him to convert one of their barns into a place for large, casual parties and just hanging out and watching TV, he took it on with relish—his first barn, and on home turf."

"When Steven was delving through history for a decorating theme, he ignored the barn's most recent tenants—cows—and looked further back to the farm's equestrian past when Thoroughbreds and saddle horses were bred there. Middleburg remains an epicenter of foxhunting and a hub for all things equine. Tucked in the rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, it seems at times more English than England."

"As the decorating unfolded, the homeowners asked Steven to incorporate more than 250 photographs of jockeys and family members from the past three generations engaging in equestrian activities. "They're fabulous pictures, every single one," he says. He framed them all uniformly in distressed, rust-colored frames and hung them free-form on a wall that runs the entire length of the barn (about 80 feet).

Making a marvelous gallery out of old family pictures is exactly the way Steven's mind works, and it explains why his chic interiors are never vacuous. "There are elements that I use over and over, mostly things that have to do with comfort and proportion," he says. "But what's really important to me is a sense of place. You can pull spirit from a location, the time we live in, or the lifestyle of the people. That's what I do, and it's my signature.""

See more here at southernliving.com

Scrumptious Bird Nest

These are bird's nest candies-they look wonderful! I could see drizzling the nest with dark and white chocolate for Easter and a early Spring gift! Who knew chow mein noodles had such potential!

Click Here For Recipe

Spring Gardening

This is Roger Griffith featured on http://www.marthastewart.com/ in his New York abode-I just love every inch of his garden it certainly inspires...it overflows with charm and old world inspiration!

"Griffith relaxes on the patio in front of his perennial garden, which bursts with blooms during three seasons. Spring kicks off with tulips, bread poppies, and peonies, giving way to the night-blooming daylily Hemerocallis citrina, thalictrum, goat's beard, 'Indigo Spires' salvias, and 'Sum and Substance' hostas in summer. Fall brings on 'Limelight' hydrangeas, 'Autumn Joy' sedums, and tickseed, which glow in the season's soft rays."

As spring is just around the corner I am getting anxious to work out in the yard and get some fresh air. Looking through my mothers books I found a 1951 edition of Better Homes and Gardens "Garden Book"-a bible to yard layout, upkeep, and planting of the good oldies such as lilac bushes, delphinium, rudbeckia, climbing roses, bearded irises and yew(just to name a few). A great book even though it's 62 years old! The picture above is of a espalier fruit tree-I saw an apple espelier in Taos, NM a few years ago in a nursery and it intrigued me...

Espalier is the horticultural and ancient agricultural practice of controlling woody plant growth by pruning and tying branches so that they grow into a flat plane, frequently in formal patterns, against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis, and also plants which have been shaped in this way.The word espalier is French, and it comes from the Italian spalliera, meaning “something to rest the shoulder (spalla) against.”^[2] During the 17th Century, the word initially referred only to the actual trellis or frame on which such a plant was trained to grow, but over time it has come to be used to describe both the practice and the plants themselves.^[1] The practice was popularly used in the Middle Ages in Europe to produce fruit inside the walls of a typical castle courtyard without interfering with the open space and to decorate solid walls by planting flattened trees near them. Love this mixture of tulips and pansies stuffed in these great concrete containers...

Roger Griffith's flower and vegetable garden, just hours north of New York City, is like a farm stand in a backyard. He uses succession planting, in which seeds are sown about every three weeks, to ensure produce into fall.

Inspiring English cottage-stuffed full of tulips, irises and other beautiful plants....

A Martha-inspired garden-this could easily be done in any backyard love the twig/bark borders around each section-the finnials on the section of fence surrounding it is a good idea as well...love the posted lanterns leading the green grass pathway to a white draped table...

Lemon-Poppy Seed Belgian Waffles

These fluffy waffles are filled with the sweet, lemony flavor of their muffin cousins. Cook up the batter as waffles or pancakes for breakfast or dinner. Finish the fruity flavors with our Blackberry Maple Syrup.

• Recipe: Lemon-Poppy Seed Belgian Waffles with Blackberry Maple Syrup

Shades of Turquoise

Looking for inspiration I came across these beautiful shades of turquoise-each picture a different shade of aqua. They seem to make these rooms more interesting don't you think?

Just love the creams and blues on these ancient old doors-so yummy!
Don't you want to walk through them and touch them?

Thinking this finish could be pulled off with turquoise blue, denim blue, and white wash with an antique glaze on top.

A little bit of Ralph! Touches of reds-the books, persian rug-the contrast is interesting...

Love these old beams incorporated in this loft-something to think about!