Porches and Petals

I recently purchased this beautiful blue floral table lcloth by Pioneer Woman from walmart.com for under $20.  I went with the largest one available to make sure that I had enough for my dining room table. I thought id it was too large, I could use the excess fabric to make matching napkins. I'm very happy with the print of this tablecloth, I particularly wanted the beautiful blue and white to showcase my yellow and green lemon plates that I purchased from the Dollar Tree last year.  I think the colors and patterns are going to work very well to showcase lots of other dishes and tableware as well. The blue and yellow toile napkins that are on the table are ones that I made from extra scraps of fabric that I had lying around the house. They are not a standard shape and size of napkins but for just me and my family, I don't really care and they worked out just fine.  

I remember seeing these lemon plates online last year on Youtube haul videos.  I seacrhed all over, and I was only able to find the bowls and mugs to purchase.  I just love the yellow and green color combination!  I am not sure why, but I, and many other people seem to really be fans of this design.  I have never particularly loved lemons before, but something about these plates I find beautiful. I was very happy when I saw the lemon plates were going to be available again this year. This time I was able to pucchase a set of four dinner, and salad places.   I just checked on the Dollar Tree website, and was sad to see it appears they are already out of stock again.  Hopefully they will be back again next year for anyone that wanted them and missed out. All of the crystal, and the glass butterdish were purchased at thrift stores.  I like usinig clear glass and crystal pieces because they all go very well with each other, and pretty much ...

It has been a long time, but I am finally back with a new post! The whole home renovation process has been one of the most involved and overwhelming things I have tried to do in my life, so I have not kept up with this blog like I had originally intended to. For this post I decided to share some of my fall decorations, since fall is one of my favorite seasons to decorate for.  I just love the fall colors!  The pineapple vase is from Walmart, and I bought it a couple years ago but last time I checked, they were still selling it. The flowers are also from Walmart.  I just love them!  The rich colors look amazing! The tiny pumpkins are from the Dollar Tree.  The Dollar Tree always has lots of cute decorations, for every season! These amazing orange glasses were prchased from a Goodwill store in San Antonio, Texas, many years ago.  The orange color is so gorgeous, and rare!  I think these are the perfect fall/Thanksgiving glasses. ...

Here are my latest before and after photos.  The area is the dining room, which is right off the living room.  In place of the new chandelier from Home Depot , there used to be a ceiling fan.  I'm not a "fan" of ceiling fans, so that was one of the first things to go.  The very first thing to go was all of the old carpet that covered the floors in almost all of the rooms. As I've written previously, one of the things I first loved about this house was the paneling, and this area off the living room that I have chosen to use for the formal dining area.  Not long after starting the process of buying the house, I envisioned an all-gold dining and living room.  Part of that vision was gold curtains.  Well, after purchasing the fabric online from Ebay , I realized they were way too sheer to be used without backing.  Since taking these photos, I have added off-white muslin to make them opaque. As you can see, under that old carpet we...