Easter Sunday

He Is Risen!!

Coffee Bar

Having guests for Easter this year?

Why not set up a coffee bar at the dessert table?

It doesn't have to be super fancy and you can mix and match all of your coffee essentials!

The mugs above were purchased at Walmart.  They're part of the new BH&G spring line of dishes.  Love the fleur-de-lis! 

This cute rectangular sugar bowl came from The Christmas Tree Shop - $1.99 - love that place!!

This whimsical little cow creamer also came from the Christmas Tree Shop - 69 cents!  Did I mention that I love this store??

 Put everything together on an old flea market tray and you've got an instant coffee bar.  Place it at your dessert table with a thermal carafe or you can put it out on your counter next to the coffee pot.  Be creative with it and your guests can just help themselves!

Happy Easter!

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

Easter Eggs

I've been working on some Easter decor today.

Here are some eggs that I made this afternoon.

The kids and I also made some papier mache bowls out of shredded sheet music paper.

We tried this idea that was in the April issue of Country Living magazine.



For a tutorial on the eggs, visit my other blog Ruffles and Mudpies

xo and God Bless,
Kathleen

A New Blog and Some Easter Ideas

I wanted to share with you, a few bits of Easter decor ideas.



I made a fun little Easter tree

as well as these adorable birds

Which brings me to the second topic of this post...


I've started a new blog! I'm still going to keep my French cottage blog {with regular updates}, but I decided to keep the decorating separate from the project tutorials.

So...come on over to Ruffles and Mudpies to see some of the new projects I've got!

You'll see the Easter egg tree pictured above as well as the birds and I've even got a tutu tutorial too - haha say that three times real fast - tutu tutorial too!

I hope you'll come over for a visit and follow along!

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

Yellow...

...must be the color of happiness...

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

Palm Sunday

Blue Angels

Nope...not the airplanes that put on an awesome show...but rather, this blue angel. He was originally gold and I found him in a flea market. He was sweet and I already had his brother at home with me.So I gave him a coat of beautiful robins egg blue paint, then antiqued him a bit with walnut stain.

Now, the two of them are sitting sweetly together enjoying each other's company.

Happy Saturday!

~~~

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

Children's Rockers

You may remember these rockers from last spring. I had painted them black and lived with them for awhile. I soon tired of the dark color and decided to paint them white.

After painting the chairs, I painted numbers on them to add a little whimsy - I'm loving numbers and cool graphics these days! then I sanded and distressed them... I'm loving their new look! Have a great day!

~~~

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

~~~

I'm linking up to Miss Mustard Seed's Furniture Feature Friday. Make sure you stop by the party to see some awesome furniture makeovers!!

Spring Cleaning

The floors are all finished and I've taken advantage of the empty room.

Time to clean...dust, wipe down the walls, etc...

Then I started putting things back into the room, re-arranging as I went.

Spring fluffing I guess you could say

Since we don't have any open shelving in our kitchen, but I really like the look of it, I have used the bakers rack to stack everyday dishes as well as flatware and the coffee press. I put some of my favorite coffee mugs up there too. Everything is white except for a few vintage rose patterned pieces and a few pale blue pieces. I like the clean look of everything together.

Can't forget the old rooster. I love his weathered patina as well as his perplexed expression.

And finally a small bird, nesting in my candelabra. Have a beautiful spring day! ~ xo and God Bless, Kathleen

Bar Stool Makeover

As promised, here is the project I was working on.

~~

We have bar stools sitting at the island in the kitchen. They were just the basic, plain jane oak ones from Walmart. I painted them white about two years ago and then last spring I got this wild hair and painted them robins egg blue. That didn't last very long so back to white they went. Oh, did I mention that before they were ever white, I had painted them black? So anyway, they've been black, white, blue and back to white again. They were still missing something though.

~~

That brings us up to today.

Here are the bar stools now. I rather like them! I had wrapping paper left over from Abigail's birthday and since I loved the pattern so much, this is what I did... First, I flipped the bar stool over and laid it on top of the wrapping paper. Then I traced around the stool.

I cut out the circle of paper

added some glue to the top of the stool and decoupaged the paper circle to the top.

Easy peasy!

Now get out your sander or sandpaper and go to town.

I love the layers of all the previous paint colors showing through

Finally, as a last step I went over the whole thing with a wet paper towel dipped in watered down black acrylic paint. I did small sections at a time and wiped it off as I went.

There you have it. A basic oak bar stool from Walmart...remade into something that is a little bit more "me."

Have a great day!

~~

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

A Beautiful Gift and a Project Sneak Peak

I entered a giveaway that Martina was having on her blog Northern Nesting .

Do you see the wonderful goodies pictured above?

Well guess what? I won them from her! Martina was so generous and I love these bottles and wicker carriers and sweet little bird. I have the perfect place for them and as soon as our living room and kitchen are put back together, I will show them to you in their new home. Thank you Martina. I'm really enjoying my lovely gifts!

~~~

Also, I'm working on a project and I wanted to give you a little sneak peek of what I'm doing. I'll post a tutorial when it's complete.

I haven't forgotten the lampshades. I'll get those posted soon as well!

Now, go and visit Martina...she did an awesome tray makeover here

Have a great weekend.

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

A HUGE Project!!

Just wanted to pop in to let you know that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth...just keeping really busy. We have an exciting project going on that has kept me a bit occupied and away from my blog.

Yes, as you can see, we're tearing apart the kitchen and great room.

Ripping up 12 year old carpet and linoleum...and replacing it with hardwood flooring to match the rest of the house!! Yay!!! Go hubby!!! Tear it out!!! And while we're at it, we're taking out the old laundry room flooring too. Beautiful slate grey ceramic tile is going in there. People...I cannot tell you how excited I am to be doing this. Our old floor was in BAD shape. And guess what else? We're getting rid of the old red paint in the kitchen and dining room too...I'm so over the red. It will be replaced with Comfort Gray by Sherwin Williams. Woohoo! Oh and you'll never believe what my husband said last night. Are you ready for this? After he saw the hardwood floors in the kitchen, he said and I quote, "I think we're going to have to paint the kitchen cabinets white. There's a lot of wood in here now." So of course I said, "Oh yes! We definitely have to. I certainly agree!!" Now we have to hurry and do it before he changes his mind. I have been working on him to paint these cabinets for the entire 12 years that we have lived in this house. His response has always been..."Absolutely not!" ~~ And while I'm at it...I'm going to paint the kitchen table too. He already agreed to that! ~~ I will be back soon with some photos as soon as we wrap up this project. ~~~ xo and God Bless, Kathleen