A whining Witchy Woman... and lots more tweaking...

About a week ago I told you all I was sooooo lazy that I didn't even give Witchy Woman a scarf this year. Well she has been whining non-stop all week, begging for something a bit more than her pointy black hat...


And truth be told, I do understand. I mean Halloween is her holiday...


So I dug through my stash and found a vintage scarf and black clip-on flower for under her chin...



I'm happy to say she is feeling like the belle of the Witch's Ball now...


Okay, back to rearranging and tweaking... The pink polka-dotted pumpkin/pewter candleholder have been moved from the LR pie safe to the DR hutch...


...where the pewter candleholder now sits on the shelf beneath my Nana's photo (I am the lucky recipient of all of her china so she gets a place of honor over the hutch!)....

...and the pumpkin sits atop a small hobnail vase.

And the lamp that used to be on the LR pie safe is now on the little table next to the hutch...

It's nice to have a choice between soft lamp light and bright chandelier light at suppertime (maybe some day we'll get a dimmer for the overhead)...

I moved little Pete the Parakeet (in his HomeGoods cage) from the kitchen to the little DR table...

And last, but not least, I gave the top of the recycling bin a mini-makeover...

The swan was moved here from the half wall in order to make room for the fabric pumpkins...

I placed some of my favorite old books and a bird's nest around the swan, and it gives the top of this little recycling cabinet a whole new look...

So thanks for joining me while I tweaked this, and rearranged that, and gave in to a whining Witchy Woman...

I hear it might be SEVENTY DEGREES on Thursday so I might get to play outside, planting some bulbs!

I hope you all have fantastic weather wherever you are!!!

Donna

Hutch Makeover - From Prim & Proper to Shabby Cottage

This was our dining room hutch three years ago... We had so many projects going on back then, and this was one of them...


Like all of our furniture, this little hutch started out as an inexpensive piece of unfinished furniture. And, like everything else back in my prim days, it was immediately stained dark brown. (How do you like the plywood subfloors that I painted white? After ripping out our ancient wall to wall carpet, we lived with those for 2 years until we could afford hardwood floors last year. I could never do white floors again - too much work to keep clean!)


But about 3 years ago the cottage bug hit me, so this is how it looks today. I also happened to take possession of my Nana's china during that same time period...


So I refer to it as "Nana's hutch" because I have all of her old china displayed on the shelves and stored inside... I placed a favorite photo of my Nana between two dinner plates on the plate rack above the hutch (perhaps taken about the same time as she picked out this china, as she's a young woman in the photo). Below that is a 1950's photo of my mom and Nana (her mom), with my mom's crystal candy dish on the shelf right below.


The glass knobs and rose & cherub appliques really help with the "prim to cottage" transformation! (The large framed photo is my mom and dad in front of their Niagara Falls honeymoon cottage back in 1951!)


I don't know if it is 'proper' decorating or not, but I love having all the photos of Nana's side of the family mixed in with her good china, and I think she'd really like it, too!


Here's a close up of the pattern and a photo of my mom and dad from the early 80's... So thanks, Nana! I love the pattern as much as you did when you picked it out so many years ago!! I think it's just perfect for my little cottage!!

Donna