Chickadee Home Nest: blue and white vase

Showing posts with label blue and white vase. Show all posts

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Furniture Rearranging

Several months ago we thought it was time for Baby Love to start piano lessons, so of course it was a package deal—the piano had to go along with the lessons, so our piano now lives at her house. It’s the piano her Papá and uncle used to ~~learn~~ ~~practice~~ ummmmm spend our money—that’s what it was!—so it seemed only right that she have it now. It didn’t get played much at our house, and when we had it tuned recently we were pleasantly surprised to learn that it’s in very good condition!

Once the piano was gone, it gave me the opportunity to re-think our furniture arrangement. It had been a focal point in our home, and I had loved using it for vignettes (if not for playing, LOL). Here’s where it was~

We played musical furniture (thank heavens for those slider-disk things!), and our vintage buffet came to the former piano spot…that was it! Loved it! That’s where it needed to live! ~~

And guess what’s gracing the sterling punch bowl my MIL gifted us many years ago?! Hydrangeas, of course! Today was a perfectly beautiful day, so I took advantage of the beautiful weather to harvest more of them for future use—I’m thinking Christmas, but my ideas are still a secret (to me too!—I’m thinking…I’m thinking…).

I thought you might be curious about the three pictures to the left of the buffet. The top picture is of my parents happily walking down the aisle after their wedding. The second is a portrait of my mother and me, taken in our home in Havana, and the last is of me with my father at the beach—in perfectly clear water (also in Cuba).

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The move of the buffet created a void, of course, and after more musical furniture we settled on my MIL’s writing desk. It had been living in our bedroom (it’s the surface you see in The Nook and Old Ladder post {HERE}). Now it provides me with the opportunity to gather some blue and white~~

The vase on the desk is another perfect vessel for drying more hydrangeas. The black-and-white pictures are a collection my husband and I put together at our other house and repeated it in this home. It’s a collection of pictures of us and the generations before us. (Some adjustments need to be made to the collage, since I had to take some of them down with the new furniture piece.) Sometimes we talk about taking them down and doing something different there…we’ll see, but it’s interesting to me that after so many years of having them up I still enjoy looking at them. For example, there’s a picture of my beloved grandmother holding my baby brother and I’m sitting real close, right next to her. There’s one of my husband eating an ice cream cone that’s almost as big as he is, and an 8x10 of him deep-sea fishing with his parents in Mexico. Lots of good memories.

The sunlight was playing its lovely games when I walked in the room, and I quickly grabbed my camera.

Aren’t they drying beautifully? I know many of you dry your hydrangeas—how have you used them? Have you used them for any Christmas decorations?

I’ve been on the hunt for blue-and-white bowls, and recently I found this beauty at the antique shop where my SIL has a booth. Guess how much?? I HAVE to share the price because it’s so pretty and it was such a buy--$6.00!! It has no flaws, and the gold rim and base are perfect. See the reflection on the desk?

The rest of the vignette—blue and white plates on brass plate racks/candleholders. I got these candleholders years and years ago, I think from the Pier 1 catalog, because I wanted to display not only our boys’ Bunnykins plates, but also their mugs, and I was able to hang the mugs from the arms. It was a precious vignette in our other dining room. (Hmmmm…I wonder if I have a picture of them? They wouldn’t be digital, that’s for sure.)

I’m looking forward to your ideas on how to use dried hydrangeas, so please share them with me, and if you have pictures, please share those too! I can’t wait!

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From my nest to yours~

Zuni

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Hydrangeas Galore

I’m so excited about my hydrangeas this year—we have tons of them! I don’t know what variety they are (I wish I did), but they usually start blooming around mid-August, which is perfect, as we were able to use them for our Baby Love’s baptism reception back in 2008 (to see a re-make of that day go to HERE)—here’s one of the pictures of that table/post, already graced by the start of hydrangea season at Chickadee Home Nest, even though I did the post in late July:

My birthday is in mid-August—could the timing of the hydrangeas be any better?—and I mentioned Southern Living’s tiered basket over at Ballard Designs to Mr. CHN. Well, three or four days later a package from Ballard Designs appeared at our front door :). Sweet, sweet man. And perfectly timed to further enjoy our hydrangeas.

The possibilities with this basket are endless—it’s useful for every single season. I have a feeling you’ll be seeing a lot of it at Chickadee Home Nest. In this vignette, the first tier holds three small medicine bottles I bought from my compounding pharmacist (!). They no longer use them for medicines and were selling them 3 for $2.95—what a deal! I hope they still have more, because I ~~could’ve used~~ NEED more. I digress, but I had to share my bargain. So the first tier holds sweet cuttings of the freshest and newest hydrangeas to bloom.

The second tier is cuttings of the larger clusters in full bloom, and the third tier holds three good-sized bowls full of another favorite—shells gathered over the years while on vacation—embellished with…HYDRANGEAS!

~At this point I should warn you…lots of pictures to follow. I just can’t seem to get enough of the beauty.~

No words necessary…

My favorite part of the basket is this handle…it looks like a garden shovel’s, which insinuates gardening, earth, plants, flowers…what a perfect touch!

Having ample supply of HYDRANGEAS, I moved on to create another vignette at the bar that faces into the kitchen. This time, I left the silver ice bucket and tray in their tarnished, “old” state—I liked the contrast with the fresh, white, dainty flowers, and my “perennial” favorite—a blue and white vase.

As I walked by at one point I noticed the reflection on the granite. If you’ve read my blog for a while you know how taken I am with the unexpected, fleeting gifts of shadows and reflections. They are magical moments that you’re blessed to see simply because you’re there at that precise moment.

Someday I’ll do a post that will probably be called The Saga of the Picnic Table. Suffice it to say that I now {finally} have the old picnic table that I’ve wanted for a long time, and now {finally} it’s on the patio—painted and ready for family meals, which was no minor feat (but like I said, that’s another story for another day—probably in the spring, to allow some “distance.” Are you getting my drift?? I’ll laugh about it by then {maybe}).

But I AM already enjoying the “new” picnic table, and the fact that as I glance out through the screened porch I can see it, in its soft teal splendor. Already it has served its purpose in several ways: 1. The babies have eaten there; 2. It brings me joy to see it out on the patio; and 3. It’s yet another surface to “pretty up” and make the view even prettier.

So I’ll let you guess how I prettied up my view! Yes! Of course! MORE HYDRANGEAS!

This wood planter has seen its better days. For some reason my husband had it before we got married (did he really plant something in it?!), and that was almost 30 years ago. For the last 10 or so it’s been abandoned at the entrance to our business (empty, I’m embarrassed to say), so it’s been in the elements for that many years and then some. You know that look men give us when they have absolutely no idea what we’re thinking or why we do the things we do? It’s a look of surprise, mixed with curiosity and resignation. Well, that’s the look I got the day I asked Mr. CHN to bring the beaten-up, ugly, brown thing home. And then it sat in the garage for a year or two, but bless his heart, he never once asked why I he’d brought it home. (I, of course, knew…it was going to be a centerpiece someday! :) ) And THIS was the moment. The place. After it’d gotten a quick whitewash!

Don’t you just love the contrast of the dainty, sweet flowers against the rough wood and smooth metal strip?

And the contrasts even within the flowers themselves? Some pinkish, some white, with spots, some browning to a beautiful final stage. The stages of a flower are like the stages of a woman’s life—beautiful even as they reach their final stage.

Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you’ll leave me a comment to let me know you were here—I read every single one of them, and you can’t imagine how it means to me that you took the time. And if you like what you see a lot, maybe you’d like to +1 or Pinterest them too! Thank you!

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