Finding rusty old junk is fun! Nevertheless, I have found that no matter how much "stuff" I find and collect, only God can fully satisfy my heart. Matthew 6:19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

New House Dining Room, New Wallpaper and Fall Touches!


After many months it's finally time to show you the inside of our "new" house! I'm going to start with the dining room since it's all ready for fall.  I'm also so excited to show you the historic reproduction wallpaper we just finished! We moved in last December and this is our first fall here so it still feels new to us. I plan to do a better before and after post when the dining room is completely finished so this isn't a true "reveal" but it's ready enough for a virtual tour, so come on in!


I'm sure many of you will recognize our farm table. The original post has been extremely popular and has been repinned and clipped over and over. You can see the original post here:
http://junkaholicsunanimous.blogspot.com/2013/09/10-find-antique-farm-table-and-fall.html?m=0

I love it in our new house! 

It took 7 months of living in the house for it to speak to us about what it needed. It was built in 1924 so after living with greige walls for a while and trying to keep up with modern decorating trends we decided that while the greige was popular and worked as a neutral, it just didn't do anything for the house. With all the dark woodwork and history it was just missing something. I kept researching homes of the twenties and realized the blah feeling in the dining room could be completely changed with wallpaper. We looked at several historic, reproduction,  period inspired papers and decided on this one-

We love it! I said I would never use wall paper again after the nineties, but in this house it is absolutely perfect.

After all whites in our last cottage this was a huge decision and as you probably know, the historic style papers are pricey so it was a big risk. We went for and have no regrets! The dining room has the old house "feel" no it should have, and it's just wonderful.

I didn't think my ironstone would work at first and was planning to move it all to the kitchen, but it looks even better than it did on the neutral walls. It really has an authentic historic feel with the paper and antique French country and farmhouse pieces.

We finished the papering just in time for fall decorating. I've kept it simpler this year and just concentrated mainly on my buffet. I will do more with my tablescape the closer it gets to a Thanksgiving.

Like my previous house, the buffet sits in front of windows so good pictures will always be tricky. These are iPhone pictures so quality isn't as good as I had hoped. I think the buffet looks much nicer in real life but you can probably get the idea.





I tried combinations of opening and closing blinds to get the best picture. Maybe my real camera will be more true to life.  I'll try to get some better ones for upcoming Halloween posts.

I still wanted that taupy-greige in my house so I repainted the tired white buffet  in a nice DIY chalk paint I had with leftover colors from other projects.

For the buffet I chose dark burgundy hydrangeas, blue pumpkins, green acorns and a garland of dark blueberries with some pine cones and other small gourds and leaves. I used my Johnson Brothers "His Majesty" turkey dishes as color inspiration to tie it all together.

I normally wait til November for these, but I have really been working to do simpler decorating and the pattern on the dishes looks wonderful with the wallpaper, so I went ahead and used them for now. The great part is all of this will work through Thanksgiving with only a few little changes in between for Halloween.







All the burgundies, blues, greens and burnt oranges look beautiful with the taupy-grey paint on the buffet. I normally use dark orange bittersweet in my displays, but this year I went with an almost black, faux blueberry pips garland and I just love it!  A few autumns ago I found some wild, dark blue bittersweet along the side of the road and I've been smitten with the darker hues of fall ever since.







The addition of my vintage green rooster really gave the buffet a French Country feel. My mom is a
rooster fanatic and I just can't compete with her fabulous collection. I actually didn't have a single rooster until recently, because I've just been holding out for the perfect one. I found this guy second hand and I just love him. He may not be a turkey but for early fall he looks great.





I love how this all came together with minimal fuss.

Whether real or faux, I'm crazy about blue and green pumpkins!

The best part of this year's fall decorating is how cheap and easy it was. I have many health challenges so I can't keep up with twelve totes (no exaggeration) of fall decorations and lugging them up stairs and packing them back up and so on. Actually I got rid of most of it when we moved and surprisingly don't miss any of it. I'm really into the using what I have in creative ways mode and only buy a few new little things now for seasonal decor. I did find this cute sign at Dollar Tree. It had a glittery frame thing around it that I didn't like but I loved the vintage postcard image so I just removed the glitter thing. I really like it displayed with this ironstone platter and for $1 I like it even more!



On the wall opposite the buffet, I left my salvaged antique mirror/buffet shelf with my everyday 
ironstone arrangement. I already had my brown transferware on display and it works especially well for fall, and it looks even better with the new wallpaper. I added a couple of pumpkin tureens and a new (junk find) old brown ironstone pitcher. Love this simplicity!

At first I added fall sprigs of leaves and berries to a couple of the pitchers but it really was too much. I am loving it simpler, just like this.







I reserve this little unmarked orphaned mug and saucer with a fall scene only for display in autumn
each year. I love patterns featuring English country and pastoral scenes.



For a simple centerpiece I used an old brown transferware urn and some ironstone platters stacked with a candle, small green gourds and antlers. 

Love the "urn" filled with a faux autumn kale. If it's a chamber pot I really don't care! Repurposing is all the rage...

The dining room is definitely cozy and I am sure it will really come alive for the holidays with the new wallpaper.

I hope you have enjoyed this first ever preview of our dining room!

I will leave you with a little sneak peak picture of a couple of upcoming blog posts about this fabulous painted area rug my husband did in the dining room and the wonderfully-warm persimmon paint I custom made for the living room that just pulled the whole house together. I hope you'll come back soon!

Amber
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Monday, September 21, 2015

Vintage Planter, Herbs and Fall Fruits


Hello again already---I'm on a roll now with this being my third post in a week! I was going to wait to do a big fall open house home tour for my next post, but this little vignette on the back patio  came together quite by accident and I thought it was charming and wanted to share.


It all started with this lovely vintage maiden planter by Haeger Pottery. I spotted her at a yard sale and "knew" she was something unique and for .75 I snatched her up.


I immediately thought she would graciously display fall fruits or succulents. The more I looked at her I was sort of mesmerized. I started to think I had really found something. I looked her up online and could only find a few anywhere all $70-$150, describing her as rare. Here is the marking on the bottom.



  The "worth" doesn't really matter to me because I buy what I like but I was glad to know that even 
though I've been out of die-hard junking for a bit due to illness, I still have the eye and the luck.







I found a turquoise cross necklace at a yard sale for a quarter. Looks so lovely on her!




The family went pumpkin perusing this weekend and I always let my son pick a few little ones of his own before we buy our big carvers in October. This year he has gravitated toward warty gourds and mini-pumpkins in light orange and yellow tones. He doesn't mind that I hoarded them for my decorating, he just likes to pick them out. The yellowish ones are not what I would have picked,  but grouped with my lemon thyme with bright green and variegated yellow leaves it makes a beautiful display. Very unexpected and different!



My Roman chamomile is spilling out of the galvanized bucket and smells heavenly interspersed with
the lemon thyme.  I love how it has a mossy look which is just perfect for fall and Halloween. I am babying it (and all my remaining herbs) like  crazy trying to make them last as long as possible. It's time to start drying them out for holiday cooking but I'm just not ready to part with them yet. Herbs and fall fruits make wonderful garden companions.


Our back deck shown in the background is sort of a potting shed and retro junk collecting area. I keep all of my McCoy planters, vintage garden tools, soda crates, and other misc. summery treasures here. When working on outdoor displays I just shop the back deck for something interesting to use. This time I chose an old ivory McCoy pot and a cute autumn squirrel from the garden stash to tie it all together.







The squirrel was a gift from my junkaholic Mother. I love him! And her! She is finally enjoying some  free time during retirement and I'm looking forward to some Autumn junking adventures with her!



Well, I decided to keep the turquoise cross necklace for myself, but the fair maiden looks just as lovely with her long braid spilling over her shoulder anyway.  I really love this display, especially since it came together so easily with what I had on hand. 

I also topped my chamomile with a sweet little ghost pumpkin.  Any time I can group herbs and pumpkins together with vintage junk it's a successful vignette!


Until next time...
Amber

*Note- something is up with blogger changing my fonts in a post. Any other bloggers having this issue? It appears fine in editing but the font is different when viewed?

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Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Mid-September Fall Decorating

Hello everyone! It's Sept. 16th! First, it's a special day because it's the 15th anniversary of the first date I had with my hubby! And, it also means yesterday was the 15th, (obviously) and that's a decorating holiday for me. Every year I begin my outside decorating on the 15th. I feel like it's a good time to get started enjoying all of the season's beauty without being "too soon tacky." Over the next few weeks I will be adding more but I wanted to show you what I've done so far out front.

Here I was just getting started. Then I tweaked some more. 

This year I have a new house with an amazing front porch and lots of steps to showcase autumnal
delights! I've started with my favorite blue greens shades and purple kale varieties. My garden frog has just the right shabby patina to pull the colors together. Plus he will double as a Halloween
decoration when the witches and cauldrons appear!


Oh it's just Pure eye candy to me. I can never get enough! Let's just hope the deer don't think so too! 


Lookin good, but still needs more...






Today I added another purple kale, and a dark green pumpkin on the plant stand I got for $1 at a yard sale this weekend to the left side, and I found a new (second hand) pot with gorgeous patina for the other side, and stuck a pretty pale purple (say that three times fast) mum to the left side.  Love how the height of the pumpkin on the plant stand adds interest and the juxtaposing textures and colors  of all the fruits and foliage blend into fall brilliance. God is awesome, fall is a gift!



My ferns are just thriving and compliment our home and garden, so I decided to work with the bright
green and create a dramatic color scheme rather than stacking pumpkins and gourds on the urns as I
had originally intended. I love when the unexpected completely thwarts my plans and I have to force myself to go with it. It usually turns out even better than what I envisioned at first.  I have plenty of other urns elsewhere in the landscape anyway,  and as the season progresses I'll stack 'em up with fairytale pumpkins and gourds.



Here it is as of this afternoon. I can't wait to fill the stairs with pumpkins but I'm waiting for our local Aldi to get a shipment. They have nice, big dark orange ones for only $2.99. It should be any day now!

 I'm already decorating the rest of the porch and yard in my mind, so now I need to look around here and see what junk I can consign to make some pumpkin money! Hopefully by next week I'll have more to show. Here's a sneak peak of my buffet too!





Fall is in the air and it's the first one in our new house so I'm inspired with lots of new ideas and things to post. I hope you'll stop by again soon!

Amber 

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