A Summer Mood

 

@verryrobin_co and @jmclaughlin teamed up on Instagram last week

 to host a flatlay contest to celebrate #asummermood. 

I'm a Summer Girl all the way so I thought it would be fun to give it a try. 

There are prizes (and at this point the winner has not been announced) but, win or not, creating a flat lay is soooo much fun!

Do you ever do them for your IG account?

I'm ready to create some more!

Is there a job where you just create and photograph flatlays all day long?

Cause I want to apply.

*Most of these items were found thrifting (or walking on the beach in the case of the shells.)

Garden Table

This picture was taken in mid- March.

We had just begun what we thought was a two week shelter in place.

The weather was pretty nice and I decided to work on the backyard. 

Little did I know that we would be home for months and our backyard/gardening/outside spaces and time spent there would be so important to us.

The table base was on my donate pile but we couldn't take it anywhere and I had crazily not purchased a wrought iron bar cart at a thrift store a few days earlier because it was priced more than I wanted to go. Not that much more (but it was gone when I went back the next morning which was the day before we began our shelter-in-place order.) 

After I came home I realized how perfect it would have been by the fire pit. 

So I decided to "temporarily" use this iron table base, a piece of outdoor plywood we had on hand and some green spray paint I also had on hand to create a serving table/plant display area. I was going to use it until I could get back out to thrift stores and find a great cart like the one I let get away. 

Little did I know that I still wouldn't be thrifting regularly 5 months later!

I was inspired by this fabulous table full of plants and lanterns curated by John Roselli

and this vignette from Harolds Finishing Touches. 

Both great inspiration feeds.

Obviously my little set up was far more humble :)

But it flourished. Here it is in late May (Above)

The concrete elephant was purchased on a road trip to SC with my parents a couple of years ago. The faux bamboo mirror frame is plastic so it can take the weather. 

I had the baskets and the urn with a topiary form in it. 

Being unable to go to the Nursery for plants made me especially thankful for plants I wintered over and for my perennials that I was able to divide and use to fill planters with. I divided some perennial ferns and Creeping Jenny ( I love that plant) that were starting to come back to fill my pots. 

(We eventually picked up plants at curbside that we had ordered in advance but our choices were limited. This resulted in a much more colorful palette of blooms than I usually have. We embraced the mixture and the surprises when plants bloomed!)

Here it is in July. (Below) The plants are huge. I put a stump underneath and a couple of urns to one side.

The block and the pea gravel right in front of the table are the edge of our fire pit circle and the table backs up to the back of our screened porch.

 

You can't even see the elephant or the mirror anymore :)

Below you can see how handy it will be for trays of drink 

and S'mores fixins' when we sit around the firepit.

As it cools off and we use the firepit more I will replace the fading annuals with a mum and leave more room on the table for the trays.

But for right now we are enjoying the remaining Summer blooms and how much everything grew and blossomed.

Before and After:

      

How did your garden grow this Summer?

You can see other spots in our backyard/garden here and here.

In Case of Sniffles...

 

I found a couple of cute tissue boxes on a recent thrifting trip*

Since Fall allergy season is right around the corner I figured I would grab both :)

It will be nice to have a cover for the cardboard box that blends with our decor 

(no offense, Kleenex!)

I tried both tissue box covers out in our main Powder Room that I recently refreshed

 for a One Room Challenge.

We aren't sure which one we like best in here. 

What do you think?

I'm a big fan of Pencil and Paper Co.'s interior design posts and tips.

They often post that they love a touch of rattan/bamboo in every room. I agree!

And the day I found my tissue boxes at the thrift store they posted about a cute rattan Kleenex box cover. 

#validation

They love a good vintage find but also post sources on their feed of similar products if you can't/aren't a thrifter!

They posted this one that they sourced on Amazon. 

*I thoroughly cleaned my thrifted tissue box covers before using.

 I simply rinsed these in hot soapy water and put them in the sun to dry. 

Painting the Porch

I honestly didn't know if I should call this post "Painting the Porch Floor Green" (which is basically what this is about), "Messel Green", or "My Obsession with Amanda Lindroth's Bahamian Home."

We have a large screened in porch on the back of our house. 

We are porch people. 

We live outside about 9 months of the year and any unusually warm days in the Winter months. 

It has been added on to over the years and is a bit quirky for this reason. 

People always want to hear the story of our porch "evolution" when they see it the first time :)

When the pandemic struck and lockdown started I began a series of #pandemicprojects to keep myself busy. They all needed to be done anyway and they were a great distraction.

One of these projects was painting the screened in porch floor 

and the wall that is inside the porch but is the exterior of our house. 

This has been a process because A) it is a large porch as I said B) it is fully furnished with some rather large heavy pieces to move around and C) it has to be painted in a way that the dog rowdy puppy Cooper doesn't track through wet paint so that means blocking off sections to paint one at a time.

Fresh green floor paint on the left and the dingy old paint on the right.

And, yes since it's 2020, let's throw in a broken bone and a walking boot :(

What does this have to do with Messel Green (whatever that is you ask) and Amanda Lindroth?

If you are as obsessed with her book "Island Hopping" as I am then you are probably beginning to figure this out.

Years ago our deck floor was hunter green but when we screened it in I knew I needed a medium green for the floor because we had some dark green porch furniture and I needed there to be a difference in the greens. I knew my ceilings would be light blue because I am originally from Charleston SC and that's what we do.

I decided to look through some pictures from a trip to the Bahamas for porch inspiration and I kept seeing this unique, not too dark green color that seemed like it could work as a "neutral" on our porch floor. We had a partial 5 gallon bucket of dark green so we mixed in some OOPS paint (remember that??) to lighten it up and matched that green as closely as we could.

(Pictures from the good ol' days when we could travel)

(I'm also now wondering why I didn't buy that center painting of the palm trees on the yellow background?)

Fast forward a bit and the porch needed a fresh coat of paint. This green we mixed had worked out great but it was still a bit yellow-er than this Caribbean green I was after. I had seen pictures of Amanda Lindroth's home in some of the shelter mags by then and she used that same Caribbean green I liked so much! I started searching through my Sherwin Williams fan deck for the perfect color. I narrowed it down to SW Lounge Green. (By the way, another fav designer Eddie Ross recently used Lounge Green in his home restoration!!)

About that time my long awaited copy of "Island Hopping" arrived and there was the story of that particular Caribbean green. It is one of Amanda Lindroth's go to colors and it is named after a famous designer/builder  in the Caribbean named (you guessed it) Oliver Messel. He designed homes in Barbados and Mustique in the 60's and 70's and used this green a great deal. 

So my color had a name - Messel Green - and if that color is a favorite of Amanda Lindroth whose style is everything I love then it must be the perfect color for my porch floor!! #validation

So here we are, 5 months in to a stay at home situation, and I'm finally about to finish painting my porch floor!! 

I'm pretty sure this is more than you want to know about my (or any) porch floor paint color but, then again, we have time on our hands still and this long winded explanation of why my porch floor color is this green might just be what you needed to fill 5 minutes of your day!!

Here is a little look at our porch with it's pretty green (freshly painted!!) floor.

I'm going to start with some pictures I took in the evening.

(I know there's a whole thing about not taking pictures for blogs and IG with lamps on but that's when I love the porch most so I'm going for it.)

I'm standing in one corner (which is against the house) facing the opposite corner. 

In this next picture I'm standing in the opposite corner from the one above 

looking back toward the table and chairs.

I'm standing in this nook (below) that has our hanging/swinging bed 

and a big, comfy wicker chaise.

If you look at the first picture you can see the golden seahorse outline and the wicker lamp if you need a point of reference for this to make sense. See, it's a lot of floor to paint. That's why it has taken me this whole lockdown to get it done! Not to mention the 629 other projects I kept coming up with :)

What's under the big green tarp, you ask?

It is a pool table. I"ll uncover it and show you sometime. 

It's tarped to protect it from the weather and me. 

Mostly me because I like to do big, messy projects on it.

(In this picture I am standing at the kitchen door which is where we come out onto the screened porch from the house.)

If you've been following me for even a second then you know all of this furniture, lamps and accessories have been thrifted. Everything is comfy and nothing is too fancy for propping up your feet, sitting a drink down on the table next to you, eating on the furniture or sharing a nap spot with Cooper.

Speaking of Cooper...

We have 10 chairs at the table but we can squeeze in a few more if when we need to.

Ready for a laugh?

 My BIL made this checkerboard for us several years ago. 

Look at the bottle caps he used :)

I think this year is "Corona Extra!"

So now we've come full circle. 

I was standing in front of this bar cart when I took the picture across the porch to the opposite corner. 

Thank you for joining me for an evening tour of my favorite place "in" our house at my favorite time of day. And if you made it through all of this long-winded look at our screened porch, double thank you!

July Wrap Up

I can't believe it is August. It's amazing to me that with things so different due to Covid19 or whatever they are calling it now and so many regular Summer activities cancelled or altered drastically that time is flying by. (For me anyway!)

Spring seemed to last forever and now Summer is a blur. 

The children in our area are starting back to school over the next two weeks in a variety of different scenarios but it really doesn't feel like back to school time at all. 

I thought I'd share a half dozen or so things

from life in July.

First up. I have only been in a thrift store a handful of times since we locked down in March and then started our reopening phases in May.

I'm very surprised to say that they are pretty empty and I have not found anything very exciting at all. I thought that everyone was cleaning out and donating during lockdown. 

We did (big time) but there is not much to be found in my area.

That being said I saw this over a week ago at GW. 

It was quite large and very sturdy. It would have been easy to replace the black leather (?) if someone wanted to. I thought it would have been fabulous in our black walled Library but it was a bit too large for us. If it had been rattan or faux bamboo I would have snatched it up. It wouldn't have been the first time that I rearranged multiple rooms for a great find :) 

It was $39.00  Quite a deal!

This brings me to my second item. I had a little vent session with Gwen at The Makerista and Thrift With The Makerista about FB Marketplace sellers and etiquette. I have bought and sold on FBM for years and met lots of delightful, helpful, patient sellers. 

BUT, I am seeing this more and more and it irritates me.

 Is it just me?

 Or do you think this "gimmick" to catch buyers eyes is OK? 

The ad on the left said all 11 items listed were priced individually and to DM them for pricing. The ad on the right had prices at the bottom and the planters started at $180.00.

Nothing was free or $1.00.

And the other day I told a seller I wanted an item and later she messaged me to say she had a lot of interest after we chatted and wanted me to know before I picked up the item that she was raising the price!!! 

I don't think this is OK.  Maybe I'm being a stick in the mud...

I say don't be this kind of seller!

Moving right along. I love this IG feed @ikomello for great inspiration photos. 

This is my current favorite:

We had Drive Thru VBS at church this year. 

It was a lot of fun even if it 

was very different. 

We still had VBS shirts...

Speaking of socially distancing. 

This is where I would like to ride out my next pandemic :))))

 

Private island?

#yesplease

And I became obsessed with this beautiful art created by a Bahamian named 

Mr. Amos Ferguson.

He passed away in 2009 but if he were alive

 I'd be tracking him down to purchase one of his happy paintings. 

I could hang them in my house on that private island I mentioned above :)

And now it's August!