Part Two of Dining Room Reveal

First I want to start by saying THANK YOU all so much for all of the wonderful comments on part one of my dining room reveal! You gals have truly made me feel embraced by the blogger world!

Okay on to the second part of the big reveal!

The above picture shows the entrance into the living room from the dining room. That was one solid wall when we bought the house. At one point our big old farmhouse had been converted into two residencies, we had to make it into one house again for our mortgage to go through,which was our plan anyways. My Dad and husband had to connect the two residencies, but we didn't even own the place yet. I thought long and hard about what would make sense and flow design wise. I am glad to this day that I choose this wall for the passageway. I love the way the rooms lead into each other, I am on the search for salvaged french doors to put there.

The original passageway which had been closed up, is in the room behind the closed door below, which is now our guest bedroom. Most of the walls in our house were in good shape when we removed all of the paneling but the one seen below was in awful shape. I had to drywall it and then skimcoat over that. I am not a fan of drywall but sometimes it is your only option when renovating. To make it match the original plaster and lathe walls I always do a very heavy skimcoat with light weight plaster. I had no idea what I was doing when I first started but I learned as I went. I am all for diving into something. It all comes down to the sanding, lots and lots of sanding. Its so messy but so worth it.

As you can see I am not quite ready to give up on the greenery from Christmas. Our winters here are very "white" and I just love that little bit of color that natural things like garland and little pine trees bring to the room.

My mom gave me the cupboard pictured below, she had to get something bigger to hold my Dads very large collection of books. It is from an old shop and my mom snagged it for a song. I love it and was so excited when she passed it onto me, and it is just the right size for some of my ironstone collection.

I wallpapered the back of it with some French toile that my mom had leftover from a bathroom. It is very subtle and adds the perfect backdrop to the white ironstone. It wouldn't stick however, so my sister told me to try mixing flour and water. Worked like a charm!

Below is a printers box that hold things I bought at flea markets as a little girl. My mom started taking me to flea markets at a very young age, and I loved them from the start!

And to answer some questions about the pillows on my couch...

The smaller ticking pillows on the ends are actually vintage Italian military pillow cases that I just folded over. I bought the cases from Spring Hill Farm on Etsy, it is a wonderful shop.

 And the larger striped pillow is from Big Lots! I just found it the other day, they had red too! I was so excited I wanted to walk around and say to people "Look they have grain sack inspired pillows, for $15"!

A big thank you to Melanie from Rusticfarmhouse.blogspot.com and Linsey from Farmhouseporch.blogspot.com for featuring me on their Facebook pages!

Dining Room Reveal

It is finally here...the dining room reveal! Enjoy!

As you can see it is more of a keeping room and definitely the warmest room in the house with the wood pellet stove running all winter long.

This room is perfect for entertaining, we have a big long table (that we so graciously inherited) that every one sits at. Before we had this table I rearranged this room multiple times, never liking the results, but once we got the table the room really started to come together. It was like it was built for this space (thank you Pete and Sandy).

Above you can see how the keeping room leads into the kitchen. That island is where I spend a lot of my day:)

This is the piece my husband built me for Christmas. I love it, and I found the perfect antique drawer pulls for it at Romantique Boutique. I love how rustic the piece is but it's size demanded a big rustic table underneath it. So I showed my husband lots of pictures of rustic work tables, gave him the dimensions and one day later he had built me an awesome rustic sideboard. When we have guests I always like to set up a drink or deserts bar and our new table is the perfect place for that.

I have always wanted a big long shelf in our dining room and adding the big long table along the wall created the perfect space for a shelf. Once again I showed my husband lots of pictures of shelves I love and he built me this shelf in less than a couple of hours. I bought the cubby with the wine in it at the Country Living Fair and I had my husband make the bottom shelf just the right size so that it would fit. Antique crocks and an old toolbox, some of my favorite things, also fit nicely on the shelf.

The old trunk that I bought for $10 at the flea market is one of my favorite things in this room. It has such a great look but also serves as storage. I keep magazines in the old tote on top. This couch is the perfect spot to read because of all the sunshine and the warmth of the stove.

 I hope you enjoyed part one of the dining room reveal, in my next post I will show you the other end of the room!

And I am linking up with The Cowgirl Up Link Party!

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Farmhouse Goodies

So I finally have my dining room all put back together...BUT....it is not sunny here what so ever and I left my camera battery charger at my parents house over Christmas so I have to save my battery for those sunny days. I really want these pictures to come out well so I am going to wait for the sun to shine! But I did snap some pictures just to give you a taste of what is to come!

                                 Above is the table my husband just built for our dining room.

I just picked up this awesome coat rack at my favorite shop in Erie, Romantique Boutique. I bought some other great things there too, they have the most amazing stuff.

And I was beside myself with joy this weekend when the shelf arrived that I had ordered from Frog Goes To Market on Etsy. I absolutely love Ellie's shop and her blog and I was so excited to see that she had reduced the price on this shelf that I had been wanting to buy for some time. My husband kept calling me a dork because I was so excited to have received something from Ellie's shop. He clearly doesn't get it, she has such great taste and decorating sense!

Isn't it beautiful? Just the right color, just the right amount of shabbiness. I absolutely love it and it fits perfectly in between my front window and front door.

It is supposed to be sunny here tomorrow so hopefully I will be able to show you the dining room in it's entirety! Happy Monday!

Snowballed

Isn't it funny how one simple thing can snowball into a huge project? My husband built me this awesome thing with drawers out of reclaimed wood for Christmas. I absolutely love it, but as soon as I opened it on Christmas day I pictured it on a rustic table/workbench along one wall of my dining room. I have been wanting one of these for years and I have eyeballed many but have never been able to afford any I have seen for sale. I spent many hours looking for the perfect inspiration piece so that my husband could build me my very own. He loves a project and I wanted to take advantage of his week off so I put him to work! Needless to say I now have my very own long work table along one wall of my dining room. I am working on getting it all put together so that I can show you how it all turned out. I took some pictures to give you a sneak peek....

The beautiful ironstone pitcher was a Christmas gift from my mom, and I got the awesome rusty bottle carrier from Spring Hill Farm on Etsy.

My husband looked at my Pinterest boards to get the inspiration for the piece he built me for Christmas, I thought that was pretty sweet. We always try to make as many gifts as possible at Christmas time, our nieces and nephews get coat racks and stepping stools, but I never expected him to have made something for me. To me something handmade is always more special than something expensive and store bought.

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season, I can't believe it is all over already! I hope to have the pictures of my dining room posted by the end of the week....stay tuned!

Snow Day

The snow is falling heavily here and it really feels like Christmas! I snapped some pictures of my living room while my son was at Pre-K because if he is home there are toys on every surface.

Like I said in previous posts I wanted to keep our Christmas decorating simple this year and I definitely didn't want to spend much money to get the look I wanted.

I got the wreath on our stepback for less than $2 because all of it's pine cones had fallen off...I just reglued some of my own on. And I filled an old box I bought for $1 with some pine boughs from our yard.

I bought this antique frame at the flea market and then my husband cut a piece of wood to fit so that I could turn it into a chalkboard.

An Ikea "As Is" basket holds some of the ticking fabric that I can't get enough of, and an old enamelware bucket makes the perfect mini tree holder. These little trees were only $3 at Aldi, what a deal!

I made this stocking with a left over scrap of the painters drop cloth I used to make our sofa slipcover.

Ok well it's back to cookie baking for me, with the snow falling outside it's a great day to be inside making cookies with my son. Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Christmas Guest Bedroom

I finally have our guest room all decorated for Christmas, up until a couple of days ago the bed was stacked high with presents to be wrapped. I finally have them all wrapped and put them inside this antique basket.

Nothing too fancy and not too much color, that was my goal for all of my Christmas decorating this year.

I thought I would go with all white bedding this year, I love it with the red and green.

This old store box makes for the perfect present holder. I  made my own tags this year, I used a bird stamp but I really want a tiny pinecone stamp (definitely on my list of things to get).

It FINALLY snowed here today and really made it feel like Christmas time. We live in the snow belt and usually by this time of year we have quite a bit of snow! Hopefully it will be a white Christmas, can't believe it is a week from today already!

Ray Of Sunshine

The Sandy Hook tragedy has filled me with a deep sadness and in that I know I am not alone. I debated about even blogging but I feel like we all need a a little ray of sunshine right now.