Farmhouse Winter ~ 2017

It is the dead of winter here in the Pennsylvania snow belt region and I must say I am enjoying every minute of it. Seems like every one is eager for Spring but not me, I love being snowed in with a fire going and the candles lit. I love all of the seasons equally for different reasons, but I love how much I can get done inside the house in the winter. All of the other seasons involve inside and outside work but other than stacking the wood pile there isn't much you can (or want) do outside here in the winter.

Winter means getting the house scrubbed clean, the closets organized and just overall decluttering...some of my favorite things to do. 

You have probably noticed that I painted the fireplace brick, more on that in another post, bottom line the red brick wasn't working for us. This room is so small and it was just making the room look smaller and overall too busy for our liking. One thing we are loving though is having a fireplace and being able to have a warm and crackling fire every night.

I love keeping things really minimal this time of year, all of the white snow outside is just so beautiful and I like the inside to be calm and white just like the outside is.

Winter also means sitting by the fire in the evenings under a warm quilt and not feeling guilty about it. The rocking chair is a family hand me down and has become Neal's favorite place to sit, I told him he just needs a cigar now (not really, ew). 

This giant antique wooden bowl is a recent find from one of my favorite local antique shops, Yesterday's Best Antiques , and I just love it.

Neal built us this long bench for behind the couch, it is perfect for stacking extra quilts and pillows. He actually surprised me with it, I came home one evening and it was sitting there, my kind of surprise all right:) I am going to have him build a bunch for us to sell at the spring Springfield, Ohio Antique Extravaganza (May 19, 20, 21).

Winter also means lots of time spent in the kitchen, making comfort foods and baking lots of goodies. 

I was so excited to find another one of my very favorite things to collect, scalloped ironstone bowls, on ebay recently. This ones a true beauty with all of her discoloration and I think my favorite so far. And I found another old wooden spoon, another thing I love collecting, while shopping with my mom last weekend. 

I also just got the most beautiful items in the mail from PCB Home.  Simple and creamy white this beautiful egg holder and small crock are just perfect for our farmhouse kitchen. 

I hope you are all doing well and until next time...stay cozy! If you ever have any questions please email me directly for a faster response versus using the comments section! And make sure to follow me on Instagram for daily pictures!

Farmhouse Living Room

Here is our newly repainted and refreshed Living Room! It seemed to take forever for me to get this room done but I must say I am very pleased with the way it all turned out! I didn't really make any major changes to it, it is the same furniture and lay out as before.  I had just grown tired of the grayish white color that I had painted this room a couple of years ago and once I decide I don't like something anymore I can't make it go away fast enough. Plus once I get my wheels turning I can't rest until I get the room the way I have it in my head.

The color it was before was a cooler white and I wanted to make the room feel warmer but also lighten it up some so I chose Behr's Cottage White, one of my favorite whites. I plan on doing a post about whites in the near future because I get soooo many emails from you guys about choosing whites. This white can be almost creamy at times and is very soft, because of the high ceilings in this room I didn't want to go with a pure white.

Another challenge in this room is the pot belly stove chimney (behind the couch) that I am always working around. I plan to remove it at some point but I am into enough projects at the moment so it will have to wait for now. It was crumbling as I painted it though and boy was it hard for me not to just grab my crowbar and go at it. But since it is here for the time being I decided to just work with it and hang all of our family photos around it. We don't have a single hall-way in our farmhouse and this is just about the only wall that is big enough for them all.

I repainted the big step-back cupboard that Neal built us (far wall) Glidden's Crisp Linen White. This is a new white for me and I can't say that I love it. I thought I would try some new whites out since you guys are always looking for the perfect one. It might just be the light in this room but I am not in love with the Crisp Linen White, I was hoping it would be a hair creamier looking. It photographs well but in real life is a bit lackluster for me.

Neal built us a chimney style cupboard for all of our DVDs (back wall behind couch on the left) and I painted it Behr's Antique White, it IS one of my favorite whites on the other hand. This is the color I painted the living room of our last house and I still love it.

The cupboard I have on the table beside the couch is in as found condition, wonderful as it is.

I made the couch slipcover from drop clothes a couple of years ago and it isn't perfect but it is way better than the floral pattern underneath. As for the pillows on the couch I wanted a very simple, comfy and collected look.

I was on the search for some soft linen pillow covers with some old fashioned touches but couldn't seem to find any that were quite what I was looking for so I just made my own.

To make the pillows I mixed store bought linen with ticking and lace edging. I always wash the linen first so that it gets that antique linen look and because it usually shrinks a little. I always buy my linen from the remnants bin at JoAnn Fabrics, it ends up being a fraction of the price of the stuff right off of the bolt.

I bought some grain sacks on ebay to make into pillows but I couldn't bring myself to cut them, they are just too gorgeous plus I love having the option to use them different ways. To create a square pillow cover from one without cutting it I just put a feather insert inside and folded the grain sack over twice.


And I was so excited to find the extra long antique ticking pillowcase on Etsy, to say I absolutely love this thing would be an understatement. And of course I put a white quilt underneath them all.

This is usually the couch I sit on if I want to watch a movie by myself or work on my blog so I always have a tray of candles on this table. The one corner of this room that I don't show in the pictures is where the TV is so you won't be seeing it but I have a few plans for that area....don't tell Neal:)

On a recent antique shopping trip I bought another bushel basket, what can I say I love these things. they are rustic but yet so pretty.

The cupboard that Neal built me from an old window also got a new coat of paint. I painted it Better Homes and Gardens Antique White and changed the handle.

I continued the same trim color as the rest of the house into this room...Glidden's Swan White.

I swapped out the curtain I had on the door with a simple linen panel that I made. For the days that I want the sun to come in I can tie it back.

I moved the little cupboard door from the dining room onto the mantle for some height and flanked the fireplace with our two slipcovered chairs.

If you are a long time follower you know that I found this mantle for $25 at a salvage/junk yard and that it is not original to our farmhouse. Since it is just decorative there is no brick or anything behind it and the empty space inside the mantle box bugs me. Hopefully someday we will turn this into a working chimney but in the meantime I think I want to do how I did in the family room with the vertical boards inside. However, this room was taking me so long to finish that I wanted something fast and easy for the time being so put textured wall paper inside the space.

My mom bought me the awesome rusty bucket for my birthday and I was just waiting for the perfect place to put it.

I hope you enjoyed seeing this room! Let me know if there is anything that you would like to know about that I didn't cover!

We are making slow but steady progess with the dining room reno....hopefully pretty soon I will be able to do a camera shot from this room looking into the dining room. I know one of the things that I want from a blog are wide angle camera shots that really give you a sense of the space and I try really hard to do that for you guys. For now I will just give a you sneak peek....

Wall Color - Behr's Cottage White
Trim Color - Glidden's Swan White
Floor Stain - Minwax Dark Walnut