2012 Holiday House Walk - Stop 19

 Surprise! It's me, Kimberly from Serendipity Refined and I'm delighted to be a part of my dear friend, Jennifer Rizzo's, 2012 Holiday House Walk. Thanks so much for inviting me, Jen!

If you're visiting from the amazing Tricia's Morning T, welcome and thanks so much for stopping by!  Isn't her home glorious? She's got the most beautiful style and her photos...well, don't get me started or we'll be here all day!

Let's get this tour started, shall we?!

Wow! Keeping this secret has been one of the most difficult things that I've done since hauling my concrete urns inside from the front porch! Come in...let me show you what I mean.

Yep, that is a concrete urn in the foyer. You'll see the other one in the living room hearth. I filled them with live greens to give our home the smell of Christmas even though we have artificial trees. The urns were heavy as heck to move but worth the trouble once they were in place!

 The living room, dining room and foyer were decorated using birch logs, pine cones and mixed evergreen boughs. The goal was to create a winter woodland feel that would blend well with my collection of flea market finds and vintage ironstone using materials that were often free and readily available and didn't involve me getting poison ivy, or dealing with wild animals.

 

In the kitchen and great room of our home, pine cones and birch twigs are joined by vintage red plaid blankets and plaid flannel ribbon for a rustic lodge-like feel that I've decided is something akin to Paul Bunyan meets The Polar Express. It's much more casual and I have to admit, it's in these rooms where we spend most of our time and where everyone feels most at home.

 

The kitchen is the heart of our home. It's where we make candy and bake so many batches of Christmas cookies that I've stopped counting.  It's also where you can almost always find homemade hot chocolate and marshmallows waiting on cold Chicago winter days when I've been outdoors shoveling after the plows block the end of the driveway with snow and slush for the fourth time in 24 hours!

You may wonder why I decorate the one room in the house where I have my eyes closed most of the time. The answer is simple: for me, there's nothing like going to sleep to the glow of twinkling lights (and it keeps me from tripping over the dog when I get up in the middle of the night to see if it snowed or if Santa has arrived. You can read that story and see more photos of this room here).

Needless to say, we're still in the thick of the holiday season with DIY projects, baking, and the 12 foot tall tree in the family room still left to decorate. I've also got many more photos of these rooms that I'll be sharing on the blog in the coming days so I hope that you'll visit again soon!

Now, please continue to the next stop on the tour, Paige from Simple Thoughts. Paige is a wonderfully talented photographer, mom, and newlywed!  She's got a style that is as elegant as it is powerful.  She's honest, candid, and will make you feel like you've known her forever. 

If you'd like to start at the beginning so that you don't miss any of the other houses (including Jennifer's own home that was featured on the Pottery Barn blog this week), click on the button.

 

xo,






I'm linking to:
Embracing Change
On Sutton Place
Stilettos In The Mud - Home for the Holidays

Kitchen Progress: When One Thing Leads to Another

When my sons were small, we read. A lot.

One of their favorite books was "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" by Laura Numeroff.

In case you haven't read it, it's the story of a young boy who shares a cookie with a mouse setting off an entire chain of events that keeps the boy busy all day long, and potentially for days to come. If you give a mouse a cookie, after all, he's most certainly going to ask for a glass of milk, for which he'll absolutely need a straw and, of course a napkin....you get the idea.

Home Tour: My Mudroom

The main item on my "wish list" when I built my house was a mudroom. Other than that (and a basement ceiling taller than 6'8'), I'd have been perfectly content to stay in my last home forever (well, okay, maybe not forever but certainly for a few more years. Our "new house" is only 2 blocks from our old one. No kidding.
 

The mudroom in my house ended up being "a small space where a series of doors intersect." At least that's what the builder called it.  In this very small space, there are two different doors to garages (look closely, the white door on the left and the one that you see in the corner are solid core, metal fire doors (code in my area for attached garages), they're safe, but ugly. I adhered pieces of wood trim to them with gorilla glue and a nail gun. They don't match  the other doors in my house exactly, but I think they look a whole lot better than they did.  There's also a door to the outside (the brown wood one), a door to the powder room, a door to the kitchen and a double door closet.

I also managed to squeeze in a sink with storage cabinets and a corner bench seat with shelves under it  for shoes. The mudroom has a slate floor, (Home Depot for $0.97 per 12"x12" tile), Greeff "Gardener's Toile" wallpaper and two different colors of paint cover the walls.

My friend, Jerry, and I built the seat out of left over tongue and groove bead board,  window casing and some cherry veneered plywood that I found in the dumpster in front of my house while it was being built. Imagine the convenience! Dumpster diving in my own front yard! (The neighbors, I'm certain, were "not amused".)

I mounted an old tool box, (purchased at a flea market from Joe and Sandy at  Rhubarb Reign), sideways on the wall beneath the cabinet above the sink. It holds paper towel and a collection of vintage linen towels. A soap dish from an old school house hangs on the wall.

 On the adjacent wall, a collection of vintage flower seed packets purchased from Jan at Gracie's Cottage hangs in a frame along with metal "GARDEN" letters purchased  from my friend, Diane Passi, and another sign purchased at Kane County flea market, earlier this spring. The seed company was a "long ago" business in my home town of Rockford, IL.

The top of the cabinet above the sink houses vintage watering cans that used to belong to my grand parents and my mother in law.  Too precious to use outside and far more fun to see in the dead of winter as I pull on my boots to go outside to shovel.

 An old wooden teapot cutout (complete with her scissors and a key to "something unknown") as well as the salt cellar  from my grandmother's kitchen which now holds stick matches. My collection of different types of twine and string always at the ready in an old tool box with a leather strap.

As fun as all of these things are, my favorite item in this room is the magnetic dry erase board that I built out of the "leftovers" from the bench seat.

I didn't take photos as I did it (since it was done in my  "pre-bloggy" days)  but it's this simple:  1) purchase a magnetic dry erase board at Office Depot, Target, or another store that sells office supplies. Remove the icky aluminum frame, and 2) trim it with pieces of window casing. Window casing has a small space in the back of it that will accommodate the thickness of the board.  I also put a  piece of "window sill" under it as a ledge to hold  the eraser and markers.

Everyone in the family has a "color", family events like birthdays and parties to which everyone is invited are denoted in black marker. The days are "erased" as they occur and obligations are met. The numbers for the days in each month are a different color and the months "roll forward" as time passes.  The board is conveniently located between the kitchen and the back door where everyone sees it at least twice a day as they come and go. As my sons grew and their schedules became their own, they learned to put their obligations on the board so that I know where they are and whether to expect them for meals.  I also use the magnet part to  pin up lists, coupons, the reminder to have the car emissions tested and other "stuff" that I need to remember. It's been a life saver in our home! 

If you have questions or need measurements or a materials list for either the bench seat or the marker board, please let me know.

xo,

S

Linking to:
Between Naps On The Porch
Coastal Charm
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Primp
Savvy Southern Style
Uncommonly Yours