Mary in Montevallo

About 35 miles south of Birmingham is a cute little town called Montevallo. American Village is located here, as well as an older college that was founded back in 1896, The University of Montevallo, a pretty college campus that sprawls over 160 acres. I've shown you a few pictures of this area when I wrote about The American Village last year and the countryside down there is just beautiful....peaceful countryside everywhere you look. It's a quaint little Southern town with a wonderful feel of days gone by, a slower pace and small-town charm.
My friend, Mary and her hubby, live in Montevallo and I recently visited her at her home of less than 2 years. I think you'll really enjoy seeing Mary's home. Even though it's a new home, it oozes cottage charm. Mary's done a wonderful job with putting it all together, incorporating her family antiques passed down to her from both grandparents. She has collections of old and new items and the feeling is definitely cozy and cottagey. You would feel right at home in Mary's house. We visited at her house and then had lunch at a new restaurant in the little downtown of Montevallo, the Alabama Coach Company. It's set in an old train depot and we had hamburgers and talked decorating. See above pic. The livingroom is warm and cozy with a chaise lounge in the corner. I love this piece. She said she splurged on the Karastan rug, but otherwise she loves a bargain just like I do.
Mary and her daughter painted this window canvas one day after getting inspired to create something of their own. It's a cute piece that looks great with all of the colors in Mary's home. She recently added some new draperies in the diningroom as well as the livingroom, after I picked up some fabric swatches in Atlanta last fall when I was over there visiting. She had told me she was looking for an inspiration fabric to make some drapes and I came back with several to show her in the colors I knew she was looking at. She found this pretty blue/green/chocolate check and had them made up by a friend who also has her own drapery business. I was anxious to see the drapes in person and they really do make the room.
She made some matching pillows to go in the chocolate leather chairs too. This fabric was really perfect for her room.

View into the kitchen. The paint color is ICI 474 Stone Harbor. It's a taupe shade, but even though her colors are on the cool side, the house is very warm and inviting.
She has many family pieces in her house, including this buffet and mirror that were her grandmother's. She collects shells and has them beautifully displayed here as you come in the frontdoor.
She found this piece of driftwood at the beach and had to bring it home. Next time I'm at the beach, guess what I'll look for?
Here are the diningroom drapes in place. Aren't they beautiful. Just like a ballgown. This pic is dark, but you can see them better in the next pic. They have goblet pleats at the top.
Diningroom table and chairs.

Vignette over the china cabinet. She said the oil painting came from her mom's house and she added the other pieces that she already had. I love how she pulled the old white ironstone pitcher and blue bottle from the painting and put them in front for added effect.
Old telephone table from her grandmother behind the sofa.
She added some pretty stained glass in the windows of the breakfast room.
Her beautiful kitchen.
Cottagey guestroom. This was her furniture when she was a little girl, as well as the cute chandelier.

Note the red/white toile chair.
Guest bath is spa-like with a bamboo Roman shade under a custom fabric covered cornice board that she made. I love the little iron piece used as an accent on front. Bathroom color is ICI 556 Dakota Land.
She used the same fabric stapled over trim that was cut to fit over the mirror. Very clever!
Another guestroom with some custom pillows she sewed.
Covered her grandmother's old rocker with some pretty toile herself.
And here's the master bedroom with soothing blue walls, chocolate browns & creamy whites. Bedroom and bath color is ICI 1444 French Silver.
Along with the up to date gorgeous bathroom in the same shades.
I'm totally going to copy them on the patio that her hubby built out of pavers and pea gravel. Isn't this a wonderful spot for a cool drink outside on the patio? Check out the vintage chairs and glider.
I love this area. She's got some vines growing up on the posts that will eventually cover the top of the arbor.

These pics were taken with my hubby's camera and not my new one.

Hope you got some great inspiration from Mary's house!

Lighting Finale

Here's where we started......
And, at last, the foyer light fixture is UP! Our neighbors had a ladder tall enough to reach up from the next to the top rung and yes, you guessed it...it was me who climbed up there & did it. Hubby was a good sport and helped me the whole way, since I'm much smaller & more agile than he is, I can get up on the ladder easier. I'm so glad it's done and I really love the changes. I stood on the tall ladder and my hubby had a shorter one right beside me. He was right there with me as I took the old one down (after turning off the power breaker, of course!). After that, it was a matter of balancing with him holding the fixture up for me as I threaded it on the bracket. We had a few little glitches along the way, but hung in there and got it done. I was so relieved when it was up! I almost chickened out once, but my determination won out. Took us about an hour and 1/2 total. Not bad!
You can see the open wall as you come in our frontdoor. It looks directly into the diningroom. Hence, everything has to flow from the moment you step into the foyer.
Both fixtures are pretty and unique and I think they go well together. I'm not into matching everything, so it's fine with me that one is black/rusty iron and the other is antique brass. I like the contrast.
My new Canon camera (A570 IS) just arrived this past week, so I'm going to have some fun with it. These are the first shots I have taken with it and I think I'm going to really enjoy it. It has more bells and whistles than my old HP 2 year old one did. It's amazing how fast camera specs change. I got a great deal on this one online and it has 7.1 megapixels and additional zoom power, as well as lots more features. I'm pleased with these pics so far, set with the Auto feature and I can't wait to play with it to see how much better I can make my photos.

Don't miss the next post down about a birthday celebration...I've posted 2 today!

Celebrating Debbie's Birthday

(Debbie's hubby, Rick, along with their entire family: daughter & SIL, and 2 sons, who were acting crazy, as usual!) I was playing with my new camera on night setting.



My friend, Debbie turned 48 on Saturday, so we were invited to join their family and another couple who are friends of theirs for dinner at a local Japanese steakhouse restaurant, Stix. There were 10 of us and we had a ball. You know the drill, sit around the big cooking pit where the guy cooks everything right in front of you. It's always a fun experience to see your food being cooked and then you get to eat it right away.
The rest of us waiting for dinner to start. That's Debbie beside me. Remember when I took you on a visit to their farmhouse in the country last year? Debbie and Rick are great people!
So, the show starts with major flame throwing by the chef. Always a treat to see fire!
Took so many pics while he was preparing our meal, he called me papparazzi. We all got a kick out of that one.
We all ate so much we were stuffed at the end of dinner. But, Debbie had other plans......
Since it was HER birthday, she wanted to go and get HOT Krispee Kreme donuts for dessert. We didn't argue and luckily the big neon sign was lit, so you know what that means! I had never been inside this big store that we have and what a fun place to watch donuts being made. Look at them all! There was a group of 14-yr. old girls in there who were celebrating a birthday and after they heard us sing to Debbie, they all rushed over and gave her a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday in a way only 14-yr. old girls on a sugar high can do. It was too cute!
Here they are coming out of the cooking vat, ready for the icing to go on. We all wondered if we would get tired of donuts if we worked at a donut shop. Huummmm, maybe not!

Sun-Dried Tomato Artichoke Chicken

I am always looking for chicken recipes & I came across this one in our local Publix ad. If you don't have Publix supermarkets in your town, I'm so sorry. They are truly a wonderful grocery store & are my very favorite place to shop for groceries. I also shop at Walmart for some things, to save money of course, but overall for quality & service, Publix can't be beat. This is three boneless chicken breasts, cut into chunks.
Main ingredients are sun-dried tomatoes & artichoke hearts, how can you beat that combo?!
Chicken & other ingredients simmering in the pan.
I served this with baked sweet potatoes & a side spinach salad. Pretty healthy & tasty, don't you think? Hubby loved this one, so it will stay on the list.


Sun-Dried Tomato Artichoke Chicken


1 1/2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken breast (I used 3)

1/4 cup flour (I decided to substitute Italian bread crumbs for the flour)

2 TBL Canola oil

1/2 cup white wine

Fresh thyme (I used dried & added it with all the other ingredients simmering)

1 lemon for juice (I used Real Lemon)

1 large can artichoke hearts (drained)

1/3 cup julienne-cut sun-dried tomatoes in oil (or if they are just dry, soak them for a few min)

2 TBL butter (I forgot to add the butter, it was still yummy)

1/2 tsp. salt

1/8 tsp. pepper

2 TBL Parmesean cheese


Preheat large saute pan on med-high 2-3 minutes. Cut chicken into 1 inch chunks, place in zip-loc bag (or used a large dish). Add flour (or bread crumbs) and coat chicken. Place oil in pan, swirl to coat. Add chicken & cook 2-3 min. turning once, until chicken begins to brown.


Stire in wine, reduce heat to med-low & cook 2-3 min. or until liquid is slightly reduced. Squeeze juice from lemon over chicken, stir in remaining ingredients (except thyme & cheese). Cover and cook 2-3 min. until done. Remove chicken from heat, stir in fresh thyme & sprinkle with parmesean.

You can see I made a couple of changes, but overall followed the recipe. It was really tasty!


Eat & Enjoy!
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It appears from the organizing post that y'all are about as pathetic as I am about going through your magazines and either giving them away or throwing them out. It must be a shared sickness for decorating people or something. From the comments, I can see that this is a subject that is on many of your minds these days and that the magazines in particular are pretty difficult to keep a handle on. I do not want to become like my hubby's 89-year old grandma, who lives with his mother. Their house is crammed to the gills with all of grandma's stuff. She won't get rid of anything! It's going to be a BIG job when she is finally gone and the rest of us have to go through her things. That in itself is reason enough for me not to want to end up being a "hoarder" as some of you mentioned. My dad is a pretty good hoarder of old stuff himself, much to my mom's dismay.

You have given me some great ideas on getting the recipes organized, so my plan is to get a binder of some sort with plastic sleeves to slip recipes into. That's something I can do very soon and once it gets started, it should be pretty easy to keep updated on a regular basis. Thanks so much for all the suggestions. I really appreciate all the ideas. I'll keep working on the magazine-aholic problem. Right now, I'm thinking I'll donate the old ones!


Kay asked me a question about the lampshade fabric and there's no way to contact you, Kay. So, the question was, can you use the black/cream color with any other color scheme. And my answer is YES! I absolutely think this fabric would work with many colors. Black/cream/tan are so neutral that I can see them mixed with so many other colors. I use a lot of black as accents in my home, so that is one thing to think about. If you have all pastels or very light colors, then one shot of black/cream might be too much, but for most colors, I'd say go for it! And if you don't already use black accents, think about adding them. Black really grounds a room and adds a lot of interest. Think: picture frames, chandeliers, lamps, pillow fabrics, and even a piece of black furniture mixed in is great.

Organizing: 101

I've been working on getting organized this month of January and I've made some progress. My office nook is straightened and decluttered now and that junk drawer in the kitchen got completely cleaned out. But, I'll admit it...I need some tips and ideas on getting better organized with my magazines. I currently subscribe to 3 different magazines: Traditional Home (my very fave!), Better Homes & Gardens (simply because they offer such darn good deals, I can't pass them up...just try not renewing sometime & see what kind of deal they will make you), and more recently Country Home (again, got a $5 per year offer & couldn't pass it up), so needless to say, I have way too many magazines sitting around. Like most of you, I so enjoy sitting down with a magazine and a cuppa something hot and delicious and getting lost in the beautiful pictures, dreaming of changes to my own decor. What ideas will I get? What can I incorporate from an inspiring article in my own home? As you can see with the above issues, I have found some diningroom chandlier inspirations that caught my eye. I'm happy to say, that little project is behind me already.
I've even tried the 3-ring binder idea, tearing out beautiful magazine articles with pictures and inserting them in binders with labels, so that I can go back and find these pictures later. You never know when you might need one of these ideas or pictures! The problem is, I don't seem to stay up with organizing them all nice and neat in the binders. This binder is several years old and I'm sure I could go back and throw much of it away now.
So, my magazines end up like this. All stacked up for months in the magazine holder in our bedroom by the easy chair. I will browse them, stick them back in the pile, pick one of them out later to look at again. You can never look at the pictures too many times, can you?
And then, they will finally make their way to my office nook where I stack them month to month. A whole year or 2 of Traditional Home. I can't seem to get rid of these, since they are my favorite. But how many years can you really comfortably keep and not have it be ridiculous. I mean, do I really think I'll go back 2 years and look at all of these again. Probably not, but still I can't let them go. So.....what do you do? I need real ideas and tips on what all of you do to keep the magazines under control and not let them take over the house? Do you do the tear-out method and keep favorite articles filed neatly away? Put them in binders or folders for later use? Or do you gladly give them away, knowing that another beautiful magazine will arrive in the mail and it will soon take it's place beside your easy chair? These are Southern Living and Better Homes & Gardens. I can sooner let these go than my Traditional Home, so I think it's time to find them a home. I know lots of places take magazine donations, so I really need to think about getting rid of some of these. I know I've heard some girls say that they are scanning their favorite magazine articles and keeping them on discs. That's an idea too, but again, that takes time.
And that brings me to my recipes. Oh. my. word! Would you look at all these recipes! You can see my organizational skills for this part of my life is not any better than the magazines. I tend to pick up, tear out, copy recipes all the time and they land all in a heap in one of my kitchen drawers. I sometimes have to go through all of them to find the one I'm looking for. And no, I haven't even made all these recipes, but I just might need it one day! I will know just the one, it's spattered and folded and I usually remember just what it looks like, I just have to find it. So, as you can see, I really need some ideas for the recipes too. How do you handle those? I do have a cute little recipe box, but it will not hold all of these and besides I'd have to reduce them all down to 3x5 index card size to fit in that box & I don't think I want to tackle that. I've thought about getting another binder with dividers for catagories: Appetizers, Soups, Salads, Meats, etc. and then putting these in clear plastic holders. Has anyone tried that? Seems like it would work pretty well.

And you all thought I had it totally together, didn't you?! Well, this will show you how much I don't in some areas! Don't you feel better now? I'd much rather be redoing a lampshade or painting something than organizing. I'd love to hear from all of you on how you handle organizing around your house...especially with magazines & recipes!

Thank you ALL again for coming by to visit me! I love to hear from you and I'm so glad you enjoyed the new lampshade project.