White Wednesday, Kitchen Whites

Today I wanted to share a few photos of my kitchen "whites". I love the look of white, but I have to use some "color" for a backdrop. I have used gold or yellow on the walls of several of the kitchens in houses we have lived in, and to me it's an automatic mood booster. To wake up in the morning to "sunshine", helps get me going and brightens the start of my day. So please excuse that it's not all white-on-white. My sunroom that I have posted on in the past is off the kitchen to the right of this photo.

When we bought the house we live in now, we did a lot of furniture shopping. In the past we had had a lot of mismatched flea market items and antiques that I loved, but it was time for a change. There wasn't any cohesiveness in our rooms, so we tried to find furniture that was vintage look, but actually had drawers that worked and table legs that were firmly attached...you know, functional furniture. Then we added in the vintage pieces and antiques to layer.


I fell in love with the design of this chair, and I knew I wanted white distressed furniture for the kitchen. The table has a leaf that enables us to seat eight for family dinners.

Most of my accessories are vintage, or have that look. I love English and French Country, and in the kitchen I use a little black to balance.

I love vintage bird prints, really anything "bird" gets my attention.

These are a few of my cow creamers. Some are alike.

This one on the top left is from England and is really old.

Marble pastry block.

I started collecting ironstone several years ago, and my collection

is growing rapidly.

I use my chintz teapot daily in the cooler months.

These are two of my door frame headers. This one is really chippy.

I thought I might have some opposition about it going up, but hubby now

appreciates my white chippy things.

( I know, popcorn ceilings... but hey it's an 80's house, and they had just been redone by the previous owners. So I live with it. Sorry HGTV)

This is one of my strawberry carriers that I keep on the island, in easy reach of the cooktop. I love soy candles and I keep one burning most of the time when I'm home. Anyone with cats knows you can only yell and use the water spray bottle so many times. They tend to do what they want, including lounging on cabinets.

I've been collecting copper items for the last several years.

Some of it is hanging from my white pot rack, but a lot has

spread over to the top of my fridge.

Dove tealight holders that I bought for Christmas one year have found a place to roost.

I found this "White House Cookbook"

last weekend in St. Louis, published in 1926.

It's in pretty poor condition, but I have seen these before for a steep price.

This one was only $3.00, so I overlooked the yellow brittle pages, and discolored cover.

It truly is a little piece of history.

Thanks for joining me on my little "white" kitchen tour.

Drop by Faded Charm to see all the rest of the

White Wednesday participants.

Have a Wonderful White Wednesday!

Debra

What I Rescued This Weekend, Monday

A great find this weekend! One of my favorite prints,

"The Gleaners"... so Country French.

I cannot deny it. I am in total junk overload. Kind of like when maybe you've eaten a whole box of Russell Stovers candy, or a giant Mocha Moolatte, or a half dozen Krispy Kremes. That's where I am. It was oh...so...good while I was in the process. Now I feel a little sick at my stomach, especially when I go out in the garage and see it all...kind of like when you look in one of those 3-way mirrors and you just groan and wished you hadn't indulged quite so much. That's where I am.

I have enough stuff to share for many a Monday, so I'm going to do this in installments so your heads don't fly off and your eyes bulge out. I could open a store in my garage. I know many of you are in the same place as I am. We are short on space and long on fabulous finds, so they end up in a place that our men find we are infringing on their territory. My husband has grown much more tolerant of my shopping endeavors, but still I know it makes him a little fussy to have it all there.

Here are a few things I got together for a little group display.

Lots of silver, a great little table, black metal standing shelf, frenchy jewelry box and fashion print. Painted gold plaster pilaster stand and more silver. Paper mache tray, brass candleholders all in front of my screen I redid a week or so ago...a great garage backdrop!

Here are some other recent finds.

Dawn from A Feathered Nest knows I love bird prints and books as much as she does, because everytime she so graciously posts about her favorite find I have to immediately track down the book. Dawn is one of the sweetest most talented persons I have ever come across. Someday I would love to meet her. "Hi Dawn! Thanks for being a wonderful inspiration, in every way!"

My husband and Keith found this precious book in a flea market in St. Louis this last weekend. I have everyone on the lookout for goodies. This is just one of many beautiful colored photographic plates from this book published in 1903.

Here is the little wicker tea cart aka cat "bunk beds" that Janna from Artsy Fartsy Finds so appropriately named. It's not particularly old, but I just loved it. I found it last week at my friends store closing sale.

I didn't take time to "style" it, everything that was on the table that it replaced

just landed there.

Speaking of white and wicker here is an update on my sunroom. I mentioned that it gets changed out everytime the wind blows, so here is the August version. I have several antique quilts and this one was really summery with the sailboats. Recently my MIL divided up her quilts between myself and my Sister in law. Many of them were old, and all of them were "family".






The octagon picnic tin is one of my new find favorites, along with a divided basket and some flea market mismatched silver. The little tea towel is from my sister's recent stash.

This is another antique book that I found in St. Louis that is from England. Actually it is a gallery of individual British engravings. Each one is approximately 16x12. These are just a few of my favorites.

You will see the water damage on them, but they are still extraordinary.

This post was a little rambling. I really didn't know where to begin with it all, but I'll just show a few of my new finds every week. Polly, hope you don't mind if I'm cheating a little. Check out Polly's weekend finds at Sassafras Stuff.

You can find links to Dawn at "The Feathered Nest", and Janna at "Artsy Fartsy Finds" on my blog list.

Have a great week, my fellow junkers... Antiquers!

Debra

P.S. I promise I have never eaten a whole box of candy,

drank a giant Moolatte,

or eaten 6 Krispy Kremes.

(I was just using those as examples.)

Cats a la Carte and a Story

Last week before we left for our getaway, a good friend had a major sale at her store that she was closing. Everything was pretty much "garage sale" prices. Needless to say, I found quite a few things. So much in fact that my sister and her husband had to go back that night with a pick-up to get the rest, for me.
I knew that I would keep this little wicker tea cart because I have a "thing" for white wicker. You haven't heard the story about me and white wicker. BUT, I brought it into the house to get it out of the way in the garage. I wasn't sure where to put it but the Dining Room made sense for the time being. Immediately it was covered in swarming cats. (I only have two, but they were swarming) They were all over it smelling all the fabulous nose tickling "smells".

This is as close to live action that I will get for awhile.

And of course Miss Jenkins always has to be the boss and smack Miss Wrigley.

So after this display it went into the Sunroom and I changed out a little table. I could see that the top of the curio cabinet was just too tempting, and I didn't want to come home to everything in a pile of tiny glass pieces.

Such is the life with cats.

OK, the story of white wicker. Many years ago when my husband was not

as tolerant of my shopping fetishes, we had a little "showdown".

We had lived in a larger house then moved to a smaller one.

I refused to sell a white wicker settee that HE found to be old and useless.

He let me know he would deal with it.

One day when I came home and pulled into the garage he had all my wicker

pieces roped together, hogtied and hanging from the ceiling of the garage.

Of course from the street it looked totally insane and sick.

Oh well, I finally broke down and sold them, just to avoid the embarassment.

But...we now have moved once more, into our larger house.

Ha Ha, I have many, many more now.

(fiendish laughter and rubbing of hands)

Ahhh... revenge is sweet.

Debra