Our New (old) Front Door

In the midst of a few other projects I had going on, this one got done first!

I, like so many out there in blogland, am loving bold front doors that add a pop of color to your entry.  I have had this in the back of my mind for months, but finally took the plunge with a less “in your face” color that I think will transition through the seasons well.  I loved this front door on Emily A. Clark’s house,

(source)

but since we don’t have a brick façade I wanted something a tad more bright.  I started a Pinterest board with all kinds of green door pins to show my husband what it might look like since initially he was a little skeptical.  He ended up being pretty neutral about it after seeing some of them which was great progress so I went ahead and painted it when he went to visit his parents last week.  : )  I had Benjamin Moore’s Avocado color matched in a Behr exterior semi-gloss…with the tiniest bit of black added after I thought it was a little too bright olive-y. 

After the first coat it looked pretty darn awful.  And this next picture is actually after the 2nd coat so it looked slightly better, but still…

EEEEK!!

And I was really questioning my color choice since it looked positively neon in the sunlight!!!

But after 5 coats, done over the course of 3 days, it now looks like this:

I think our lion is liking his green surroundings…

though as always he doesn’t show it.  . 

I found it is difficult to make the green not look flat in pictures.  It looks much more vibrant in person, but oh well!

And here is a comparison--

Before (this spring when all the plants were new):

And now:

I think it looks a lot more welcoming and a lot less stark now!  What a difference a little paint and some lush plants make!

Last Week’s Thrifting Haul

You just never know what you’re going to find.  I found lots of decor items last weekend, and a baby gate too (not pictured—who wants to look at a picture of a baby gate?).  Our little guy is very mobile now and the new house has an open stair down to the basement so a baby gate is  very  necessary. 
See that cute little footstool?  I thought it would be darling reupholstered in a velvet…perhaps with the legs painted or at least stained another shade?  $1.
Tin platter of the Sacre Coeur in Paris.  I have happy memories of that lovely church near Montmartre—this will go on a wall eventually.  25 c.
Two geometric metallic balls…50 c each.
Orange glass bowl…$1.
Cake plate (brand new Threshold brand from Target!) $1.
My favorite find of the week---metal urn, also a dollar.  I’ve seen these all over blogland and finally have one of my own now to decorate with!  Yay!  I could see this with evergreen boughs in at Christmas time. 
Blue basket (also originally from Target) $1.50
Garage saling can be really hit or miss, and I’m calling this week a hit.  :)  Our citywide garage sales are this weekend but I doubt I’ll have much time to go as we’re closing on our current house and the new house and moving on Thursday.  (EEEP!)
I’m excited to see what the garage sales are like in our new neighborhood! 

Our little getaway to Le Chateau

A couple weeks ago my husband and I took a little weekend vacation sans children (well, except for the latest little bean which we just couldn’t leave behind!).  It was lovely.  We try to get away for a couple nights by ourselves every year which can be tricky, but this year in spite of our almost 2 year old getting sick the day before we left, it worked out. 
We went to a larger town a few hours away which was the perfect distance.  It didn’t require hours and hours of driving and it was in many ways very different from where we live. 
The first night we dined at a most interesting restaurant.  It is called Le Chateau and this is what you see when you pull up:

Isn’t it gorgeous?
This French restaurant is housed in a historic mansion and is run by two chefs, who are actually husband and wife.  The wife has a most exquisite French accent and is a most gracious hostess.  Her pronunciation of my husband’s name on the voicemail confirming our reservations is something worthy of imitation.  He agrees.  : ) 
The food is wonderful.  The menu is rather small, but what they do, they do well.  We started off our meal with an amuse-bouche of chilled asparagus veloute.  It was delicious;  I liked it better than my husband who is a bit skeptical of cold soup however.  Although I had heard of the term before, I thought our server told us that this was “Amish brew” when she brought it out to us and I had her repeat it.  I was wondering what on earth Amish brew was!!!
Then we got a platter of bread, whipped butter, and olive oil for dipping.  The bread was amazing!  There was the traditional French baguette and then a more flavorful foccaccia-type bread that was delicious dipped in olive oil. 

I ordered a salad as I was very very hungry.  It again was wonderful.  The flavors were not too intense yet were definitely not your average variety.  I love balsamic vinaigrette and it was perfect on this asparagus, tomato confit, snow pea, and spring green mix. 

(My husband is trying to decide what he should order!)

I ordered a pasta dish with scallops and was not disappointed.  Yum!!!!  The scallops were so succulent, and they went well with the fettucine and roasted red peppers.

 

So, so delicious and full of flavor.

My husband got the little neck clams with a wine sauce and angel hair pasta.  It was also delicious but being a scallop lover I, of course, preferred mine. 

His main dish came with a bowl of lemon water for finger cleansing:

I almost forgot!!!  Our surroundings!!  We had requested the Peacock Room and it did not disappoint.  What was especially lovely was that we had this room all to ourselves for most of our meal!!

(Look at that floor!)

Behold the peacock:

 

Every touch was perfection.  This house was restored with great care.
I wish I had taken a picture of the ladies’ restroom!  It also was beautiful.
For our final course I chose a Pear Champagne sorbet.  I devoured it before I even took a picture.  It was so refreshing and delicate, just what I wanted after the meal.  My husband ordered a pear tart and it was also good, but just didn’t hit the spot like the sorbet did. 
We had excellent French pressed coffee with our dessert and my husband got all fancy and tried the brown sugar lumps. 

I enjoyed the meal!

We had a wonderful weekend, and this meal was one of the main highlights for me.  What fun!  I hope to go again. 

Delightful.

Garden plans

As we’ve been having a really really early spring here, I’ve been having fun gardening a little earlier than I normally would be able to.  Although I haven’t planted anything  new yet, I’ve been moving around existing perennials as they come up to new locations.  I seem to do this every year as I find out just how the plants like or do not like the different parts of our yard.  We have a mixture of full sun, part sun, and mostly shade so I have places for almost everything though I struggle with the shade areas. 
I had a lot of time on my hands this winter while I was on bedrest for over 6 weeks (subchorionic hematoma with baby #3), so I drew up some garden plans for the flower beds we have in our yard.  I have modified them slightly as memory didn’t quite serve me correctly in the dead of winter on some plant placements, but this is what a couple of them looked like:


The above is the front of our house.  My very elementary sketching and scribbling would probably be difficult for anyone else to decipher, but it is a huge help for me when it comes to organizing plant heights and colors, etc.  All the circles with number correspond to a “key” that I have written out on another page of this notebook. 


This one doesn’t have as many plants so I was able to write the names of the plants on the same page.  We’re actually incorporating a rain barrel into this flower garden so I’m going to have to do some rearranging, but most of the plants have not been planted yet (I ordered a few and am  moving a few from elsewhere in the yard to this flowerbed) so it isn’t a big problem. 

Not very professional I know, but for my purposes right now they work pretty well.  And really, I do have better handwriting than that…I didn’t plan to publish it for the world to see at that point in time!! 

I’m looking forward to my gardening this summer!  I’ll probably do some more posts on my gardening trials and errors as I’m sure there will be plenty of them! 

Blessings,

Elizabeth

What I'm thinking of today...

As I look out my window at the dreary winter brown and white, I dream of this:

viabluehourstudio.blogspot.com

This:

via thisoldhouse.com

And this:

via gardenvisit.com

And I couldn't resist thinking of these fresh from the garden:

via yougrowgirl.com

It's getting to be that time of the year when seed catalogs arrive and dreams begin for a summer of color and flavor!  I'll be checking plant books out from the library and making flower bed plans in the next few weeks.  I'm excited!

Blessings,
Elizabeth