Good Monday Morning to everyone,
I’m SO glad Linda was on the ball and sent some pictures to me, because I had NOTHING for today… My Saturday was playing catchup and trying to get my summer clothes put away and my Fall things in my closet. Then I cleaned out one drawer in my dresser. I worked ALL day on those 2 areas… still have my shoes to go.
This morning was church… we picked up some groceries afterwards…got home at 1:40 and then Rebecca called and wanted to talk at 2:00 if possible… 2-1/2 hours later we finished talking… we hadn’t eaten yet, so I made some lunch/dinner and ate about 5:15… we just finished eating, when our Pastor and his new wife called and said they were in the area and would it be okay if they stopped by, sure… and they stayed about an hour and a half. By then it was almost 8:00 and any creative thoughts I had for my sewing room had vanished.
Maybe they’ll come back tomorrow… (the creative thoughts, I mean!!) :o)
How wonderful that Linda “knew” what my day was going to be like and had 3 lovely pictures to share with everyone. She has decorated her house and porch for Fall and it looks so clean and neat. (You’d croak if you saw my front entry way, Linda… I mean really croak!)
So may I present Linda’s pretty and very tidy pictures…
(From Linda:)
The first one is the wreath I made several years ago. It has held up pretty well.
Here is my bench on the front porch that I decorate with leaves, flowers and pumpkins.
Here is a shot of the front of the house.
Love to you, Linda💕
WOW! Linda… I bet you have the neatest house on the block… I know you are an outside person and like to rake the leaves and trim your flowers and sweep your walkway, and it REALLY shows. Thanks for sharing your pictures!
See everyone tomorrow,
Blessings, Jeanne
You certainly did have a busy day on Sunday! I can sure understand why you didn’t have time to do any pictures/project to show.
Linda, your house looks just lovely, all decorated like that. So pretty! Thanks for sharing pictures!
Well, I thought MAYBE Jeanne could use my pictures when or if she had a busy day, but had no idea it would be today! So if anyone is in the vicinity here in St. Louis, you will know where I live and please stop by!
It is a gloomy, damp, chilly and overcast day today, and yesterday too. It doesn’t look so cheerful now as compared to the pictures here, that’s for sure! I do love to work outside when the weather cooperates, and love fixing things up to look “pretty”!
Thank you both, Jeanne and Charlotte for the kind words! My house is a labor of love, you might say. We have lived here for 52 years, moving in with two toddlers, and now our grandchildren are almost all grown! It’s not a huge house, but perfect size for us now.
See that smiling pumpkin face on a stick on the bench? That’s as scary as it gets here at my house for Halloween!🤣👻
Dear Linda, what a beautiful front porch area. It looks so inviting.
Thank you, Dorothy, and you ARE invited!
Linda, your house is my dream house. I love neat and tidy and have fought over the years to keep the mess down by the shop and not up by the house, often without success. For years I worked full-time, took care of the house, cooked meals and got everyone where they needed to be. I didn’t have time for much else. These days I have the time but the body is not willing so I have trouble keeping up with things, especially outside when it’s hot. Fortunately I have a grandson who wants to earn money and a stepson who doesn’t mind the heat so the flower beds eventually get weeded, but that in itself could be a full-time job so that is often lagging. I would like to hire someone to do the front flower gardens at least but I haven’t been able to make that happen. Still working on it.
My house is your dream house, Barbara? We have lived here for 52 years, and started out as a young couple, not really knowing what we wanted in a house, but thought we would start here and then move on in 5 years. We are still here, and even though it is not exactly what we wanted, it turned out to be just fine for us, not too big or fancy, just right! I wanted a house that we could take care of ourselves, not relying on hiring others to do things for us, and it seems to have worked out.
Thank you so much for the kind words! It made my day!
Wow, Jeanne, you did have a very busy day! I hope you can slow down soon! I also hope George is getting better every day.
On Saturday I made Peyton’s favorite breakfast and then got out in the yard for a while, raking up all the stuff I had trimmed off some of the bushes. The yard man will come soon so the stuff is waiting for him to remove. He called last night and asked if we would like 2 fresh caught fish, a trout and a flounder. I was thrilled but only if it is cleaned. He said he would.
After church we picked up something from the Piggley Wiggley for our friend whose husband just died. We had a nice visit with her. Then off to home to fix dinner.
Linda, you are inspiring! I will have to get on the ball and put my fall stuff on the porch. It won’t be as lovely as yours, as my swing and chairs are getting pretty ratty looking. Nothing like GA humidity to wear things out.
We are off again to the Y. Y’all have a lovely day!
Thank you, Sissy! I figure that by the end of November, I will be starting my Christmas decorating in earnest, so the earlier I put the fall things out, the longer I have with them. I can certainly understand the thing about humidity! We have more than enough too!
Sounds like you have the same problem we do here in SE Texas. David says everything here either mildews, rusts, rots or molds. Even treated lumber seems to succumb to the climate here.
Talk about a cleaning wizard, Jeanne’s closet switching makes me so tired. Here, I move stuff from the bottom rack to the top. If I get to it. I’m kind of half and half between right now with short and long sleeved tee shirts. After yesterday’s cold rainess, I should switch down all of the long sleeves, I guess. No dresses here, but way back there somewhere, I might find a black pleated skirt. 🙂
How wonderful to see Linda’s house photos. Thanks for sharing Linda and Jeanne. Absolutely love Linda’s decorating, inside and out. Rather embarrassing, but our porch has an overgrown fern that is pretty to me, and a vintage container that should contain some fresh plants but currently only has empty pots. There is a jade plant growing from a Home Depot orange bucket as I’ve never gotten around to putting it in a pot that also sits there empty. The bench has a plant that sits on it along with several old towels that the cat uses to sleep on unless I’m covering tender plants during frost time. So, rather a jumble. Seeing how nice Linda’s space looks gives me hope. Guess I should concentrate on the porch instead of deck rail painting. 🙂
We had rain most of the time over the weekend, but still were able to get in a walk each day. Too wet to do any yard work or deck painting. But, I did finish the hem on that tiny pleated skirt for the Ruby Reds. Started the waistband, but not quite done with that yet.
And on to Halloween. 🙂
Thank you, Joy! I love ferns too, in fact, that is a fern in back of the bench on a table. That is a southern facing porch, and my fern gets morning sun, and afternoon shade, and loves it. In the summer a fern also goes in that planter with the purple mums and loves that location too. That. Is one thing I can plant and not have deer eating them!
I’m changing clothes out too, since fall arrived so abruptly here. One day was summer, then bang, it cooled off big time. I do keep a short sleeved top or two handy on the days when it gets warmer than most, but it is rainy, chilly and gloomy now, so you feel the chill more.
Your description of outside sounds a lot like mine. I have a black thumb so nurturing plants has never been my specialty. Even inside I have a problem. The plant rack on my breezeway would do Morticia Addams proud. I have a Pathos that has lived forever but with intervals of non-watering (oops) all its leaves are at the end of long tendrils. Sometimes I gather them all up and put them on top of the pot and it actually looks like a full plant. Someone suggested starting from scratch and clipping the plant back so the new growth would be in the pot but that would mean discarding the living part of the plant and I just can’t throw away all those green leaves.
Dear Jeanne, I hope you are able to get some rest over the next couple of days.
You know you don’t have to worry about us here on the sofa if you don’t have a topic. All you have to say is “talk among yourselves” and we surely will. It is always like that when friends gather.
What a beautiful statement, Dorothy! 😹🥰❣️💐
Dear Laura, thanks. Well, Jeanne has created a kind of sisterhood, “The Sisterhood of the Sofa” (laugh). That kind of sounds like a cult movie title, though, so I think we should just stay with the Sofa Sisters (smile).
Regardless of what we call ourselves, we know this is a fun and secure place to come and share a little of our lives.
You’re right. We never seem to be at a loss for words or have to search for a topic to discuss so if Jeanne is missing from the sofa at times, we’ll all still be here carrying on. Your comment about me being proud of my hometown was right on. I loved living there. It was a beautiful place to live and at that time had four definite seasons and little to no humidity. Some of that has changed but the flavor of the area still remains. I check out the real estate in Bethlehem often (hubby says we are not moving to Bethlehem!) and I think it makes me a bit homesick. I recognize so much of the area and many of the homes my friends and I live in have been up for sale so I get to see changes in the neighborhood (usually very little). I get information on things going on there and really wish I could take advantage of them. David and I have never been big travelers so even visiting does not seem possible these days but I’m not giving up.
Dear Barbara, hold on your dream of at least a visit to your hometown. The next time your husband asks what you want for Christmas or your birthday or your anniversary, tell him that you really want to go back home for just a few days. I am hoping that it works!
Linda, your house and property are beautiful enough to cover a magazine!
The wreath on the front is really stunning.
I hope everyone had an enjoyable week-end, whether romping around some place or recovering. The weather has been nice in Northern Virginia.
Jeanne, I am glad that both of you are moving ahead with progress. Keep it up!
Thank you Rosemary! I made the wreath about ten years ago! It started out as a plain straw wreath, and I added leaves, berries, flowers and feathers, (which by now are few and far between!) It might need a refresh for next year!
Thank you so much for the compliments!
Jeanne, your closet switching must be a lot of work. Here I just choose from the left side instead of the right side of my walk in closet. I have spring/ summer on the right and fall/winter on the left with my hanging sweater bag also on the left. All shoes are in my shoe pocket holder on the back wall. And then just choose from a different drawer of my chest of drawers. Even my wool winter coat just moves in and out of the coat bag with cedar blocks in the hall closet.
Beautiful photos, Linda! Your porch looks so pretty with all the fall decorations. Front porch here does have one chair and my year round porch tree currently with orange lights, but mostly three heated kitty houses and a heated mat with food and water. I love your wrought iron bench. And the fern is so pretty. I love ferns and have a patch of them in the backyard, but the frost nipped them the other night and now they are all turning brown. Your front yard is so perfectly manicured.
Thank you Laura! I do love to decorate and have fun doing it! I do have to keep the porch decorations simple, since the weather gets to them a lot of times, with the wind and rain doing the most damage. At least the mums are easy to take care of! I agree that ferns are so pretty and mine are pretty hardy too. We haven’t had a killer freeze yet, but frost has taken down some things, just not the ferns yet. The porch does give them some protection. I would love to see your “kitty porch” sometime!
Linda, what pretty fall decorations you put out on your front porch! I love how you draped the leaves on your bench. So clever! Your wreath is very pretty and welcoming on your front door too. I think fall is my favorite season ( next to Christmas days ). Fall is so pretty in most of the states and cooler.
Thank you for sharing.
Dorothy- I saw your pictures from the exhibit last Friday. The doll house was really neat. Whoever put it together back in the day was resourceful in making it and filling it with fun items. Whoever owned it – I’m sure it was enjoyed – with all the little things that made it so life like.
I had a metal doll house from the 60’s- it was my favorite childhood enjoyment next to Barbie. Long gone but several years ago I found the exact doll house with all the furniture and had to get it. Thank you for showing us your pictures at the event.
Jeanne, hope you remember what your projects were so you can get them done!
Dear Paula, thank you for your comments on the doll houses. I think that two of them were purchased from descendants of the families who initially commissioned them to be made. I think these were the pre-1900s doll houses.
I know that sometimes wealthy families would have doll houses made to represent their own houses. They would use the wallpaper and paint in the doll houses that were used in the actual house.
If you want to learn about an absolutely exquisite doll house, you can read about Queen Mary’s doll house. Here is a link to the website:
https://www.rct.uk/collection/stories/queen-marys-dolls-house
Thank you Dorothy for the doll house information. How fascinating that some families were able to use paint and wall paper from their own homes. I guess I would too if I had the means. I’m sure their were creative families who were able to do some, maybe not as fancy,
Thank you for sending the link for Queen Mary’s doll house!
Paula, I love fall too, and the colors of the trees just make everything so pretty! That hasn’t really started here much at all, but a few early ones are starting tochange, and I hope to take a drive out in the country to see them better in a few weeks.
Thank you so much for the compliments!
Now we need pictures of the decorations inside Linda’s house. These clearly came at an ideal moment.
George’s health report is so encouraging. God is clearly on his (and your) side.
Wow! You do stay busy. How wonderful you had a nice, long visit from your pastor and his wife. So thoughtful of them to want to stop by. And a long phone call with Rebecca sounds like an additional blessing. Hopefully you can get a day or two of real rest soon. Sounds like you may need it.
Thanks for sharing Linda’s pictures. Whether doll, home or garden she always has something wonderful to share. My biggest problem with decorating outside is I don’t have a porch. I may have to start decorating the porch on our new storage building. It looks like an adorable little house and has a porch. I will take pictures sometime soon. I was hoping to wait until the garage door is on the space for the lawn tractor but some revisions to that framing are needed so I just won’t take pictures from that end. Otherwise it will be totally finished when Sean gets the final painting done on the inside of the storage area today. Then we need everyone home to put all the stuff in it. Right now David and Jason are on a job and that could be off and on for a few weeks. But that’s okay since it will be getting cooler and make it easier to do outside work since the shelves have to be unloaded in the garage in order to move them to the new storage room. My job will be to decide what goes where since I plan on having some real organization this time rather than putting things up to get them out of the way.
Oh, I would love to see the shed when it’s painted. I’m sure that it will be a wonderful place for storage. 🙂
Thank you, Barbara! I had a hard time finding your comments when there were so many others, so I hope you don’t think I forgot you! I’m so glad that we do have a porch, since it keeps the front of the house cooler when the sun is shining. I thought all southern homes had porches for that reason. The front of the house faces the south, so that really helps. Maybe your contractor hubby could add a front porch on the house for you! It wouldn’t be that hard for him to do!
I would love to see your shed! It sounds like something fun to decorate.
Linda your porch is just lovely. I love your decorations. Sam and Kai are planning to decorate the front but it will not be pretty like yours! Fortunately, Halloween will be over on Fri so the decorations will be gone on Saturday…. or Sunday.. or Monday. … maybe!! Unfortunately my deck is more like Joy’s. It did used to be nice, I didn’t have nice furniture but used to have lovely flowers in pots and hanging baskets and it was tidy. These days the pots and baskets have a collection of weeds! and the furniture is always covered with stuff that ‘needs sorting’ or ‘it is going in the garage/workroom’. I did take a photo of my clematis which was gorgeous a week ago. Since then we have had two massive storms the first was just wind then overnight it was heavy rain and wind so it doesn’t look so pretty now.
I have an apology, I finished the little tartan dress but forgot to photograph it and the lady has already picked it up. I plan to make another so will photograph that one.
Jeanne, I am not as organised as you. All my clothes are in my small closet and I pull out what I want to wear after looking at the weather on my phone in the morning. Today it will be trousers and a sweater after skirts and t’s for the last few weeks. Most of this month the lowest daytime temps have been about 19C (68F) – 27C (84F). Today, currently it is 5C (40F) and is going up to a tropical 9C (48F)!!!
After giving me a scare Luna seems to have recovered. She lost a lot of weight in those few days but she seems to be putting it back on. I take her back to the vet tomorrow at ten so will see how she is but I think she will be fine. At least until the next NorWester. These are our hot, dry winds which can be distressing to humans too, sometimes. They originate from the Australian and sweep in over the Tasman sea to the West Coast, hit the mountains and drop all their moisture on the west side then hit the Canterbury plains where they can pick up strength, particularly in spring and autumn, and they can flatten anything in their path. In summer it isn’t usually windy, just hot but it can be really bad in spring and this last weekend it has been shocking. Huge amounts of damage. The govt has given $150,000 to the Mayoral fund to help with the cleanup. One farmer laughed when he heard that, he was looking at more than that on his farm alone!
Ah well it is supposed to be better now for a while.
Can’t wait to see the tartan dress when completed. Love those plaids. And, I’d love to see your deck perfect or not.
Glad to hear that Luna is getting better.
Those storms sound atrocious. Definitely need more money for compensation of losses.
Thank you so much, Anne! I love decorating, but I do more “fall” decorating, than Halloween. It last longer and is prettier!😊. What kind of clematis do you have? Right now, Autumn clematis is blooming, or should I say bloomed several weeks ago, but is quite different from the purple and pink clematis that blooms in spring. I’m sure your plants were beautiful but then you have been gone on your trip, so you couldn’t possibly keep up with them then. Someday you will get back to it!
I have no excuse not to take care of my yard, since we did not go on a vacation this year, and what would I be doing instead? Just sitting around doesn’t appeal to me, and if I have the energy to do outside things, I do it!
Those storms sound terrible! I hope they are over for now! Good to hear that Luna is getting better! Can’t wait to see the tartan dress!
Jeanne….I share your thoughts on organizing the clothes closet! My closet is small and I know its time to weed out the too small items and things not worn in over a year….but I know I think I will do it in about an hour and then it will be three hours later! I’ve decided to tackle the weeding-out after Christmas since I have so many Christmas projects to do before Dec. 24th! Our kitchen cupboards need a complete overhaul too, so items that are left out on the counter can be put away, out of sight. Another good project for after the holidays!
Linda…your home and front porch are beautiful! Love the fall wreath! I just finished putting together a new Christmas wreath for our front door, using the items that my daughter had purchased on sale from Walmart. I want to call it “Visions of sugar plums” since it is filled with pastel fake sweet treats and swirled all around is light green, sparkly netting. Not sure yet how well it will show on the front door, since we painted our front door a peach color when we moved in! The fall wreath we hung really ties in with the peach color though. Most of the front doors on the homes in this new-build community were neutral in color or painted the same as the siding color…we’ve never regretted going with peach (we taped a lot of paint chips on the door to decide on a color first!)…it helps with the delivery instructions if we have groceries delivered! We have discovered one other house on the street over, that also has a peach door. The peach color works well with the soft ecru siding color and the four porch posts (dark brown) that have “cave rock” pillars at the bottom.
I really like the brick edging you have surrounding the plant areas….and I look forward to using brick or some type of stone edging next spring. We have those short red-wood half-round edging that stick down in the ground, but in the Texas heat they haven’t held up well. Plus, I have to be very careful not to catch my gardening shoes on the short “fencing” and not fall. Sometime you need to step into the mulch or pea-graveled area to prune the bushes…so I am looking forward to some type of stone edging that doesn’t stick up so much.
And your green plantings all around and the rounded bushes look so good, and very well cared for! Your climate must be perfect for those plantings. Is that a vine all-around or a type of green plant? We are still learning by trial and error what grows and survives here in the Texas heat, full sun, and drought-like conditions. Gerbera daisies seem to do well. And there are three bushes on each side of the front porch garden areas that came with the property and they grow like weeds, but I keep them trimmed so they don’t grow up past the windows sills. So many folks seem to just let them grow and they are already obstructing window views and have different heights. Daughter and I think the reason we seldom see anyone outside pruning or gardening is due to the high heat and possibly the fire ants too! Lots of folks have people who come mow and edge regularly, but do nothing with the front garden areas that came with mulch. Here it is the end of Oct. and it is 85 degrees and full-sun today! Capris and sandals still feel pretty good to wear! When I lived in northern Indiana, the furnace would have been running already for over a month!
Thank you, Elizabeth! Your wreath sounds lovely, and I would love to see it when you put it up! Actually, we all would!
That green plant you must be referring to all around the bushes is English Ivy. It grows very well here, but a word of caution if anyone does plant it, thinking it will stay nice and trimmed. It takes a lot of work all summer long to keep it where you want it. I trim it every month, depending on how fast it grows. We did all the plantings ourselves and I put the bricks in. Michael built a wall on the side you can’t see, plus all around in the back. I’m glad we did that when we were younger, because we sure couldn’t do it now! I like the Ivy because here, in the winter everything looks so dead, but the Ivy and evergreens stay green all year long.
Our weather is not perfect, and we learn by trial and error like everybody else! We have lived here 52 years, so we have learned a few things on what works well and what doesn’t!😊