A Barnyard Breakfast

We took The Traveling Tablescape Show on the road again this week and headed to the newlywed niece's farmhouse for a little barnyard breakfast. Yes, the sister lives on the farm too, but it's the niece who has the great old weathered barn boards.

So off we went to the country

with our dishes...

and our linens...

and our flowers...

and our props.

Even my grandmother's old kitchen table

made the thirty mile country commute.

This is some hard core tablescaping, folks.

Our inspiration came from my favorite old tablecloth. This one did not come from the vintage trunk but from the Duchess’s every day closet. It was a shower gift from the Great Wedding Adventure of 1957 and has the faded beauty of a well loved treasure.

I think those are supposed to be colorful turtle doves,

but for today, 

let's pretend they are
 barn swallows.

The sister made the tan and white napkins
 from remnants

 used in my niece’s decorating.

I made that 
. faded vintage fabric
for the matching napkins myself

by printing it on my computer. 

I yakked all about that yesterday.

We decorated the side of that barn

and brought along some

faded old accessories.

The yard chickens are as old as the tablecloth.

The Duchess bought them on her  honeymoon

as a gift for her grandmother.

They're MINE  now.

These cream and sugar pigs

belonged to that same (great) grandmother.

She purchased them from a peddler,

and she was fun enough to actually use them.

My own grandmother’s cookbooks

add a little more faded glory.

That egg crate isn’t a family piece.

The Duchess purchased it along the way.

The toile rimmed dinner plates were a gift from a British friend and made in her hometown. Other than that, the dinnerware is unremarkable and chosen for the colors.

You just don’t bring your bone china into the barnyard…

The requisite

decoupaged doodad

Coasters made from photo copies of the tablecloth.

So there you have it.

We so greatly appreciated the niece

 inviting  allowing us to invade her space 

that we invited her to pretend to join us at the table.

Making it a barnyard breakfast for four

One old hen

One cute chick

And a couple of

hams.

*****

I'm sharing this at
 Between Naps on the Porch 

for

My Faux Vintage Linens

Our first empty nest Labor Day was kept very simple.
The husband played golf.

I made something useful out of hoarded stuff.

It’s one of my favorite things to do, and only half the fun is the finished product. The other half is figuring out how to bring it to completion at no cost. Other tightwads will relate. 

The man of the house
does not understand

the pleasure in this

and said as much…

Then, he left  to spend four hours

 chasing a little white ball across the ground

 with a funny shaped stick.

While he was ball chasing, I made my very own vintage napkins. OK, they’re not technically vintage since I just made them yesterday, but they do have a faded vintage look to them. I got the inspiration from Carol at The Polka Dot Closet. 

I made them to match one of my favorite old tablecloths. It belongs to the Duchess.

It’s her cookie cloth

(I yakked about cookie cloths HERE) 

For my napkins, I used hoarded white fabric from The List. Because I want to actually use these napkins, the fabric had to be treated at least a day in advance in a solution of...

2 Tablespoons alum

2 ½ teaspoons washing soda

½ teaspoon fabric softener

1 cup of very hot water

It created more froth than my Milli Vanilli Ice Cream in a Can ever did so I let it settle for a few minutes.

Then I:
Cut the fabric into pieces the size of an 8 ½ by 11 sheet of paper.
Soaked those pieces in the mixture for about 15 minutes.
Rinsed and  hung to dry for about a day.

Then, I scanned the pattern from the tablecloth that I wanted to use on my napkin. I don’t have a picture of this because it’s hard enough to get a tablecloth to fit on a printer screen without the added feature of a shiny red Kodak.

Here’s the photo copy sitting on the table cloth.

Pretty good.

Then, I cut 8 ½ by 11 pieces of freezer paper

 and ironed the treated fabric

 to the waxy side of the freezer paper.

This makes waxy fabric paper.

which you feed through the printer

to copy your vintage pattern.

Peel it off.

And Ta Da!

Milli Vanilli vintage fabric?

Since it was only 8 ½ by 11 inches, my napkin was on the small side.
I’m calling it a tea towel instead.
I could have purchased some pretty fabric to jazz it up, but since this was supposed to be a cost free project, I just cut up more strips of that white cotton and coffee stained them to match that dark tan color in the tablecloth.

I had to stain and dry twice

 to get them the color that I wanted.

By the end, I had coffee stained counters,

a coffee stained floor,

and coffee stained hands.

 I also had coffee stained fabric so it was worth it.

I stitched the two homemade fabrics together and lined the whole thing with more hoarded remnant. And there you have it. They are not a perfect match, but they are pretty close and didn't cost a dime.

All in about the time it took the husband

to play a few rounds of golf.

Who’s smirking now?

All he has to show for it are some achy muscles.

I, on the other hand, have

 handmade coffee stained faux vintage tea towels.

Kicking Summer in the Can

Thanks from the bottom of my heart for the comments on my treasure box post. I truly loved them. Upon reading them, however, I learned something. Apparently, favorite friends come to my corner of blogland to either laugh – or cry.


Who knew? And here I thought it was for the recipes.

So which will it be today? You’ll have to be the judge, because today, we’re in the kitchen. Well, kind of...

You see, Gnee at Singing with the Birds is co- hosting a So Long Summer BBQ, and I wanted to join. Unfortunately, guests are expected to bring along a little something for the table. I checked the list, and "Pickles and Olives on a Pre-Divided Platter" was already taken. Oh well...

I decided to bring

Ice Cream in a Can

I saw this recipe years ago, and have always wanted to try it. I think if we had little boys around, I would have done so by now. I considered making some kind of adventurous flavor, but I chose instead to find the simplest vanilla recipe that I could find because, well, you know…

But I named it.

Milli Vanilli Ice Cream in a Can

Here's all you need:

* Wash two coffee cans, one large, and one small.
* Chill the cans in the freezer for at least an hour
* Mix the ingredients in the smaller can.

1 cup half and half

1 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla.

* Seal the lid with duct tape.
 (I forgot the Duct tape, but my coffee can had a really tight seal, so…)

*Place the smaller can inside the larger one and fill the sides with a combination of
ice and rock salt.

* Kick the can for 15 minutes.

As you know, we have a sad shortage of children around this place so we had to do the kicking ourselves. We chose appropriate shoes.

Here’s the sister in her flip flops…

And that’s the nephew-in-law in his cowboy boots…

And his lovely wife, the banker, straight from work
 in her peep toe pumps….

My shoes were sensible because I got the memo.

That’s my toe.

We kicked that can for 15 minutes in the Georgia heat while The Duchess stood in the air conditioning and timed us. Then, we checked the progress.

We found frothy white stuff.

So, next…

* Empty the now liquid slush of ice and salt and replace with fresh salt and ice.
* Kick the can some more. (I hadn’t mentioned this second act during kicker recruitment.)
* And Ta Da! You have ice cream!

Only we didn’t

We just had somewhat frothier white stuff.

Maybe it was the missing duct tape…

We decided to give ours the freeze

while we sat down to dinner,

and then we checked the can again.

Very cold white frothy stuff.

The others laughed and tossed up their hands, but they weren’t the ones going to party empty handed. So back outside I went, a 48 year old curbside curiosity kicking a coffee can up and down the front walk… by herself… for the next 20 minutes. 

And I checked again. 

Seriously?

So I loaded my can into Ebenezer and headed back home on the thirty mile country commute. And then, I started thinking. I’m always thinking…

And I made a little side trip to the grocery store.

And then to the napkin hoarder’s box…

And then to the craft closet…

Time for a little decoupage therapy...

Ta Da!

Milli Vanilli Ice Cream in a Can.

And now, at least those around the age of forty

  know why I named it 

Milli Vanilli

 Ice Cream in Can.

Because it’s nothing but a big fat faker.

And besides

Snickers was already taken.

*******

Hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day picnic.

Please visit Singing with the Birds
or
A Little Bit of Everything
 for more fun at their

I should be ashamed to take this to the party,

but oh no...
off to the party, I go.

Simply Treasured

This is our treasure box.

It’s not an old treasure box but a relatively new one. It was given to us near the end of 2008, the terrible, horrible, no good,very bad year, and it was given to us by friends.

In June of that year, we were swept away by the first wave of the unemployment tsunami that would become known as The Great Recession. With a stroke of a pen and a mechanical phone call, the husband’s job was eliminated, and we became one of them.

The unemployed.

When we lost his job that Wednesday afternoon, we lost more than our single income and benefits. We lost any naïve sense of self- sufficiency.  What we didn't lose was our faith. Rather, it flourished, and we learned the simple art of trusting God and appreciating the hands of His provision.

Like a mother who cooked for an army and sent home the leftovers… and then purchased yet more groceries, because they were on sale, you see… And besides, Deb-or-ah, I once walked in your shoes, and that’s what my mother did for me.

And a sister who asked me to use supplies in her emergency closet, because they were going to expire, you see… and then handed me a box of perishables...

...like shampoo

and hair spray.

and dental floss.

Or a friend who consistently brought us dinner, because she had cooked too much, you see…and her own family just didn’t like leftovers.

Or the extra vegetables from a garden…

Or an extra car when insult was added to injury

 and our van broke down as well.

You’re probably not surprised that I took pictures of it all.

It was months into our season when our Sunday School classes gathered after church for potluck and encouragement. We talked and shared stories, and I saw the husband laugh that day.  When we got ready to leave, the hostess quietly said,

“You need to take the box.”

She handed me this

and told us not to open it until we got home.

Inside were cards and letters of encouragement and gift certificates… and a love offering from friends who would allow neither return nor repayment. They merely asked that we pay it forward when we could.

We have, and we do.

And in a little twist which can only be God, forward has in some cases been backward as several in the room that day put on our shoes before the next year was out. God had prepared us for ministry to them through our own season.

And a box.

The box holds a position of honor in our living room. Inside are all of the cards and letters and hard copies of pictures like the ones posted here…lest we ever forget. It sits near the chair where I sit to pray. When I’m having a particularly difficult week, or when feelings of fear and anxiety threaten me, I like to open the box and be reminded of a time when I got to see God with his skin on.

This week has been such a week. The husband is in sales, you see, and no matter what the talking heads might try to tell us, the economy is not exactly robust.

But God has not given me a spirit of fear.

God has given me a box.

This week’s simple pleasure was opening it.

*****

It's my pleasure to share this with Dayle

 at A Collection of This and That.

Please venture over there to read about the other

Simple Pleasures

                                                            

*****

I am also sharing at

 Southern In My Heart   for Inspiration Friday.

Divas on the Deck

Just as I had been collecting dishes for last week’s table for years, our tablescape this week has been years in the making as well. This one is the pet project of the Sister.

Rather than a bedroom setting, this table belongs in her sunroom.

Now, the Sister is a partial empty nester, which means that her daughters have moved out, but their belongings have that annoying little habit of home invasion. Such is the case right now as her sunroom has become the temporary home of recent summer rental furniture.

So we set it up on her deck instead.

Personally, I think it’s even lovelier surrounded by creation.

Most things are.

The table was set this week to celebrate the

50th birthday

of her favorite nonDebbie friend.

This is the friend with whom she shared

 that trip to a spa…

The friend who hosted the recent garden party.

I yakked all about it HERE.

Because the birthday girl is a dish nut and table lover, we set it in full invisible people fashion.

 In truth, the two old friends merely enjoyed some dessert and lemonade.

Just go along with it, folks…

She started with Willow House plates as chargers and stacked some cobalt and white until she got to the dessert plate, which was purchased a few years ago at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

The cobalt glass and stemware was purchased separately, and actually, both are from Walmart.

The flatware is Satinique by Oneida.

All linens were made to coordinate with her sunroom curtains. The napkins are folded fan style and cinched with a floral napkin ring. She couldn’t find the exact color flower that she wanted so she just bought white ones and painted each petal to match.

To say that she’s detail oriented

 is a bit of an understatement.

She wrapped her gift to coordinate with the napkins.

How pretty is that? 

The table was scattered with a variety of decorations in her color palette.

For the first time, we set a table without a single vintage accessory. Being lovers of all things vintage, we scoured around for an antique touch for the table. We tried this cobalt sugar bowl from the Duchess’s collection.

It just didn't seem to fit so we left it off.

Not to worry... I reminded my big sister that once she and her guest settled down for their birthday celebration, the table would have the vintage look.

After all, she is they are 50...

And I am not.

Happy 50th birthday to my dear  friend!

****

I'll be sharing this with Susan at Between Naps on the Porch