Be my guest.....

On the first floor of the tower of our home is the guest area. I showed you the bathroom earlier. I use it as I enjoy a bath but this is actually the bathroom for the guest room.

The photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.....

Our guest room has windows on three sides since it is in the tower. This means the room is very light. I wanted to give the room a warm and welcoming look so choose a warm dark beige for the walls. I was so grateful when we were busy with the house to have help from my friends Silvia and Carolien when we were painting this room.

There are built in closets in the room and when we placed the furniture in the room, I discovered the bench I use at the end of the guest bed fit just perfectly in the space between those closets where the window is. It gave the room an instant window seat.

My miniatures and silhouettes and hanging once again. I added a few more since the previous house and just love this wall.

There is a reading corner here from which I can also sit and see the silhouettes. Sometimes, I relax with my current book here after having taken a bath.

We have two mirrored doors on the closets and two regular doors. Instead of painting them, we wallpapered these two doors. This was wallpaper I had left from lining the back of our hutch to lighten it up. That reminds me that I must share that with you soon too. This wallpaper is a Swedish reproduction wallpaper dating from 1902. The moment we saw it at the shop, Jos and I knew it was the one we wanted to use as it reminded us both of living in Stockholm. The inside of these doors is also wallpapered with the paper left from doing the sampler wall in our bedroom.

While my mother was visiting, she commented that she would like a mirror at this spot. We had this mirror still to hang so used it here along with an antique Swedish sideboard. This sideboard design is attributed to Karin Larsson. It is even held together with wooden nails. I would love to paint this to match the other furniture but am not sure about doing so with this antique piece.

There is nothing that makes a home more personal that little touches that say who you are. I included this silhouette of one of my favorite authors, Charlotte Bronte, and the lace gloves I wore when Jos and I got married.

I do not have very many but I love collecting Persephone books.

The windows in the tower are very deep which gives me lots of wonderful space to create vignettes on the window sills. Not having had window sills in our previous home, this is so much fun to have them here.

Jos and I get comments about the guest room being bigger than our bedroom downstairs. We keep saying we will be guests in our own house once and sleep up here just for the fun of it.

Thanks for being my guest and visiting our home.

Spring begins.....

Spring is arriving and nature is bursting out ready for another year of color and splendor. Everywhere in Holland, the bulbs are either in bloom or growing forth. What a pretty time of year...


My white grape hyacinths in a vintage olive pot...

"The year's at the spring

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hillside's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in His heaven -

All's right with the world!"

~ Robert Browning

Gardening season.....

It is the start of the gardening season. Our frost is gone with the exception of on and off light night frost so we could start in our front garden. It had been left as is for 16 years. It was a hard and compact ground covered totally with moss. In fact, we discovered there were many flagstones under all the moss which could no longer be seen. We first removed all the flagstones and Jos loosened and turned over the soil. We moved plants around and disposed of ones that were just left dieing as they were choked in the hard soil.

We removed all the old white gravel and used it along the side of the garage which none was left over the years. A new and wider path was created using the flagstones to separate the garden from the path and went to a farm out in the countryside who specializes in various gravels and split. They said since we were early in the season, they could deliver it the next morning. The guy told Jos that last year, he was making on average 100 deliveries a day in season. That is due to their great prices of course. It was fun to see how he could use the crane to place the 'big bag' wherever we needed it even though it is a tight squeeze for a truck in these little Dutch streets. Notice his wooden shoes? *wink*

After looking at the many types of split, we decided on basalt which is a stone that is dark grey but turns black when it is wet. 1500 kilos of basalt was delivered and we needed about 1200 for the front saving the rest for something I want to do in the back garden. We are both really happy with how it turned out.

Planting is sparse until I start buying some things but this hellebore was there already and really showing off in the spring sunlight. What pretty centers these have!

I did plant up two new types of hellebores including this one. I could not resist it when I saw that it is called 'Christmas Carol'. It is not as pretty a flower center as the other but still beautiful.

Our sun dial takes center stage in the front garden. We discover four little rose bushes among the plants and replanted them together. I have no idea if they will make it but there is a little new growth coming on the already. We also rescued dieing boxwood from the back garden and created a large ball in the front. It hopefully will take on a new life there.

We plan to use our garden gate at the end of this new pathway and Jos will place it before our driveway is rebricked. You can see our gate here from a blog entry when we lived in our previous house. The beech hedge will then continue on the other side of the gate so we have to add two more beech hedges to the other side. In the second photo, I am standing where the gate will be. There is still much work to do as you can see......

So time now to take off the wooden shoes and have a little rest before starting on the back garden. Jos and I have both been sick. We have a bad cough and Jos a nasty cold to go with it. I had lost my voice for 4 days but it is back again. This morning Jos also has an appointment at the oral surgeon to have a tooth that is crumbling extracted. The joys of growing older!

Now I await a little warmer temperatures to sit in the sunshine on my bench. The doctor told me to get outside as much as I can. Not hard with all this gardening. I am afraid my vitamin D levels dropped badly again. They have no idea why my body is not taking up the vitamin as I have been taking it for a year now but rarely have safe levels. She is now having me use oral injection boosters for 3 months to see if that will help. After three months, she is going to check the levels again and then it will either be 3 more months of injections or back to tablets. I hope I only have it for 3 months as this stuff tastes horrible. Guess this is sunshine in an injection. *grins*

Today is a gloomy day here in Holland with gusty winds so I am going to curl up with a good book.

White roses and lace

Yesterday I spent a fun day with my good friend Bep. We went to a large indoor fabric market. So many wonderful fabrics, trims, buttons... Can you overdose on seeing such wonderful things? *wink* We also walked into the village shopping street and visited a couple of shops to look at yarn among other things. Then before leaving, we had to stop in at a store called Action. It is a wonderful discount store. I bought this tray.

When I got home, I immediately started playing with things to put on it on my dining room table. The nice thing about it all being on a table is that you simply slide the tray aside when it is time to set the table for dinner.

I put some of the things I love on the tray...lace, a lacy looking pot and ball, silver heart keyring, a candle and my white miniature roses I recently bought.

There are so many rosebuds on these plants and now all we need is a little sun to make them open.

Walking past this tray and seeing these things make me smile. I hope you have things in your home that make you smile too?

Don't you love a bargain?

In a shop I stopped in at on the way to Cranberry Cottage, I happened to find a bargain. It was laying on the floor under a bargains table. I almost did not even see it...

I found a matching decorative cake plate to my larger one I already had. They are made of wood with a painted taupe grey paint distressed effect. It was marked down so well that I had to get it. *grins* When bringing it home, the fun began. One of my cloches fit on it perfectly so I was able to use the two well together.

Under this cloche is a piece of my handmade bobbinlace, a porcelain heart and a watercolor portrait of Samuel Pepys which was a souvenir from a little shop in The Cotswolds.

The two plates are now standing to greet all who come to visit on my sideboard in the living room.

Love is in the air.....

It is almost Valentine's Day and our home has reminders to celebrate the heart throughout our living room...

A vintage wooden trough full of heart made for me or given to me as gifts by various friends.

A book containing beautiful words of love given as an anniversary gift from my sister....

Chocolate and raspberry colored quilt I made which I called 'A Box of Chocolates'...

A Valentine's tree adds a twinkle of light...

I wish I could remember that first day,

First hour, first moment of your meeting me,

If bright or dim the season, it might be

Summer or Winter for aught that I can say;

So unrecorded did it slip away,

So blind was I to see and to foresee,

So dull to mark the budding of my tree

That would not blossom yet for many a May.

If only I could recollect it, such

A day of days! I let it come and go

As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;

It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;

If only now I could recall that touch,

First touch of hand in hand.--Did one but know!

by Christina Rossetti

Sweet words of long lasting and true love...

'Mended Hearts' quilt with a wooden dough bowl of more fabrics hearts...

Valentine's day is a time to remember more than just our husbands, wives or sweethearts. It is a time to also say to all those we care about how special they are to us. I wish each of you who read my blog a Happy Valentine's Day!

On the rocks.....

This is a rock garden just outside on the terrace between my studio and our living room. Normally this would not be a style I would choose but it is practical for this area due to the large windows there. We thought it would be a simple touch to the sitting area near the house as we plan to plant up the rest of the garden heavily in comparison.

But the rock garden needed a facelift. For years, the previous owners have swept dirt and junk into this area and it showed. If you look at the photo above you can see the results after cleaning it up from the photo below which is before we started.

You can see the anti-weed membrane sticking up through the pebbles and it is just very dirty looking. We found broken wine glass, clothes pins, plastic wrappers, plastic from toys, etc. and lots of leaves and so much dirt that weeds started growing in it.

We removed everything right back to the membrane. Once the membrane was swept, we started to first filter out the less dirty pebbles to put them back. A good half of them had to be washed though. It was hard work which we sometimes continued even when it turned dark. A friend laughed when she saw it and asked if the beauty police were coming to visit. I laughed back and said the beauty police live here. *grins*

The fountain did not work and we wanted to see if we could figure out if the pump was broken but instead Jos discovered this. If you look closely on the photo, you will see that the end of the cord has been cut straight through most likely with a hedge clipper. Jos plans to pull up part of the terrace to retrieve the remaining portion of cord and repair it.

When the frost season has passed, I will plant another decorative grass. We marked a spot for it with a tile.

Now my large lanterns are standing in the rock garden and I think they look like they belonged there all along. It is so pretty from inside the studio or living room to see the candles lit.

Our gardening makeover has started and this was hard work but when I see the before and after photos, it was well worth it. We have major plans for both front and back which we are going to work on as time and weather permits. For now, I can sit on the terrace in the coming spring to enjoy the rock garden and hopefully by then a working rock fountain.