Where Have I Been?

I have been to the beautiful Gulf of Mexico….

Panama City Beach, Florida…

Isn’t it beautiful?

To those of us familiar with the beaches in this area of the United States…..there are none more beautiful than our sugar white sandy beaches…we love it….

Panama City Beach has been very fortunate…they have been spared the horrid oily mess….so far….

So far we have been able to go there and swim, and parasail, and bask in its beauty….

We saw these guys walking by everyday….they are the spotters….

They wore heavy shoes and boots….

Some wore long sleeved shirts and hats to protect them from the sun….

The walked by once or twice a day…they were looking for signs of oil, tar balls, a sheen on the water….

And at night?

We saw this from our balcony….

These are not children with flashlights looking for crabs…

These were men and women out on the beaches when the tide came in…looking for oil…signs of oil…

It was an eerie sight….surreal….

this couldn’t happen here…not to beaches that we love…that we have vacationed on for years….brought here by our parents as children and now we bring our children….these beaches which have given us so much joy and so many wonderful memories…

Our sister beaches in Alabama, Orange Beach, Gulf Shores…Louisiana…have been affected horribly by the BP oil spill…the thing that we never thought would happen…has happened….

My family and I decided to forge ahead with our vacation…to support the Gulf and go anyway, amid the fears of oil on the beaches….we decided if the oil came, we would sit at the pool and face the beach….but, we were lucky…

Panama City Beach so far, has dodged the bullet…

Linda at Coastal Charm lives on the Gulf and she and so many others are feeling the consequences of the oil spill…this tragic, tragic oil spill, which is affecting lives, livelihoods, wildlife, marine life…everything…

Please visit Linda’s blog…she has phone numbers listed that you can call to urge and BEG the President to waive the Jones Act for the duration of this crisis.  This would allow foreign vessels into our waters to aide us in the oil clean up.  Skimmers that are capable of doing so much more…to help clean up our Gulf….

Please help!

So these beautiful beaches will  be there for our grandchildren….and theirs….

much love to each of you….

God Bless and Keep those affected…..

The Cabinet Project

Well, sometime on Saturday I decided I was going to go ahead and paint my kitchen cabinets.  Now, mind you, I have wanted to paint them FOREVER!!  HOWEVER, my friend Jamie, said “OMG!! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WANT TO PAINT YOUR OAK CABINETS!!!”

So…I got scared and didn’t do it!  That is how I roll….I want EVERYONE to be on board!  Crazy, I know!!

So every time I have seen a kitchen cabinet reveal in the blog world, I would think, I wish I could paint my cabinets…then last week when I saw Ruth’s cabinets at The Beautiful Life, I decided I was going to do it!!  Ruth gave me tips and suggestions AND encouragement, so I just made up my mind right there like a big girl!!  I mean, they are MY cabinets and Steve was totally on board.  SO!!!  IT.WAS.ON!

Went to Home Depot and got Behr Premium Plus Paint and it is THE BOMB!  Two coats is all it took!  The color is Oyster..

Before…oak cabinets…nice, but not me…

 

ALOT of doors….

I did have to take the doors off, which I was hoping I would not have to do, but my hinges are hidden and I couldn’t paint behind them unless I took them off…bummer…so OFF they came…

The ATFER…as you can see over on the left, I ain’t done yet!  I still have five MORE doors to paint!

I really do LOVE it!!  I am pondering wiping a stain on….or not….  We are getting new countertops and I am leaning towards a black granite looking laminate that I found at Home Depot…

Steve turned the panel on the dishwasher around to the black side. (Insert Darth Vader voice here)

I also spray painted all the knobs and handles oil rubbed bronze.  That part was REALLY easy!

Rhonda at Blue Creek Home also gave me great advice, encouragement and COURAGE!!  She even sent me some photos of cabinets she has done, which were gorgeous!! Because, I was thinking, what if I do this, and DON’T like it??

But I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!

What do you think??  Glaze, no glaze?  Leave it alone? Or not???

I will say that I started painting these hummers at about 1:00 ish on Sunday and at 11:00 p.m. I was washing out my brushes and hobbling to bed…started back at about 2:00 ish yesterday and at 10:00 I was washing out brushes and I am not done yet!  I was doing it by myself so it took longer, but People, I am OLD and rickety and all that up and down and in the floor and up on the ladder  and bending over the island painting those cabinets….Lord have Mercy!!  I am in some PAIN today…

Steve’s great advice was….get ready for it….

“You need to pace yourself.”  Seriously??? Did he say that?  Pace myself????  I looked at him like he had THREE heads and said, “You know what, I want to get them FINISHED!  And it would have gone ALOT faster if you had helped me!!!”

He looked at me like, well, I never thought about that!

MEN!!!

I am linking up with sweet Chelsea  at Room to Inspire for Be Inspired!

Thank you so much for stopping by!

Vignettes!!

I am joining Beth at The Stories from A to Z for her Vignette Party today!  She is going to a doozie of a time right now, so be sure and visit her blog, which is always great!

I did a little vignette a week or so ago on my coffee table….using birds and nests and stuff…

I LOVE skeleton keys…and the print in the nest is by the one and ONLY Michelle Palmer…she is amazing!

little tiny eggs…

I love my butter pats too….just all stacked up…

The little rims on them are so sweet…

Thank you for visiting!!  I appreciate it so much!

Lou Cinda :)

I’m Seeing Red….

Literally, I am seeing red….

I painted my island, which was previously green…I just decided that I needed a little pop of color in my kitchen and I had been thinking about painting the island red anyway….soooooo Sunday afternoon, I got the paint that I used to paint my front door and just got to it…

the trim was already black, and I just left that alone…

this is the back…

I have thought about wiping a glaze on the island, but I’m not sure….  That little appliqué thingy was a dickens to paint around let me tell you…it’s glued on there…really, really, well…

This is the frame and print I got at a yard sale a couple of weeks ago for $2.  I took down the rooster prints I had here and hung this picture.  Kathy at Creative Home Expressions and I had discussed doing this and I took her advise.  She is such a doll!

What do you think Kathy? 

I hung some plates around it because this is such a LARGE wall, the picture just looked lonely without something else.  I am not sure about the platter on the top…it’s “iffy”

I repainted the black part of the frame as it was pretty dinged up.  I painted it while it was hanging on the wall. 

What?  You don’t do that??

I found these plates at T.J. Maxx and loved them…they also had them in black… I hung them on the wall beside the print but noooooooo it didn’t work!  So I put them in this little basket…

Well, that is just a small inkling of some changes I have made around here in anticipation of summer!

I STILL want to paint my cabinets and Steve told me he could spray the doors and drawers which would make it a whole lot easier!  I just DREAD doing it!  I HATE to paint! 

Go figure….

But I do have visions of creamy cabinets with a glaze to age it…which would naturally lead to changing the countertops…which…would lead to changing the floor…. I am still pondering…

Thank you so much for stopping by! 

Glorious Spring…

Flowers from my yard….hope you are all having a wonderful day!

 

 

Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays

I wanted to join Linda at Coastal Charm for her Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays party!  I stopped at a yard sale and saw this picture.  I love it!  It reminds me of a print my mother used to have, so that is probably the reason I love it so much.  It was $2!  I also LOVE the frame…

I am going to repaint the black on the frame, but I haven’t had a chance to do that yet.

This print I have had for a very loooong time.  My parents got it at an auction when I was probably 12 years old.  It hung in my room for years and years and I took it with me when I left home.

Pictures are the HARDEST thing for me to take a photo of!  I keep getting reflections!  But I do love this print!

Well, that is all I have today!  Please check out Linda’s blog and visit the other participants!

Thank you for visiting!

Busy Busy!

We have been working in our yard for the past several weeks trying to grow grass where everyone told us grass would NOT grow!  That is one reason for the “limbing up” of the below tree which I have mentioned in a prior post.  We were trying to not only make it so you could actually SEE our house, but also so the sun could shine under this tree.

As you can see in the photo below the grass is growing in nicely!!  We have watered and watered and WATERED this grass and have been told that we will have to continue until at least August.  Hopefully by then their little roots will be deep enough to survive the hot humid summers we have here in the South

You can still see some of the wheat grass we covered the seed with to keep them in place.  I don’t have a before photo of this, but suffice to say there was NO grass here.  The prior owners had put pine straw under the tree over and over again to sort of mask the fact that there was no grass.  But I was determined to grow it!!

The front porch is shaping up.  The small rabbit on the left I got at a yard sale a couple of weeks ago and I spray painted it and planted some impatience in the little basket she was holding…

I have had the ficus tree for YEARS AND YEARS!!  I bring her in every winter and put her out every summer.  I seriously need to do some pruning on her, but I just let her be….

Those things are growing like wildfire and I predict before too much longer, the rabbit’s head will not be visible!

See the tall ugly skinny tree??  I don’t know what it is, but what I DO know is that I do NOT like it!  It is just plain old UGLY!!  I do not see one attractive thing about that tree.  SO ~ I had Steve yank it out…..

And I planted a hydrangea here instead!  My favorite flowers are hydrangeas!  These are pink and they are LOADED with buds!

Thank you so much for stopping by!  I am linking to:

Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for Met Monday

Rhoda at Southern Hospitality for Thrifty Treasures

And Kaysi at Keeping it Simple for Motivate Me Monday!

Thank you ladies for hosting these parties each week!