September at the coast…..the most beautiful time of year in my opinion. The weather is usually clear with maybe some morning mist and warm afternoons. The leaves are just starting to turn and the light has that bit of haze and there is a taste of crispy in the air. A good time for a fire in the fireplace and salmon season is coming to an end and the blackberries are ripe and a beach cottage is a cozy place to…
I am still looking for a few furniture pieces for the cottage and found a couple of little tables at two different yard sales over the summer. I bought a little side table at the annual Surfpines neighborhood yard sale just north of Gearhart on Fourth of July weekend. It was painted with a flat grey paint – it may have even been some kind of chalk paint – and I knew I would need to paint it some nice beachy color when I bought it for…
August on the Oregon Coast! Time for the annual gathering of the clan to enjoy the weather, the beach, family and friends, lots of good food and drink, golf, boogie boarding and just plain hanging out around the fire with a good book and a cold beverage! Let Beach Week begin! We started the week with buying a fresh load of firewood. My brother tracked down the wood cutter guys – what a couple of characters! – and got a cord of…
Spring and summer is an awesome time for gathering great and inexpensive goodies for the cottage. Practically a yard sale every other block on the weekends as everyone is either moving or just clearing out the clutter. Here are just some of the things I found for the cottage: Martini glasses – For some reason these always seem to disappear every summer so I grab them when I find them. I got this whole box for $3.00 at a yard sale in…
Sea Star Cottage is almost done. The remodel took longer than anticipated but then remodels almost always do. Once you get into things there is always the – “While we are at it we might as well do this” – situations. The white vinyl Milgard cottage windows went in a while ago and they look great! They are now all framed out and the trim is painted a nice fresh white. This picture doesn’t show the trim finished but it is…
Lots of little projects at Shell Cottage were finished up during the end of June and early July. I headed to the coast right after school got out in June to oversee the Sea Star project and ended up staying into July. Longer than I thought I would be there but I did get a lot done at Shell Cottage as well! I am finally finished with the bulk of the painting. All the walls are done – Yay! The little hall was…
A Fourth of July post….only a few weeks after Fourth of July… I guess I am still on “Beach Time.” I finally finished a couple of small July 4th quilts I started a few years ago out of several patriotic fabrics in my stash. Some fabrics I had bought, some were given to me by my sister-in-law Mary many years ago, and some were just the right colors left over from other projects. I think they turned out pretty well! I…
A few weekends ago, we – Susan and Natalie (my sister and my niece)and myself, ventured up to Astoria for the Fifth Annual Vintage Flea Market on the waterfront River Walk and to check out this year’s Sunday Market which runs every Sunday during the summer in downtown Astoria. What a fun day! First stop was the Vintage Flea Market which started in front of Astoria Vintage Hardware and extended on down the wharf. I wrote about this great store awhile back – we got our “Toilet”…
I started this post last week and have been so busy I didn’t get it finished and posted but here it is…. Just a week late and it’s now July… oh well! (…guess I am on beach time…like everybody else here 🙂 …) The garden is blooming with all kinds of things now in the middle of June. The butterfly bushes are so pretty – lots of color! The shrubs and roses are all blooming and the window boxes are…
Our big old chair! … (Doesn’t everybody have one of these somewhere?) We have had this big oversized brownish/sage green chair for many, many years over at little Sea Star Cottage. We bought it at a second-hand furniture store in Seaside because we needed a big chair and it was the only one we could afford at the time. The color was fairly neutral and it has held up to many years of little kids and teenagers. It’s not really very beachy…. but it worked and it…