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…
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…
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…
After spending a lot of time dealing with my garden and weeds and lawn and all that a few weeks ago, I actually still had time to work on finishing up a few projects. I also did a little shopping and found a few new/old things for the cottage and I was finally able to hang a few things on some walls! For some reason the list of little projects keep getting longer or at least staying the same – finish one thing and…
Sometimes it is just the little areas and corners of a home have the most vintage charm! Here are some of the small details of the cottage that you may not have seen or noticed before….. The closet of the yellow bedroom is so sweet….it reminds me of the closet I had when I was a little girl growing up in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of Portland… First of all this classic glass/crystal door knob.. The hardwood floors and built in drawers and…
Remember the dark green carpet in the yellow bedroom? No more green carpet! We bit the bullet and had the carpet removed from the bedroom and had all of the wood floors on the main floor refinished. This bedroom was the only room in the whole house with wall-to-wall carpet and now I know why. The back part of the room and the closet appear to have been a later addition and it looks like they just laid down the…