The Everything Post: Random Fun Stuff Worth Sharing

    Okay. This may be the weirdest post I've ever written for BNOTP. I'm always taking pics or saving fun stuff to share with you when you stop by for a visit, but sometimes I never get around to sharing it all.  Often it's because the pics just do not fit in with what's going on at that moment, here on the blog.

    Today, I'm sharing a bunch of different topics and pics.



    They are all totally random, and I do mean random!  I'm presenting them in no particular order.  We're gonna be all over the place...a severe case of Blogging ADD. There's probably something in this post for everyone.

    Here goes!

    Check out this amazing Hobbit House in Trout Creek Montana!  .




    I wish I was about a foot tall right now. :)



    If you live in Metro Atlanta, here's a fun place to check out some Saturday.  Have you visited the Sweet Auburn Curb Market?



    There's a great coffee shop inside called the Cafe Campesino Coffee Bar.



    You can find almost ANYTHING in this market.  It's quite an adventure!



    A friend and I had lunch in the wonderful Italian restaurant located inside the market at the very back.



    The restaurant is called Ciao Bocca which means "Hello Mouth!" and the food is insanely good!  My mouth was very happy...downright ecstatic!



    Go!  Your tummy will thank you!  (I think they are closed from 9-29-11 thru 10-02-11, but put it on your calendar to check out after October 2nd.)



    Mary, followed the tutorial I posted HERE and made her own flag with some "help from hubby."  Mary said her husband cut the stakes and made the frame for her and she did the painting.  What a great team!  Mary, you and hubby did an awesome job!



    Lori at Cottage Art Shop blog shared these images of her wonderful bottle tree.  Love all the garden art!



    Have you checked out, Knock Off Decor, yet?


    Beckie has a great site where she links to blog posts around Blogland that have posted tutorials showing how to make all those wonderful items we drool over in catalogs and popular stores.

    For example, she recently linked to a tutorial I created HERE, showing how to make Christmas garland that's very similar to the garland we see each year in the PB catalog. Check out Knock Off Decor for links to some awesome tutorials.


    Many, many months ago, my sister, Glenda and I attended a tour of the historic Rosehill Cemetery in Macon, Georgia.  It's an interesting tour...lots of rather famous people are buried in Rosehill, including musician, Duane Allman and architect, Neil Reid.  Their yearly ghost tour is coming up soon.   I took a few pics to share, but who wants to read a whole blog post about a cemetery tour, right?  So here are just a few of the interesting things I saw in Rosehill.

    There's a whole section where all the monuments are designed to look like chess pieces.




    Pretty neat.



    I saw this engraved on one of the monuments.   Wish I knew the meaning or why they chose this.   Update:  Jackie tells us in the comments below, these are they lyrics from a song on the album, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd.  Faith shared the words are from the song Eclipse on that album.  Interesting...huh?  There are some famous folks buried at Rosehill...wonder if this is a band member from Pink Floyd?  Or, maybe just a fan?



    There's some really beautiful sculpture in Rosehill.



    This concludes our Rosehill Cemetary tour. ;)  Moving right along...


    Another one of my fave places to lunch is a French restaurant called Douceur De France.  I've only visited the Marietta, Georgia location but they also have a location in Roswell, Georgia.



    The food is yummy and the desserts are awe-inspiring.  Here's are just a few of their amazing desserts.



    Not sure if they ship, but you'll find their website HERE.



    When it snowed here last winter, I took these pics but never got around to sharing them.   This is the magnolia tree whose leaves you so often see me using in table settings, holiday centerpieces and last year's Christmas wreath and front door decorations HERE.



    Thank goodness we had mostly snow during this storm.  Ice is brutal on magnolia trees.  Their leaves are so large, they grab all the snow and can get really weighed down.  Whole limbs will break off when that happens.    The top has been broken out of this tree twice during bad ice storms over the 21 years I've lived here. It always puts out a new top when that happens, but it takes about 3 years to semi-recover.  Fortunately, this past winter, there were no broken limbs and the top survived intact.



    A monstrous oak tree lives outside my front door.  If this baby ever falls, it won't stop until it hits the basement.  Wasn't it pretty silhouetted against the blue sky after the snow storm?




    A few folks wanted the formula for the paint on the walls of my Upstairs Family Room in THIS post.  It's an old Duron call called Tea Biscuit.



    Here's the formula for Tea Biscuit and any Home Depot can mix it up for you.  I would imagine Sherwin Williams paint stores can mix it up too, since they merged or bought out the Duron stores.



    This is the formula for Sugar Cookie, another old Duron color that I've used in the following rooms of my home:  kitchen, master bedroom, entry and office.



    I posted this pic of my son, Chip and his sweetie, Nancy, when he graduated from law school in May, for THIS post?



    When I created that post, Nancy's glasses reminded me of another place and time.  I think I was around 18 when the pic on the right was taken...maybe a bit younger.  I sent this pic to Nancy and we had a good laugh.  Isn't it funny how the styles just cycle right back around?



    Last Halloween I shared about a Boo and Brew event HERE that was taking place in my neighborhood on Halloween night.   If we wished to participate, we could have drinks and food available for the Moms and Dads as they took their children around for trick-or-treating.  It sounded fun....kind of like a roving party.   I never got around to sharing the goodies I put together for those who came calling.



    I had two kinds of cake...pumpkin and spice.  I didn't do any baking...found all these yummies at Publix.



    I also had sugar covered donut holes.



    I served hot spiced cider (made with Williams-Sonoma mulling spices) in this Fitz and Floyd witch pitcher.  This funny guy...



    ...held the cinnamon sticks...



    ...for the cider.



    I totally overdid it...had a lot left over.  I need to buy or make about half this much for this year, if the neighborhood hosts another Boo and Brew.



    Pinterest is still letting me send out invites. If you aren't sure what Pinterest is, click HERE. If you haven't joined and want to, OR you're just tired of waiting on your invite, e-mail me at betweennapsontheporch@gmail.com and I'll get one out to you.


    Don't forget to include the email address where you want the Pinterest invite sent.  If you've emailed me or left a comment on the Pinterest post I wrote previously, requesting and invite but didn't get it,  1. Check your spam file and 2. Did you remember to include an e-mail address where you wanted the invite sent?  

    Hope you enjoyed this "everything" post.  Is your head spinning from such a crazy variety of topics?  lol  I think mine is!

Beautiful Tablesetting by Bunny Williams at The Mount, Home of Edith Wharton: Welcome to the 162nd Tablescape Thursday!

    Recently, I received a wonderful e-mail from Mandy. Mandy lives in Hawaii and on a recent trip to the United States, she toured The Mount, the beautiful home of American novelist, Edith Wharton.


    Edith Wharton wrote many novels in her lifetime including Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth and well-known, The Age of Innocence, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize. Mrs. Wharton was also a garden designer, as well as an interior designer.




    She wrote several garden and design books, including The Decoration of Houses which was co-authored by architect, Ogden Codman.



    Mandy was kind enough to share some of the photos she took while visiting The Mount, which is located in the Berkshires (Lenox) in Massachusetts.  The home was neglected for many years after the death of Mrs. Wharton.  Work began in 1997 to restore the severely deteriorated mansion, stable, gatehouse and greenhouse.



    In 2002, in honor of The Mount's centennial (100 years) birthday, eight highly regarded designers were each given a room in The Mount to design/decorate in a way they thought would have appealed to Mrs. Wharton.   Wouldn't you love to tour The Mount in person?  I know I would!

    Mandy told me, "You really feel that you got to know Edith Wharton through her house and her extraordinary gardens. She obviously had a love affair with this house."



    From what I've read, Mandy is right. Mrs. Wharton truly loved her home and carefully planned and executed each detail of the design she created for the home and gardens.

    Bunny Williams was the designer chosen to create the table decorations in the dining room.



    Let's go inside and take a closer look.



     Beautiful dining room!



    Gorgeous centerpiece!



    Love the china.  Wish we knew the pattern names.  Update: Cherry Kay identified the dinner plate as William Yeoward, Hampton Court Burgundy.  Thanks, Cherry Kay!



     Mandy said, "She (Bunny Williams) had name cards at each place setting written in gold."



    Another area of the dining room:



    Mandy, thanks so much for sharing this beautiful tablescape created by Bunny Williams for the dining room of Edith Wharton's beautiful home, The Mount.  Such a treat!  I hope I get to see it in person one day!



    Winner of Giveaway from A Beach Cottage:
    The winner of the Giveaway from A Beach Cottage was chosen by Random Number Generator today and is now posted HERE on the original Giveaway post.  Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway!


    To receive the latest posts, as well as updates about blog parties, subscribe via an RSS Reader or have BNOTP delivered right to your Inbox.  You'll find links to subscribe via RSS and Email on the sidebar to the right.  Thanks for reading; so glad you are here!

    Looking forward to your beautiful tablescapes!

    Reading this post via e-mail or RSS feed?
    *If you are reading this via email or RSS feed, to view all the tablescapes linked for Tablescape Thursday, click;HERE.





    Please Read:
    If you are participating in Tablescape Thursday, please be sure to add your permalink below, and not your general blog address. To get your permalink, click on your post name, then just copy and paste the address that shows up in the address bar, into the "url" box when you link up.

    If you would like to use the Tablescape Thursday logo button in your post, just copy and paste it to your computer and upload it to your post as you would any photo. Or, grab the html code you'll find under the "Join a Party" heading at the top of this blog.

    Please link back to the party so your regular readers will find all your fellow Blogger's tablescapes, too.

    Please, don't add your post name/blog name ALL IN CAPS...it tends to create big spaces between the rows of links. Thanks!

    Let's try something fun today! Please visit the person who linked before you and after you...that way everyone will get some visits. Hope you'll visit more, of course.


    Welcome! Thanks for coming to the party!

Hiding Ugly Scratches on Furniture

    Monday, when I was playing with the mantel in the family room for a Fall Mantel post HERE,



    I noticed a few scratches on the armoire you see over in the corner.



    Can you see the little dents/scratches in this pic below?



    Over the years, this armoire has accumulated small scratches from everyday use.



    I thought I'd share a few products I've found that work well to help hide the boo boos that are inevitably going to happen.  By the way, I was not paid or perked in any way to share these products...just sharing them in case you find them helpful.




    The product I use most often for a quick touch-up of a scratch on wood furniture is Wood Finish Stain Markers by Minwax.  I found these at Home Depot.  I love Minwax products and use them a lot.  In fact, I noticed when the hardwood flooring guys installed my office flooring HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.   Minwax stain was the stain they used to match my exisiting hardwood flooring.



    After I bought the markers, I wanted a quick way to tell which one I should use each time I needed to touch up a scratch.  I found, even though a chest or table might be made of mahogany, sometimes the best marker to use wasn't always the "mahogany" marker.  Sometime the "Dark Walnut" or the "Early American" marker was a better match.  It just depends on how the piece was stained and how the wood has aged over the years.

    So, I created this little reference sheet to carry to the piece I'm about to touch up.  Not very high tech, but it works. :)  I just put a few marks/samples of each stain onto a piece of notebook paper and I store this paper in the same place I keep the markers.  Each time I need to touch something up, I just carry the paper over to the piece of furniture to pick the best marker for the job.



    I used "Red Mahogany" to touch up the armoire and here's how it looked afterwards.



    Before:



    After:  Those shiny areas you see off to the right are not scratches.  They are just the reflection of the lamp on the table nearby.



    If you have larger areas to touch up...too much for a marker, you can use Howard's Restor-A-Finish.  It also comes in several stain colors.  Be sure to test it out on a inconspicuous area before applying it...just to make sure it gives you the finish/color you need.



    My very favorite furniture polish is The Original Bee's Wax.  It protects your furniture but doesn't leave a wax build-up.  I used to buy this at a local antique store but they recently closed, so I'll have to find a new place to purchase it.  Fortunately, I have two cans right now, so I'm good to go for a while.  Update:  Just Googled and apparently, The Original Bee's Wax can be ordered online.



    I use my son's old cloth diapers to apply furniture polish.  They also come in handy for polishing silver.  He's gonna shoot me if he sees this post. ;)  Someone told me years ago that cloth diapers make great dusting/cleaning cloths when your kids are potty trained.  So I saved them and 28 years later, they are still working great.  Talk about durable! Guess they last so well because they are made to go through a million washings.



    Now, I need your suggestions.  I was noticing yesterday, the wood walls of my family room are looking pretty dry.  I haven't rubbed them down with polish/oil in several years...so it's time.



    I've used Old English Lemon Oil in the past.  It worked great, but I would like to know if you have a product you recommend for judges paneling?



    Or, do you have a favorite touch-up product for case pieces/wood furniture?  How about a favorite furniture polish?  I hear Guardsman is an excellent furniture polish, but I've never tried it before.  Have you used it?  What are your favorite furniture care products?

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