Pintrest, Abandon Houses, Gardening, Spring and Other Thoughts

 Ok, I must admit to you that CJ has me hooked on Pintrest. If you are visual like I am it is an amazing place to find beautiful images. As many of you know from reading our blog I  love old buildings/houses and vintage architecture. Searching thru Pintrest has allowed me to find some amazing photos.

Looking thru some of these pictures has reminded me that 25 plus years ago I purchased a fire damaged house in the neighborhood we are currently living in and was fortunate to have an empty lot next to this this house  that I was also able to purchase. The empty lot inspired thoughts of flower filled gardens.

I had Grandmas when I was young that had the most amazing gardens and a Dad that love to spend what little time he had outside of work, making our world beautiful with flowers. So I was determined to learn.

 At about the same time the city of Grand Rapids(were we live) was tearing down about eight city blocks of houses in an old Italian neighborhood. The goal was to turn the neighborhood into an industrial park.  However, once the houses had been torn down the city couldn't sell the property. So for about three years I would go walk this neighborhood about this time of year and into early summer and I learned that abandoned houses/ farms and neighborhoods sometime have beautiful remnants of what was originally beautiful gardens and flowers.

I would walk with a shovel and buckets and find my little treasures. One of my early finds was a clump of Rose Campion. Back then it was considered an old perennial that was no longer available at nurseries. It took some research to find out what it was. Over the years many people benefited from cuttings off that original clump.

Beside flowers I also developed a love of old multi floral roses that are often found on old farm sites.

My largest transplants involved moving Lilacs and Bridal Veil Spirea bushes both common around the foundations of old houses.  One plant I moved must have been about six feet tall and had and equal spread. I barely got  it in the car. It was a small hatch back car and the branchs dragged on the street when I hauled it home. It actually must have been a very amusing sight. But it lived. I became a master at moving things.
So the next time you see an old house that is abandoned look at more than just the house. You may find some treasures growing at your feet. 

We are so very busy right now. Have made some great finds in the last couple of weeks. I will post pictures later this week about some of these projects. So stay tuned.

Made a second trip up to Petoskey last week with more product. The season seems to have gotten any early start up there. Don't you just love this early warm weather!!

Time Change, Vintage Style, Flea Market Decor, Trip to Petoskey

 OK so have you all adjusted to the time change yet? We are still struggling with getting up in the morning. Turning my clock ahead one hour doesn't go on my list of favorite things to do. I just thought it was getting so nice and light in the morning. Somehow this feels like going backward.

 In the last couple of weeks we have found some new and interesting magazines we would like to recommend. I managed to find both at our local grocery store. The first one is Vintage Style and the second one is Flea Market Decor. Both are filled with fun ideas, lots of pictures and for those interested in the vintage flea market style they are a must to check out.

 We have both been very busy lately. CJ has some design work that is keeping her busy and I am busy trying to keep product in are various locations. This past weekend we made a trip up to Petoskey to restock our booth at Then and Now. Our booth was looking rather sad because of the wonderful job Tracy and her staff do in selling our product. However, we no sooner got our trailer unloaded than we were descened upon by people called in by Tracy that were waiting for our arrival and we prompt sold much of our load(good problem to have).

 

 So we left our booth in not much better shape than when we had arrived.  So all week long I have been working on finishing product and loading the trailer up for another load to Then and Now this week. I think it will be a quick one day run without CJ maybe on Thursday or Friday.

 Before we got out of town we made a stop for lunch at one of our favorite lunch place in Petoskey, Julienne Tomatoes. This get deli style restaurant has a great menu and is located in a fabulous old building in downtown Petoskey. We first got to know this place because they do the food booth at the Petoskey Antique show that we do every summer. They got our vote for being the best show food we have ever had at an antique show.

 CJ's tomato painted chair that she had to take a picture of.  As you can imagine the interior decor is all about tomatoes.

 The other thing that we like about this restaurant is that they make a chocolate chip cookie that is rated by The New York Times as being the best chocolate chip cookie in town. So now you know what we have for dessert.

New Upcycled/Repurposed Furniture, Shabby Chic Interiors, and Stinking Thinking

We love to do upcycled/recycled vintage furniture out of the many parts and pieces we constantly find. There are many people out there doing the same thing so we are doing are best to try and stand out from the crowd. We are realizing that going the extra mile and spending a little more time paying attention to detail is a way we can set ourselves out from the crowd. The above cabinet is an example of a piece of furniture I created a week or so ago. I was inspired by an antique French cabinet I saw in one of our books. The back of the cabinet is a vintage beadboard door, the top and bottom trim is old house casing, the turnings running down the sides are vintage stairway spindles, and the door was salvaged last summer from an old pie safe. The arch in the top of the door was created after the fact to match the original cabinet inspiration.

Then the entire cabinet was finished with a base coat of black, two coats of linen white, then gently sanded so some of the black showed thru, then glaze was applied with a finale matte clear coat finish to give this an Annie Sloan chalk paint type of finish.
I wish I could tell you that if you want to see this cabinet you should go to our space at Blue Door to see it however, I put it there a few days ago and it has already sold. I think was are on to something and very excited about the current work going on in the workshop.

Another interesting project I completed in the last week was this vintage bead board mail/cubby type cabinet that came out of a railroad depot. I spent time making needed repairs and than refinished it using amber shellac to give it that vintage/original look of old finished wood. This is currently for sale at Blue Door here in Grand Rapids. I find that I have a real love of anything made of bead board. I am always on the hunt for it.

We also purchased this Rachell Ashwell -Shabby Chic Interiors book this past week. Rachell Ashwell has  been around for awhile and has often been credited with starting the trend of painting furniture white but this book shows some use of very soft colors which is very interesting. We loved her very simple vintage themes in this book. So if you get a chance check this out.

Over the last few years we have struggled to make a living in this new economy of ours. We found a few years ago that we just needed to stop watching the nightly news. We just didn't need more bad news and have looked for way to feed positive thoughts and ideas into our lives. In so doing we have noticed that there is a lot of negative in our culture. There are people on the radio and TV that seem to make a whole living out of being negative and angry. Imagine how we could change our world if we all decided to assume the best of others and not the worst.

We had a friend of ours the other day who was sheduled to go on a hike with a group of friends. They decided to stop for lunch first and during the lunch the conversation took a very negative turn. It seemed the conversation took a very negative turn into politics and than into bashing overweight people. Our friend excused herself from lunch and just left. This year we are getting alot of negative political messages already. So much email seems to assume the worst that is political in nature and most people don't even seem interested in making sure they have their facts right. A few years ago I remember hearing a motivational speaker talk about stinking thinking. Maybe we need to start with getting some of that stinking thinking out of our own lives and call it when we see it in our lives and around us. What if we could all turn are thoughts each day into creating things that inspire people, think of what a different world we would have. So today create something beautiful for yourself or those around you, even if it is just a positive thought. There is plenty about life that is good, so embrace it and encourage it in others.

COLOR TRENDS

One of the most fascinating aspects for me of what I do as and Interior Design professional is watching trends. It makes everything exciting. I love it that all of my clients have different taste and like all kinds of different styles and colors. Color is one of the most personal elements of design. We all react to color on an emotional level. One of the colors that has been trending is the beautiful blue green, sea glass color, weather it is pale and more blue than green or brighter, more turquoise. I love the variations on this color, bold to pastel.

Home fashion color trends also correlate to fashion.

I love this bracelet from Maryellen of Twist Style.

I saw this, this morning on Pinterest. Perfect for spring. By the way click on the pinterest is the previous sentence and follow us. We would love to follow you back!

Another color trend that has been speaking to me is the combo of mustard and gray! I have always loved gray - kitties, dogs, rabbits, wool.........! But now with mustard - wow!

Also love this combo in home fashions - not too crazy about the bold stripe walls but still way cool colors together.

We would love to hear from you about what colors are speaking to you.

Stay tuned I may have a new color combo next week or month that is my new favorite!

Happy Valentines Day and More Computer problems

Tomorrow is Valentines Day and we want to take this time to wish all of you a wonderful and happy day.

We have had more computer problems in the last week so we have been without our computer for awhile. Our computer guy and friend, Jesse has been so good to help get us back on line and find us a backup computer so that we won't have to be without a computer again if we have another crash. We have a number of ideas for blogs that we are planning as well as some great pictures of recent projects and of trips we will share with you. So stay tuned.

Pale & Interesting, Road Trip-Picking

  We received a new book in the mail today. Pale and Interesting is the title. It is a book about decorating with whites, pastels and neutral. It had a lot of great picture of farmhouses with white wall and floors. We loved looking thru it together and had to recommend it in our blog. So check it out.

Saturday we decided to take a road trip. It was a beautiful day and I have been struggling with a pinched nerve in my shoulder so we decided to take it easy by doing something like taking a drive. The drive was a perfect opportunity to look for vintage farmhouses,  old trucks and other vintage/antique finds for our business.
We headed out along the lake shore of Lake Michigan south thru the city of Holland, Saugatuck, and Douglas. We made a stop in Holland at a local antique mall and than for lunch. After lunch we headed for one of our favorite primitive antique stores called Nob Hill at the south end of Holland. It is located in a wonderful vintage building. When we got there the business was closed for the season but there was also a for sale sign out in front of the store. This building would be any antique dealer's dream to set up a business in. So we had to take a few pictures to share with you.

 How could you not help but fall in love with this! After we stopped long enough to take a few pictures we got back on the road again and headed for the next antique mall we intended to visit in Saugatuck.

 Going thru Saugatuck we saw this great Chevy pickup in front of a garden center. Because of my weakness for vintage Chevy pickups we again stopped to take a picture of this wonderful truck being used to advertise this garden center.

 After Saugatuck and the Blue Star antique mall we headed out south of Douglas for awhile enjoying seeing lots of great vintage houses. The one the really captured our imagination though was this white farmhouse with plenty of porches. What a classic!

Me made one last stop for the day at a fun antique store that was located in an early 1900 wood frame store. After talking to the owner of the business I found out that he had an old barn fill with lots of vintage that he was more than happy to give me a tour of this coming week. So today I meet him at his vintage old barn and spent a couple of hours digging thru 30 years of collecting and found some treasures that should make it into our spaces in the next week. So our day "off" proved to be a very successful day for us.

Trends in Interior Design

My dear friend Sandi Garrison of Rhubarb Reign suggested late last summer that I consider blogging about my Interior Design business and that she thought it would be interesting to read about. I have to admit that it has been buzzing through my head for several months now. There are a couple of issues for me in writing about Interior Design. First I respect my clients privacy and will not mention names - you most likely will know who you are! Second it is never ethical for me to give away design advise when that is what people pay me for. So given all of that it took me a while to formulate how to do this in an interesting fashion. Here goes, hope you enjoy this.

One of the BIGGEST trends that I am using in Interior Design right now is Pinterest.

I first leaned of it from my Interior Design students that I teach at Kendall College of Art & Design Continuing Studies Youth and Adults program. I am now addicted! Pinterest is an online bulletin board where you can "pin" images of things you like under categories or "boards" that you create. I first started with pinning images of things that I like under a board that I titles "my style". That's easy anything I saw that I liked - right. Then I added one of "great ideas", things to make, recipes, on and on. My students use it to create "boards" for the projects that they are doing for class. We look at them on their ipads and iphones. It amazes me how useful those tiny pictures are! I now use Pinterest to create boards for my client projects, pinning fabric, furniture, lighting, room ideas etc. On Pinterest they can follow me and I can also follow them. It is so cool, they can almost see what I am thinking and vise verse.

The photo at the top of the page and the 3 above are from Sarah Richardson, of HGTV and Country Living fame. I love her style as do several of my clients. I think if I had to give you an overview or summery of her style it would be sophisticated, monochromatic comfortable - however the images that I have chosen of her work to share with you have more color - more my style. After all I'M writing this! And it is no secret to any of YOU that I love color! I think that her style of design is livable and has great character. So always fun to have a client who is inspired by here. 

I am working on a bedroom right now that was inspired by this bedroom that she did.

So stay tuned and possibly I will be able to share with you a photo of  "our" interpretation of the Sarah Richardson bedroom.

Yesterday to my astonishment Mary Emmerling started following me on Pinterest. I of course started following her back and picked up several other noteworthy people for follow!

It truly has been so much fun and such a great way to stay current on trends in design, color, fashion, you name it. Amazing for me to see what everyone pins!

I saw this great scarf on Pinterest and pinned it to my board, clicked on it and learned that it was a pattern that I could purchase in a PDF version. I did!

So then I pinned this item from my Etsy site that I had for sale, to one of my boards titled "Vintage" and  sold it in one day.

So can you see why I am addicted!!!!

If you would like to follow me go to Pinterest search for me CJ Pluister Zondervan.