Antiques!

Hannah's Antiques - downtown Birmingham, has tons of great vendors... I found these treasures in addition to the sewing table from a prior post. Need to go again this weekend I think!

Birdies

Lamp

Some of these shells (the majority from Pensacola Beach)

***my camera has been EATING batteries lately - so some of my upcoming pictures are grainy as I took them with my iPhone!

Espaliers!

I was in the backyard admiring the stunning azaleas (yes, I do this daily with Piper, don't judge :) ) and really found myself avoiding eye contact with the HUGE glaring eyesore that is the back wall of the house. This area is begging for some lovin'. I know just what to do!

Espaliers!!! Aunt Anne is an expert in the design, building, and maintenance of them. See on her website a little bit about them, Simply Gardens.

Espalier is the horticultural technique of training trees through pruning in order to create 2D patterns by the branches of the tree. The technique was popular in the Middle Ages in Europe to produce fruit inside the walls of a typical castle courtyard without interfering with the open space, and to decorate solid walls by such trees planted near them. - WIKIPEDIA!

I googled it too and found a paper by Kim Powell at NC State school of Horticulture, and she listed some good plants to use for espaliers.... of which I liked rebud tree, quince, forsythia, jasmine, and viburnum!! I must talk to Aunt Anne about what she recommends!

It is going to take a lot of work over the next few years, but I don't have any other long-term projects and I think the payoff will be worth it!

Bookshelves

I love the artform of arranging a bookshelf.

Here are a few I have stolen* from other blogs and websites over the years. We have a set of two tall ones in our office... arranged by Jimmy with pride according to the category of book... with my girlie collection, including The Power of Makeup, Being Dead is no Excuse, and White Gloves and Party Manners, conveniently hiding out-of-sight!

I have to pick my battles and hold off on taking it over until I have him sufficiently distracted. One day I want built-in floor-to-ceiling white ones in our living room!

*Sorry for not crediting!

Allison Godwin's, from HOOT!

Handfuls of Surprises!

Obviously - I love the spring. I have been walking with my friend Sara lately - and she was asking about the beautiful white trees that are (were) blooming all over Birmingham... I noticed the, um, quite pungent smell, and thought it might be a Bradford Pear tree but just wasn't sure! My aunt mistakenly cut down a branch of it from her tree in her yard and put it in a vase... just to have her houseguest ask if Reba, the dog, had gotten into some rotten trash! So I did some leaf analysis - and for my own clarification distinguished between the Bradford Pear and the same-bloom-time white Cherry Blossom!!! Sadly - I don't have either in my new yard.

Bradford Pear - stinky Cherry Blossom - think DC!

I also do not have the amazing redbud tree in the new yard - but we do in Boligee!!! Here are some branches left over from Easter weekend there that I transferred to some vases in mi casa!

Another hot tree for me is the Snowball tree - viburnum opulus I think -here is one from my old neighborhood in Chapel Hill!

Things I do have:

4 pretty dogwoods,

camellias, Japanese Magnolias and Japanese Maple (which I don't always love, but it works in our front yard)

and tons and tons of azaleas!

Also have crepe myrtles, hydrangeas, phlox, ligustrum, etc...

My Christmas present from Cover was this planter - I promptly killed the main topiary-type thing in it this winter, and finally have gotten its replacement, this Dwarf boxwood, some sweet potato vine, and some million bells. Perfect right below our little songbird nest!!

Wall Collages

I love wall collages! We have one in Boligee, which was the inspiration for what I've done in our back hallway. Here are some other great ones.

Here is my precursor.... I drew the rectangles on our wall before we painted to see how it would look. Hard to see the pictures I framed in these photos, but I stuck with all family pictures, with a majority of pictures of our parents and grandparents when they were young! We have a few more to put up, but overall I am very pleased. Mine is all black and white, but I love the more hodge-podge nature of the ones from above. I will vary it up some as I collect more and more frames over the upcoming years!