Surfside Style

 

 I have followed Fifi O'Neill for years

reading all her different magazines

 and numerous books.

I was definitely interested last summer when my friend Deborah, of Sakura Blossoms in May, 

told me Fifi was looking for beach houses for an upcoming book and said I should submit my beach house.

 I sent off pics, Fifi and I exchanged emails and in November Lulu was quite happy to have Fifi visit.

I was beyond excited when the mail was delivered on Monday.

I cannot believe our little shed is on the cover of the book and I am honored to see our little cottage on the pages of this book.

"Flip Flop escape" is an appropriate tag for our house - there are always flip flops on our front porch.

The best part was watching Fifi take things from all over the garden to style this pic.

I enjoyed the banter between Fifi and her photographer Mark Lohman.

I know the flag blanket wasn't on the love seat when the morning began, but it looks great there.

Fifi moved things around in the guest room 

to create just the look she had in mind for the book.

She stole the green bottle full of sea glass and shells from our bedroom and in doing so created my favorite pic of the house.

There are 12 beach houses featured in the book



and each one has a unique style.



This is one of the bedrooms, in my favorite house on Instagram, belonging to Sandra of Old Silver Shed and every picture of her home is fabulous.



This is the home of my friend Molly of Molly in Maine - another of my favorite houses.



 If you want to see more, you can find the book here.



It is definitely a fun book featuring "relaxed living by the coast".

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Lemons and Sunflowers

How is it already the end of July?

Thank goodness I joined in the July Pinterest Challenge hosted by Cindy of County Road 407

or I would not have written a post the entire month.

The theme for July is "Summer Floral Arrangement" and the inspiration photo is from
Mary of Home Is Where the Boat Is.

I struggled with an idea for my arrangement and finally found inspiration from my shopping cart full of wooden balls and flowers.

Once I knew what I was doing, I headed to Trader Joe's for flowers and lemons -

 way too many lemons!

I chose a basket, added a glass for water, dropped in lemons and started adding flowers.

This was a really fun arrangement to make and I like how it turned out.

I set the arrangement on the coffee table and swapped out the pillows with a blue and yellow print.

I really liked the arrangement there, but it was in the way when I was watching TV.

I moved it to the dining room and set the table with my favorite vintage ironstone plates.

I love creating floral arrangements and this might be one of my favorites.

 There were too many flowers so the leftovers are in the entry.

Remember all those lemons?

I gathered lavender from the garden, squeezed all the unused lemons and made lavender infused lemonade.

I added snips of lavender to make the bottles festive because I gave one to my neighbor.

And now it's time to send you off to check out all the versions the other bloggers created.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

An Unplanned Project

Last week we had a big messy tree cut down.

We had no idea that cutting down the tree would lead to such a big project and a fun change.

June 16 our tree man took down the big tree, but we asked him to leave the schefflera tree.

The schefflera tree (I planted a little 3" plant 20 years ago) didn't look so good without the big tree so on January 17 Steve borrowed a chain saw and took it down himself.

Once I saw that space with just soil, I remembered photos I had saved, but never really dreamed of doing anything like them at our house.

June 18 I laid out a border and planted a few flowers.

The next few days we were busy digging up rocks and tossing them into the fire pit, weeding the area and laying down weed fabric before we spread  9 bags of pea gravel.

On June 22, 7 days after the tree came down, we were finished laying 12 more bags of pea gravel and I set out chairs, but there was just too much blue.

I have always liked vintage chairs like this one I found on the side of the road (it finally fell apart), but a favorite shop downtown, B on Main, sells reproduction versions.

I called the shop and they brought the chairs out the back door to me - surprisingly, I passed on a red chair and chose yellow and aqua.

 Monday afternoon, this little corner of the garden was ready for me to "decorate".

The bicycle got a basket of lavender, the frame was brought down from the attic and I made a wire heart with air plants, but it blends in with the fence.

I want to find a different table, but this will do for now.

While we were working, we kept saying, "we're too old to be doing this", but we are proud of ourselves for tackling the project on our own.

The pea gravel section is 10' x 12' and that's prime real estate in our limited amount of space.

After the messy tree, we can't get over how clean the area stays.

For now there are petunias sitting in the fire pit, but with no tree hanging over the pit, we will be out there many nights enjoying a fire.

The jungle was colorful, but we are so happy to have another nice place to sit in the garden.

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I've joined the party at Shabby Art Boutique