DO COME IN...

I bet you thought the day would never come... Finally the reveal of the interior of the GARDEN COTTAGE. Let me give you a brief history of how the GARDEN COTTAGE came to be...

I had saved pieces and parts over the years of being in the antiques biz. You know porch posts here, a zinc dormer there, pieces of tin ceiling tile, architectural fabulosities. A lot of them were used as decor in my shop which I closed in 2008, and I saved all of them without any real plan. Until... I got the inspiration for a GARDEN COTTAGE that I could have home sales in. So I used the COTTAGE as a mini shop and sometimes just as storage. What a waste... After last fall I had decided to end the home sales and thought that it was too darn awesome to use as storage. So I set my sites on bringing it to be as a little place that I can sit in and enjoy just for me. The ceiling is all hand~pieced rusty crusty tin ceiling tiles, and the floor is hand~painted by moi to look like stone.

I hope you love it...

BEAR WITH ME

So please bear with me, this post will unfold one layer at a time...

I received an email yesterday and another today about a long lost friend from my childhood. She is just a couple of years older than me, early 50's, and she is dying. I mean today, as I type... She has liver cancer and has been sick for about two years. Like me, she has grown children. They are all saying their good-byes today. She is in her final hours...

Can you imagine?

I haven't seen her since I was in high school. But I idolized her. I never told her that. She was an upper classman and beautiful, and the coolest guy around was mad for her. She lived with us for awhile. She had a job and some spending money. She turned our car on it's side in a ditch with me and my sister in it. She could hit the heck out of a softball. She treated me like a little sister...

I have thought about her all day. Sad, saying prayers for her family and friends, just kind of moping around. I needed this kick in the pants really. You see I am a procrastinator and sometimes I just can't get out of my own way. I overthink things. I am afraid the end product won't be what I wanted. Won't be what others wanted...

And so the idea that my old friend won't get the chance to put things off, to see things through, to do a million things she wanted to do made me realize that life is short. For some of us, even shorter.

I've been procrastinating on the garden cottage... Today I finished it...

I'm dedicating this post to Pam...

Let's start outside, then next post we'll go inside.

We used old wavy glass windows and a gorgeous old door, old porch posts, a zinc dormer from France, lots of old architectural pieces and a tin roof.









I re~purposed old iron headboards for porch railing.




















An old pot belly stove makes a fab table on the porch.