Vintage Thingie Thursday: Cornbread Pan

Today I'll be joining Coloradolady for Vintage Thingie Thursday with one of my fave vintage "thingies": an old cast iron corn bread pan!

I picked this one up a year or so ago at an antique store. I have seen them from time to time, usually they're pretty dirty or even rusty. This one was quite clean on the front. There were a few rusty spots on the backside, but I was able to remove the rust. It's very heavy cast iron. I feel like my wrist is breaking when I try to pull  it one-handed out of my baking cupboard. I just think it's so fun to make food shaped like things!

Aren't these corn sticks so cute?   ha ha.......

I made a Southestern Black Bean Salad the other night and decided to whip up some cornbread to go with it. Yum!

Thanks for visiting me!

Mosaic Monday: The Faces of Olive

                                                 ** click  images to view larger**!

I'm joining Mary at Little Red House for Mosiac Monday. Thanks for stopping by!

Decorating Dilemma

When we bought our house and moved in the first weekend of October, 2006, one of the few interesting things that we found in the attic (other than a lot of dust, a number of old rolls of insulation and an old broken table) was a set of three leaded glass window panels.

This is one of them. It's turned on it's side here; you can see on the left side there are hooks. Normally, a brass chain would be attached to the hooks so that the panel could be hung inside a window frame from another set of hooks.

They are really quite pretty; the etched flower in the middle oval is actually sort of raised. The diamond shaped pieces and the corner square pieces are beveled. I'm not sure of the age of these pieces or where they came from. They are actually too big for the windows in the house ( all three pieces are 36" wide, the windows are 33" wide), so we suspect that someone who lived here or owned the house in the past purchased these panels with the intent of hanging them in the parlour windows. Whether they knew beforehand these were too big is questionable. Some holes in the window moldings of the three windows in the bay seem to confirm that they did hang them. We're not sure,however, how they would have been hung, since they are too wide. Usually these are supposed to be mounted within the window frame, hanging from hooks or a short brass chain. If we were to use these, we'd have to mount them on brackets on the outside of the window frame. I was all for trying to find some way to use them, since they are so pretty, but Erik argues that hanging them that way would look, in his words....kinda dumb. :-)

He probably has a point.

I also finally bought some more lace sheers to match this one for the other windows in the formal parlour. These will be the 'backdrop' for the main window treatments we want to do in here, although we haven't decided exactly whether we will have them custom made or whether I might try to sew them myself.

I love these sheers. So pretty!

This is the bay in the formal parlour; there are actually three windows; the big one in the middle obviously would be wide enough to hang one of those glass panels the way it's supposed to be hung.

 So I'm faced with a dilemma; A) hang one of the glass panels in the big middle window and leave the other two in the attic. B) Not use any of them and sell them.  C) Try to hang all three of them, even though Erik is opposed to it and thinks it will look bad (which he might be right).  D) Find some other use for the panels. (I've already checked the widths of all the other windows in the house and they are all the same width, so I can't use them as window panels.)

What do you think?? Suggestions or ideas would be welcome!

Thanks for visiting!

Food: Blueberry Orange Bread Deliciousness!

It was a busy weekend at Le Beau Paon Victorien. The hubby's band had a show on Saturday night, so there's things to do to get ready for the show and the inevitable being up until 4 a.m.,breaking down equipment and hauling it home after the show. In preparation for a busy weekend, I cooked a number of meals during the week that would result in tons of leftovers for quick eating. I also was in a baking mood, so I decided to bake a loaf of Blueberry Orange bread on Saturday morning. It was a delicious treat with my morning coffee!

The recipe came from my grandmother's recipe box, which my grandfather just recently allowed the rest of the family to look through and take some of "Mother's" recipes for their own. My grandmother passed away in 1991 and even though I have many of the recipes she used in baking and cooking, this is one of the few that I have in her own writing from her personal recipe box.

I make this bread frequently to give away as gifts; everyone seems to really like it. It has a nice sweet glaze of orange rind, orange juice and honey that you spoon over the loaf when it's still hot from the oven.
I did post the recipe for this bread in the past and showed pictures of how I wrapped it to give away as a gift HERE and HERE.


Thanks for visiting me!

Feathered Nest Friday/Show & Tell Friday: New Goodies for the House

I'm excited to show off some new things I bought for the house, pretty cheaply, I might add. I'm all about the cheap. Or, excuse me..... I should say frugal. 
The word 'frugal' makes you sound cool, especially these days when everybody wants to look like they are 'frugal', even if they don't necessarily have to be. It seems that the pendulum is swinging back the other way now; even if you have money, you're supposed to act embarrassed about it and pretend you don't have any. I think they're afraid the poor frugal folks might come after them with pitchforks, like in an old movie about Frankenstein!  ;-)
 I'm proud to say I was frugal before it was cool, but I'd be lying if I said that if I had the money I wouldn't be spending it on high-end antiques like crazy!  Ha Ha!

But I digress...........today I'll be linking up with Cindy at My Romantic Home for Show and Tell Friday, and also with Courtney at French Country Cottage for Feathered Nest Friday.


In an earlier post this week for Met Monday (click HERE) I mentioned that I'm finally working on window treatments for the formal parlour. I also mentioned the previous owners' penchance for ugly, old cheap horizontal blinds. They were everywhere in the house when we bought it. Most of them have been removed long ago, but one was lingering in the downstairs bathroom.

I was making measurements to buy rods for the parlour windows, so I thought it was time to get something different for this window too.

This is the downstairs bathroom (which we often refer to as the guest bath). It does have a shower stall, so it is considered a 'full bath' rather than a powder room, but it's location is somewhat odd. We actually believe it might have been a butler's pantry originally.  I added the dragonflies around the mirror after we moved in, using a stamp from a set I own and some craft ink.

The pale green walls actually looked good with the light brown and cream colors of the bathroom accessories, which had actually been Erik's at his apartment.

The bath accessories (incuding a bath mat, some hand towels, tooth brush holder and this shower curtain) have a dragonfly motif. I loved the ribbon embroidered dragonflies on the shower curtain.

The dragonflies on the bath accessories gave me the idea of stamping the dragonflies on the wall around the mirror. Later I added a couple more here on this wall and also a stick-on wall decal of some wildflowers. The craft ink, dragonfly stamp and the wall decal came from Stampin' Up. I've been stamping for about 10 years now and 99% of my stamping stuff is from there.

I found this pretty valance at Bed Bath & Beyond when I was buying curtain rods. It was on clearance, so I bought it to replace the ugly blinds. I love the wildflower pattern; it goes so well with my "theme", I think.


Something else that I found at Bed, Bath & Beyond was this ultra pretty shower curtain. It was in the clearance section also for $9.00 !! I think it was because it had been opened and returned. I love my plain white textured shower curtain, but I thought it might be nice to change out the curtain for spring and summer to this:

I love the sweet ruffles along the bottom; I have some towels with white ruffles on them like that.

For $9.00 I couldn't pass it up!

A few weeks ago I happened to be in Target buying something else and of course I decided to wander into the bedding aisle, specifically the clearance section, to see if there was anything of interest. I'm always looking out for sheet sets that would go with my bedding. I like to have lots of sheet sets. I'm one of those people who change the sheets on the bed about every week and I don't like having to wash them just to put them back on. I like to rotate.  I found this duvet cover, shams and a bedskirt for our guest room at 75% off.

I loved the colors and the pattern; it was more like what I wanted for this room. I already had the cream colored sheets and cream colored shams, (plus I have about 2 or 3 other sheet sets that will match perfectly), so all I bought was the Queen size duvet cover ($20.00), a bedskirt( $7.00) and two floral shams

($10.00 ea).

This is the bedding I had in here before:

This was the bedding Erik had in his old apartment. It sort of matches the room, but I had planned for a long time to get something different for this room eventually.

I'm happy with the way it looks now:

We also have a different bed for this room, but it's on our garage. It's an iron bed that looks just like the one we have in our bedroom. This bed is actually a full size, but I have Queen size sheets on it. The bed frame in the garage is a Queen, but we don't have an extra Queen mattress or box spring which is the main reason we haven't moved the new bed in here yet. By the way, the Okinawa pillow cover is vintage. My dad was a Marine during the Vietnam War and he was stationed for awhile in Okinawa, Japan. He sent this pillow as a gift to my mom probably in 1967 before they were married. She gave it to me a few years ago.

 When I was ordering lace sheers for the parlour windows, I came across an online store for Heritage Lace and found a pretty lace runner with fringe for about $10.00.

I wanted a lace runner for the top of the piano. I also wanted a fringed one, but wasn't able to find a vintage one that was the right length and had fringe.

So even though this one isn't vintage, it's so pretty! And it was $10!! I believe this is Chantilly lace.

I love lace. (So does my cat; can you see her foot in the upper left corner of the picture? She was bound and determined to get in the picture, no matter what!)

And lastly, I didn't really decorate for Valentine's Day ( I actually don't really have much in the way of decorations), but I did hang up this sparkly lavender heart in the parlour and added some lavender ostrich feathers to my feather arrangment on the mantle.

It was such a pretty picture I used it in my mosaic blog header.

Thanks for visiting me!

Tablescape Thursday: Valentine's Day Dinner for Two

It's time once again for Tablescape Thursday!
I'll be linking up with Susan at Between Naps on the Porch with my romantic Valentine's Day table. Be sure to pop in and visit them all!

My table for this year is quite different than the tablescape I did last year. Click HERE to visit last year's table.

I chose to do a very "traditional" table, with some of the themes most often associated with Valentine's Day; red roses, hearts, chocolate candies, bling and of course, romantic candlelight!

I set the table for two. My dining room table is "dressed" in a white tablecloth purchased at Goodwill, and a vintage table runner with a red rose print.

This vase of faux red roses has been sitting on my dining room table since after I put away all my Christmas decorations. To give it some "bling" in honor of Valentine's Day, I added some sparkly beaded sprays and red floral picks with hearts.

Also making up part of the centerpiece is a silver wine bucket and a glass jar with a crown stopper.

A view of the cover; vintage linen hemstitch placemats, red damask napkins in a fan fold off to the side. Mikasa crystal wine glass and goblet and a plate stack including black transfeware plate, cut glass salad plate and an Apilco porcelain soup crock.

The Apilco lion's head soup crocks were a recent purchase. Each place setting also has a tiny heart-shaped candy box with chocolates inside. The candy boxes were plain red $1.49 Russell Stover candy boxes that I embellished with paper goods from my stamping supplies.

In addition to using the good crystal, we also will be using the good silver flatware.

Another small bouquet of red roses in a silver mint julep cup sits on a paper lace doily and a cut glass plate that matches the salad plates.

My crystal is Mikasa's Jamestown Platinum. I just love the tall size!

This jar with a crown is from my bathroom; inside are some faux jewels, some of which are scattered

oh-so-artfully across the table!

A romantic dinner wouldn't be complete without candlelight! I used some floating flower candles in a footed dessert bowl of water. I love these candles; they are actually magnolia scented.

It was actually very simple to fancy up these candy boxes. A piece of designer paper cut into a heart, a small paper doily circle, some adhesive ribbon and a couple embellishments and voila! These small boxes, which hold only three chocolates, make perfect favors.

Bird's eye view

Now for some candle light pictures!

I'm excited that I managed to capture the elusive "blue hour" in a few of the photos (look to the extreme upper left).

This table was really fun to put together because everything on it I already had. The only things I bought were the candy boxes, which I picked up for $1.49 each at the grocery store!

Thanks for visiting me!