Loving You is Easy Cause You're Beautiful

I think someone wrote that song especially for a sunny, warm spring day (because actually, it's kind of a bogus song for a woman, what if it said, "loving you is easy cause you're hot"?  Okay.)
I mean c'mon, how can you not feel good on a day like today. It just rocks our animal cores.

Since my camera is in the camera hospital, undergoing expensive procedures without insurance, I resorted to usurping my son's sport  Vivitar for our trip to the park.

 These funky pictures are SOOC.  Funky colors here, but nothing wrong with shaking things up.

Little Reinventions (or Pimp My Chair)

Eight friends arrive this weekend for a birthday celebration (mine!). Not just a party, but full on two days of house guests. Cue the scramble. I've been cleaning, painting, primping the place for weeks now, though I'm nowhere near ready. Trying to be OK with that (if you knew how I grew up, you'd understand), but really, just under the surface, I'm frantic. My mom is taking the kids for a few days, which at least ensures 12 hours of clean bathrooms and kitchen before guests walk in. Anyway, a few projects.

Turned a hand-me-down rocking chair into a plant stand out side the cottage door. Total cost: $9 (3 for the spray paint and six for the petunias).



Turned four napkins from anthropologie into pillows for the guest bed. Rather cute, if I do say so myself. Total cost: $30. Yes, I have a stash of fabric I could have dug into, but couldn't resist the ruffles already on the napkins. I just covered some existing pillow forms.






more tomorrow...

Spots of Lovely in the Day

Part of my perfect afternoon
Originally uploaded by Grey Cottage Studio

Recipe for a lovely afternoon:
- wear a funky apron
- bake a blueberry pie to share with the neighbors
- cut the gorgeous peonies from the side garden
- photograph the flowers just as it starts to rain and gets all super-saturated green outside
- enjoy Jack's extra long nap

Betty Friedan would be appalled.

Who's Side Are You On?

A while ago, Molly posted about her bedside reading. I love those kind of intimate daily glimpses that people afford through their blogs. Yesterday, an unexpected snow day, offered a slower paced morning than usual and I had time for a few captures of our morning. First, the two nightstands. This view always cracks me up because I used to think that I was the intellectual of our pairing. Ha. Take a look at our bedstand reading, completely unedited and you tell me, who's the deeper thinker? There's also a pile under the bed along similar lines.

Hers:



and His (the book on the top left is The Rise & Fall of the Roman Empire. Just some light bedtime reading: