Welcome to this week’s Share Your Style #399, friends! No posts for me this week as Mr. Ethereal and I just enjoyed a weekend of yardwork and some time to rest. He has been going gang-busters at work and then working in the yards on the weekend, so he needed time to recover from being sick. 🙂 We had fun watching Bruce Willis in REDs and REDs 2…
I am Barbara Chapman and I’d love it if you’d follow me here on my blog and on any of my other social media sites, too. Thank you!💜
Has it been super hot where you live? Here in North Texas we have been over 100 degrees for the past month now. This week we really heat up to 108 and 109 degrees with the heat index even higher!
I am sooooo ready for fall… How about you? Our plants have been suffering but most of them seem like they are making it. 😀
But besides that, we have a bunch of great posts to share ~ some DIY, a little fashion and much friendship! Worth being a little hot… 😉
Carol from Bluesky at Home brings us this fun Christmas in July post sharing her lovely home ~ Merry & Bright Christmas Home Tour. Perfect to cool us all off and to inspire us for the season to come!
It’s been a minute since Kelli from 3 Boys and a Dog stopped by, but I’m so glad she has as this Soothing Lavender Oatmeal Soap Recipe is wonderful!! Love lavender soap…
Thank You so much to everyone who linked up this past week. A special thank you to everyone for always promoting Share Your Style on your blog and on your social media channels! I do see it when I stop by and I appreciate the love. 💜
If you’d like to follow my Share Your Style board on Pinterest I’d appreciate it, thank you! I do post all of the featured posts from each week’s SYS there plus usually other photos from those posts to my boards.💜 Thanks so much!!! If you are new to French Ethereal, I hope you will think about subscribing to my blog.
Welcome friends to this week’s Share Your Style #394!!!! I hope you all had a wonderful American Independence Day yesterday, July 4th! We had a quiet day and went to lunch with my mother-in-law at our local Braum’s Restaurant.
Mr. Ethereal hung up a coat rack bar in her laundry room and also fixed her internet which had stopped working the night before. We spent the three days previous working on her front yard sprinklers, pulling out bushes and starting to plant new bushes for her. It was a busy four day weekend for us! 😉
I am Barbara Chapman and I’d love it if you’d follow me here on my blog and on any of my other social media sites, too. Thank you!💜
And our final feature for this week is this one from Esme from Esme Salon who shares this recipe for Blueberry Coconut Bundt Cake. Deliciousness!!!
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Thank You so much to everyone who linked up this past week. A special thank you to everyone for always promoting Share Your Style on your blog and on your social media channels! I do see it when I stop by and I appreciate the love. 💜
If you’d like to follow my Share Your Style board on Pinterest I’d appreciate it, thank you! I do post all of the featured posts from each week’s SYS there plus usually other photos from those posts to my boards.💜 Thanks so much!!! If you are new to French Ethereal, I hope you will think about subscribing to my blog.
I have been on a bit of a Americana/patriotic kick this spring into summer. So, it was fitting as I was setting the table for our Flag Day Tea to also add a bit of Americana to our china hutch…
Here is the dining room table all set for a Flag Day tea! We had a lovely time visiting, eating (of course!) and just enjoying the time together.
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Decorating the Hutch
The last time I decorated our china hutch was for Valentine’s Day, so most of plates and items on the hutch have changed. I kept just a couple of the pink roses salad plates, to add their “red” to this patriotic look.
I brought in a couple of the harvest plates we have made by J. Broadhurst The ConstableSeries Bicentennial 1776-1976 for their pinkish red. For the blue, I looked around for other plates in our corner round cabinet.
I can’t remember if I found the hand-painted plate with blackberries on it or my mother-in-law did, but it is lovely. Blackberries are so summery to me! It is a true antique made in Austria by Imperial above a small crown, RSL below the crown, and Empire inside an oval with Austria written below all. It also has its number: 4622 24.
In California, the blackberries would ripen in late August into September, each year along the American River, in the suburbs of Sacramento and in the foothills of the Gold Rush country. When I was in college, my friend Rob was on the crew team at CSU Sacramento. We also worked togethere at Swensen’s Ice Cream factory and restaurant in Citrus Heights. So he had access to borrowing canoes and rowing boats, and we’d go gather buckets of blackberries for his mom to bake pies and for topping ice cream, etc. BUT, working at Swensen’s, we could go in and make ourselves (and everyone else working) blackberries milkshakes!!!
Oh, they were soooo good! :)’
The large blue Mason Crabtree & Evelyn teacup plate had a pretty large teacup that went with it, but it was broken soon after I bought it. So, here I’ve paired it with a realistic rose teacup from my collection, and they bring the RWB look together.
I also pulled out this Americana bread plate. It’s fun to see what works together! For our recent Pinterest Challenge we put together a patriotic themed vignette and I used a pair of Japanese-American figurines in it. Here I’ve placed my husband’s little bicentennial figurines.
I’ve shared them before and my mother-in-law has a set at her house. I think that Gini bought them for Charles and his sister Jodi back when they toured Philadelphia around 1976.
Mr. Ethereal also has a reproduction (non-working) wooden rifle from the period. Perfect back in the day for a kid to play with but also isn’t a real weapon.
Here is the whole hutch.I really love all the subtle red, white and blue displayed in it!
I had forgotten all about this sweet little blue and white kitten teapot drip catcher until I was looking underneath in the china hutch. There she was inside a small bowl just waiting to come out and play!
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Happy Independence Day!!!!
Happy 4th of July to y’all or Happy belated 4th, if you are reading this after our American Independence Day! This has been a fun summer full of patriotic posts for me this year. I don’t have a lot of red or blue chinaware but what I do have, I love to bring out for the summer holidays.
On the buffet shelf, I kept the silverplate tea tray in its tarnished state and also the croched boy which my father’s mother Rosa tatted back in the 1930’s or 1940’s, is my guess. I have quite a few of her crocheted pieces and I love them all.
Just adding a simple patriotic napkin was all that was added here, with new china pieces of course!
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And for all of my friends named Debbie/Debra/Debbee
Here is one of the few bee items I have courtesy my husband’s aunt who owned this teapot before me. It is really cute and I’d love to get a few more bee things but Mr. Ethereal wants me to pare down what is already here. 🙂
But tea towels I always need, so I’ll have to search for some bee ones! 😉
My self-imposed year of buying nothing new was 2022. The little Japanese-American figurines were about it for purchases that year.
There’s always a way around that, though… 😉 Enjoy!!!!
Welcome, friends, to this month’s Patriotic Decor Pinterest Challenge! I’ve created a very simple vignette easily put together in under 5 minutes of which you can recreate!
If you are just coming over from Julie at My Wee Abode, welcome! Didn’t you just love the soft red, blue & white homemade flags Julie made? Adorable!!!
Our hostess Cindy from County Road 407 has chosen the perfect photo from Liz Marie and her blog for us to take inspiration…
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What inspired me
I love Liz’s wrapped wine jugs!!! As a teenager, I had one given to me by my parents which I loved to burn candles in using it as a candleholder, but I don’t have any currently.
Mainly, I was inspired by the American flags tucked into each jug and those I do have! 🙂 Mr. Ethereal has been redoing how we store things in the garage, and unfortunately, I came across only one little flag.
I was also inspired by the group of three jugs but four flags.
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My patriotic vignette thought process
Not having any jugs, I thought about using lanterns instead, however, what I did have didn’t all go together. You can see the one grey woven one up on the mantel in the background here above. This would have been a perfect replacement shape for a jug…
Barring that, I chose three statuettes to replace the jugs. Pearls on the large statue add their subtle lustrous white along with the the creamy white of the blue ticking napkin added as a ground for the grouping. The little statues bring in their red, white and blue, pulling this patriotic theme together.
Even though the statues are of varying sizes, the two Japanese American patriotic figurines scream Americana and are perfect in any patriotic decor! I found these last summer and they are post-WWII pieces made in Occupied Japan. My guess is they were made during the recovery phase after the war when the United States helped Japan get back on its feet with rebuilding the country.
I found an article online which might interest you about the United States helping with Japan’s economic recovery and this quote is from it:
After World War II, the United States also understood the strategic importance of using foreign assistance and other tools to aid and rebuild post-war Japan. Between 1946 and 1952, Washington invested $2.2 billion — or $18 billion in real 21st-century dollars adjusted for inflation — in Japan’s reconstruction effort.
Next, I needed something to hold a flag since neither of the figurines has a vase attached. I chose a small milk bottle found at Magnolia Market a few years ago to hold our Stars & Stripes! The dried pinkish-red gomphrena are an added bonus and were already in place.
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Adding a white candle in its glass vase brings in more of the white in our red, white & blue theme, while adding my favorite maiden statue gives the height needed as a replacement for which the three wine jugs had in the inspiration piece.
And that’s my patriotic vignette which was literally pulled together in 5 quick minutes! I hope this has inspired you to look around your home for items that you can round up to create a patriotic tableau for your upcoming 4th of July holiday table.
Next we have Laura from Everyday Edits sharing her American Flag door basket. I know you will love it as much as I do! As always, thank you to Cindy for creating our monthly challenge!! Enjoy visiting the other 13 friends on today’s Pinterest Challenge tour!!! Thirteen friends, thirteen colonies… You gotta love the Americana theme!!! 😉
Welcome, dear friends, to a Flag Day Tea! Flag Day is June 14th each year, for anyone who may not know this. I know I didn’t until moving to Texas. It wasn’t something that was celebrated much in California, I guess. Here in Texas, though. Flag Day is big deal! So, let’s celebrate with a nice tea luncheon…
The history of Flag Day
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially established June 14 as Flag Day. On August 3, 1949, National Flag Day was established by an Act of Congress. Flag Day is not an official federal holiday.
I shared how the table was set in a previous post, so today I’d like to share my friends!
Potluck Tea
Why a potluck tea? Well, that way the hostess don’t have to do all of the heavy lifting creating food. I am not a cook by any stretch, so this frees me up to focus on making what I bake really well!
Time for scones!
New friend Linda lives not too far away from my house and we met when she subbed in the library for my librarian (my boss) for a week. We became fast friends! Here she is coming up to the door. (I just happened to have my phone/camera in hand so snapped a quick pic!)
Here is everyone!
Linda took this photograph. From left to right, my mother-in-law Gini, myself, my boss Anna, and Heather who is our library technician. I enjoy working with everyone at school so much! The school motto is that we are a family, and I have to say it makes a HUGE difference feeling loved and appreciated where you work. 💜Â
We talked about work naturally, but also what all we were doing in the future, our summer plans. It was fun to introduce my mother-in-love to some of my friends so she could make some new friends!
Lunch is served!
I’ve been using the program Canva to make Pinterest pins for a number of years now. So for this tea, I thought I’d try my hand at invitations to text everyone. It also became our menu. This was really fun for me!
I used the Johnson Bros. pinkish red china with the farmers bringing in their harvested wheat to set the table. The red fits with our patriotic theme. Little flags were scattered around the table and the little roosters were brought out to add their pretty feathers.
We had scones as our first course, and I set the smaller red transferware salad plates on top of these larger dinner plates. For fun, at the end of the scones course, the ladies looked underneath to see if they had the magic blue painter’s tape stuck on the bottom. If they did, they won a prize of a pair of patriotic star earrings or a tin of tea!
For the remaining lunch menu, we had zucchini quiche, cucumber tea sandwiches, a refreshing fruit salad with blackberries, chocolate pêtit fours, and lemon poppyseed cake served with the last of the black tea I brought back from France. Yum!!!
The napkins underneath each placesetting were gifts for everyone to take home. Everyone had a nice time and thought we should do this again!
As part of hosting, I was able to use my English teacart again, too! It is one of the pieces I picked up at at thrift shop over in Cambridgeshire when visiting my brother and his family with my kids back during Easter/spring break 2005. Gene brought it back with his household goods when they moved back Stateside later that summer. Another friend stopped by and camped at their homesite the next year and brought it back to California for me.
Friendships are a wonderful thing! I’m so glad Covid restrictions are through! It was a lovely day to share with friends.
I hope you’ve enjoyed our little tea and can use some of these ideas as inspiration for a patriotic tea of your own.
Welcome, friends, to this week’s Share Your Style #388!!! Spring is definitely changing for us here in North Texas towards the upcoming heat! This past weekend, late spring storms came in with their humidity plus school is almost out for summer vacation. I am sooo ready!! 😉
We have lots of wonderful features to share with you. And, can you believe that Mother’s Day is this coming weekend?? My mother is no longer here (she passed in December 2004), but my mother-in-law is! We are going to an orchestral concert this evening while this post goes up (actually wrote early!), and to a dance recital tomorrow night. Lots of fun getting to see our middle school students perform!!!
No features from me this week. I just gardened, relaxed and stayed off a hurting foot. I walk and stand on my feet a lot in the library helping students and putting away books that plantar fasciitis is trying to weasel its way in on my right foot. But enough of that!
So, let’s get this party started… 😀
I am Barbara Chapman and I’d love it if you’d follow me here on my blog and on any of my other social media sites, too. Thank you!💜
First up for our Mother’s Day weekend, Rita from Panoply worked hard in her garden and shares the bounty of a couple of years dedication ~ Mayday! Mayday! Come check out her story about lily of the valley… 😉
Lynn from Living Large in a Small House brings us A Recipe for Raspberry Cordial ~ just like what Anne Shirley served to her bestie in Anne of Green Gables… Love it!
Esme from Esme Salon delights the palate with a wonderful recipe ~ Mile High Lemon Meringue ~ YUM!!! My mother used to make lemon meringue pie a couple of times a year. Cut the meringue sugar by 1/3 and you get a tarter pie! Comes out really good. :)’
Thank You so much to everyone who linked up this past week. A special thank you to everyone for always promoting Share Your Style on your blog and on your social media channels! I do see it when I stop by and I appreciate the love. 💜
If you’d like to follow my Share Your Style board on Pinterest I’d appreciate it, thank you! I do post all of the featured posts from each week’s SYS there plus usually other photos from those posts to my boards.💜 Thanks so much!!! If you are new to French Ethereal, I hope you will think about subscribing to my blog.
Welcome, dear friends!! This month’s Pinterest Challenge has us creating a fun Easter-time Spring Chair. Yes, a chair ~ totally fun and unexpected! Our host and friend Cindy from County Road 407 has found a really fun idea from Jamie at Anderson + Grant!
Our inspiration ~ what I see
Welcome to everyone coming over from Michelle at Thistle Key Lane for the first time! Isn’t this beautiful antique chair so pretty with this gorgeous woven harvest basket filled with tulips, a sweet rabbit scouting the scene, and a soft white afghan cascading out of the basket and over the chair Lovely!
I loved it so much that I thought It’d be fun to create a couple of spring chair ideas to inspire you in your springtime decorating.
Love Cindy’s springtime Pinterest Challenge graphic!
I shot these photos with my cell phone so they are a bit fuzzy and I apologize for that. Since then, I’ve shot only with my Canon. 🙂
My first Spring Chair & Basket
I began this sweet vignette with a Longaberger cake-carrying basket set onto a chair I bought from my longtime friend Kathy. I recovered it with fabric from a dress I wore back in the late 1980’s to one of my brother’s weddings. I filled this basket with a small glass cake plate used as a riser for Momma & Baby rabbit.
Nestled in with our rabbits, I’ve scattered some soft green shredded paper used as Easter grass, glossy bright plastic Easter eggs, and a spring bouquet of mums and other flowers my husband just bought me! He’s a keeper… 🙂
The last thing I added was a lace curtain I hang up in our bedroom every year for summertime. I love its softness plus it added dappled light. Here this curtain adds its softness and texture to the scene!
Now let’s check out our second Spring Chair out in the Garden!
Our garden
Over the past four seasons, I have worked really hard creating small planting beds around one of our backyard oak trees, under the primary bedroom window and out here along the edging of the western and southern fencing.
This spot is against our new garden shed/greenhouse (how I am using it) and faces south.
Let’s check out Chair #2!!
Since my roses aren’t in bloom yet, I brought out some dried roses and set them inside our flower girl’s basket.
This outdoor spring basket vignette has lots of texture
This chair came as a set with a small end table we picked up at last summer’s end-of-summer sales. I call it my Titanic chair…
All of the dried florals add their own special fluffiness and refinement…
The sun was rapidly going down when I came out to film after school last week. It had rained the day before so everything was fresh and clean! And here is our second chair.
One of our cement rabbits came out to play, too. A little nod to Jamie’s sweet cement rabbit! In the background, one of our David Austin climbing roses is being trained upwards on jute twine. Fingers crossed it grows more canes on the other side!
The vintage tablecloth takes the place of the white afghan in the inspiration photograph. Sorry the whites are blown out. I had some trouble getting the light balance correct while photographing.
And those are my two second chairs for today’s challenge. 🙂 I hope you’ve enjoyed both of these chair stylings! If you like what you see, please consider subscribing to my blog and following French Ethereal on my other platforms. Thank you for stopping by! <3
Up next is Niky from The House on Silverado and her green vintage chair looks absolutely adorable with its floral bouquet and sweet rabbit! Please see below for links to visit everyone on today’s tour.
Welcome everyone to this week’s Share Your Style #381! A little bunny fun to brighten our Easter month as we check out this week’s featured posts… 😉
I am Barbara Chapman and I’d love it if you’d follow me here on my blog and on any of my other social media sites, too. Thank you!💜
Claire Justine shared this beautiful tribute for all mothers as we approach the holiday soon ~ Homemade Mother’s Day Treat Ideas. Delicious!!
Penny from Penny’s Treasures shared her sweet entryway all decked out in spring decor ~ Simple Easter Entry & 1st Spring Blooms. Soooo pretty!!! (Love pinks…)
And doing a fun double-header, here is Penny’s massive storage solution for How I Store My Spring & Easter Decor. I am totally impressed!! Question: How many bunnies do you think she has??? Love ’em all!!! 😉
CoCo from The Crowned Goat wows with this festive feast of florals in her post ~ Cottage Inspired Spring Porch Tour. Look at those hydrangeas!!!
Thank You so much to everyone who linked up this past week. A special thank you to everyone for always promoting Share Your Style on your blog and on your social media channels! I do see it when I stop by and I appreciate the love. 💜
If you’d like to follow my Share Your Style board on Pinterest I’d appreciate it, thank you! I do post all of the featured posts from each week’s SYS there plus usually other photos from those posts to my boards.💜 Thanks so much!!! If you are new to French Ethereal, I hope you will think about subscribing to my blog.
It’s that favorite day for wee leprechauns across the globe, this day is! And we are dancing a jig here to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick himself… Let’s have a bit of fun in just a quick post! 😉
According to the History.com, St. Patrick wasn’t Irish but…
{St. Patrick} found his faith while being held as prisoner by a group of Irish raiders.”
He was actually British but during his captivity in Ireland, he dreamed of converting the Irish to Christianity.
Our sweet lads and lassies are certainly happy that St. Patrick was adopted into Irish lore and are happily celebrating the day of his passing. <3
Probably, though, they are just celebrating because this year St. Patrick’s Day falls here on Friday, and it’s quittin’ time!!! Time to head to a pub for some supper and a pint…
Always good when it’s a Friday! 😉
This has been a fun month for me getting to write a few more posts and sharing this tablecloth yet again. I bought it at the Peterborough Antiques Faire back in 2005 while visiting my brother and sister-in-law and family over in England. The boys went to see an airshow and Linnea and I and our girls went antique browsing.
I have long suspected that it is an Irish piece. It has little clovers carefully wrought into its design. One wee clover can be seen just to the left of this little boy’s shoes…
via Illustroon
Here is a cute clipart I found under free stock. A bit of silliness, really… I thought you’d enjoy something lighthearted today.
Being that I am roughly 38% Irish and another 48% Scottish, it’s only natural that we should celebrate a bit on St. Patty’s Day, don’t you think? Actually, it’s only a piece of pumpkin pie with milk as I am having.
Nothing stronger, lol!
And this is my St. Patrick’s Day post! Just a quick little vignette to celebrate the day!
Hope you have a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day and weekend,
Happy Valentine’s Day, dear friends! Today I thought I’d share our hutch all decorated for the holiday…💜
Going for Beauty
Decorating the hutch for Valentine’s Day this year, I looked for things in my stash which felt beautiful and ethereal. This small Japanese screen was something I had bought while in high school (for a dollhouse my father found for me) or it was a gift from my father brought back from one of his military TDY trips to Taiwan when I was a girl. I honestly forget now!
However it came into my stash, it was perfect for pairing with the French sweethearts in this cubby. Adding a handmade Valentine napkin and a vintage Limoges dessert plate finished this little vignette.
I love dollhouses and though I don’t have one right now, it’s fun to decorate small areas as if they are dollhouse rooms. 🙂
Originally, I had the hutch all decorated with winter plates and vintage Valentine cards, but I cannibalized the Valentines for the Valentine cloche I put together last week. Then, too, I decided to paint the dining room a couple of weeks ago following painting the laundry room.
So this sweet bird pair is my only Valentine in the whole redecorated hutch. I love these love birds in their rosy “birdhouse!!”
For the right side of the hutch’s lower shelf, I placed a 1990’s praying ceramic Cupid, a favorite teacup and saucer, one my size and one for little Cupid. This Villeroy & Boch Botanica coffee pot takes the place of a teapot here.
Teatime anyone?
Down on the buffet, I thought I’d set up a tea tray…
Pulling out one of my grandmother Rosa’s tatted antimacassars from the linen closet brightens the bottom of this tarnished silver tray.
A second smaller silver plate tray works great for raising the teapot.
Several of these antimacassars feature little boys on them and I wonder if Gramma Rosa didn’t think of my father as she created these!
This Royal Doulton chintz teapot, creamer and sugar are favorites of mine and pair well with the Old Country Roses china I have.
And here is the completed hutch! Dried hydrangeas nestle in the upper shelf with two teapots and a floral pitcher holding up a trio of vintage rose-strewn dinner plates. Just a nice soft look for Valentine’s Day…
Here you can see how the dining room walls are coming along. This is the only finished wall, so since the wall adjacent is still taped off, this photo is a little pinched in. 😉
I did ask y’all through my Instagram if I should go with either of two darker colors on the lower part below the chair rail. In the end, after looking through all of my Versailles travel photographs, I decided to just go with my original plan.
That plan was to paint the main wall in Comet Dust and off-the-shelf white. The lower wall naturally looks darker, which is pretty cool. 🙂
And that’s our Valentine’s hutch!
I think this will be a nice transition into spring and I might add in some greens for March but otherwise it is done for now. 💜
If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing. Thank you! 🙂
I hope you have a wonderful, treat-filled Valentine’s week! Enjoy!!!
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