Tag: mother’s day

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Beautiful Inspiration ~ An Ethereal Mother’s Day Table

French Ethereal

For Mother’s Day this year, I wanted to set a really soft and ethereal looking table in remembrance of my mother and for all of our mothers, really. A table which began with a delicate lace tablecloth, clear glass candleholders and a beautiful bouquet of springtime flowers straight out of the garden…

After going out for a nice hour-long walk with my friend Torrance in her neighborhood this past week, as I was leaving she cut a couple of pink tea roses from her front flowerbed for me. I set them immediately in the last of the water I had in my water bottle, and off they went bobbing their twin many-petaled pink heads as we went down the road.

This Mother’s Day table setting…

I had been thinking of using this tablecloth for a light and airy feel for this table. From a now discontinued Simply Shabby Chic line at Target, this “tablecloth” is really a lace curtain. I bought a few panels when we were living in our trailer knowing I would eventually use them in our next home. I love it for a tablecloth, though!

Do you use unusual things as tablecloths? Long ago, I had a deep purple top sheet that I used as a tablecloth. It worked perfectly and hung over the table really well.

The large purple-ish hydrangea blossom came from out in the garden. I picked up three different types of mophead hydrangeas this spring from Costco, Walmart, and Lowe’s.

Setting a simple tablescape

For a light and ethereal table, I thought I would bring out my favorite Haviland-Limoges vintage dinner plates. These plates all have delicate roses and vines in their transferware patterns and I thought these pieces would be perfect to celebrate our mothers.

My favorite are these ruffle edged plates!

It was then a simple matter of choosing some pretty stemware and adding in clear glass votives and a few bubble glass candleholders set randomly at both table ends.

The day was a rainy one as I shot all of these photographs, and as it went into evening, I thought it would be fun to dim the lights and take a few more photos… This is my ooops! shot with the tripod in the background. 😉

Photographing glowing candles is really hard with a camera without a low-light setting capability! (On my list of future upgrades.)

These two are almost the same shot but not quite. I love how the roses photographed… I added a few red Knockout roses as well as the pinkish-white hydrangeas. So excited to add a few more hydrangeas to the garden since they grow really well here in Texas!

So how will you be setting your Mother’s Day table this year? Are you making a special meal? My mother-in-law Gini will be driving out with my sister-in-law Jodi this coming June so I am sure I can recreate this table for them for one of our dinners.

Thank you for joining me in honoring our mothers… If you’d like to check out some of my other Mother’s Day posts,

Happy Mother’s Day! (2020)
10 Minute Tussy-Mussy Gift Bag for Mother’s Day (2019)
Happy Mother’s Day ~ My Mom (2019)
Happy Mother’s Day! (2018)
Sunday Double-Header ~ Cupcake Tea! (2015)

Just a few to choose to revisit, and I know there is one about my mother-in-love Gini! I’ll add it when I find it. <3

Have a fun Mother’s Day, dear friends,

Barb 🙂

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Happy Mother’s Day!

French Ethereal
Happy Mother’s Day  friends! For this Mother’s Day I thought I’d share a few photographs of my mother (and her family) with you of when she was young…


In 2010 when my youngest brother Tom, his wife Kim and my other sister-in-law Linnea cleaned out my mother and father’s last home, Kim asked if I’d like this photograph of my mother. She was 3 years old here when this portrait was taken.  I remember Mom saying that the photographer was trying to get her to do something, and that’s why she has this funny look on her face. 

We have a lot of Scottish ancestry in our background and I love seeing Mom’s big wide-set hazel eyes here! 


Whenever we all smile, our eyes crinkle and look slanted. That’s the Scots thing I was referring to here. 💖

“You know Moms are without a doubt a mix of sugar and magic.”

Joyce Olsen, At Home With Jemma.com 


Flash forward to 1962 and Mom is 23 years old and I am just born. It looks like springtime (no snow, short sleeve shirt) so maybe I was 3 mos. old here??

I find this photograph so apropos since our little grandson Milo was just born. He is a cutie patootie and I wonder who he will look like as he grows older. He will be 5 weeks old this week! I love the sense of wonder on his little face as he “sees someone inside that box (phone) talking and waving at him!”

Peter and his little M, 3 weeks old


I was just looking at Milo’s photo I screenshot from a FaceTime call a couple of weeks ago and he has the sweetest widow’s peak!!! He’s so cute!!!  I just want to chomp his chubby cheeks! (Guess this must be a grandmother thing… Lol!)


I didn’t have much hair back then… Looks like I have a mohawk! 😉
My brother Frank is named for my Grampa Frank, my mother’s father. Here we are in Centerville, Ohio at my parents first home, probably back in summer of 1963. Frank was about 6 months old at this time and I would have been 18 mos. old. 

Here is Gramma Helen, my mother’s mother, and me on the swan boat in Boston (Charleston Harbor?), around Easter 1970 before we moved to Hawaii that summer.

The past couple of years I shared Mom’s letters and her watch that Grampa Frank gave her.  She wore it for many, many years. I also shared a post when it would have been her birthday.


And a couple of years ago I shared my mother-in-law Gini and her family. Have I ever shared with you that both my mother and mother-in-law are Ginny and Gini?? My mother was Virginia Mary and Charles’ mother is Mary Virginia. It’s a God thing… 

💝

Gene and Gini, New York City 1986

Here is one of the last formal photos of both of my parents together. Usually one or the other was behind the camera so it is nice to have this one of Mom and Dad. 



Missing you, Mama Bear!
xoxo
Sharing with
Love Your Creativity ~ Life and Linda
Wonderful Wednesdays ~ Le Cultivateur



Enjoy this special post,
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Happy Mother’s Day ~ My Mom

French Ethereal
Mother’s Day  is a favorite holiday and this year made more so with finding some photographs of my mother
Virginia Mary Blades Simonalle.

So today I thought I’d share my mother with you. Next month I’ll share a little more on her birthday, June 13th, but for now let’s look at Mom while she was young, happy and healthy…

A collection of emails, a handwritten note, my mother’s watch and wedding photo. Also the cut crystal bowl passed down from my great-grandmother Julia 
Foley to my grand-mother Helen then my mother Ginny.

My mom loved to write and she wrote me many a long letter by hand for years (she was left handed) until the advent of home computers which made it way easier to type her thoughts as fast as she could get them on the screen. 

She loved her computer and it opened up a whole world to her where after retiring as a school teacher she went on to become a successful writer. 


Ginny was about 35 years old in this photo taken at the
Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind, Honolulu, circa 1974.


Mom started dog training just as I was entering college in Placerville and quickly gained a following as she was a really good teacher! Teaching dogs wasn’t a big leap from teaching children in my thinking, and Mom rewarded her furry pupils with praise and treats, as she most likely did with her Special Ed students those 17 years.

Dad’s was a corporate lawyer who worked for Bayer Corporation after retiring from the United States Air Force. The legal group  was moved to the Danbury corporate headquarters which moved them from California back to their East Coast roots and to southern Connecticut. They never thought they’d move back to the cold and snow! But it was a good move and one they never regretted. Connecticut gets little snow, normally.  😉
My brother Frank out in the front garden, 2010. The barn was to the right
off-camera down about 50 feet.

They purchased a house which had been built in the late 1960’s on almost 12 acres backing up to the Connecticut forest and G and O quarry complete with a gorgeous 1/2 acre pond. Early on, Mom found the local dog training groups back there and quickly joined the fun. Her retirement money from Sacramento USD went into building a large barn so mom could hold classes inside.


She started up her own dog training and agility classes there, eventually traveling all over the midwest and east coast and up into Canada to compete in agility. She won many trophies and silver plates with her American, Canadian and British Grand Champion Golden Retrievers and one Dalmatian and would occasionally do some judging, too. But her big passion, besides competing herself and teaching other people and their dogs basic dog training and agility, was writing “how to do it.”

Some of Mom’s emails to me ~ I loved her
script handwriting ~ so pretty!
Here is an email she shared with me about winning an agility trial.
She was so excited!

I am so grateful that I was able to print these emails before this email server went out of business. This was my first email account as a newbie computer kid!
Just a little about my mom today… Her family emigrated from Scotland, England and Ireland back in the 1600-1700’s coming to Maine and Massachusetts and some moving up to Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia during the time of the American Revolution ~ so we have ancestors on both sides!
🙂

My grandfather Frank left Nova Scotia in the 1920’s to come down and marry my grandmother and they raised their three daughters in Massachusetts. My mother had fond memories growing up in Winthrop and Revere, heading to the beach often throughout the years and seasons. She also told many stories about her family and wrote poems about several family members including one about her Great Aunt Jennie who wore a turban all her life. Guess she picked that up during the early 1900’s and kept the style!


Love this sweet photograph of my father and mother, Frank and myself from 1966! Dad was home between two tours to Vietnam and they thought they’d have a family portrait taken while he was home.

I was four years old and Frankie was three. Mom was 27 years old here and my father Gene was 34 years young. The watch?… There it is on my mother’s arm!

Here is a previous posts I shared last year about my grown children coming to visit for Mother’s Day and about my mother-in-love also named Gini, though her name is the reverse of my mother’s and is Mary Virginia. 

Hope you’ve enjoyed this post about my mother and don’t forget to check out my Mother’s Day craft post as part of this month’s 10 on the 10th here. Have a blessed Mother’s Day with your family and your mothers!!!

Happy Mother’s Day to you!
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10 Minute Tussy Mussy Gift Bags for Mother’s Day + More ~ 10 on the 10th

French Ethereal
Welcome to this month’s 10 on the 10th where 10 bloggers (and sometimes more!) get together and share ideas with you on the 10th of the month for under $10. 

Thank you to our host Katie of Let’s Add Sprinkles for putting this party together, and if you are stopping by for the first time from Cindy at County Road 407 welcome to French Ethereal!

This month’s theme is something for Mother’s Day, Graduation and Teacher Appreciation gifts.



With all of these events happening in the months of May and June, it is often nice to create a gift holder which can be made in batches to give out to all your recipients for not much money.  

Like making fresh plumeria leis picked then strung by the bags-full for my elementary school teachers in Hawaii when I was growing up, making a Tussy Mussy to fill with gifts is a welcome change from the usual wrapped or bagged gift! Homemade gifts are often the best and most appreciated (in my book, anyways!).

Easy to make in just a few minutes, Tussy Mussies can be filled with small candies, a special note, a small gift box containing a thoughtfully purchased necklace or earrings you’ve just picked out… The ideas for filling Tussy Mussies are endless and easy to coordinate with your theme.

Here’s how to make a Tussy Mussy

*Start by laying out your sheet of printed paper, printed-side down.

*Begin rolling the paper with holding the left side tight to create the bottom, pointed end. (or right side, if you are left-handed!)
🙂

This tussy mussy went to a little girl and the sweets theme was perfect for her!

*Keep the left side tight/small as you roll the upper-end looser creating the cone shape.

*Put a bead of hot glue along the edge lengthwise to hold the edge in shape. I also glued a bit along the upper edge, next to the vertical long edge, just glued-down to keep it from unraveling.

*Make a slit 2″ down (or however long you like) 
to create a way to cut off and even up the top edge.

*Glue down the inside loose piece around the inside top.

Decorations

*Pull out all of your laces, cheesecloth, buttons, whatever you have and have fun loosely wrap these around your cone.

*Hot glue in hidden spots to create the effect of bent lace/ribbon pieces and to keep in place. Working the laces around the upper-edge first seemed to work better for me.
🙂


Create the hanger

*Use more lace and form a loose knot on one end. Hot glue to the inside edge to hide some of the edge-glueing.

*Once the first part is glue on, then twist or layer your hanger piece, create the second, opposite knot and glue that in place.


An ethereal beauty ~ Two types of lace created this
tussy mussy’s hanger.

Costs?

Each paper I picked up at one of my local craft stores from anywhere from 10 cents to $1.00 each. I think the sparkle papers were a bit more but these were in my stash so they cost me nothing this time.

A pack of hot glue sticks costs about $1.99 and lace costs a couple dollars a roll if you buy at Christmas time ~ well under $10 to make several!

And that’s all there is to creating a Tussy Mussy ~ perfect for putting that special gift for your mother, grandmother and all the moms in your life. 


If you missed any of this year’s 10 on the 10th posts
they can be found here:

January 2019 | February 2019|March 2019
April 2019

Thank you for visiting and if you enjoyed this post, please
consider following along ~ I appreciate you! 🙂  Please visit all of today’s 10 on the 10th participants ~ I know you’ll love what everyone has to share!

Terry at Decorate and More With Tip  begins our blog hop at
the top of the list as you begin with my post ~ Enjoy!





Happy Mother’s Day, 
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Happy Mother’s Day!

French Ethereal
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Mother’s Day  is always a wonderful holiday and it is especially wonderful this year as my grown children
came down {and up!} to visit me and my husband
this past weekend!


Mom and Amy grabbing a selfie!  We don’t look alike at all, do we?  Lol!


We enjoyed a trip to Magnolia Market as our daughter Amy and our son Peter and daughter-in-law Justine enjoyed their first visit to the market even though it was a crazy rainy day!

You can see a little more from our trip on my Instagram
posts here and here.

Justine and Peter out with Peter Rabbit in our little glamper garden.

We had a good time eating out and taking a tour
of Sanger and Waco ~ lots of fun!
Even got to skip some stones.
🙂


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So… this year’s Mother’s Day post is a mishmash
collection of photographs I’ve taken.
This past fall or winter I shot some photographs of this lovely Mother’s Day napkin
I have owned for many years now.
I found it rummaging through some baskets I have
stored under our bed and thought that it would
make a fun future post!


Then too I found this photograph of our former big house
garden and I loved adding this poem to it.
It’s random but it works with all of the things and people
I love and it speak to me about love and
Mother’s Day.
😉

One of the first photographs I took for my blog back in the day.  I was still learning how to use the camera lighting, too.
This one too with some of my favorite linens packed away
and still in storage waiting to come back out to play
speaks to me of the many other women who
enjoyed these lovely lacy beauties before me.

I wonder how many of these tablecloths and napkins
graced someone else’s Mother’s Day table
before mine?

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Mother’s Day  of course makes me think of
my mother and how I wish she and my father had lived
longer so they could have known the kids better.
Ginny and Gene on their wedding day ~ September 1959.
I’ve been on my ancestry account this week and it’s fun to see the continuity of family genes on my ancestors’ faces ~  for
those relatives that we have photographs.
😉

A lovely photograph I took before church one day of my MIL Gini Chapman.
Here are my mother-in-law and father-in-law
with Charles’ grandfather and grandmother
in the late 1970’s ~ Raymond and Kate.

Raymond and Kate {she’s from Farmersville, Texas!}, Gini and Pete {my FIL), and Charles and sister Jodi ~ who just
graduated magna cum laude with her master’s degree this weekend at Ashland University, San Diego, California!!! 
I think I may have shared these two photos with
you all at some point and maybe in a post
last year for Mother’s Day but it’s fun
to share them again!
🙂



It’s a comforting thing ~ like these linens
and even this silly little bowl of soup.
😉
My hubby Charles and our sweet Amy!


*Sharing more about my mom and dad here.
🙂

Sharing with
Keep in Touch ~ Let’s Add Sprinkles
Feathered Nest Friday
Wow
Thursday Favorite Things
Sweet Inspiration
Dishing It and Digging It

















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From my family  to yours ~
Have a great Mother’s Day!
Uncategorized

5 Free Things to do with or for Mom on Mother’s Day

French Ethereal
Happy Mother’s Day
to you all!

Just stopping by to share five
easy things to do for Mom
today…

1. Make Mom breakfast in bed

Always a favorite of mine! 
This can be as simple as a piece of toast lightly buttered 
and generously spread with your mom’s favorite jelly 
served with
a nice cup of hot English Breakfast tea.

Or perhaps you’d like to serve a nice refreshing 
glass of orange juice with one large
pancake dropped in layers onto 
the griddle in reverse-order creating 
cute animal faces?
Whatever you choose to serve
Mom will love it!


2. Mom’s favorite movie

While away the afternoon or evening by popping 
a big bowl of buttery rich popcorn and 
sitting down with your Mom
and watching her all-time favorite 
movie {or two or three}.
😉



3. Go for a walk with Mom

Make Mom a homemade card saying that
you’ll go with her on her next walk 
around the neighborhood.
It costs nothing but a little time to get
outside and go for a walk, see some nature
and just visit with your Mom.

Taking the dog for a walk while out
walking with your Mom 
is also a big
style point winner!
{at least in this household!}
😉


4. Help Mom in the garden

Here’s a big one ~ Mom could always use
a little help pulling up a few of those
pesky old weeds
but
she’d also love it if you’d come outside
when she’s gardening and 
just be with her and help plant
a few colorful plants.


Who knows? 
Maybe you’ll find some interesting bugs
and insects to look at 
while you are out there?
🙂


5. Bake Mom a yummy cake

Have fun in the kitchen baking
with your dad or an 
older sibling
{or even with your mom}
making Mom a surprise double-decker cake or 
some ooey gooey chocolatey 
rich cupcakes!
One of the simplest things to do
yet also 
one of the most memorable.


Sharing with
Dishing It and Digging It ~ Rustic and Refined

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Snickerdoodle Create Bake Make Link Party ~ 
My Husband Has Too Many Hobbies
Monday Social ~ My Heart Lives Here

Family Joy Link-up ~ Thinking Outside the Pot

Friday Features ~ The Boondocks Blog



Happy Mother’s Day!
Uncategorized

Sunday Double-Header ~ Cupcake Tea!

French Ethereal
Since it’s Mother’s Day
and
since I was thinking about a new blog series called
Sunday Double Header,
and
since I haven’t posted anything in a while
because we have been working around the house,
I thought it might be fun to share a second post for the day!
It won’t be super often, 
but once in a while will be fun!
🙂

My daughter made us cupcakes to celebrate the day. 
She found a white box cake mix in the cupboard
looking delicious just from the box cover
so
that’s how these came to be.
😉


She also found inspiration from the cute can of 
sprinkles 
found on sale
at our local grocery store a month or so ago.
I think the blue pearls are from another decorating shaker set.
Of course, I like to turn it into a little tea party, 
so we pulled out some china
for a few quick photos…
😉


Sweets from my sweeties!!!
Happy Mother’s Day
and many blessings 
to you!!!





***Will be sharing later this week with
Centerpiece Wednesday ~ The Style Sisters
(*Centerpiece Wed. is taking time off for family events, so will share later with them!)
and
Feathered Nest Friday ~ French Country Cottage
http://www.frenchcountrycottage.net/2015/05/feathered-nest-friday_14.html#more
Tea Time Tuesday ~ Rose Chintz Cottage
http://sandimyyellowdoor.blogspot.com/2015/05/floral-treasures-for-tea-time.html

*Was still learning how to link to link parties… Lol!
Leaving “as is”…
😉

Uncategorized

Electricity, Plumbing, and Wallboard, Oh My!

French Ethereal
We have been BUSY over here
working on getting our
projects
all wrapped up.


I’m not usually a “selfie” kinda girl.
I’m pretty happy just being behind the camera,
but
I thought this would be a kinda fun photo to share!!!


So…
Onto what we have been up to these past couple of weeks.
Hubby has finished moving insulation, lying at odd angles,
working in the tiniest-crawl-space-between-a-joist, 
and cutting plywood to get into said-space
and has finished moving the
heating and air conditioning vent from inside that
large, long horizontal spot
(where the fake wall used to be)
to where it should have been all along
(in my humble opinion)
😉
along the right side of the ceiling
here in the second bathroom upstairs.


He has also replaced the little night light
ceiling light with the ever-so-much-more-practical
ceiling fan
(this was an easy switch compared to moving the vent!).
Both look great!!!!!
So proud of my husband for his doing this ~
something I have wanted to have done for years.
Sorry this photo is so dark… I could have turned on more lighting (or opened up the aperture…), but didn’t think about it.
😉
THE word for the day!!!
Feeling fabulous that all this work, though it is chaotic and practically every room in the house has something going on in it and we are living in the middle of all this destruction/construction! 🙂
What the wallboard looked like prior to sanding
…and afterwards. 🙂

While he was doing all that,
I’ve been down in the kitchen slaving away on cabinets ~
sanding, painting, more sanding, more painting.


I’m about half-way done.
🙂
Not far enough along as I’d like to be, 
but
happy that it is coming along.
(Still have to cook, clean, do laundry, work, blog…
a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right?!)

***

I also have been working on finishing up the thresholds
going from the kitchen into the dining room
and
from the hallway into the living room sitting areas.
You can just see where the kitchen threshold will go over in the very upper right of this picture.
This just will NOT move to where I want it, so here is the photo to go with
all the talk about wallboard mesh and the
little hand-saw, my new favorite tool!!! 

Just a pop of color from outdoors, since I was out there staining in the  overcast p.m. 

These are the oak planks all cut to size, routered on the leading edge, and sanded and stained.

Different stains that I have had and used over the past 28 years of marriage. 🙂  One of these I used on some Windsor chairs we no longer have, and I think the “sugar maple” is what I used on the sofa-table-turned-side-board.
Lastly, I helped Hubby yesterday by holding the 
vacuum hose for awhile while he was cutting wallboard
to finish an old repair.
Then, I went up and spent the afternoon sanding wallboard
in the 2nd bathroom
(the one we are working on remodeling).


***Wallboard is dusty stuff!
Definitely wear a dust mask rated for keeping those nasty little
particles from going into your lungs!


I found these sheets of super rough 
wallboard mesh
at
Ace Hardware
for sanding wallboard
and they work great!
I went through 3 of them just going over those open 
wall spots.  


Tip:
One of the older gentlemen who works at 
Ace Hardware 
told me that you can cut a piece of this sanding mesh
off
to clean up hard calcium deposits in your toilet
(those hard water spots that the toilet brush doesn’t quite get rid of).
He says to just roll it and stick it in there and scrub gently.
Good tip!!!
And it works!!!
🙂


Well, that’s it for now!
Happy Mother’s Day to you!!!
Blessings to you,
Barb
🙂


p.s. Almost forgot! A friendly electrician came by (hubby called to wire the ceiling lighting together on one switch) this week, and Hubby mentioned he wanted to have a plumber look at our sink attachments, so…
A plumber came this week, too! 
Busy week!!! Bye, Ya’ll!

***Will be sharing this week with
Feathered Nest Friday
http://www.frenchcountrycottage.net/2015/05/feathered-nest-friday_14.html#more
and some DIY sites.***