Rare and Beautiful Treasures: September 2011

Beauty

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Truth

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Love

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White Cottage, Red Door.

Thank you for the encouraging comments about the cottage exterior!

Now that the door is red (we are loving it!), I am trying to decide what to do with the trim around all of the windows. The cottage itself is a true white. When we bought it, there were black vinyl shutters (shudders!) on all the windows. We took the shutters down but now the house seems to need more detail. I think it would be nice to paint the exterior window trim.

I actually came across this picture below, with red trim. It looks amazing here, but I'm not sure I {or rather our cottage}could pull it off.

I also love the combination of red, sand and white on this house:

Since our cottage is white, I could do the window trim in a sand color-sort of the reverse of this inspiration picture. My only hesitation is that we will go through all the work to paint the window trim and it will be such a subtle color that it won't really be noticeable. Maybe I will get a stack of large paint chips and scotch tape them {classy, I know}around the windows to see what color would look the best from the curb.

Any thoughts? Give me your suggestions, I always love them!!

cottage curb appeal

A dutch door, like the one pictured above, is on my "long-term" wish list for our beach cottage. I am saving my pretty pennies for one. So much charm.

In the meantime, I am working on painting the front door that we already have "Heritage Red" by Benjamin Moore. It is a bright lipstick red:

Photo via Country Living, featuring Benjamin Moore Heritage Red

Our beach cottage is white and came with black shutters. There was something cold about the black and white-probably because the black was vinyl. {I know that black and white can be classic, of course}. After studying a lot of pictures of white houses with black trim, I realized that most of the truly beautiful white/black houses had brick accents {walkways, chimneys, etc}that warmed up the exteriors considerably. Long story short, we took down the black shutters and I am in the midst of painting several layers of lipstick on the front door. It should be an inexpensive, high-impact update.

Do you love the combination of white and a touch red? Very farmhouse/cottage/homey.

via

I am planning to pair the white and red with copper accents.

{Progress Lighting available here}

{Grandin Road }

Next summer I hope to update our date concrete front walkway with pavers in a herringbone pattern.

For now we are busy eeking out the last days of summer in Northern Michigan . . .

Getting my Ducks in a Row

I spent some time this weekend going back through old posts and putting together a table of contents of sorts. I realized that I have written nearly 400 posts and that a lot of content is hidden far back and therefore hard to find. So I've hopefully got my ducks in a row now and I hope the list below is helpful to you. Just click on the photo icon to go to the post of your choosing {and thank you so much for reading}. This table of contents is also available in the "Welcome" tab above.

In other news, we are {still} working away on our cottage floors! We decided to leave them natural wood (thank you for all of your input!) We are DIY'ing the poly which is taking some time, but boy are these floors glowing and gorgeous. I think you are going to love them as much as we do! Can't wait to take some reveal photos in the next few days.

Finally, the warmest of thank yous to my newest sponsor, Jones Design Company. Drop by Emily's beautiful shop to see her art prints:

name prints:

and darling printables:

I think the world of Emily. She has truly impeccable taste and a love for the Lord that is admirable. The following print from her shop has a place of honor in our beach cottage.

Alright, heading to bed so I can tackle another coat of poly on my floors in the morning. Thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by . . . and finally, the aforementioned table of contents!

Blog Table of Contents