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In addition to starting a new job this year, I decided to embrace the crazy by packing up and moving house. I had an opportunity in June to purchase a single-wide mobile home in a very nice little 55+ community in the same neighborhood as the dollhouse. The mobile had already had some major updates done, including new flooring, sub-flooring, and other improvements inside. When I walked in and saw the white-painted paneling, bright white kitchen, and first-floor (only-floor) laundry, I was sold. I’m buying it on contract so it was  perfect for me financially because a). it’s cheaper per month and b). I didn’t have the resources to buy it outright.

So over the July 4 weekend, it was good-bye “dollhouse” and hello… hmmm… well it still needs a name I guess… but I love it!

Today I’m sharing a few photos of my new living room. The beautiful primitive-style step-back cabinet that Greg built for me is the first thing you see when you walk in the front door.

Here’s the overall view from just inside the front door (actually a couple steps to the right, from the kitchen). In this shot the front door is to the left.

My cottage-upholstered chair and sofa fit well in this space, along with Grandma’s table, the curved curio, and my sawhorse coffee table.

I also decided to use my custom dish storage cabinet as a TV stand – it’s still filled with dishes of course! (Oh the dishes… I can’t even tell you how many dishes I moved!)

And here’s the view from the opposite end of the room. There’s an enclosed front porch through those windows on the right. In July it was like walking into an oven… but over the past couple of weeks the weather has cooled off significantly and now it’s heavenly out there – I’m able to leave the front door open when I’m home, so it feels like a much bigger space because it becomes sort of a bonus room. One of the changes I’d like to make is to get a new interior front door, which still has that “I was built in the 70’s” vibe.

Because of the window and door placement in the room, I wasn’t able to put my barrister bookcase in this room but instead it’s now in the office/dressing room.

Hope you enjoyed the living room tour of the new vintage floral cottage – mobile home edition! I will show you the other rooms soon!

I don’t watch a lot of television, but one of my favorite programs is Downton Abbey. I seriously cannot get enough of it, and have watched the entire six-season run in its entirety from start to finish, several times over.  (I’m SO excited for the film to be released in September – the King and Queen are coming for a visit!)

Of course most of the homes in the series are far too grand to be mimicked in my little vintage floral cottage, but there was a line in one episode that caught my attention regarding the furnishing of houses: the newly-widowed chauffer Tom Branson decides to remain at Downton while his daughter is young. He’s talking with the family about living in one of the cottages on the estate, and someone mentions that it will have no furniture once the current tenant leaves. Tom’s sister-in-law, the very grand and wealthy Lady Mary, says to him, “I’m sure we’ve got lots of things in the attics here.”

Well this remark got me wondering about just what “things” might be in the Downton attics: ornately carved furniture, large paintings of past Earls and their family members, giant tapestries, statuary, ancient Chinese vases and the like…? Apart from the fact that these would absolutely NOT be the furnishings that the Irish Socialist chauffer would choose for himself, the remark does give a clue about how a small cottage could realistically come to have some very grand furnishings: they could be hand-me-downs from the main house!

Now I’m not really one for ancient Chinese vases or (ug) giant tapestries. But I did think that perhaps statuary could be an element I might bring in to my little cottage. This piece from Downton, for example, appears in almost every episode because of its prime location on the grand staircase:

Here’s a peek at my own statuesque acquisitions! This auction purchase featured in a recent blog post…

Then this smaller piece acquired at a thrift store:

Another auction score, this bust of someone I originally called Martha but am now calling Emma…

And finally, this heavy resin garden statue (about 18 inches tall) that I spray-painted shiny metallic gold before bringing it in to sit atop the barrister bookcase along with some English-themed memorabilia:

I also have a small room in my new home that might appear to be somewhat Downton-inspired, but in reality it’s a direction I was gravitating before I became so enthralled with aristocratic English interiors so I’m not quite inclined to give them all the credit. Now if I could just get the Queen to pay me a visit – oh the lovely chat we would have!

Well it seems that Spring has finally arrived, after a seemingly endless bitter cold spell from late January through the first of March. But now we are predicted to be in the 50’s and 60’s every day through the end of the month, so I don’t see much chance of Winter returning until much later this year.

I’ve been working on new vignettes around the house, including my Irish-themed tea table that I shared a few days ago, and this one on top of one of my china cabinets:

I love this arrangement because it has sort of an “English cottage garden” vibe to it with the statuary, rambling flowers, and small still-life paintings. It makes me think of the book Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen – set during a time when noble-born English girls were taught to sketch and paint, and to speak French, and to flirt just enough to catch a noble husband.

I have several old chippy windows used as decor around the house; this one was a bargain for $2.50 at an area barn sale. The pip-berry wreath was a thrift store find.

The little paintings were a recent auction win. They are by a local artist named Nancy Semcoe Link, and I acquired about five of her pictures in the same lot. These two were both painted on the same canvas, and I separated them to give them the appearance of having been torn from a sketchbook.

The statue also came from that same auction. If you attend many auctions you know what “choice” means: you bid for the chance to select one item from a table at the winning bid price. I snatched up this sweet girl for a mere $3 – she’s anonymously recorded on my receipt as “Choice on table.”

The small photo is of my daughter, tucked into a resin frame of soft pink roses.

The silk flowers, purple charger, and Dresden dinner plate are thrift store and Ebay finds, featured in a recent Springtime tablescape.

The little clay bird figure came in a box lot at the afore-mentioned auction – I can’t believe he didn’t get broken.

Here’s a picture showing how this cabinet is situated in the room, set along the wall between a bedroom and bathroom.

I’m thinking about painting this cabinet a very light aqua. It is solid oak, but I don’t think it’s terribly old. The glass is curved but not wavy like very old glass. My friend Traci (who does beautiful painted furniture pieces) has painted a similar cabinet white, and there’s one painted white at the antique shop where I work that is used as a display piece – I think they both look wonderfully “shabby chic,” but Greg worries that it’s an antique and shouldn’t be painted. I just am not sure about its age. What do you think – to paint or not to paint?