Quince Cottage

Friday, January 1, 2016

DIY Restyling the Mantel Post-Holiday

Hello, and welcome to Quince Cottage!
First of all, we'd like to wish you a 2016 full of love, peace, and inspiration!

As we see it, there are two ways to view the post-holiday winter season.
1. Now that all the excitement is over, winter is dull and colorless (depending on where you live of course).
2. Now that all the excitement is over, winter is a peaceful time for reflection and simplification.
Let's go with 2, shall we?
Now, as you may already know, Rhiann's favorite part of the home to style is the mantel, so it makes sense that's where she headed first, once the holidays were over.
If you weren't around for Christmas, here's what the mantel looked like then.

Now, with the goals of simplifying and honoring the bare, frosty, beauty of winter, she started with one of our Chinese porcelain vases, which is icy blue, gray, and white. An IG potter friend let us know this is a crystalline glaze and actual crystals form during an extra slow cooling cycle or a long hold time.

Rhiann filled the vase with branches, some of which already had little faux ice crystals stuck to them. The others were the branches we painted to look like birch and stuck in our Christmas tree. The real branches have glass icicles wired to them.

She strung a garland of crystal prisms across the mantel. Finally she worked on the right side, using her favorite empty Victorian frame and a small watercolor we bought long ago in New England. It's a snow scene at sunset and reminds us of the years we lived in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. We miss the beauty of snow, but not the shoveling, or the bad driving! Finally she tucked in a sprig of faux juniper and added a real jumbo pine cone. We bought a bunch of these pine cones in an antique store and they had a good time laughing at us for buying things they picked up in their yards. They were only fifty cents a piece and unfortunately we don't have sturdy, supersized pine cones anywhere near us, so...

That shot above gives you a nice clear look at the great job Ron did creating an old, distressed finish on our brand new mantel. If you're curious, click here for the DIY.
Now here's a photo of the whole thing.

We'll be sharing other areas of the house that have transitioned from holiday to winter season in an upcoming post. Tell us what part of your home you like restyling seasonally in Comments. We'd love to hear from you!
And of course, it wouldn't be a Quince Cottage post without a cute doggy pic. This was how Daisy and Buster spent most of New Year's Eve. Party animals...

We'll leave you with a beautiful North Carolina sunset to start the year off right. The beauty of Nature is just one of the many things we hope you'll enjoy in 2016.

Quince Cottage Style mixes old and new, rustic and opulent.

Our goal is to make our new subdivision house look inviting, beautiful,

and as though it wasn't born yesterday!

Sunday, December 27, 2015

DIY Interior Shutters

Glad to see you here at Quince Cottage!

One of the things we liked least about our previous home was how dark it was inside. Frankly, cave-dwelling is depressing. This house is much lighter and brighter and we love that! When it comes to window treatments, sometimes less is more, especially when it comes to farmhouse style.
However, once we'd decided to leave the living room windows naked, a problem reared its head(lights). At night, when Mr. Quince Cottage relaxed in his leather chair (see below) to watch some TV, headlights coming down the street darn near blinded him.

What to do?
Shutters, that's what.
We're not talking about the super-expensive, custom-fitted plantation shutters that many people in this part of the world adore. Nope. We're talking old school circa 1960-70-something shutters. They come in white or wood-tone.
We ordered them online from Lowe's and they ended up costing about $80 a window. So, not exactly cheap, but remember, we didn't do drapery of any kind, so we spent no money on curtains or curtain hardware.
Installing the shutters wasn't too hard. You will need to have a drill and a screwdriver, along with a pencil, tape measure, and plenty of patience.
Since they aren't custom, you will need to order in the range that suits your window. Measure carefully! The shutters come with spacers which enable a snug fit. You can see them on the right side of the shutter, butting up against the window frame. The shutters can be opened, closed, or left midway.

Here's an after photo. Now, this was in the "early days" of our family room so it's looking pretty bare and we hadn't yet hung the mirror over the fireplace OR done our planked wall treatment. Click here for that DIY. However, you can get an idea of the light, airy feel and the connection to outdoors that this kind of window treatment allows. Very fresh farmhouse/cottage, right?

Another photo. With mirror, planked wall, and a Buster photo-bomb.

A close up of the corner, with shutters partially open.

And closed...

Another of the whole room...

What? No doggy picture? Don't be silly, of course there's a doggy picture! Since Buster already managed to sneak into two of the photos, we'll leave you with one of Daisy. You can tell she's thinking. Watch out!

Daisy © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Quince Cottage Style mixes old and new, rustic and opulent.

Our goal is to make our new subdivision house look inviting, beautiful,

and as though it wasn't born yesterday!

Monday, December 21, 2015

Setting the Holiday Table

Welcome to Quince Cottage!
It's getting pretty close to Christmas, and we've figured out the menu. How about you? Once the food questions were decided, we turned our attention to setting the table.
We like things to be easy whenever possible and yet, we get bored when things always look the same. Here's a little tutorial meant to inspire you. We didn't spend hours layering china patterns, creating elaborate centerpieces, or hand-writing place cards. These looks are simple and practical, but offer variety, with very little effort. Also, none of the china, glassware, or napkins are specifically Christmas. We don't know about you, but our storage space is limited, and we like our tableware to work for more than one occasion.
Start with your basic centerpiece concept, whatever that might be. This year we decided to include some of our favorite things: milk glass, pine cones, mercury glass and pompoms! In all the tablescapes below there's a faux fur runner and three compotes filled with either the pine cones or the pompoms.

Look #1. we went with a natural and neutral theme, using taupe gingham place mats, beige/white damask napkins and white china plates and milk glass tumblers.

Look #2. Here we incorporated cheery red with a tablecloth, napkins, and Bohemian crystal glassware. The plates stayed the same.

Here's a closer look at some of those snowmen. Aren't they cute?

Look #3 is basically the same but we fancied up the napkins a tiny bit by tying a glass pine cone ornament on with twine.

Look #4. Here we used brown transferware plates and a colorful plaid napkin. That's a lot of pattern, so we simplified the glassware to clear crystal tumblers.

Look #5. By the way, it's perfectly okay to mix plaids, stripes, ginghams and other prints. Just be sure there's something uniting them - in this case, the color red. White plates again, a pine cone "garnish" and the crystal juice glasses. This would be a fun breakfast setting, wouldn't it?

Look #6. Back to the red glassware, and a napkin ring with Russian khokhloma painting.

Look #7 This one is quite playful, isn't it? Normally we use our jadeite in the summer, but we thought it looked cool with this plaid napkin, a vintage Shiny Bright ornament, and a mason jar mug.

All these place settings were the work of about three minutes each, and the combinations are practically endless. Stealing decorative items from other vignettes or Mother Nature is highly recommended. We used to have a book on artsy napkin-folding and if you have the time and interest, by all means impress your guests with your skills.
Which look is your favorite?
Daisy provided moral support, or maybe she was just hoping a meal was about to be served in the dining room.

Quince Cottage Style mixes old and new, rustic and opulent.

Our goal is to make our new subdivision house look inviting, beautiful,

and as though it wasn't born yesterday!

Friday, December 18, 2015

Christmas Crack! It's Quick & Easy!

Welcome back to Quince Cottage!
As you may already know, we're pretty big fans of Pinterest. If you are too, please check out our boards here. Anyway, we kept seeing a recipe for "Christmas Crack" floating through our feed and we decided to try it.
The other name it goes by as Chocolate Saltine Toffee. Not quite as catchy...
We've seen a few variations in terms of recipes, which is great because it means it's "flexible" and you can customize it with things like peanuts, cashews, bacon bits, M & Ms, etc.
For our first attempt we decided to go with a basic version.

Are you drooling yet? Gonna have to send these to work with Ron, otherwise we'll just eat them all!

Ingredients:
40-50 Saltines
2 sticks salted butter
1 C firmly packed light brown sugar
2 C milk chocolate chips

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Line an 8" x 11" (doesn't have to be this exact size) pan with aluminum foil and spray the foil with cooking spray.
3. Line bottom of pan with saltines.
4. Melt butter and brown sugar together. Stir and let it come to a boil. Boil 2-3 minutes while stirring constantly.
5. Pour sugar-butter over saltines and quickly spread to cover (if it's not covering perfectly, don't worry).
6. Bake 6-8 minutes.
7. Sprinkle chocolate chips over hot mixture. Let the chips melt (we ended up having to put the pan back in the oven for 2 minutes). When they are melted, spread them evenly.
8. Let the pan cool down and then put it in the freezer for 30-45 minutes (until chocolate hardens).
9. Remove from freezer, lift foil and crack out of pan. Break crack into chunks.

This is one snack we can't share with Buster and Daisy, but don't worry about them - they get plenty of treats!

Daisy & Buster © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Quince Cottage Style mixes old and new, rustic and opulent.

Our goal is to make our new subdivision house look inviting, beautiful,

and as though it wasn't born yesterday!

Friday, December 4, 2015

Quince Cottage Holiday Home Tour

Welcome to Quince Cottage!
We've been busy adding holiday touches to our home and we'd like to share them with you.
Let's begin with a few photos of our front porch.

Isn't that red and white metal picnic basket fun?

As you can see, we didn't hang the snowflake garland straight across, you know, the "normal" way. Instead we wanted to give the effect of a little snow flurry in one corner of the porch.

Once inside, we moved some of our milk glass to the cubby display, and added some greenery, cotton, plaid, and vintage Shiny Bright ornaments.

In the dining room, we hung a pompom twig wreath in each of the four windows. For the DIY, click here.

We also assembled our snowman collection on our buffet, and did a quick 'n' easy greenery arrangement in our $5 yard sale silver-plated champagne bucket.

And we've been playing around with various table settings. Here's one featuring more of our milk glass collection (and more pompoms).

Okay, Rhiann is a bit obsessed with pompoms.
On to the living room! We filled the basket on our coffee table with greenery, a candle, and a jumbo pine cone we picked up (literally) on the University campus in Wilmington (wish we'd taken some more).

As you can see, we've done a gallery wall behind the sofa. We have a plan for what to put in the picture frames, but for now we used leftover scraps of fabrics we've used for pillows in the room.

We were so happy to have this antique cabinet for a display space. We'll be doing a DIY post on how we freshened up its look. Right now it's playing host to our collections of white pitchers and mercury glass, and to a winter wonderland just for our Snow Babies. The greenery up on top is an ordinary fake evergreen garland, augmented with more artificial greenery, glass ornaments, an owl, and some wired burlap ribbon.

A close up...

Our mantel is always Rhiann's favorite part of the house to decorate.

The morning sunlight is really pretty, don't you think? Even better with the fire lit!

This is a close up of the left side. We just love using cotton, and this is the real deal, not the artificial version. We're lucky to have cotton fields in our part of North Carolina. For those of you who might not have seen what one of those looks like, here you go.

Magical isn't it?
Here's a close up of the right side of the mantle. We're totally in love with that rusty bird and vine garland. We got it at a shop called Affordable Chic in Raleigh.

Here's our house angel. Rhiann made a little seasonal crown for her. She looks pleased.

Finally, the piece de resistance, our Christmas tree! This year we took some branches from a nearby wooded area, gave them a "birch" look with some white paint, wired glass icicles onto them, and stuck them into the tree. The topper is paper. Our ornaments are mostly glass and have been collected over time.

Look what we found this year to add to the tree!

Here's a last little touch of Christmas - can you believe we scored these vintage Shiny Bright ornaments at a charity thrift shop for $1.79 (for all 15 of them!)?

Buster and Daisy have been VERY good doggies.

Quince Cottage Style mixes old and new, rustic and opulent.

Our goal is to make our new subdivision house look inviting, beautiful,

and as though it wasn't born yesterday!

Quince Cottage

Design. Create. Decorate.

Friday, January 1, 2016

DIY Restyling the Mantel Post-Holiday

Sunday, December 27, 2015

DIY Interior Shutters

Monday, December 21, 2015

Setting the Holiday Table

Friday, December 18, 2015

Christmas Crack! It's Quick & Easy!

Friday, December 4, 2015

Quince Cottage Holiday Home Tour

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