Early spring blue grape hyacinth bulbs were an easy way to bring Spring into my French Country kitchen while skies were still gray over the bare trees in the surrounding woods. 

Blue muscari bulbs, commonly known as grape hyacinths, are the perfect blue color to go with the blue walls, upholstery, and accent pieces used all over my house, not just the kitchen. The plants easily fit into a variety of flower pots and baskets, collected over a lifetime, for displaying inside before being transplanted into the ground outside after the blooms were past their prime. 

Christmas Angel Print | Winter Decor Transition

Christmas decor can transition to Winter decor by keeping seasonal greenery and neutral colored decor used for Christmas. Fresh evergreens, magnolia leaves, and a moss ball surrounding a Christmas angel print in neutral tones will carry the decorations into January. A few design tips will help you to create a decor grouping to transition your home from Christmas to Winter decor. 

An elevated shelf behind the kitchen sink is a wonderful place to decorate for any season, and fresh greenery in rustic containers keeps the kitchen from looking so bare during the Winter months. 

French Country Kitchen Stone Wall | Spring

Spring is officially still weeks away, but the sun and warmer temperatures have arrived in my French Country inspired kitchen. The warm sunshine signals it is time to decorate the shelf in the stone wall with favorite pottery and a Spring time arrangement. 

Hand thrown pottery plates by local artist Jess Lord, now deceased, often decorate this high shelf in the stone wall of my kitchen. Periodically, I decorate with other dishes and arrangements on this shelf, but I always like to bring back the Jess Lord pottery during the warmer months of the year. 

Blue O Holy Night Shelf Decor

A blue handmade O Holy Night wood sign is the center of a stone kitchen shelf decorated for Christmas. Christmas cards set the scene for the three wisemen following the guiding star. 

Christmas cards have beautiful scenes that tell the Christmas story and are an inexpensive way to create memorable Christmas decor. 

French Country Pantry Makeover

{Disclosure: If you purchase items from Botanic Bleu, I receive compensation for your purchase. See my Disclosure and Privacy Policy for more information.} 

While cleaning the pantry, a bad stain on the sheetrock made it obvious the pantry needed a makeover even though I already knew the pantry was getting a makeover. A French Country makeover . . .  with the perfect opportunity to add a beautiful blue and white toile wallpaper inside the pantry.  

Pantry with new toile wallpaper 

Inspiration for a toile wallpapered pantry came from The French Nest Company interior designer on her Instagram account. Her colors and pattern are not what I used for my pantry, but seeing her French-style papered pantry sparked the idea to use a toile pattern in my pantry. 

Romantic French Country Pink Peonies

Romantic French country pink peonies are beloved early summer perennials that captivate gardeners, florists, brides, and flower lovers everywhere. With their overblown, blousy blooms, peonies add romance to any setting, including my post and beam French-inspired American country house.    

Peonies are so well-loved and popular they are sold in local grocery stores which means those of us whose gardens do not include peonies can still enjoy them as bouquets in our homes. 

Fall French Style Plate Stand

Easy, inexpensive Fall decorating on a 

French-style plate stand takes mere minutes. 

The French-style plant stand that became a plate stand in my kitchen holds my white china which makes it super easy to add seasonal touches to it.  Everything goes with white! 

There is no easier way to add Fall to the French-style plate stand than with those adorable, everybody's favorite, white Baby Boo pumpkins. 

White dishes on a gray zinc metal French-style stand is the ultimate neutral combination that can change to a colorful display in an instant, a blink of the eye. Just place colorful small objects in the dishes. 

But not for this Fall. No color . . . just more white. 

Fall French Country Kitchen | Ornamental Kale

Fall officially arrived last week, and Fall arrived in my country kitchen as well, in the form of fresh vegetables used as decor. Potted ornamental kale in shades of purple and green sit on the island and the shelf behind the sink . 

The kale reminds me of French country potagers (vegetable gardens) where French families grow fresh vegetables in neatly structured plots for their daily meals. 

French Country Kitchen Summer to Fall

Transitioning from summer to fall is often so subtle in my French Country kitchen in Texas you may miss it. Yet, there are a few changes already at my house now in August.  

If you are ready for some small changes from summer in your home, but are not ready for pumpkins and mums, I have a few ideas you may like for how to ease into fall decorating. 

Pantry Makeover Plans

Spring is not the only time for deep cleaning a house. After taking a discerning look at my kitchen pantry, I realized a deep cleaning and makeover were way past overdue. 

It has only been 30 years since the interior was painted. 

Here is the pantry door... just to the left of the stone wall in the kitchen.

Kitchen Budget Wise Laminate Counter

Countertops Part 1 | Kitchen

Laminate 

The first in a series of three posts about budget wise countertops 

While homemakers dream of luxury marble, quartz, granite, and wood countertops, reality often calls for budget wise laminate kitchen counters. And, budgets are not the only reasons for choosing laminate countertops. 

Kitchen Island Spring Nesting | Design Challenge

Spring brings out the feather-my-nest instincts to create pretty arrangements on the kitchen island. Then over the course of several days I continue to fluff my nest by adding some elements, removing some items, and rearranging others. It reminds me of a saying my mother had, "Can't get your nest made?" 

New Hardwood Floor Refinish Update and Discount Code

{Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Rug Pad USA. I receive compensation for working with Rug Pad USA, but all opinions are honest and my own. You may want to read about why quality rug pads are important to protect all your flooring and area rugs.}

 H A R D W O O D   F L O O R   U P D A T E 

One Year Later 

Living Room Oak Flooring BEFORE Refinishing 

One year ago we had our hardwood oak floor in the living room refinished. Our house is thirty years old, and the oak floor has been refinished once before. Yes, it was time to refinish the floor again last year, and this year I am sharing an update on the refinished oak floor.  

The original oak floor was finished with a white-wash stain that kept the floor light, but allowed the wood grain to show through. The finish complemented the exposed natural pine beams and rafters in our post-and-beam house. 

One of the main reasons the floor needed refinishing was my beautiful black-background wool needlepoint rug had discolored the floor over time... even though there was a rug pad under the rug to protect the floor. 

Timeless White Decor | 5 Reasons Why

Why is WHITE DECOR timeless?   

Christmas Kitchen Every Day Holiday Cheer

Here it is January 5, almost midnight, and I am just now sharing photos taken in my French-country-inspired kitchen this Christmas. Why so late? 

C H R I S T M A S   K I T C H E N 

simple day-to-day touches of holiday cheer 

Everyone's life is filled with highs, lows, and mostly in-betweens. The rhythms of our days most often flow, but sometimes the rhythms of our days are jagged with sharp edges as we lurch from one day to the next, keeping our heads above water, but just barely. Carefully laid plans fall aside as more pressing issues crowd around us, pushing us into another direction. 

Christmas Rosemary Trees on Kitchen Island

Fresh greenery always makes me think of Christmas, and nothing smells more like Christmas than a live rosemary tree. Three of them on the kitchen island triples the fragrance of Christmas, the feeling of Christmas, and the look of French Country noël.

3 Quick Changes To Coastal From Valentines

Summer is slipping by... 

The last time I looked at the stone shelf in the kitchen it had Valentines, and now summer has slipped past Independence Day moving toward summer vacations and beach time. With just three quick changes, I updated the kitchen stone shelf from Valentines to coastal decor. 

Fresh Spring Looks (Almost) Without Spending Money

Fresh Spring looks for your home are possible without spending a lot of money. Is there anyone who does not know about Spring cleaning for a fresh look? Or how about Spring gardening? For just pennies (okay, a few dollars, due to inflation,) those two things work wonders to bring fresh looks to our homes. 

Plus, I have a few other specific ideas, for a total of six things, you might want to try as ways to bring fresh Spring looks to your home without spending a lot of money. 

Kitchen New Tile Floor Mimics Stone

Welcome to our kitchen with a new white tile floor. New flooring and new paint are the two things that make the greatest impact in a house design. Either of these change the look of rooms dramatically, and I love the way the new tile transformed our house. 

Previously, the floor was vinyl planks designed to look like wood planks. After several years the vinyl was cracked in a few places and chipped in many places which meant the floor needed to be replaced. 

Half Bath Update Progress

Do you enjoy seeing what others do to update their houses?  I do, and can spend hours reading about kitchen and bathroom updates in magazines, online, and on Pinterest. We are in the progress of updating our half bath. 

Of course, once you start an update, one thing leads to another, and before you know it, more than a half bath is being updated. 

The flooring contractors are removing old flooring, scraping, pounding, and repairing sub-flooring today. This is the second day of removing old flooring and getting the sub-floor ready for new tile as part of the half bath update.  

New tile flooring is the biggest renovation for the half bath update to change the style from American Country to French Country. After looking at thousands (no exaggeration) of flooring options online and in local stores, I chose Rialto White porcelain tile to cover the floor in the half bath, utility room, mudroom, entry, and kitchen... almost 500 square feet of new tile.