My French Country style sunspace is a favorite room in my house with everyone who comes to visit  us. Why? The view out the windows overlooks our backyard and naturalized woods. When rain damaged a sunspace window beyond repair, we immediately called the window company to come give us quotes to replace the window.  

Unfortunately, we could not just replace the one damaged window because it was part of a double window.  Since the original window style is no longer made as a standard option, the new windows are a different style.

The original windows, shown in the photo, had a larger pane at the top that offered unobstructed views to the backyard while sitting at the breakfast table. That’s the view everyone loves. 

Breakfast Sunspace Replacement Windows

One of our original Pella windows in the breakfast sunspace is damaged beyond repair. Replacement windows have been ordered. Yes, multiple windows are on order. We are waiting for them to arrive and to be installed by Pella Windows. 

The far right window in the set of four identical windows (only 3 are visible in the photo) is the damaged window. You can't see the damage in this photo because this photo was taken before the damage occurred. 

Photos taken over multiple years are in this blog post to illustrate the sunspace windows, the design of the windows, and the design of the sunspace.

French Country Inspired Conservatory

A rustic French Country conservatory photo inspired building a sunspace attached to our kitchen when we built our house many years ago. With each holiday or new season new inspiration provides ideas for updated decor and plants in the small sunspace. Most recently, my May bulletin board display sparked ideas for decorating the sunspace with a more traditional conservatory look than usual for the sunspace. 

Glass cloches, boxwoods, and ivy wreaths are what I envision would be in a traditional conservatory whether French, British, or American. 

Bulletin Board Inspiration No. 7 | Conservatories

A Paper Series Post 

The latest bulletin board displays a collection of conservatories that inspired my home's sunspace. Dream rooms are different for different people, and one of my dream rooms has always been a conservatory.  

Conservatories can be formal, rustic, large, small, attached, free-standing, garden rooms, or grand salons. Budgets, gardening zones, and personal styles are the major factors in the ultimate design for each person's dream conservatory. 

Dream Sunspace Design No. 3 | Purpose

part 3 of the design of the breakfast sunspace, the heart of my French Country inspired home, is all about the purpose and use of the dream sunspace. 

Part of the original design of the house, the sunspace has four main purposes. 

1. Dining Area
2. Light Source 
3. Solar Heat 
4. Gardening 

The purposes are intertwined and together illustrate a principle of good design. A space created for more than one function is wise use of resources, including natural resources of light and heat, not just monetary and square footage resources. 

The sunspace also illustrates useful, practical spaces can be beautiful spaces.

Dining  Area

The main function of the light-filled sunspace is for dining. An added bonus during meal time is enjoying the changing nature views all during the year. Blooming pear, redbud, and vitex trees visually swarm with birds, butterflies, and bees. Squirrels, foxes, and neighborhood cats and dogs wander through on their way to the surrounding woods. 

Bright, sparkling pale green leaves on trees emerge in early spring, then change to dark, dusty green in the dry rainless summer. Fall leaves can surprise us with seasonal yellows and golds before turning to rusty browns. By Christmas, the branches are bare and often glisten with ice during January and February ice storms. 

Dream Sunspace Design No.2 | Interior

Take a tour of the interior of my dream sunspace with details about location, windows, window coverings, flooring, and connection to a French Country inspired post-and-beam home. Read specifics you can use in the design of your own dream sunspace.

April

This is part 2 of three articles about the design of the breakfast sunspace at the heart of my French Country style home. Previously, part 1 was about the design of the exterior of my dream sunspace. If you missed reading Part 1, there is a link at the end of the post. Part 3 will have beautiful photos and details of the purpose and use of the sunspace I dreamed about and planned for years before we built our post and beam house in the country. 

Dream Sunspace Design No. 1| Exterior

Where do you begin designing a dream sunspace for your home after your initial daydreams? You have collected photo clippings, pinned images to your Pinterest boards, drooled over sunspaces in tours of design houses, drawn rough sketches on the backs of paper napkins while dining out, and have some overall vision of what you would love to build. 

What should you consider to translate your sunspace daydreams into reality? 

April  

Take a journey with me in the design of the sunspace in my French Country inspired dream home to get some practical design ideas for your own dream sunspace. Everyone's dream sunspace is different, but read about what to consider including in your own variation of a sunspace. 

Part one of the journey in my dream sunspace is this post about the design of the exterior. Parts two and three in the sunspace design journey will be 2) sunspace interior design and 3) sunspace purpose/uses. 

Photographs used to illustrate information are over several years and for different times during the year. Look at the caption below each photograph for when the photo was taken. Note the sunlight in each photograph. 

How to Add Christmas to a French Country Plate Stand

How do you add Christmas cheer to an everyday functional French Country plate stand? Easy... add a white poinsettia for instant Christmas cheer! 

 

The easiest Christmas decorating tip in the world is to add plants associated with Christmas in your region.  And, sometimes plants in a region do not even have to be flowers. 

Williamsburg, Virginia is world renowned for its lavish natural Christmas decorations which often are fresh fruits combined with magnolia leaves. Once the outdoor botanical garlands, wreaths, and planters appear, all of Colonial Williamsburg is a magical Christmas wonderland. 

French Country Sunspace Spring Update

Along with spring cleaning of the sunspace in my kitchen comes French Country updates. A little rearranging of the shelves on the plate stand and a few new additions add freshness inside to match the new freshness outside the windows. 

The gray metal plate stand serves as storage and display for a collection of white dishes. 

Easter Candy Treats | Dessert Table Setting

Easter candy treats are beautiful for a special dessert table setting using pastel candies, the cutest bunny dish, and handmade pottery. 

Looking for a last-minute table centerpiece for Easter that can double as dessert? Here's how to create a colorful, easy, and fun Easter table centerpiece using beautiful Easter candies normally destined for Easter baskets. 

French Country Easter Plate Stand

The French Country plate stand in the kitchen sunspace has a little brown toile bunny for Easter decor this Spring. 

The plate stand was a plant stand, but now houses my set of white dishes and usually has a few accents to celebrate the current season of the year. 

White Christmas Peonies | French Table Setting

A white snowy Christmas may not be possible in your area, but white peonies bring a white Christmas to a French table setting. 

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. 

White Sunflowers for Fall Breakfast Sunspace

For three Falls I have searched for white sunflowers after seeing some real ones online, but with no luck. I found faux ones at Hobby Lobby, and they had huge flower heads, but they weren't what I had in my mind. Does that happen to you? You see something that captures your imagination and you search for it? Have visions of seeing it in your home? 

And nothing else will do? 

Then, quite by accident this week, I found real white sunflowers when I was not even looking for them. 

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. 

New French Country Dining Chairs | 6 Features

When you are looking for specific pieces of new furniture, say French Country dining chairs, what is your overall approach? Could it be, you and I approach furniture buying similarly?  

Here are things I do in general when looking for furniture, and what, specifically, I looked for in new French Country dining chairs. 

French Lavender on the Breakfast Table

Spring officially begins this month on March 20, but I am hurrying it along by putting French lavender bedding plants on the breakfast table in the sunspace. If spring cannot come fast enough for you either, here's how to create a little early spring with French Country touches. 

Christmas Sleigh Bell Tablesetting

Christmas is the time to use all your beautiful things. No other time calls for your best and finest more than Christmas. No better time to polish the silver, to wash the crystal, and to create a special tablesetting. 

Christmas Sparkle Greenery Throughout the House

Are your Christmas decorations the same style as they were ten or twenty years ago? Or perhaps your decorations have changed like many other Americans' decorations. 

What better way to spot old and new traditions than with a Christmas blog tour! 

Today is the fourth day of a week long tour, Cozy at Christmas. Katie at Let's Add Sprinkles organized over twenty bloggers to share our homes for this Christmas. Thanks, Katie, for inviting me, and thanks to all of you for visiting. I think you will find some ideas to inspire your Christmas decorations this year.

December is such a busy time of the year, but the hustle and bustle of the holiday month always fills me with CHEER. Earlier this week several Texas bloggers gathered for lunch in McKinney, TX. We had a grand time laughing and catching up with the latest exciting news. There were a few secrets shared about upcoming events for some of the bloggers. I can't wait to see to their secret projects  revealed in the coming months.

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.