Tuesday, July 24, 2012

A Light Summer Pasta Salad and a Breezy, Beachy Table Setting



You may remember my saying I’m not much of a cook, but I have a few easy, quick go-to recipes and summer is my favorite time because I like to use simple, fresh ingredients. Today’s salad is an easy, summer pasta salad. It’s pretty flexible in that you can use whatever vegetables you like and have on hand. This time around I mixed quartered grape tomatoes, fresh corn sliced off the cob, carrot slices, and broccoli with tri-colore spiral pasta. The dressing, and I don’t measure anything, is a mixture of olive oil, brown mustard, and balsamic vinegar (cider vinegar would work too) whisked together with a little cracked pepper tossed over the vegetables and pasta and then layered over a bed of mixed leaf lettuce.


The table setting is the Robin’s egg blue linen cloth I’ve had on since spring with my wooden tile place mats, a Johnson Bros. ironstone plate and a pink glass rimmed soup/salad plate (all thrift store finds). To make it beachy, I’ve added braided rope napkin rings and little resin? star fish (cheap-o bins at Michael’s), a big blown glass decanter that reminded me of a bubble, a few wooden candlesticks, a gnarly branch that looked sort of drift-woody to me, and a teal green plate shaped like a fish (all thrift store or found items).

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

$20 Storage - Cha Ching

I recently lucked into the best deal on a gorgeous server to replace my beat up old Bombay Co. console table. I used to have it under a window, so the cats did a number on it while observing the local wildlife. Truth be told, while I loved the design of the piece, it was never very practical in terms of storage. At the very least I pined for a nice shelf underneath to stack baskets and maybe display a few things I had nowhere to store decorative objects.



I sort of fixed the problem with a large Irish linen table cloth and a smaller topper - it covered the scratches and I could stuff a few things in among the legs for hidden storage. It was one of those works for now kind of solutions, but I wasn't going out of my way to look for a replacement either.


Then a recent trip to the Salvation Army turned up this beauty. Priced at $40. On half-price day. Yes, that's right, $20 for this gorgeous, made in North Carolina by the Sherrill Furniture Co., buffet server. The size was perfect, so I didn't need to move any of the gallery wall.


The upper drawers house some of my eBay packing supplies and the lower drawers and cabinets house inventory. I was able to empty out 3 heavy, hard-to-manage, storage totes into this thing. And look at how pretty the hardware is too. The finish is in relatively good condition, a few sticky spots I just covered with objets d'art need to work on, and I love the color so no painting projects in the foreseeable future either.


Any favorite rescued furniture in  your life right now?



Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...