cottage – Page 3 – Karla's Cottage

Spring cleaning for the soul

By Karla Nathan / March 9, 2024

Rich took good care of everything while I was away. And that is with a poor, tiny Yorkie who was sick for weeks and had to go to the ER vet, Sugarwings got Covid, then he got it while caring for the poor kid.

Yet, I still returned home to a clean house.

But it was a slightly neglected house. I still had winter decor up, and gift wrap out since Christmas. It was swept and picked up, but not fresh.

I spent my first day back de-winterizing the cottage. I did one of those deep spring cleanings where you pick up things and wash them down, not simply dust them off. The velvet curtains came down, and the florals went up.

Is it rude that I rearranged flower arrangements that came to me at the funeral? These were from the Guncles, I brought them home and redid them into different containers. I think it gives the blooms more longevity, by trimming the stems and changing the water. Plus I like to see the flowers in various vessels.

My deep cleaning is usually when I take down the holiday decor. This year, we had a foundation emergency that forced me to rush to get all the trees put away, and I didn’t quite finish before we left on our Florida camping trip. Then, I heard Bobbie was going on hospice, and we zipped home quickly so I could be by her side.

More floral arrangements have arrived since I took these pics and my home feels even more springlike. I appreciate the kindness and cheer these bring, it makes the cottage welcoming.

Next up? My studio. My poor, lovely, new studio has been trashed since everything I’ve done in the last few months has been a quick in and out. Not taking time to return anything to its proper place, just creating piles, then shoving those piles aside to make room for more. Before I feel like I am truly “home” after months of back and forth traveling, I need to be comfy in my surroundings by getting everything tidied up and attractive again.

As I always tell Sugarwings- A clean, pretty environment is good for your soul.

My soul needs some of that right now.

How I Spent my Christmas Vacation

cottage, family, Hearth Room, holiday decor

By Karla Nathan / January 4, 2024

It’s that time again, I am set up for the First Friday weekend at Good Juju.

And I am ready for Valentine’s Day, with a booth full of hearts, roses, crowns, and cherubs.

Being in retail causes a twisty relationship with holidays.

In the midst of Christmas week, I was cutting out hearts.

You have to be a couple jumps ahead to sell holiday decor, so here I am, still chomping on candy canes and sipping cocoa while I create romantic crafts.

That’s okay. I love holidays and I very much enjoyed my Merry Valentine craft afternoons between Xmas movies with the grand fairies.

Not the whole week was as much fun as time with the grand fairies or with my craft supplies. We discovered a major, hidden water leak that had rotted out the whole back wall’s support system in the hearth room.

Luckily, my talented son was here to carpenter it all back to normal. In the meantime, we had three days of chaotic mess, door open (or off) in the cold, and expensive Home Depot runs while the guys worked their frozen little bottoms off to get things fixed.

The hens thought it was great fun to have an open door to wander in whenever they liked. And I zipped through taking down all of the Christmas decorations in record time to make space for the guys to work.

It was pretty bad. Did I mention the words, rotten, chaos, and expensive?
Yep, those sum it up.

But I also have to throw in “blessed”.

Because, while it was cold, it wasn’t horrible or icy, and the guys could work on the outside. And our boy was willing to extend his vacation to do the emergency repairs. Who knows how many months it would take to get this fixed if we waited on setting up a contractor?

But with Adam here- 3 days and DONE!

I was able to keep right on with my Valentine Christmastime crafting.

2023 Book Club Christmas Party

cottage, friends, holiday decor, We're having a party

By Karla Nathan / December 20, 2023

One of our bookclub members, Margie Carr, wrote a well received book about early, influential leaders of Kansas City who lived in a one block area.

I fell in love with the cover’s photo of two of the girls from that street.

Margie gave me permission to surprise our members with hand crafted ornies using this picture. The gifts were part of my centerpiece, and everyone got to choose their favorite one to keep.

With my trips to Indiana to be with my family while my sister is ill, I’d originally had to cancel the party, but was able to reschedule.

After a lot of last minute shuffling around, and voting on what dates the most of us were available, we managed to get a good chunk of us together on one night just a week before Christmas.

For a bit, it didn’t look like it would come together, that is such a hectic time of year.

Luckily, a date worked out, and I even had time to go to the grocery store for supplies and make pot pies to serve.

The Christmas tree pie didn’t turn out as good as the snow guy. You could kinda tell what it was, but the crust sunk in a little as it baked.

I’d even made a grid behind it for support and it still sank a little. You could still tell it was a tree, and actually, bubbly gravy over the crust is pretty dang tasty, so no problem.

This is a night I look forward to each year, and I was so happy that we all were able to get together.

Our club is filled with funny, informed people who make interesting dinner guests. Plus, it’s a great excuse for me to set the table!

And they brought beautiful desserts.

I had such a nice evening, thanks for coming, to all who were able to make it.

Fall at the Cottage

cottage, holiday decor

By Karla Nathan / October 23, 2023

With this week’s trip to a Florida, I’ll be missing some Halloween time, so I figured that I’d take advantage of friends visiting to spook up my house a bit.

The black and white violins that Guncle Randy and I made on his visit are still on the table, so I used them as part of the decor, added pumpkins, ravens, and then hung the ballerina bats above it all on the chandelier.

And anything looks better under glass. I love to fill my cloches with seasonal things.

The mushrooms have been renamed “poison toadstools” for October.

And OMG, look at the gourd shaped like a swan! It’s a dark, almost black green that I’ll keep for now. Next month, I’ll paint her pearl white and add a crown for winter.

My decorations were pretty easy. I have one drawer that holds my autumn stuff, plus a few pumpkins I also use to give my Good Juju booth some fall flair.

Just enough to give the house a little pick me up. That helps on these days that are getting a little chilly and shorter so that I’m inside more.

Don’t try this at home-

cottage, how to's

By Karla Nathan / October 14, 2023

Well, the floor is a bit dirty now, as it seems to typically be. Four dogs with a big yard to run (and dig) in, constantly in and out in all types of weather tends to add a layer of dust and dullness to the wood.

But it looks soooooooooooooooo much better than it did before I did some touch ups to it.

This is what it had become, in many places. Especially in all areas where the dog wrestling matches took place and of course, those were in the most prominent, big, open areas. There were also marks from moving a piece of furniture with a rough spot on its leg that left multiple scratches, wear and tear under the dining table from the chairs, and just plain old tired looking spots.

It hadn’t been all that long since the floor was completely refinished either. The hearth room we’d added is only a few years old, but like I said-

Dogs.

And lots of them.

The kitchen is a mix of many woods, the living room, yellow pine. Both are over 100 years old. The hearth room is pine that my husband and sons put in, then we had all three rooms sanded, stained and sealed to match. Which was a big undertaking and we couldn’t use the house for most of the week. We had been living through construction anyway, and this was the tail end of it, so it didn’t seem too bad at the time.

But the thought of the mess, expense, smell, and time it would take to do it over again was not tempting.

Or in my budget.

Here is the after, while still shiny and new. I love it! But I was so lucky it worked.

As a do-it-yourselfer, I figured I’d handle it. And luckily it all came out okay. It could have very easily gone very, very wrong, because I broke a lot of rules.

After cleaning the floor, and shoving some things out of the way (the floor was fine under most of the furniture, except the dining table, so why redo those places?) I opened all the windows, turned on the fans, expelled the dogs outside to the fence to enjoy a beautiful autumn day, then got to work. Husband was out of town, grandkid was at their mom’s most of the week, nothing to stop me.

I mixed a little bit of Jacobean stain (leftover from the professional’s redo) with a satin poly/stain in espresso, because I wanted the raw scratch marks to be covered well and dark.

Then started right in, dead center, highest visibility spot in the room.

Why? Stupidity.

Seriously, I should’ve tried an inconspicuous corner and waited a couple of days to see if it dried well. Nope, just started brushing on the concoction, and wiping it off with a rag. I feathered and buffed the edges to blend with the existing stain, and redid giant swaths of flooring, not just patches.

About halfway in, I started to wonder how well I’d stirred the poly blend. By then it was too late. But visions of a gummy, never drying floor stayed with me as I worked.

Did I stop working? Nope. In for a penny, in for a pound. I figured I might as well keep it going till the end, because if I’d ruined it, the entire room would have to be redone by a pro, not just my messed up areas.

My home is an old, far from perfect, farmhouse. So I don’t mind if if the wood floors don’t look perfect. Things wear over time and I appreciate that. I just hated the obvious scratches and dog destruction. This was a good solution for that problem and cost me under $10 to do.

Some areas dried faster than others, and I was feeling a little worried about a couple spots, but kept a fan on them and they started to slowly lose their stickiness.

It really could’ve gone either way, this is not how you are supposed to stain a floor. Dumping leftover stain a few years old into a different brand and color of poly/stain, and then trying to remember if I’d stirred the poly up first before mixing? No sanding or tsp, or much prep at all? Rubbing the mixture right over the existing floor as is? Going around furniture still in the room?

Nope, none of it was done correctly. But I am so glad I did it, and love the results!

Studio tour part two, behind some doors

collections, cottage, studio tour

By Karla Nathan / September 26, 2023

It would be impossible to pick a favorite thing about the studio redo. Unless it is the time spent with my boy. Adam drove out from NC for a week of work to transform the cold, hard, cement floor into a cushy, warm vinyl one.

While here, he got the work done in record time so we were able to have some fun adventures while we had him in the same state for a while. And he accomplished so many other giant, or little helpful tasks.

He repaired the basement foundation (very big!)

Tuck pointed the rest of the foundation

Hung chandeliers and branches on my ceiling

Repaired my desk chair

Replaced all of the weather stripping throughout the house

Fixed a water damaged threshold

Trimmed up some damaged siding and screwed the downspout into place so it wouldn’t happen again

Helped haul and reposition all of the furniture back into the studio once the floor was done, into a puzzle piece layout that made the most of my square footage

And that was just in the spare time he had since the floor was finished so quickly.

Basically, he wandered around the house and figured out what needed some tweaking or redoing, and just fixed it. He was busy all day long and into many evenings the whole week he was in Kansas. Sugarwings was thrilled to have her daddy around, and so was I. It’s not that often that a mom gets a complete week of one on one time with a grown son, especially one who is a master craftsmen and fixes everything that he sees wrong.

I had a vision of exactly how I wanted my tagging/shipping area by my desk, but the pieces didn’t quite fit. Adam stopped to cut small bits of wood to adjust heights and made this come together for me.

Having all of the items I need for price tags, printing, and shipping is going to make getting inventory ready to sale a breeze. I might hang a curtain over the bottom of the table though. The piles under there kinda take away from the streamlined look I wanted.

While adding my goodies back into the room, I spent time thinking about how to store them in a better way. Instead of piling all the fabric into this cabinet, I separated by type or color and used cardboard boxes and a basket to make dividers.

The loveliest fabrics and lace panels were put behind glass.

Instead of keeping my beloved wallpaper in a hard to get to stack, it’s now in multiple, easy reach containers.

Some things were left as is. I’ve always liked having this glass topped box of jewelry on a table near my work area. These are mostly pieces meant for gluing onto projects.

The stacked, plastic boxes of beads and findings to make jewelry are all stashed in this cabinet. I’d covered the back wall in a pretty wallpaper, but then didn’t like seeing the chaos of the plastic bins. So I got out more wallpaper and taped it up on the inside of the glass to hide the supplies.

This is a table that I hope to keep cleared for making jewelry. The tall cabinet is filled with books and behind its wallpaper covered door is tools.

Many of the things inside this piece are in the same spot they always were, just the cabinet is moved. Same with all of my little wallpaper covered chests. I can still find most things, the cubbies they are in haven’t changed. Old habits are hard to break, so I did my best to reuse the same boxes for the same stuff, just in a better way.

My paintings, family fairy pictures, and gifts from friends are gathered into one inspiration board type spot instead of scattered around the room.

This is the storage area back in the corner behind the screen. I’ll be bringing stack of painted furniture in to fill it up and possibly overwhelm this space. But at least it will be out of the way and in its own spot.

These shelves are filled with breakables and stuff that doesn’t easily fit in tubs. It’s all inventory for the antique mall. I also use clear plastic tubs to store stuff for my booth, and stack them up in the garage. As I buy goodies at garage sales, I sort them into color or season and put them into the clear bins. Now, if I could just train myself to tag them first…

All of the items for sale online go into a cabinet next to the computer so I don’t mix it up with my other inventory. I hope to get this piece stocked up for the holidays now that I have finished this huge reorg of my studio.

Of course, there is a dog bed and basket of toys by my desk too. Molly and Dorothy like to hang out with me there.

Molly always needs her toys nearby.

Thanks for looking around with me! Now, I’m going to go enjoy that room that we worked so hard to recreate.

Not just a new floor, a whole new look and organizational system in the studio

Chandeliers, collections, cottage, studio tour, wallpaper

By Karla Nathan / September 22, 2023

I have officially moved back into the finished studio!

And I adore each and every little nook and corner.

Not only is the new wall color calming and serene, the new floor warm and easy on the feet, the area seems so much more spacious.

Mostly, it is the same stuff rearranged into a more peaceful set up. Previously, my computer area was a dark, crowded hole because I wanted it out of sight. Now it is laid out so that everything is attractive and still workable.

Inventory for the antique mall had taken over the room. Now, I’ll be (hopefully) containing it in this corner, behind screens and pretty doors.

The lighting has had some big changes. My workspace is now in front of the window, which helps a lot. I’d had stacked furniture for good juju there and it had completely blocked any sunlight from streaming in, so that stuff is now located in the back corner storage area that doesn’t even have a window to block.

All of the table lamps’ and chadies’ lightbulbs have been switched out to clear, white, daylight LED bulbs. Which means I have an boxful of mismatched off white and soft white bulbs that I won’t be using. At my age, I need all of the clear, clean light I can get.

My son added two chandeliers on hooks above my work zone. I covered the cords in branches and floral vines.

I was able to gather all of the wallpaper cabinets together for a bigger statement. And they are convenient, right behind my rolling chair so I can glide over and grab supplies out of the drawers.

Rolls of wallpaper are no longer in the big cabinet once used for treats and storage. That giant piece is now in my breezeway, filled with outdoor cushions that I used to have to stash here, there, and everywhere.

The wallpaper is divided into five different containers and (sorta, but not quite yet) separated by color or style.

Pretty curtains that had been jammed into drawers, now are folded up behind glass so I can enjoy them.

Mt main goal was to find the very best options for all of the stuff that had taken over, and store it away into an intentional way. Labeled, or plainly in view. Because I tend to lose or forget I had things.

A place for everything and everything in its place!

Most of the cabinets are filled with functional supplies. But I did indulge a bit with just pretties. The one on the left holds my scrapbooks.

And my hutch still has a few collections behind the glass doors.

Although, about a third of the hutch is now used for supplies, not just pretties.

I’ll show you more details in my next post for now, I want to go and play in my new studio.

Guncles in Kansas

cottage, family, Food and Drink, guncles

By Karla Nathan / September 13, 2023

We had a Guncle-riffic visit last week. They spent half the time with us, the other half with close friends in KC. Their last night in Lawrence included a birthday party for that couple, who are family to the guys.

Now, down on Sweet Cherry Lane in Jax, the tablescapes and delicious food are legendary. Randy keeps his dining table set on a regular basis and then goes even more all out when guests arrive.

And the food, oh my.

So while they were visiting, I had Randy help me set my table.

Our big craft project had been to restyle some violins.

So we incorporated those along with some violin sheet music.

We had a small group at a large table, and only needed to decorate half of it. Kevin makes the best German chocolate cake, so that got center stage on the other half.

Dinner was a luscious lemon chicken. And the company? The best!

I’ll have some close ups of the violins in my next post.

A Barbie Dollhouse turned into a Haunted Mansion

cottage, how to's, Sugarwings

By Karla Nathan / July 13, 2023

In the previous post, I left out pictures of Sugarwings’ Barbie House redo. At first, I was going to vintage it up with old wallpaper and sell it at Good Juju. But as I was starting to wrestle it down the stairs, it dawned on me that the kiddo had requested “Haunted Mansion” as the room theme.

Well, dur.

This thing could make a fantastic haunted house plus it was large enough to use as shelving for books and stuff.

On high gloss surfaces, I brushed on a primer then painted it black. Elsewhere, I used black acrylic paint directly onto the existing dollhouse wallpaper, trim, and flooring.

The paint was watered down and wiped off in some spots, and I tore the paper on the walls before washing it with the black.

I especially like the effect in this room.

I could’ve easily gotten carried away and dolled it up with furnishings, but held back because I knew it was meant to be a bookcase/shelf. I filled it with some of Sugarwings’ belongings and added this antique, plaster lion for the teen’s 17th birthday in August (Leo time).

It still needed a nod to its dollhouse beginnings, so I let this person move in.

From Fairytale to Haunted Mansion

antiques/junking, cottage, family

By Karla Nathan / July 10, 2023

Sugarwings will be SEVENTEEN this August.

SEVENTEEN

How and when did that happen? That also means my blog will soon be 17.

This is the very first photo I posted of that lil sprite.

And this is my most recent photo of this piece of my heart. Before leaving for a summer in North Carolina with Dad, we went to the Omaha Zoo together. And I have to say that trips and outings with this kid are 100% as enjoyable as they were years ago. This person will always be filled with magic, curiosity, and joy in exploration.

Sugarwings has been a good sport about living in a mermaid/fairytale bedroom but confided in me that there was a Pinterest wish board of a Nightmare Before Christmas/Haunted Mansion style that they loved.

At first, I thought that I would redo the room as a surprise, but had second thoughts and decided to include their wishes long distance. And I was glad that I did, we had a good time texting pictures and colors back and forth across the country.

So, I repainted and put the room together, showing the steps by text as they were completed. ( One bit of control that I kept over the process was gathering color samples that I approved myself before saying, “what color do you want.” This way, I got a shade of plum that I was fine with on the walls as opposed to a possible tone that might’ve driven me bonkers.)
Sugarwings also did not want to rip up the murals that were in the room they had used off and on. We have two rooms upstairs that have been switched up over the years from nursery, guest room, Dewdrop’s space, Sugarwings’ dwelling, toy room, etc. We like to redecorate periodically.

This photo is from a few years ago, the bed had been repainted since, but the walls are the same, and my soft hearted sweetie was too sentimental to lose this mural.

The solution was to flip rooms. This one was much smaller and had no closet.

But there was a little walkway into it that had a linen closet. At one time, this was our laundry room, now the washer and dryer are downstairs. We were able to move the linen closet shelves to the mural room’s closet and set up a clothes rod in this area, and there you go.

This new bedroom was now feeling much larger than it would have if I’d had to squeeze in a wardrobe for storage.

Once things were repainted or reconstructed, the fun part began. I went through my Good Juju inventory and shopped for black furniture and odds and ends to decorate with. Sugarwings already had dragons, and a few other things they’d want to use. I arranged everything for now, but I am sure that when the kiddo gets back from NC, there will be some rearranging to suit their own taste.

When Dewdrop was little, she loved Snow White, so I’d made this for her with that theme as a magic mirror. The silver in was scraped off with a razor blade and a picture could be seen inside the mirror.

Now, I’ve given the pink flowers a black wash of paint and removed Snow White’s photo. There is now a skull with a flower crown peeking through the mirror. If this is too creepy, we can easily change it, the picture is just taped on the back. I might’ve gone too far with this, Sugarwings did have more of a Disney theme planned.

But I knew a slightly creepy edge would be appreciated.

I discovered that a coat of black changes many things from shabby chic to gothic. Both are ornamental styles.

Because of the low ceilings and small footprint, this room has a platform bed with drawers underneath. I added a piece of a vintage iron headboard on the wall behind it to make the bed feel more substantial. It had been hanging outside, so was nice and rusty.
I left both white to keep the room from becoming too heavy.

The ballerina bats are some that I sell at Halloween. Simple, plastic bat skeletons with vintage flowers and tutus.

Sugarwings wanted green for sheets because that is a shade from Disney’s Haunted Mansion. And a striped comforter similar to Jack Skellington’s pants. This was as close as I could get in a comforter at a reasonable price. I found it at Ross along with the fluffy rug. The sheets and curtains are Amazon. Besides paint and rid brackets for the closet, everything else was scrounged from the house or repurposed.

I sure miss having that child around, but we will be visiting the North Carolina side of the family soon. And redoing this bedroom has made me feel a little closer to Sugarwings during the separation.