WISH Wednesday #43

I can't believe it's Thursday already and I forgot all about yesterday being Wednesday and posting a WISH Wednesday picture.  My excuse is that it was a holiday on Monday and that threw me off.  We'll all pretend that today is Wednesday and then I'm not a day late for my WISH Wednesday post - okay?  Now that we've got that settled...
I try to limit myself to just one photo of a room for my WISH Wednesday posts and I usually succeed, but today I utterly failed.  There was just way too much cuteness in this adorable little bunkie to limit myself to one photo.  Plus I wanted to give you an idea about how small this bunkie is.  Do you have bunkies where you live?  They are little sleeping cabins used for guests at the cottage.  
I really love small buildings and I thought this bunkie was especially adorable.  The decorating is all done on a budget.  Rattan mats were stapled to the walls to add texture - they look like grasscloth wallpaper, but are a fraction of the cost.  I bet that is a DIY wood stump table too.  Isn't it the perfect bedside table for a cottage bedroom.  The turquise polka-dotted bedding and the mosquito nets are adorable.

Canadian House and Home

Did you notice the collection of turquoise bottles up in the rafters?  Cute, eh.

via Poppytalk

Here's how the outside of the bunkie looks.  I love the little cupola at the peak of the roof, the row of tiny windows up under the eaves, and the yellow window boxes under the windows.

Canadian House and Home

And what a gorgeous spot to lounge on a summer's day.  The awning is made out of a dropcloth held up by branches.  The daybed is made using stacked shipping pallets painted a soft turquoise and topped with a foam mattress covered in a white sheet.  The stump tables and collection of pillows make it the perfect spot to relax.  

Canadian House and Home

Doesn't this bunkie make you want to grab a good book and a cool drink and spend some time relaxing?  I'm holding on to summer as tightly as I can - we still have a few weeks to go before school starts and I plan on making the most of it.

Blueberry Cheesecake Squares

We went to my husband's family reunion this weekend - it was a historic event. My husband's family broke up when he was a child and although the siblings had met together in small groups, they hadn't all been together in fifty-five years. There was lots of chatting and laughing and getting to know everyone and, of course, food, food, and more food.  A get together just wouldn't be complete without copious amounts of food, now would it?
One of the things I took was a blueberry cheesecake - a dessert that my mother used to make fairly often when I was young, but I haven't had in years and years.  My husband remembered it from when we first were married, but Malcolm didn't remember ever having eaten it and he is almost twenty-five years old.  Anyway I dusted off the recipe and decided to give it an airing.  It really is delicious and I'm not sure why it fell by the wayside for all those years.  The original recipe is called Billie Boyd's Blueberry Cheesecake Pie.  I have no idea who Billie Boyd is and it really isn't a pie, but it is delicious nevertheless.

Here's the recipe (serves 15):
Crust 2 cups graham cracker crumbs 3/4 cup butter or margarine, melted 1 cup confectioners sugar
Method: - mix the graham cracker crumbs together with the melted butter - add the sugar and mix well - pat into the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan

Cheesecake Layer
6 oz (170 gms) softened cream cheese
2 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar

Method:
- beat together with a mixer until well blended
- pour over crust
- bake for 20 minutes at 350F

Blueberry Layer
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 cups blueberries (up to 4 cups)
2 tablespoons water

Method: 
- heat in a saucepan until some berries are broken and mixture is clear and thick
- cool and then spread on cake and chill

Whipped Cream
1 cup whipping cream - whip and spread on top just before serving

   
Do you ever completely forget about a recipe only to discover it again years later?  Thank goodness I did, as we now have a new favourite.

Linked to Tutorials & Tips Link Party at Home Stories A to Z,
WOW Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style<
Inspiration Friday at At the Picket Fence

WISH Wednesday #42

Here it is Wednesday all over again and time for another WISH Wednesday (Weekly Inspiration for a Seasonal Home).  Being that is the summer and a hot one at that, I thought a fancy-pants restored vintage trailer would be just the thing. Meet Lola...

Isn't she lovely.  She's a vintage 1960s caravan (she does live in the UK so I have to call her a caravan) that has been carefully restored and is now for rent for movies, photo shoots, and weddings.  The interior is a lovely soft sage green with Cath Kidston fabric that looks oh so homey.  I love the polka-dots and the flowery fabric and the little country touches like jugs filled with flowers.  The trailer is only eight feet long, but is big on style, don't you think?

My Vintage Party

Wouldn't you love to join me for a cuppa.

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I can't believe I forgot to post the mosaic for the July WISH Wednesday posts, but here it is now.  I had to add another one so there was an even number.  Can you recognize which one is the new one?

Master Bedroom Reveal

It only took about a month longer and tons more work than I thought it would ... but it's done!  Let me show you around our new and improved bedroom.  
We'll start here as this is what greets you when you enter the room.  

I wanted something round to go above the bed to echo the roundness of the headboard. I found this carving at HomeSense - and it was even carved in India (a place I have a particular fondness for after visiting last summer).

The darker gray accent wall (although it is a subtle difference and probably not worth the trouble) was painted several years ago and I painted the other three walls last month.  I did a happy dance when that was done - not only because the chaos that happens when you paint was over, but also because the grubby builder's paint was finally gone.

The furniture was rearranged - the two bookshelves were split up and put on either side of the window and the trunk was put under the window.  I thought it would kinda sorta look like built-in bookshelves and a window seat - both things I adore, but we weren't willing to put the time or money into building them into a house we may be leaving soon.

I re-hung the drapes above the arched window so that all the windows were covered by the curtains. Since the curtains are now much higher than they were before, I had to take down the hem and add more material along the bottom. Fortunately I had bought an extra set of curtains at the time I bought the original ones so I had fabric that matched. I covered the seam with gray ribbon and added another row of ribbon to make it look like it was all meant to be.  It actually took me quite awhile to do all of those steps since I had to think through the solution to each problem as it presented itself.

I sorted and edited the books so the bookshelves would look tidy.  On top of one bookshelf I put a shadow box with my husband's fossils. The back of the box used to be Barbie pink, which is great if you are putting Barbies in the box, but not so good if you are putting fossils in.  I painted it white and it looks much better and actually means you can see the fossils now since it is much brighter inside the box.  I know the box still looks a little pink in the photos, but that is just a reflection of the red shirt I was wearing when I took the photos.

And on top of the other bookshelf I put some of my dolls.  I'm not really a doll kind of person, but these are special to me as they were mostly collected when we traveled through Europe when I was a child and a few were given to me by my Grandmother from her travels.  I had all my dolls out before and it just looked cluttered, so I've decided to only display three at a time and have the rest in a little vintage suitcase nearby so I can change them up when the mood strikes me.

I centred the tall dresser on the wall across from the bed and put my favourite painting done by my Grandmother on it.

The ceiling light was dreadful and had to be replaced.  We toyed around with a number of options and in the end chose our second favourite.  We didn't go with our first choice because it was only available at a store in downtown Toronto and it cost almost $80 more than this one.  It was also a capiz shell light that looked very similar to the one we chose, but was cream-coloured rather than gray.  We figured that since the walls were gray the gray capiz shells would look fine and they do.  

The ceiling light doesn't cast much light so I also bought another light to go on the dresser near our bed.  I chose a silver mercury glass lamp from HomeSense to add some sparkle.

Do you love Queen Anne's Lace like I do - I think it is such a pretty flower/weed so I put some on the dresser.

Let's see the before and after photos - they are always fun!

And after ...

I had to show you all the details, because it took so long to do that I wanted to share everything with you.  If you want to see more details about how the bedroom looked before you can read this post.  All the effort was totally worth it as we are enjoying the new room!

Linked to WOW Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style,
The Creative Spark at Clean & Scentsible,
Tutorials, Tips, and Tidbits at Stone Gable,
Inspiration Friday at At the Picket Fence,
DIY Link Party at Funky Junk Interiors,
Before and After Party at Thrifty Decor Chick,
Tutorials & Tips Link Party at Home Stories A to Z

Let's Discuss our Bedroom Problems

Now that I'm getting close to finishing our bedroom (yeah I know, slow or what) I'm going to show you the "before" photos and what needed to be done to get this bedroom to start acting like the calm peaceful organized retreat it is supposed to be.  It is a little embarrassing to show you these photos as the bedroom was a hot mess. I had already started to take one of the bookshelves out of the bedroom when I took the photo below so some of the things had already been moved around, but to be honest it wasn't really a very organized place at the best of times.

So let's have a look at the problem areas and discuss:
1. The eyebrow window - aka the bane of my existence.  There is a streetlight outside of our bedroom window and we aren't the best sleepers so we needed to have good light coverage on the windows and the eyebrow window made it very difficult to figure out a good arrangement.  I had cut some foam-core boards to fit the arched window and that blocked out the light. My original plan was to cover the foam-core board in material to match the drapes, but in the end we came up with a better plan - a much, much better plan.
2.  The drapes - I thought going wide would be good, but instead it always just looked like a wall of material, the drapes were hard to slide because they were hung using the tabs along the top, and the curtain rod anchors were coming out of the wall.  Yikes.
3.  The bookcases - There were two bookcases side-by-side that you can see a tiny bit of on the left side of the photo above.  I will spare you any other pictures of them, but they were crammed with books and the top was piled with boxes and family photos.  In a word - they were messy.
4.  The bed - We have a rather strange bedframe that means the mattress is lower than usual and as you can see it was slightly lower than the trunk we had at the foot of the bed.
5.  Too much furniture and stuff in one room - Enough said!
6.  The messy dresser - It was usually a mess because anything on it (like my jewelry boxes) got moved aside whenever Jonathan needed to use his laptop as that was the only place he had found to get internet access.  
7.  The walls - The darker gray accent wall had been painted about five years ago when I first started work on this room, but life got in the way and then I got onto decorating other rooms so I never finished painting the other walls.  They still had the original thin white (now grubby) builder's paint on them.

8.  The ceiling light - The overhead light (which you can see in the photo above) is a cheapo installed by the builder and needed to be replaced.
So there you have it -  the terrible, no good, horrible disaster of a room.  I'm finishing the last few things on the bedroom today and hope to show you photos tomorrow.  I tell you I'm liking the change.
Update:  See this post if you want to see how the bedroom looks now!