Another White Wednesday and the Vintage Vacation Swap reveal!

Update: I'm also linking up with Donna's Funky Junk Interiors SNS "Saturday Night Special": Old!

Welcome back my dear blog readers and blogging friends to another White Wednesday here at Boxwood Cottage! I was very lucky at the flea market 2 weeks ago and found an old cream white mirror with 3 parts and beveled edges cut mirror glass ( a real steal for 12 Euro!), so I had to redecorate my mantle. The huge golden mirror I had hanging over the mantle for a few years is now hanging upstairs on the walls of the landing and I'm very happy with the look of it there as well as with my new shabby white mírror here over the mantle,

I rearranged a few more things like the white bird house/cage that I put over here on the small round table as well as my old hanging birdcage that placed in the small corner between the mantle piece and cupboard.

It's so nice to have something new to look at. And notice the golden wall candle holder in the picture above which I placed on the wall of the hanging glass cabinet on the left side, I really like it there with one of my dear friend Anita's pretty hearts hanging from it!

The scrabble holder with the creamy white letters from a game called Upwards and which are spelling my name were in my Vintage Vacation swap parcel from my swap partner Francine. I'll show you more pictures of this swap further down in this post. The pretty garland was a swap gift from sweet Tina of Tiny Bears!

Another close up picture of the mantle above, the creamy white pumpkin porcelain box on the left was also a swap gift I got last year from dear Heather of Speckeld Egg in the Halloween Sweet & Sinister swap.

Btw did you notice the diffent reflections of my parlor in the mirror? I really like how they change from every angle I stand. And if you noticed it and you follow my blog for a bit longer already you might have also noticed a new, old, shabby white transom window in the reflections. I had the arched rusty window over there before (see the left pic in my header/banner picture), which I placed on a wall on the beadboard of my bedroom now (I'll show pictures of my bedroom in another post) and placed this new old window, a gift from a dear family friend, there instead. Here is a close up:

It has real great patina! The old framed pictures, the black antiques sign etc. fit in so well and they give it a great contrast I think.

of course with placing the window there I also had to rearrange this corner further more, I placed the white mirror that hung on the side wall of my white wooden stairs before here on the old rusty metal box and rearranged some pictures and not to forget another fabulous flea market find of late, the old butterfly shadow box!

I was so thrilled when I discovered the shadow box whith the slightly faded butterfly beauties in it. Spot the white ones? They all have numbers and their names are neatly typed and written down on the back of the box according to the numbers. These are no exotic butterflies, just those that live here in the area which I love! 10 Euro btw, great price I think :)

Talking of flea market finds I have another picture of some recent finds to share. In the back you see an old grain or feed sack, then I found another old suitcase for my collection, some beautiful old German silver glass ornaments and not to forget my best find and bargain of the day an old shabby trumpet yay I'm so looking forward to decorate for the Holidays with these finds :)

And talking about suitcases this finally leeds me to the Vintage Vacation Swap which was organised by our favorite hostess Miss Jenny Heid of Every day is a Holiday. I painted one of my childhood wicker suitcases in my fave creamy white and embellished it for my swap partner Fran from Michigan US.

I also soldered a Paris charm for Fran and hung it on the suitcase. Then I filled it with vintage flea market treasures like the awesome binocular which was even still in it's original black lether box with gold lettering in it saying it was made in Paderborn/Germany. Then I found the pretty old black tin box for Fran which I filled with specialité bonbons from my hometown Bremen. I took Francine on a vintage vacation swap to the North Sea, but the story is too long to tell now.

And finally I like to share with you what I got from dear Francine:

She took me on a trip to Frankenmuth in Michigan. See everything she sent me in the picture above, just the yummy Reeses, my fave chocolat candy are not in the picture, because I already ate them all up lol oh and a wooden magnet cuckoo clock is missing because I hung it on my fridge right away. Notice that great sepia colored prim stocking she made especially for me?

She even found a vintage hat for me which spells my name on the inside, as well as matching vintage gloves and earrings. Of course the old cabinet cards and letters belong to my faves! Thank you so much for spoiling me Francine!

Well and before I finish this post for today I have another change to share with you, which leads us upstairs in my rooftop studio. If you come up the stairs there is an open gallery which I showed you recently in the "Where bloggers create" post. I always noticed the wall with the space in it looking so bare and thought of how to make it better looking. So I asked our very handy family friend if he could hang an old shabby frame I had around the space in the wall, which holds a vintage black instrument, for me and he did. It was a bit dangerous because we had to place a ladder on the stairs to get a nail in the wall. And while he was already up there on that ladder I asked him to hang up that scalloped wooden architectural piece for me which I had painted white recently, just under the gallerie, which he was so nice to do for me too.

I'm thrilled with the look of the former quite bare wall now with the frame around the wall space and the scalloped wooden piece above, how do you like it? As always you can click or double click on all of my photos to enlarge them and see more details.

Now that is really it for today. I have to hurry now to go to work. Please hop over to Kathleen of Faded Charm for more White Wednesday goodness!

See you back here in September with my 5 years of blogging anniversary give back.

Until then take care and enjoy the cooler days of beginning fall!

xoxo~ Carola

White shutters for White Wednesday & my August garden

Welcome back dear readers and fellow blogging friends to another White Wednesday at Boxwood Cottage!

First of all I'd like to thank each of you who left me such heartwarming comments on last weeks White Wednesday post so much, it was such a great pleasure to read them! It's so much more fun to blog and share when you got such lovely response!

Well today I'd like to share with you my new wooden window shutters! Seeing that my big living room window has no real curtains to keep the sun out when whished or nosey eyes, I thought some flexible wooden shutters would be just the right thing and indeed it works out great! They are made from wooden lamella doors that you can buy in your local "do it yourself shop" and just paint them in what ever color you like. Of course I chose my fave creamy white again.

I can put just one in the window on the window seat or two. In the middle of my window is growing this enormous Hollyhock, so noone can look in there anyway, so for now I chose two pieces of shutters for either side of the plant. Notice my gorgeous new brocante bird cage in the picture above!

Oh I have such a thing for bird cages!

So this is what it looks like with both shutters put in place from further away. There is still enough light coming in, but noone can look inside and the sun is not blinding me anymore and the best is that I can still peak outside between the plants leaves he he.

So come on out on my deck, this is the view through the door:

Then when you went out and turn around you can see the huge soft yellow hollhock which wants to grow there directly in front of my window, in the little space between my terrace stones, every year. And the flexible blinds don't look so bad from the outside either, don't you think?

So if you'd like to see some more from my little cottage garden in August you might stay with me for a while longer. Some of you may remember that there were two large bushes down there in front of the rusty rose arc, so I could not see much of it from this angle, so last month we cleared the space complete with roots and all and filled it with fresh flower soil and compost and planted new perrenials and roses in the new flower bed.

Before we keep going further down in the garden let's turn around again and have little look at our tomcat Riley who found a comfy pillow on the bench and of course had to lay down there for a little nap :)

And also the roses are through with their first flowers now and it still takes a bit before most of them will bloom again, there are still so many other flowers in bloom!

I just love this view down my back yard and even better now that both of the big bushes are gone.

The Agapanthus or African Lily is my favorite at the moment and this year it even blooms in two different colors, in white and in blue! It bloomed only in blue last year and had only 4 stems, this year it has got 7 stems yay. Well I must have unconciously potted two different plants in the big pot, it's the only possible explanation I think. The white one is the only one fully in bloom right now so I think I'll have these gorgeous  big flower heads blooming for some more weeks to come :)

Right now I'm also tending my neighbors garden because she went on a little vacation, so I took some pictures from the view she has - through the wonderful viticella clematis "Prince Charles" which is growing along our properties border - peeking into my garden. Right behind the clematis were the 2 big bushes of a mediterranean snow ball and a cherry laurel that we just digged out. They really became to large for our small gardens and everything looks so much better and lighter and brighter now that they are away.

There you can see a bit of my blooming delphinium/larkspur and phlox in my new flower bed and do you spot the pink plants in the right upper corner of these pictures?

It's Cosmos and the here so called Spiderplant Cleome Spinosa which I grew both from seeds I had sown on the 30th of May in my zinc cold frame.

Pretty huh?

Oh and some of the cosmos flowers are even filled and I find them quite amazing! It's so fun and rewarding to grow annuals from seeds! I'm currently waiting for my Zinnias to start blooming too!

Well enough of the pink, let's have a look at something white in my garden again, my white trellis. See the soft high flower beside it? It's a chinese Thalictrum delavayi, a quite amazing plant that I have for a long time but it never grew so high before. It contains out of many very small soft purple tiny bells.

And further down the trellis beside of my Annabelle Hydrangea, my clematis Piilu has finally started to bloom:

It's one of the best summers for garden flowers in a long time here in Nothern Germany! :)

Well my friends, I'll stop here for today and if you're still with me, I suggest you to visit more White Wednesday participants over at Kathleen's blog Faded Charm!

Have a beautiful summer month of August everyone!

xoxo~ Carola

P.S.: My 5 years of blogging anniversary is coming up soon and I'm currently thinking about a give back, so stay tuned my friends!