White Pumpkin Bling

A big ol’ howdy from Alabama! Yes…we’re back in the States! After 5 Cities, with 4 People and 3 Countries in 2 Days, we arrived back home and reunited with my eldest daughter, Alexandra (who flew back early after her Italian opera/language adventure to start college classes).

As amazingly beautiful as Italy was/is, we missed home! It was a blessing to spend the better part of a year in Europe, but it is equally a blessing to set foot back in the United States.

And after several days of jet lag and endless mountains of laundry, dusting, unpacking, homeschool prep, cleaning in general and sorting things in the garage for our huge garage sale this weekend, I decided to take a break and tablescape today with all of my old things I’d missed!

The only new things today are the two white blingified pumpkins I got on sale when I went to get the others for our front porch! I LOVE THEM!!!

As always, I am super psyched to share this with my friends at Susan’s wonderful Tablescape Thursday, My Romantic Home, French Country Cottage & Savvy Southern Style.

I will also be joining Rhoda’s (if she’s still having it—this week may have been her last one) Thrifty Treasures.

And speaking of the amazing Rhoda…SHE’S COMING TO MY HOUSE NEXT SATURDAY!!!

YUP! She’s my “surprise guest” I mentioned last week!

Seriously, folks! I love this woman. Southern Hospitality is one of the biggest reasons I got into blogging. I love the blog and I love Rhoda! She is far too young/gorgeous to be my “real” mother, but she is one of my “bloggie mothers.”

And she’s coming to visit on October 1st. That Saturday we’re holding a “Say Hello to the Austins/Say Goodbye to Tom” Party (before he deploys on October 10th for a year to Afghanistan—that’s the reason we’re home early from Italy since they moved his date up!) AND have Rhoda share her fantastic Biltmore products.

Bonnie and Emily (two of my great Alabama blog friends), ya’ll are definitely welcome to come meet Rhoda….and so is everyone else who can make it to Huntsville!

The blog world has been an endless source of aesthetic inspiration for me, but most importantly, I’ve been able to meet the most fantastic people….Susan and all of ya’ll at TT are heroes to me….along with Rhoda and Edie and Kate and Amy…just fabulous people and new friends everywhere I turn in blogland!

But back to my humble little tablescape! Boy…it’s been something trying to acclimate to being back home! I still can’t find everything…including my beloved camera. So, I had to borrow my daughter’s little pocket camera for these photos and of course it was overcast and…

I know ya’ll have come to expect better photos of me and I promise new photos as soon as I’ve found my camera/have better light…but I wanted to go ahead and post SOMETHING! :)

Ya’ll know I’m a HUGE lover of color and will of course be incorporating oodles and oodles of autumnal shades in the future, but I’m also loving the crispness of the all-white motif this week.

I’m going to try to change out just a few items next week, still utilizing the core white plates, to experiment and to share just how easy it is to create a lovely table with very few plates/paraphernalia.

I like a challenge!

So, next week will be more white with only one additional color and then…BAM!!!

ROY. G. BIV delight!

And of course this post is full of an immense number of thrifty treasures, from my soup tureen found at my church thrift store to the gorgeous napkins with delicate scroll embellishment that I found in Belgium

The soup tureen and napkins are so very elegant. This entire table is full of curvy and swoopy delights. The Belgian napkins are for sale on my ETSY site, but I thought I’d “borrow” them so ya’ll could see them in action!

:)

And in the background you can see the antique column I bought for a song on EBAY. I am in love with its rustic lux chippy white paint grandeur from another era! It’s been sitting in my garage for well over a year and one of the first things we did when cleaning it out for the sale was to move it inside.

And ya’ll know that I made some other pragmatic purchases: the little votive holders I found for 10 cents a piece at a yard sale. Myriad other white dishes were on clearance/sale at Marshall’s/TJ Maxx. My gorgeous white chargers I purchased on Amazon. The dinner plates are from Horchow, but they were the least expensive ones on that site and they are WORKHORSES for me as we use them for weeknight dinners as well as for tablescapes/holidays.

And ya’ll…I have a GAZILLION more photos to share with you from Italy/France/Belgium.

So, the adventure will continue.

I’m also hoping to go back to Europe once this year while Tom is gone and then when he returns we’re praying about going back to live there, perhaps in Belgium.

Our peripatetic life will probably continue!

I can’t wait to visit everyone tomorrow and see all the creativity!!!

Love/hugs/blessings & White Pumpkin Bling Joy,

Lana In America