Aside from some hanging baskets on my porch, I did not put anything in pots this year because of the time spent watering. I had big pots of roses which were killed by this unusually cold winter and did not replace them. I am not adding anything new except to fill in existing beds - just getting to be too much work and not enough fun. I have started adding more evergreens and flowering shrubs to my flower beds to simplify things. I am hoping by really filling the beds full it will choke out some of the weeds. It can get overwhelming with everything else we all have going on in our lives. Oh - and I am also trying to learn to live with "less than perfect".

Beautiful hostas, beautiful garden, happy accident! (Yes, just last week I found a large gold corrugated hosta smushed behind a big blue and completely overtaken by rampant daylilies. If I remember, it was labeled "Krossa Regal" -- which clearly it is not -- purchased several years ago at a late season clearance and tucked into the garden at the last minute before winter in a spot where all this adversity has not daunted it one bit. I'm eager to see what it will do when it has its own space. Let the remodeling begin! :-)

What fascinating stories, natesgram! What a wonderful thing to reconnect with your pen-pal from Micronesia after so many years. That's quite a gift! And what a sweet, sweet story about your father-in-law and how he met the love of his life. :-) My mother really inspired my interest in pen-pals. She had a pen-pal when she was a young girl in the 40s - a girl her own age who lived in Scotland. Mom saved several things that the girl had sent her, and over the years as I was growing up, I used to love to dig out those items and dream about a little girl from long ago and far away. I had my first pen-pal when I was a pre-teen. Her name was Barbara and she was an Italian beauty who lived in New Jersey. She was extremely boy crazy, and quite precocious for an 11 or 12-year old, and I remember being somewhat "scandalized" by her letters in which she told me of kissing (and petting with) boys. Shocking! ;-) When I was an older teenager I briefly had a young man as a pen-pal. His name was Christopher and he lived in England, and was very handsome. I definitely had a crush, but I also had a boyfriend who was jealous of my long-distance letter writing, so I stopped communicating with Christopher. I've wondered a few times over the years whatever happened to him. Thanks to magazines such as Country Decorating Ideas and Country Almanac, I've had quite a few pen-pals, several that I grew very close to throughout the years, even meeting in person and developing a relationship with their families as well. I reconnected with several of them on Facebook (but I no longer have an account there, so have kinda lost track of them again). Back in the early 90s, I probably had 5 or 6 very active pen-pal relationships with women who, like me, had a passion for decorating, collecting, and homemaking. We regularly sent each other "swap boxes" of goodies that we either handcrafted or picked up for one another in various antique shops or even at yard sales, and that was so much fun. Looking back to that time in my life, I wasn't working - I was a full-time homemaker - and the letter writing definitely filled a void and made my days at home more interesting. I still can't quite believe all of those pages and pages that I hand wrote! I just wrote a brief thank-you note to a work contact, and my handwriting has become just atrocious throughout the years. I know it wasn't this bad when I was regularly writing to my pen-pals! Fun topic! It made me stop and remember some really neat people from my past.

Yes! But fortunately, I've only thrown caution to the wind with pieces that are easy to return or not that expensive (accessories and fabric vs. furniture). Almost every home picture that i've saved or marked as inspiration has a very light beachy color palette with whites, greens, & blues, and maybe a little pink, mixed with either really dark wood or painted wood (or a mix of both), and ivory or pale taupe upholstery. Those rooms make my heart sing! But I'd have to literally start from scratch to incorporate that look into my house. My upholstered pieces are all caramel & dark brown. My paint colors are all warm (yellow, camel, lt & dark terracotta). I love earth tones, and would miss my leather and velvet upholstery. But yet that cool, pale, relaxed look is very appealing to me. With accessories, the style that I want is more modern. I like the room & board, crate & barrel, and west elm look, especially when it's done with those airy/beachy colors. I periodically buy modern throw pillows, fabric, and accent pieces to try to bring this in. I even have a somewhat contemporary bedspread in my bedroom that I bought last fall. But usually they are just not me, and don't look right with my more traditional pieces. I've studied the arrangements in a furniture store that has my ideal style (a hybrid of traditional/antique & modern) and have decided that I can have little bits of modern --- sort of like candy sprinkles on top of a frosted cupcake --- and i like the freshness that brings to my more traditional decor. But any more than that looks disjointed. I've had to return a LOT of things before figuring that out! And I'll probably return a lot more, because I keep falling in love with these things that don't really work! If I had a summer house, I'm sure it would have a completely different style than our house, and that would probably be where I indulged this light, airy, more modern style.