Candy, I think I must really be the one with brain fog tonight. I just realized that it was Jane who was claiming to have brain fog. I really do have it, a lot worse some times than others. I like Karen, have Fibro, along with sleep apnea and celiac. When I get overly tired or stressed, the brain fog hits with a vengence. If someone asked my name, sometimes I would be hard pressed to tell them. I looked at your Christmas pics on the other post and am totally in auh over your decorating. I love your snowman tree. Did you make it? I love Christmas ,too. It has always been my favorite time of the year, My DD tells me that she knows that I have to be the only person in the world with a Santa toilet bowl brush. I couldn't pull up the pic of your village, but somehow(I really don't have a clue as to how) I pulled up a link with over 2,000 villages. I hope I can find it again, I was just too tired to look all way through it tonight. I painted a village about 20 years ago in cermaics too, and hadn't used it in years, but I found it(all but the trees) the other day and decided to use it this year, The snow had turned yellow and a lot of it had faded off, so I got another jar of snow and redid it and it is sitting in my closet just waiting until after Thanksgiving. If I don't find the trees, I thought I just might use somw of the little trees that you can buy for the villages. I hope you will post more pics. I am really enjoying all the pics and posts on this forum. Janet

Everyone has such pretty decorations. MrsMarv, you have a great view from your table. I can't show my apothecary jars, but will tell what is in them. The largest is usually filled with faux fruit of the season. Right now it has apples, limes, oranges and lemons. Usually at Christmas it is filled with black, red and silver ornaments and beads, and sits on the kitchen table. The middle size is filled with rose petals from flowers I've received the last couple of years. It sits in my bedroom. Usually I put the "from" card in there, too. Right now the other one is empty. Lee

here is a blog with great ideas April 10, 2009 Ten Fantastic Fillers for Apothecary Jars I really love apothecary jars. There is something so innocent - so refreshing - about an empty vessel just begging for a beautiful display. When I find apothecary jars at thrift stores for $3 or $4 each, I snap them up like crazy. You've probably seen me grab one in Goodwill and give a Tiger Woods fist pump because I'm so excited with my new score. Because I know you love them as much as I do, I want to give you a little encouragement and a little push towards filling them with unique displays. People, it's time to start thinking beyond pasta and pears, cotton balls and cotton swabs when it comes to filling your apothecary jars. Using your jars to showcase unique finds will give your vignettes much more personality than filling them with the lemons you bought for 5/$1 at the grocery store. I've put together a list of 10 fantastic apothecary jar fillers that will hopefully guide you in the right direction to update those displays. 1. Vintage Spectacles - Just imagine the scenes that have been viewed through these lenses. Antique glasses are available at thrift stores, antique malls, estate sales, and even yard sales. Add two or three pairs to a simple jar, and you'll have a display that everyone will want to "see." Country Living 2. Soap - For an apothecary display in a bathroom, nothing beats a collection of beautiful soaps. Choose natural-colored soaps in the same hue, instead of in a color that matches your room. Find wonderful guest soaps at discount home stores, or use drugstore bargains, such as Aveeno or Ivory. Better yet, purchase monogrammed soaps to add a personal element to the display. Pottery Barn 3. Vintage Photos - One of my favorite apothecary jar fillers is vintage photos. I have always loved the boxes of photographs I see in antique stores, and I decided that I wanted to replicate those displays myself. For my jar, pictured below, I found a selection of vintage photos online, printed them on cardstock paper, cut them out, and then tore the edges and creased the image until it looked appropriately worn. Don't you think they actually look like real photos? Because I knew that you'd love this idea, too, I assembled the photos into a .pdf file for you to use in your own displays. Find that document HERE. Am I the nicest person ever or what? 4. Vintage Hairbrushes and Combs - Along the same lines as the antique photographs, I would love a display featuring vintage hairbrushes and combs. You can find some really beautiful dressing sets in antique stores or online. Keep in mind that a child's size set would probably fit into your jar easier than an adult's size (unless you had a very tall jar). 5. Sea Shells and Starfish - A universal favorite apothecary jar filler is sea shells and starfish. Keep your shells in the same color scheme and only fill the jar halfway so that you don't end up with too much of a good thing. Break the mindset that shells and starfish only belong in the bathroom. What's with that anyway? Do we think shells can only be displayed where there's water? Does the ocean remind us of the toilet? Weird, huh? House Beautiful 6. Knobs - Some of the most interesting (and cheap!) items to add to an apothecary jar are vintage knobs and drawer pulls. Find them for $0.25 a piece at places like the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store or yard sales. Your collection will be eclectic but will have a fantastic quality because the pieces are all variations of the same theme. 7. Rocks - Using natural elements in the home is very important, and nothing could be more natural than my son's rock collection. Adding his treasures to an apothecary jar meant that I had a natural (and FREE) filler, and it is extra special to him because he got to use them to "decorate with Mama." 8. Silver Cups - A few sterling silver baby cups displayed in a large apothecary jar would make such a sweet display. Stack them randomly on top of each other to create a tower. I've seen several of these little cups at Goodwill lately, so start hitting your thrift store in search for a few. They don't even need to be in great shape - the more dings and scratches, the more personality they have. 9. Blown Eggs and Found Nests - What's not to love about real birds' eggs and nests displayed in a beautiful apothecary jar? In one of my jars, I used Spanish Moss in the bottom as a "nest" and then added 5 or 6 blown quail eggs on the top. Check out these gorgeous egg displays - quail eggs on reindeer moss and Robin's eggs on a found nest. I love them! Romantic Home 10. Indoor plants- Apothecary jars take on a whole new life when used as terrariums for indoor plants. Add plants purchased at home improvement stores or a local nursery. Dallas Morning News You could even grow your own grass. Did you see Kimba's wonderful wheat grass project? A Soft Place to Land Are you ready to find something unique and interesting to put in your apothecary jars? Little makes a jar more interesting than filling it with something completely unexpected. Tell me what you are going to add to yours! Enjoy your beautiful life! Head over to The Inspired Room to see how others are making their lives beautiful, one simple way at a time. Here is a link that might be useful: scroll down to april 10th

For color scheme inspiration, I would look at fantasy book covers aimed at young adults (just Google under images). Some of my favorites are Melissa Marr, Holly Black, Gail Carson Levine, Diana Wynne Jones, and Herbie Brennan (and the books are great too). A few where I liked the covers but haven't read the books are Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston and I Was a Teenage Fairy by Francesca Lia Block. Fantasy is my all-time favorite genre, so I loooooove the idea of a moody, nighttime faerie themed room. If it were just to suit myself, I would have the dark blue ceiling have a splash of purple in it (like a sunset), and then have a deep purple on the walls that leaned blue. That way, any royal purples, blues and greens would blend in well, but still have their own character. Please note that the aubergine and eggplant purples that are popular right now are much more muted than book cover colors, so to a certain extent, you will have to decide how strong/clean you want the colors in your room to be vs muted/dirty. Personally, when I'm going deep, dark colors on walls, I like them to have more kick so the place doesn't just look dark. My bedroom right now is a red that's been blackened just enough so that I don't get a headache, but my mum can't take it for more than a few minutes. It all depends on your lighting and personal color tolerances. Also, keep in mind that when it's in the middle of the day in summer, you might be craving accents that are lighter and/or brighter, so if you have a favorite pillow/sweater/fill-in-the-blank-item that the color of consistently makes you happy, integrating that color or colors might be a good way to lighten/brighten things up seasonally, so make sure the paint colors look good with it/them. If you do go the stronger/cleaner route, to keep it from looking childish, one option would be to incorporate natural textures while keeping the uber-sparkly bits to a minimum (1-2 mirrors, 1-2 sparklies). Another is to go glam with mirrors and metals (new hardware for bedroom furniture, perhaps?). There are other ways too, but those are the easiest to pull off. Oh, and with that much dark color going on, you probably should take it easy on the black. Unless you're into the goth look, which, while there's nothing wrong with that, doesn't exactly say "A Midsummer Night's Dream". I also have to caution you about the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling; a friend of mine did that, and apparently whatever was used on the backing wrecked the ceiling (her folks were NOT pleased). So if you're sold on the idea, just be 100% sure it's going to be easy to remove. P.S. I've included a picture that I've always loved the moody quality of, but I have no idea where I got it.