My cottage living room

Before I start today's post, I have a leetle request. As a new blogger, I would like to goose up my followers list, so if you read my blog, could you please add your name to the list? I would really appreciate it, and it would make me feel VERY  popular!!!!!!!
Thanks!!!

Today I will go back down memory lane and show you guys my
Watertown living room. Being the hound I was for getting my stuff in magazines, it was in local and national publications, so the pictures I have are from two different periods of time, which shows how the room evolved.
 Never dawning on me that I should learn how to take a good picture, (this was before digital cameras), I just worked on my rooms till I felt someone would take pity on me and send a big galoot of a camera man over and take some shots.

This shot was in the Boston Globe in 1993. Believe it or not, I was still collecting art to add to the wall over the sofa. Ya see, the wall wasn't COMPLETELY covered yet. Don't worry!!!!! I found more pictures to hang up which will be reveled in the next shot.
The walls were a camel color I had chosen when the room was first decorated in 1979. I chose it to match the sofa I had then. It didn't go with anything in the room, but for some reason it still worked. I guess it's picking up some of the brown tones in the different fabrics.

Then I decided it would be FABULOUS to have slip covers made for a summer look, to be removed in the winter. This is how my Mom did it, when I grew up, and how HER mom did it. It enables a room to have two distinctive feels for hot and cold weather, and it doubles the life of the fabrics. There actually was a time in history when people didn't redecorate just for the hell of it.

This picture is from House Beautiful, shot by Eric Roth                                        
I pasted the two parts of the picture together to make a full shot of my living room. It was a full page spread, so it was stapled down the middle. Just like a Playboy centerfold!!

I had EVERYTHING covered in cool looking materials. (cool, as in temperature, though they were very cool, as in, swell, nifty, dandy, devine. I checked the thesauras.) The chairs are covered in a Cowtan and Tout fabric that is one of my favorites. They are in my current living room, as is the coffee table/bench and rug.

I had new lampshades made with wonderful glass beads on the trim.

Here's a blow up of the shot, sorry it's so blurry, but it's the best I could do......

This is what happens when you just have old magazines to refer back to. How did we ever get along without this digital @#$&????

O.K. so................ here's the picture before I added it to the other one. This way it's bigger.......

I was so excited the day I found that painting of a dog that's over the mantle. It looked just like my mutt, (who I still miss to this day, and it's been 20 years since she died). She didn't have so much brown on her. Hey, I have a picture of us!!!!!!

Oy, I was so much younger than!!!!!

Those were the days that I bothered to put on make up. And a bra. What a waste of time.

Now I get up and just start blogging.

Anyway.....

Back to the picture. The mirror over the mantle was another find that a client didn't want, SO I GOT IT FOR MEEEEEEE.......

Here's the other part of the picture.......

You can see how I reused some of these paintings in my current family room.

It's hard to see, but the walls have been wallpapered in an Osborne and Little paisley wallpaper in shades of cream and brown. It was very subtle, but added an extra degree of visual warmth to the space.

The needle point pillows of a pug, front and back view, were one of those needlepoint kits I got that is supposed to be made into a pillow the shape of a dog. HOWEVER.....I thought I would be very clever, and needle point the whole square and create a background for the dogs. This way I got two pillows out of one kit!!!!!

Oh boy!!!! Here's another blurry picture of the back of the pug.

Ya see, he's sitting looking at the ocean, with the hills at his back!!!!

I really need to find something else to occupy my mind.

Here's a shot looking in from the hall. God, I loved this room (and this house, I still miss it.) The lampshade is an old wooden lampshade frame I found with rotting fabric, so I replaced the fabric and added the criss crossing ribbons, and then stuck some old Victorian postcards that June lent me under the ribbons. I never gave the cards back to June. She finally accepted that I was a thief. I think she wrote them off on her 1995 income tax return as a lose due to theft.

O.K. I think that's everything I have on my old living room. Next up!!!! The dining room.

Betsy