AHHHHH Summer and Screened Porches!!

The heat has come to VA!!  Even though it is way too early for me, it still has a certain "feeling".  Memories of long summer days swimming and Peaches on the screened porch!!  In GA, where I hail from, screened porches were almost part of every house!  We lived out there in the summer, since we had no air conditioning, it was a place to visit with friends and spend a rainy afternoon reading!   I loved to sit out on the porch in the rain!  Our horse Lady Blaze even tried her best to get on the porch too:)
If we ever build a house I would like for it to have a sleeping porch.  Many old farmhouses had sleeping porches.
Our own un-farmhouses can easily have screened porches, in fact here in VA most houses have them!  Wicker Furniture and white ironstone seem to always be on our porch so you can imagine my Total Despair when I say that THIS Thurs, I will LOSE my screened porch!!!!!  My husband needs an office since he works from home a lot. SOOOOO we are going to enclose the screened porch for his office!!  We will try to find a place for another porch but so far it is not going that well!!  I don't want it to be in an awkward area so we are going to have to figure this out cause a Southern Girl without a place to sit and listen to the birds and have a glass of iced tea gets really GROUCHY !!:)  I sit on the porch almost everyday, maybe only for a few minutes,  I like to have lunch there and I used to paint out there too.  In fact I did most of my "creative" things out there:)  I have to go out and finish cleaning it off.  I had so many flower pots, bags of sand dirt and rocks!  I am going to try to find a place for a potting area so I don't have to do it on the porch! I don't know what to do with the furniture and ohhhh those adorable primitive mirrors!!  I am sure I will work it all out!
By the way I will pass on a recipe I love for "Sweet Tea" 
                               1 1/2 Cup Loose Tea
                               7 Cups boiling water
                               5 Cups Sugar
Steep the tea in boiling water for 7 minutes. Strain and add sugar.  Use 1 1/2 Cups of the concentrate to make on gallon of tea.  Syrup may be frozen. To make unsweetened tea use the same process and omit the sugar.
I usually separate out 1 1/2 cup portions and put it into a zip lock bag, lay it flat in the freezer to save space, then just take it out and place it into the gallon pitcher add water (that also helps it to thaw) a bunch of mint, and we are ready to go:)
I will keep the "saga" of Vicky's screened porch going.  I will really try to age this porch and pass it on.  If you have any advice please post it and let us  know! 
I hope you all have a Happy Day!!!
                                                                        

Spring and Rebirth!

Welcome to my Un-Farmhouse!!!!

What IS an Un-Farmhouse you ask?  Well that is what I call our vinyl clad house that was built in 1982!

Since childhood I have wanted an old Farmhouse somewhere in the Georgia country side or the North Georgia Mountains!!  Preferably an old Townhouse in downtown Atlanta AND and farmhouse in the Mountains!!!:)
After graduating from High school and 2 years of college I set out to search for my "Perfect" Farmhouse but instead I found a cute Marine!!  Off I went to CA then to Okinawa, VA, NC, RI and all over the place!  We moved 15 time in 20 years!  Luckily I loved moving because there was always a challenge to make it feel like our home.  We lived in Base housing and rental properties, naturally I didn't like any of them:)!! We would just throw all 4 kids, dogs, cats and plants into the cars take off to our next duty station!
In the 80s it was popular to use sheets or fabric to decorate our homes.  We would plaster them up with starch!!  Instant wall paper!!  It would then pull off with just a little tug!  Since I am more country than rock n roll I felt the need for tea stains and stencils!  Soooo I took muslin, tea stained it, cut it into strips and stenciled a border on it, slapped it up around the room and it was done! The best thing was that we could just take it off and use it in the next place!  Now we are retired in VA and NO Farmhouse!!!  So I have been on a mission to age the 1982 house!
This is how the un-farmhouse began!  I hope that you will like this blog and send your comments and techniques for "aging" and how they worked in your home!!
YAAAAAAY ...The first post for this new blog!  I plan to be inspired by ya'll and I hope to inspire some of you!
HERES TO UN-FARMHOUSES EVERYWHERE!!!