Country Style Kitchens 2013 Decorating Ideas

A country style kitchen is warm, cozy and inviting. It's evocative of a country setting.
The furnishings and decor remind you of the countryside, the outdoors and the gathering of people. Because of its welcoming ambiance, it's currently a popular kitchen style. Always comfortable, it's usually large (although smaller country kitchens work as well).
Decorating a country kitchen involves the selection of furnishings, walls, flooring, windows and accessories.

These English country style kitchen sets from County Kitchen predominantly reflect a traditional style but not without a modern twist on tradition.
I hope you like this collection .....  enjoy it ...!

Country Style Bedrooms 2013 Decorating Ideas

Country Bedroom Style: A Cozy and Welcoming Trend Country bedroom style has a timeless appeal that can be adapted to almost any home.

Here a few points about country bedroom style are given: 

Country style bedroom has become one of the popular styles of the today market due to its casual and modest appeal.
The country bedroom furniture style offers a blend of rustic and romantic flavor with graceful curves.
The furniture used for country style gives you an everlasting pleasure including detailing, molding, and the artful use of woods in each frame, nightstand, armoire and dresser.
For a breathtaking look, you can use plain sheer curtains or print or checked drapes.
If you really want to compliment your country style, then try pieces with pine stain or a painted finish.
Plain overhead lighting with bedside table lamps looks interesting in country style bedroom.
You can try paint with wallpaper borders on the walls for a unique country style.

 If you are a fan of country cottages, you are going to love this. Drool at these carefully crafted country inspired bedrooms with rustic flowing details and old cottage charm.

2013 Country Living Room Decorating Ideas from BHG

A living room decorated in a country theme can be warm and inviting. You don't need to live out in the sticks to benefit from a roaring log fire, rustic furniture and nature based decor. 

Country themed living rooms can be cost effective to produce, while being fun to design and put together. Gathering country cottage style furniture and decorations is a rewarding project. 

Get inspired by this ideas . I hope that you will find it useful for you ... Enjoy it !!

This sunroom turned kid space is perfectly equipped for endless days of fun A small table in the center of the room can be used as a spot to play games and make crafts. A row of store bought cubbyhole shelves below one wall of windows offers plenty of storage space for kid friendly activities without interrupting the views to the outside.

This neutral living space looks anything but boring thanks to accessories featuring a blend of natural fibers and textures. A woven area rug adds warmth underfoot, while the rough cut stone fireplace surround adds contrast to white beaded-board walls.

Against a backdrop of imperfect plank siding walls and doorways outfitted with sliding barn doors, furnishings with more refined fabrics and finishes let comfort coexist with current design to create an everyday living room.

Amidst vintage wingback chairs and antique European accessories, a wicker crate mounted on wheels and repurposed as a charming coffee table reinforces that this is still the living room of a young, active family where casual elegance presides.

A comfortable sofa with an attached chaise lounge offers the perfect solution for incorporating plentiful seating in this small farmhouse family room with generous windows. Beamed ceilings and a burlap covered and antique wire light fixture keep in step with the room's farmhouse aesthetic.

A blend of character filled antiques, charming flea market finds, and everyday basics outfits this comfortable living room with French flair.

Grounded by reclaimed French terra cotta floor tiles and crowned by rustic beams, this sitting area exudes a gathered over time sensibility. The daybed is bracketed by newly built side rails that have been antiqued; the side chair is slipcovered in Belgian linen.

Small homes require a bit of creative thinking when it comes to carving out space. In this tiny living room, the homeowners created an office area by outfitting an unused closet with a built in desk and shelving. Concealing the workspace for visitors is as simple as closing the closet doors. 

A rug defines the seating area in the living room, which is tightly drawn together for easy conversation.

Offset the mellow stone walls and warm brick of a country inglenook fireplace with a cool Scandinavian colour palette of off-whites and blues. The antique Chesterfield sofa is covered in vintage Hungarian grain sacks.

Give your living room a taste of the good life with farmyard-inspired furnishings. Look out for animal-motif fabrics, put up pictures of your favourite pig breeds and pick up on the retro angle with a polka-dot throw and striped rug.

Just Sittin' Here Daydreaming

One of the things I love most about this mission for my Church is just being able to sit here taking calls while I blog! I'm so loving this. We all need to serve in some way and this is my small way in helping people.

Having been the highest paid woman in a very top Fortune 500 company, you would think this is beneath my capabilities. Noooo, it is not! When we serve our fellow man we are serving our God. I know it's hard to believe someone so humorous—ME—can be very religious, but I think God loves humor. After all, he gave us teenagers, didn't he? *Smirk*

Today, I give you more photos of English kitchens, which are very homey. I love the look of them and the coziness they exude. Isn't this window arrangement just lovely? I like the cheerfulness it brings.

I am a big devotee of mismatched chairs.

These next two photos are the same kitchen if you can believe it, huge by my standards, but just scrumptious.

I have a pantry but nothing near what this larder is.

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A group of us women had lunch together a couple of weeks ago and the subject of sociopaths came up. Yes, I know, it's a strange subject to come up but I had a question about something else—narcissism—and that segued right into sociopaths. One of my friends is a licensed psychologist so she was more than willing to answer a question. So I told them my first experience with a sociopath—and hopefully, my last!

Our decision to move to Idaho was a fluke caused by the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco. We arrived here and bought a small business and retained the one employee of that existing business. (This was a total lifestyle change for us, trust me.) That woman was the best salesperson I'd ever seen. If someone walked through the door, it was rare that she would not get the sale. She was that good. The problem was she was a sociopath as I found out later.

She never had access to our finances but she got around that in other ways. One was giving our product away at our cost. She apologized and we lost a great deal of money, but she was our employee so we bit the dust on that one.

Then she would lie and tell people in that small town that we were doing things we were absolutely not doing. She could look right at you and lie and you'd believe her before me. It was truly mind boggling. But she was so believable that it almost destroyed our reputation. Come to find out she had been in prison for embezzlement. Then one day the Secret Service showed up and asked us about her! She had been using a credit card belonging to a friend of hers in another state. That is a federal crime. Talk about shocked. While this woman wasn't a very attractive lady, if she had fixed herself up and dressed more stylish, she could have been a millionaire in selling.

At that time a new friend, whose husband was a psychologist, (Why have most of my friends or their husbands been in the mental health field?) and I were talking while sitting at a park one day and I told her the story. That's when I found out about sociopaths. She told me that's what sociopaths do. They have absolutely no conscience of right or wrong. It certainly enlightened me and I am much more guarded around people now. Our church excommunicated her and the leaders came to me and hubby and talked about it but we assured them she didn't have access to our finances. But it is kind of sad when someone with such a skill as selling does things like that when they could be so successful honestly.
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Just a few Random Thoughts for today:

Embarrassing moment: The other day I was on Skype with another missionary who was helping to train me doing this mission. I hadn't even combed my hair that morning as I wear a headset when sitting here taking the calls. I started picking my nose and several minutes later I realized we were on video chat! Talk about embarrassing. So be careful when you are skyping with someone. I have my preferences set so no one can video me without me clicking on Video. I screwed up that day for sure. I didn't know what to say. Deer in the headlights?! So quiet I could hear my brain cells dividing?! Yep, all of the above.
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Am I perfect because I'm a Christian? Nuuuuu, I am as imperfect as people come. I don't dance with the devil but he sure signs my dance card frequently!
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Next time I think I'll talk about padded bras.
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Pink Saturday 1/7/2012 English Country Rooms

Happy Pink Saturday once again and thanks to Beverly for hosting it. Visit all that you can or at least one new one you've never visited before. Have fun!

Click on the logo below to see what it's all about.
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Here I've shown some scenes from English country life. I love England and the British Isles, but I wouldn't want to live there. I love my country, as I'm sure the British do, but home is home. I can not even imagine living anywhere else in the world. Too much is romanticized about living abroad, but that's all it is: romanticized. Having visited other countries I do have knowledge of them, plus we have family members who came here from other countries. They risked much to get here and have become U.S. citizens. They tell me other countries, especially where they are from, would give all they could to come here. So be careful what you wish for, sweet bloggers.

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Random Thoughts:

Over on her blog, Claudia has been blogging about the English language used today, and I'm definitely with her on this one. But I have one more thing I hear a lot in conversations and that is: there's. When speaking there's is singular; plural would be there're or there is and there are. I majored in English so trust me on this one. Example: There's the men of the organization coming towards us. Incorrect. It should be: There're the men of the organization coming towards us. Men is plural. Okay, I'm OCD about proper English, but a nation that can't speak well because they aren't taught well and aren't corrected when wrong because someone is afraid of hurting their self-esteem, shows its ignorance. And that brings up the proper use of its and it's.

It's is a contraction for it is. Its refers to possession. The bird was preening its feathers. It's the bird that is preening its feathers. Get it. You will be thought of as well-spoken if you master this one and a few other very, very common English errors. Speaking well shows knowledge and intelligence.

Oh, and anyone reading this has my permission to use this in your blogs. Please! We must be better educated with our native language. Help me to get the word out.
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Love bunny and I go to restaurants at least twice a week. (Read previous post for why.) A restaurant is a place to eat. Their goal is to make good food, have happy customers and make money. Okay, for those of you out there that have a problem with people and/or businesses making money, let me ask you: What would you have a business for? Making money, right? Yes!! Okay, with that being said, the restaurants aim would be to make you happy so you'll come back. If you don't see something on the menu that you'd like, then ask if they can fix something for you that you'd prefer. A good restaurant will try and most will be happy to please you. Trust me on this one also.

Recently at Applebee's we noticed they had taken 2 of our favorites off their menu. Mine was Asiago Peppercorn Steak. I LOVE that! Voilà, I now order it though it is not on the menu. Problem solved or I would have gone elsewhere. I'm an assertive woman who usually gets what I want, being gracious and smiling, of course. There's no reason to be rude...ever! I'll tell you about my letter to Olive Garden in a later post. ;-) Ooooh, and the apostrophe in Applebee's? It's because it's intended to show possession as in Applebee's Restaurant; we just shorten it. Besides, it's the way they spell it.
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More 24 and Jack Bauer.

It truly amazes me how many traitors get into CTU (counter terrorism unit). I hope that isn't true in our actual government; although, looking at it makes me wonder!
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I can't think of one instance where Jack Bauer has been wrong. Why don't they believe and trust him? Boggles my mind.
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Most spoken phrase: "It's imperative this stays between us." Then the man or woman turn on their heels and run to spread the news. Sheesh.
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Another popular phrase: "Everybody's losing it.
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Jack Bauer should be given a bill for everything he's destroyed. That man goes through some equipment!!
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They keep giving the traitors a gun.
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They are constantly on their cell phones, and they never go dead. I want their cell phones!!
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Tough guys don't have to act tough. Example: US Marines, my heroes!!!
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But all in all, I absolutely still love that show.
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Until next time...and there will be more. And if I've made any errors here it's because I'm too lazy to go back and read it again.
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Happy New Year 2012

This holiday season is officially over, but hubs and I both noticed that there was no big celebration on the news sites this year as in years past where they at least have the ball dropping in Times Square. I mean the internet sites since we have no television. It kind of fizzled out with a whimper. I wonder if it's the apathy or are people actually realizing the reason for this celebration or if it's just the mood of the country: tepid and/or frustrated with how things are going in general. I love this time of year but we just don't celebrate much and try to keep the spirit of the season. We don't have small kids at home though so it's very easy for us and I truly have everything I need and most of what I want. At any rate,

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE

Again, just look at the homes below without any descriptions from me. I'm too lazy to do it right now.

We went to the cinema today to see War Horse. A strange thing happened though.

We bought the tickets and actually splurged on popcorn and sodas for a total of $33.50. I thought it was outrageous but I wanted popcorn. Hubs "scrooged" a bit but he finally stopped complaining and got a soda, and I shared my popcorn with him. In 20 years we've only been to the movies about 5 times and 2 of those were free tickets from our home teachers in our ward. I'm not interested in movies much but I cannot understand how a family of 6 could even afford to go on a regular basis. With just popcorn and drinks it would easily be $100.00. Now I know why Netflix is so popular.

Anyway, we went into the theater for War Horse according to the ticket person and the marquee inside the theater. The movie started with several coming attractions, and by-the-way, the only one I would want to see is Mirror, Mirror with Julia Roberts, a take on Snow White with humor. Absolutely my kind of flick! Then what I think was a cartoon about self-esteem. Ooooh, puhleeze! How politically correct can we get? Then a muppet cartoon also. I thought it was kind of strange to list so many credits at the beginning of the cartoon, but after about 20 minutes, hubs said, "Give me the tickets." I did; he marched out, came back and said, "We're in the wrong theater!" It was a muppet movie. But we were so clueless as to cartoons and such that we actually thought it was a cartoon.

We got up and went to the cinema manager and told him what had happened. He said the movie we wanted to see was about 20 minutes into the story and we could go in. I said, "No, I want to see it from the start, so we'll come back at a different time." (I am NOT a wimp and very assertive—VERY!) He said that was fine so we elected to see it at the 6:30 time.

Bottom line: If you haven't seen War Horse, go! It was absolutely wonderful and a true family movie. No swearing, nudity, sex or anything that you wouldn't allow your kids to see. Just a great movie.

More in a few days. I have much to say lately.
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