Antique Bed, Updates on Kitchen and New Camera and the Garden at Night and REALITY!

For Pink Saturday post, please click HERE

For those of you who had playlist on their blogs and switched, Playlist has reinstated the automatic start .
If anyone does not care for my music, please feel free to turn it off but it is just a facet of my personality that I want to share with you!!


What doesn't kill us will make us stronger....
read more at the end of this post!

Currently I have my mother's bedroom furniture in our bedroom. Before my Mom passed away, we had Joe's Maternal Grandfather's bed in our bedroom. I had it in storage @ my inlaw's home ,thinking that I would use it in my guest bedroom.

Now my guest bedroom is small so I opted to keep my son's single bed set up in there.

I did not want this bed to grow legs and walk away at my inlaw's so we decided to use it in our bedroom again.
But first, we needed a new mattress and boxspring. I am too embarrassed to say how old my current one is but I will tell you it is in the well in the double digits......

My new pillow top mattress will be delivered Monday.......

Here is the bed before we had it set up in our bedroom.....

The headboard.....

Love the baskets of flowers ......

The footboard......

Also a basket of flowers on the footboard.....

You may have noticed that it is a metal bed painted to look like wood. The first time we used it in our bedroom we could not fit the boxspring and mattress on it. People were shorter 125 years ago ( the estimated age of this bed). So we had to take the frame to a welder who added 6 inches to each side .

Now I know that many of you would paint this bed.

However, this was in Joe's family for many years and not to gross anyone out, Joe's Grandfather died in this bed. Remember I don't have that same mattress. LOL!
So I am going to leave it as is with all the scrapes and marks of it's age on it.

I will post pics soon of how it looks in our bedroom.....

Now this is my new camera....

A Kodak Easy Share.......


Now I know many of you have expensive cameras.

This is not one of those.....

This was $129 in Target and I am having fun discovering all it does. I think it is a great buy for that price!!

Here is an example of what it can do......

Here is a pic taken in color with a Nostalgic look....


Same scene in vivid color.....


Same scene in natural light.....


In Black and White.....


In Sepia tone.....


Now if you have read this blog only once or twice, you know that I am a lover of Victorian and Edwardian times.
So I went a little crazy with this Sepia tone feature....

Hutch in my Den....


In my Dining Rom.....



Hutch in my Living Room....

Okay, enough of that!

Then I went on to play with the Night Time feature......

The back yard at night....


The patio with flameless candles lit....


I do know that I have to hone my photography skills...

And now for Kitchen updates.....

I mentioned before that we had a new light fixture installed. I opted for a flouescent one and chose Sunshine Bulbs which are recommended for rooms with little natural light.

The light fixture was installed about a week and a half ago....

Joe and I have just been able to take our sun glasses off......

LOL!!

It is bright alright......

The caps are a brushed bronze antique look....

We are used to it now but after having track lights in the kitchen that cast the light downward, it was an adjustment.

It does provide a lot of light when working in the Kitchen which is great......

Here are some pics of the kitchen with the light on.....



Ooops! You can see that I was making tomato sandwiches by the tomato still on the counter!!


Now I still decided to keep all of my ambient lighting in the Kitchen as we do not have the bright light on all the time.

I remembered that I was not using this lamp and decided to get it out of the attic and change the lamp on my counter bar.

Here are some pics of my ambient lighting taken in the night time mode with my new camera.....



This is a wire tea cup basket filled with silk flower and little mini lights....


My candle lights on my shelves....


More Kitchen updates....

A vignette under the desk/hutch....


I used some of my vintage Kitchen utensils and cookie cutters with an old loaf pan to create this little arrangement in an old crock....


Remember that I had only decoupaged one rose from my wall paper border on the stools???
Well, at the suggestion of my online friend, Patty from Texas, I added more roses.....



You were right Patty!! I think they do look better with more.....

And Joe found these great red plastic bowls and cups on Clearance at target for 50% off .....99 cents each!!!


Now I want to talk a bit about REALITY.

Some bloggers have recently posted about the reality of their lives and have mentioned that as bloggers, we try to portray ourselves in the best way.

I think this is human nature.

BUT......

After working full time for 32 years and working with a host of all kinds of people, I have learned one thing!

Everyone has a story and those who portray the Perfect Life, the Perfect Family , the Perfect Children and who have the Perfect Home, are usually the ones who are hiding the most....

I have also read on another blog about someone being intimidated because of not having a big beautiful home like other bloggers.

Everyone is different and did you often think that life in some of those big beautiful homes are not as great as you think?????

I don't want anyone to ever be intimidated when they come to visit me here at Debbie-Dabble or A Debbie-Dabble Christmas, not that you would!!

I live in a simple little townhouse and I have had to work full time my entire married life.
Joe has only worked for the Post Office the last 14 years and worked in factories prior to that. We have gone through factory shut downs where at one time, he did not work for over 2 years. That was when I was pregnant with my second son and actually faked my 6 week check to return to work in 4 1/2 weeks because there was no money coming in. Then when he did find a job, it was minimum wage.

So our lives are not perfect nor is my family nor is my home.
But I am HAPPY ( my word for 2011) with what I have.

And if I may go on, I was reminded of my greatest Blessings of all just this week.

The gift of TIME!

On Tuesday morning at 9 am, I started experiencing right sided abdominal pain radiating to the back. Now one of my realities is that I have Post Gall Bladder Syndrome. Even though I had my Gall Bladder out 7 years ago, certain foods still cause me to have pain like I am having a Gall Bladder attack and sometimes, just cause me to have massive diarrhea. I know, not pretty but it is the reality of my life and why I can not travel much. I am on medication that helps the diarrhea but not always does it help.

Anyway, the pain usually goes away in about 8 hours but it was getting worse and the back pain was increasing. Back pain usually means something with the kidneys and the last time I had pain like that, was caused by Hydronephrosis. This is when the urine gets blocked up and fills the kidney. I had a tumor in my right ureter. Luckily, I had the pain, went to the ER and they found the tumor just as it had started. They were able to remove it and save my kidney and since it did not spread , I needed no chemo or radiation because it was Grade One Squamous Cell Carcinoma.

CANCER.....

I was now having a similar pain.....

So we went to the ER on Wed. morning....

Long story short, I had a severe Cystitis, urinary tract or bladder infection ,causing the pain. I was put on antibiotics and I am feeling better now.
CT scan of the abdomen showed that there was NOTHING growing in there...

AMEN!

Once again, I was reminded how 5 years ago, I was given the gift of TIME.

TIME to spend with my imperfect family , in my imperfect home and to go on leading my imperfect life!

And to me, TIME is all that matters and not the imperfections and that is what makes me HAPPY!!

As I said in the beginning of this post...

What doesn't kill us , will make us stronger!

And I am one strong person!!!!!!!!

So what is your REALITY???????

I am linking up to these great parties:

Table Top Tuesday

WOW Us Wednesday

Out Door Wednesday

Rednesday

Vintage Thingie Thursday

Cottage Flora Thursday

Show and Tell Friday

Home Sweet Home Friday

Thanks so much for stopping by today and every day that you take the time to do so!

Hugs,
Debbie