Italian Curio Cabinet

I am always on the hunt for neat looking furniture on the cheap, whether it's an antique or flea find, something from Bookoo or Craigslist or even a Facebook yardsale page.  Well, I happened to find Facebook gold!  There are a few local Facebook pages that I peruse and with so many people coming and going in our area, there is always something that needs to be quickly purged before a move.

I was lucky enough to find this Italian curio cabinet from a couple that was downsizing because they were moving.  They said that this cabinet was custom made from Italy when they had visited on a trip and had it delivered to Germany.  Their loss, my gain because I was absolutely enamored when I saw the Baroque style cabinet.



Now when I looked on FB, I had noticed that this cabinet had been available for weeks!  And the price had even gone down.  Someone had even stated that they were taking it, but following the conversation, I didn't see a SOLD comment so I had decided to express interest.  


Lo and behold, it was indeed available and for a decent price!  I surely thought, this would be wayyy more expensive and I'm sure it retails at much more.




I was so excited, but as with most furniture purchases I am interested in, there is always the question of "How am I going to get it to my house?"  I don't own a truck, just a small SUV which is great for most of my flea excursions but not a 6 ft. tall cabinet.  So kind of giving up, I asked if they could deliver, not expecting a "yes" based on past experiences.  But to my surprise they did say "yes."


They just had to find someone with a truck as well...But a few days later, I came home from work and it was there!  Brandon had off from work and he waited for the cabinet and even filled it with some of our things that we didn't really have a good place for like our wedding photos, nick nacks, and the black and clear crystal from Iraq.







Below you can see the detail of the crackle paint and the beautiful pastel colors of pink, green, and blue accented with gold!






The beautiful key to lock the cabinet.






Inside you can see the detail of the gold etching and rope cording that aligns the inside.







I'm so happy to find this FB score!  The only thing that I am a little unsure about is the bright yellow color of the background.  I think it's kind of distracting and was thinking about painting it an off white color (even Brandon mentioned something about the color).


So what do you all think?  Should I keep the yellow background color or would it benefit from a paint job?








Also, this is the last day for my GFC follows to move my blog to BLOGLOVIN.  New followers can also find me on Bloglovin.  It's a great way to read all your blogs in one place!




Linking up at:

Twigg Studios
Dagmar Bleasdale
Ivy and Elephants
No Minimalist Here
Mom on Time Out
Rooted in Thyme
Common Ground
Feathered Nest Friday
The Brambleberry Cottage
Romantic Home
Finding Fabulous
The Tablescaper
Back 2 Basic Health
Sunday View
Dwellings
Coastal Charm
The Dedicated House
A Stroll Thru Life
Knick of Time Interiors
Kathe With An E
Back 2 Basic Health
Hickory Trail
Savvy Southern Style
God's Growing Garden
From My Front Porch To Yours
Her & Nicole
The Shabby Creek Cottage
The Self Sufficient Home Acre
The Thrifty Groove
Hairspray & High Heels
Serenity Now
Plucky's Second Thought




Posted by
29 comments

Monthly Inspiration: Outdoor Furniture

June's inspiration post is all about outdoor furniture.  It's a little late in the month, but I'm finally done with my cruise postings.  I've chosen a lot of different outdoor furniture and my favorites are the ones that are unexpected and simple.  I chose many different styles to feature and you're going to have to let me know what styles you like best!  Here are my finds from around the web.




I think for outdoor furniture there needs to be a minimalist mentality or else it will just look like you have a bunch of crap in your yard.  There are so many simple pieces of outdoor furniture that will make your yard or porch POP!

How fun does this hanging NestRest look?

Hammocks!  I want one of these in my yard one day.  A cute one.  My yard is too small right now, but how cool do these look?

boho hammock



shabby hammock


No trees? No problem.

beach hammock


Great color!  I'm very into tangerine right now.  It's a nice summer color and I also love dainty outdoor furniture.  (The type of furniture that looks like it will snap easily after sitting lol)




If you don't like sitting on metal or wooden furniture, I found this website that sells a range of crazy colored outdoor seat cushions.  Looking closer, you could also probably make your own!



Check out this chippy painted wooden table and chairs
.  



Outdoor furniture can mean porch furniture.  And this swinging porch bed looks really comfortable and modern.  Would take a lot to keep clean in white though.




I love fire pits so I had to include this pic.  How cozy! You could sit and roast marshmallows in style.




I had to include this little remade shed that looks like a little club house.  Maybe it's the kid in me that has  always wanted an awesome tree house like the one in the movie "Now and Then."  




Calling all Pottery Barn lovers.  Look at this 4th of July decked out outdoor furniture set!  This is awesome and so festive.  You could spruce up your current outdoor set with some festive homemade pillows or buy this:




And don't forget my inspiration for outdoor furniture with my Garden Furniture and Spread post.  I feature my recent dainty outdoor set purchase.






So many good inspirations I found all over the web.  And they are all so different.  What is your favorite outdoor furniture style mentioned above?









Also, GFC followers and those wanting to follow my blog should do so through BLOGLOVIN.  You have a few more days left before July 1 (when Google Reader goes away).



Sources:
pic 1: gardenhousedecor.net
pic 2: houzz.com
pic 3: artrick-playground.com
pic 4: indulgy.com
pic 5: link n/a
pic 6: casasugar.com
pic 7: grandinroad.com
pic 8: apartmenttherapy.com
pic 9: hangingporchbeds.com
pic 10: link n/a
pic 11: link n/a
pic 12: potterybarn.com
pic 13: therococoroamer.blogspot.com



Linking up at:

Twigg Studios
Front My Front Porch To Yours
Dwellings
The Dedicated House
A Stroll Thru Life
Stone Cottage Adventures
Savvy Southern Style
Dagmar Bleasdale
Ivy and Elephants
No Minimalist Here
The Shabby Creek Cottage
Mom on Time Out
Rooted in Thyme
French Country Cottage (fun in the sun)
Common Ground
French Country Cottage (feathered nest friday)
The Brambleberry Cottage
My Romantic Home
Finding Fabulous
Miss Mustard Seed
Serenity Now
Ready to Waltz
The Tablescaper
Sunday View
Coastal Charm
Knick of Time Interiors
Kathe With An E
Hickory Trail




Posted by
27 comments

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Dubrovnik, Croatia (Last Stop on the Cruise):

I knew little about Croatia and also hadn't heard much about it either before I had booked the cruise, but I was very excited to see this place.  I'm excited to tell you about Croatia because it was my favorite stop on the cruise and it also happens to be the last stop.






Dubrovnik is beautiful.  As we were pulling up to the port from our tender I snapped some photos.  You can see that Dubrovnik is a fortified city.  It's different from our Italy and Greece stops and it was a lot of fun to visit even though we, once again only had a short time ashore.








Our other awesome dinner table friend was originally from Croatia so she was telling us all about how beautiful Croatia was (shoutout!).  She didn't have to do much convincing.






This is what the walled city looked like.  It wasn't very big as you can see, but pretty awesome nonetheless.  It was lined with little tourist shops.  It was very hot so we stopped to get some gelato.  I told you about how good the gelato was in Bari, but wow.  The gelato in Dubrovnik was the best I've ever had.   It almost tasted like custard.  Definitely try it if you ever go there.







It didn't take long to walk through the city and it was so nice out that we wanted to see if we could find another beach.  We were suppose to go sea kayaking, but Costa had cancelled it due to "lack of interest." But as soon as you leave the city walls there are friendly people offering info on how to go.  We would have done it, but didn't have enough time.  So with some advice, we walked towards the nearest beach which was right around the corner from the city center.





I snapped pictures of the beautiful surroundings on the walk to the beach.






 




The beach was actually prettier than Corfu's beach, but smaller.  The water was clearer.  It was definitely a lot colder though so I didn't go in, I just layed out and enjoyed the rest of our day.






While we were in the city center I also had picked up a few food items to try out.  I bought some local wild flower honey, which is so good.  Some local oil that I have been putting on all my salads.  I may need to special order it that's how good it is.  And I also bought some of the local treats.  It is sugared orange peels, dates, and jelly.  I didn't even know you could eat the peel!





I had a perfect day in Dubrovnik and I do want to go back to Croatia for sure!

With this being the last stop on our honeymoon cruise I do want to mention that while I loved the ports we went to, I probably wouldn't go on a Costa cruise again.  The time on the ports was just way to short for me and that was a huge factor for us.

I hope you enjoyed following our trip and thanks for reading for the ones who have been following along!


Favorite Think About Croatia:
Everything!  Go to Croatia, you won't regret it.




Posted by
31 comments

Corfu, Greece

Corfu, Greece (Stop #6 on the Cruise):


The Corfu post will be short and sweet and the reason is because we finally got our beach day!  We again had limited time ashore and we had a clear directive; get to a beach.  So we shared a cab with our new dinner table friends from Oklahoma, (shoutout)!  And we asked the cab driver to take us to the BEST BEACH in Corfu.  He took us to Kontogialos Beach which was about 20 mintues away (speedy driver alert).
He was very nice and talkative and interested in where we come from.  The cab ride was very expensive, but he took us down the side of a cliff where we witnessed views of the beach as we were driving down.  We had arrived!





Our visions of sandy beaches and crystal clear waters had come true and we hopped in at once.  Brandon and our friends ate some seaside swordfish steak also.  This wasn't a nude beach per se, but there were a couple of boobs.

We spent the rest of the day sunbathing!


Here are also some pictures of what Corfu looked like as we sailed towards the port.











Favorite Thing About Corfu:
Go to the beach in Corfu!



Last Stop: Dubrovnik, Croatia




Are you a beach person or a sites person?





Linking up at:


Posted by
16 comments

Santorini, Greece

Santorini, Greece (Stop #5 on the Cruise):


I am so excited to tell you all about Santorini, because this was my second favorite stop on the cruise.  Despite the fact that there was no sun out and I only had 2 hours to make my way around Santorini, it was so beautiful that it didn't matter and you are about see why!







We had to take a smaller boat from the cruise ship to the shore.  These are the cliffside houses in blue and yellow, but as you are about to see, the city is whitewashed.  It's so pretty!





There's our ship, the Costa Magica, Italian cruiseline.  And yes it's sister ship crashed the year before, it's okay we are fine.







So obviously we had to get from the bottom of the cliff to the town above.  There were three ways to get to the top.  1) Cable car 2) Walking up the path 3) Donkey.  I wasn't about to get on a donkey and I wasn't about to hike up that cliff in flip flops which seemed to me a 90 degree angle.  So we took the cable cars which was a scary experience in itself.







So this is what I saw at the top.  The tourist area of town looked pretty neat and like I said all the buildings were white.  I wondered if they had to paint them all the time and I actually did see someone with a paint roller that had answered my question.  But with Costa's ridiculous schedule of only allowing us 2-3 hours on port and the time it took to wait to get off the ship and get on a boat and go ashore then get to the top of the cliff, we only had time to panic. 






But seriously, I wanted to do a beach day before we finished our cruise and we are in Greece after all.  So we hailed a 20 minitue cab ride to Perissa Beach.  With the beautiful black sands and multicolored rocks, it was like no beach that I had ever seen.  But it wasn't "beach weather"  boooo!  So no one was on the beach or in the water.  We decided to lay out for about 15 minutes, just to pretend. 






The black sands are from the town Volcano which had last erupted in the 50's.  There were also volcano hiking tours that you can take.  We actually signed up for that but Costa cancelled it due to "lack of interest."  But really with the crazy schedule, there was not time.








Then we decided, what the hell, let's eat some Greek food! 

Some Greek coffee.





On the cab ride down, we had asked the driver what good foods Santorini was known for.  He said to try the local tomatoes.  I ordered tzatziki with tomatoes and cucumbers and pita bread.  Let me tell you, those were the best tomatoes I've ever had.  And I am picky about them if they are too soggy.  Don't let the modest spread fool you, I also had stuffed tomatoes and peppers and Brandon had a meat dish of course.  And he tried some of the Greek beer, Mythos!  Everything was so good!







So after enjoying our meal, we realized we needed to get back to the ship or we would miss it!  From here on is where the panic ensued.  We got another cab ride back and isn't the scenery gorgeous?






After we made it back to the port of Fira, we ran through the town to get to the cable cars.  No way, we were getting on those, the line had like a hundred people in it.   Don't they know we have a ship to board?  Our only other options were of course hopping on a smelly donkey or hauling ass down that cliff.  So we hauled ass down that cliff.  I really didn't want to to get kicked or bitten.  We had 20 minutes to make it to the last tender so we had to run. 






This is what we saw as we were literally running down the cliff.  We had to dodge crazy donkeys, their  poop, and their owners asking us to "take a donkey ride."   "No thanks mister, we don't have time!" 






Running down this cliff in panic mode was the funniest part of our trip.  What's this guy doing with his hind legs?






We made it to the bottom.  But it wasn't all in vain.  We made our tender, I got a leg workout like you wouldn't believe, and I shot this great picture on the way down:








So if you have more time in Santorini, I'd suggest that you go to the village of Oia, where you can see the pretty whitewashed village.  It looks like this: 








Favorite thing about Santorini:
Hands down are the views of the whitewashed cliffside villages.




Next Stop:  Corfu, Greece




Would you rather visit more places on a cruise with less time ashore or visit less places with more time ashore?







Linking up at:

Sunday View 
Mom on Time Out
Common Ground
Dwellings
Coastal Charm
A Stroll Thru Life
The Dedicated House
Kathe With An E
Vintage Zest
Stone Cottage Adventures
Hickory Trail
From My Front Porch To Yours
No Minimalist Here
The Brambleberry Cottage
Rooted in Thyme
The Tablescaper
Serenity Now
Budget Travelers Sandbox
Kisses and Croissants









Posted by
15 comments