Antique Shopping in Belgium

I was so excited to be able to shop an antique fair in Tongeren, Belgium while visiting Europe in April. Unfortunately there was no shipping service available while we were there so anything that I bought had to fit in my suitcase. Luckily I was able to find a few treasures to bring home. We loved all of the Delft ware and found this little spice canister to purchase. It is only about five inches tall. The man who was selling these vintage tiles tried to make us a good deal for a whole box...

The Antique Fair in Tongeren, Belgium

On our trip to Europe this past spring I only had one “must do” on the itinerary: the Tongeren antique fair. For the past 35 years the Tongeren antique fair has been held on Sunday mornings so we had to arrange our schedule to be there on Saturday night for Sunday morning. This presented a challenge but we were able to manage it. On our travel day we left Amsterdam by train and headed to Brussels with a brief stop in Antwerp. I’ll cover those in another post. From Brussels we took the train to Tongeren...

Top 10 Ways to Eat Fresh Tomatoes

Summer is upon us and my family is enjoying the bounty of fresh tomatoes.  We don’t have a garden but we are blessed to have friends and co-workers who share with us. Actually, I don’t eat tomatoes unless they are fresh.  Grocery store tomatoes have no appeal to me. Have you seen Jane and Leo’s garden at Cottage at the Crossroads? You really need to see it.  It is absolutely beautiful and just look at all of those tomatoes! They have enough tomatoes to supply their whole community!...

Updating the Guest Room

For a while I have wanted to add a little more color to the guest room at our summer cottage and recently I was able to do just that.  I had seen a “bed in bag” at a local department store and decided to think about it.  While I was thinking about it, I received some reward bucks from said department store and as I was strolling through the store I just happened to notice that the bedding I was thinking about was reduced to half price and it just happened to be almost the exact price as...

Adding a Pantry to the Refrigerator Cabinet

I recently marked another project off of my to-do list. I added a pull-out pantry to both sides of the refrigerator cabinet at our summer cottage. I had to figure it out as I went along and made several trips to the store to fine tune the hardware but I got it done and am so glad that it is behind me. It adds a considerable amount of storage in an otherwise unused space. Big disclaimer here: this was not my original idea. I saw one at my friend’s house that was built into her custom cabinetry and...