A bouquet for a family

It's been raining cats and dogs here, it's really good because we need the rain so much.
Yesterday there was a break from the rain and I gathered these roses from the garden as part of our gifts for a family as we were invited over for dinner.
The Perfumed Perfections (purply/mauve ones) are showing off their colour and fragrance to the fullest at the moment, and since the lady of that family loves purple, I thought they would be perfect for her.
I mixed in peach and pink roses to make the bouquet more interesting and here are some photos to show you.
The joint forces of fragrances nearly knocked me out!

There's something special about the colour purple, especially on roses.

Here's the more peachy side..................

And here's the more purply side..............

I pulled out my little collection of heirloom doilies from my mum and started looking through them.

I keep them in those round boxes which used to be for cup and saucer sets.

Look, a purple crocheted doily, perfect!

It's still raining now as I write, I'd better go get some more roses in before the rain damages them.

We have company tonight.

Have a lovely lovely weekend, won't you? Bye for now.

Befores and Afters

Hi, dear friends, how are you doing? Hope you have a great start to the week.
Blogger was down from time to time last week and when it was back up, I lost some of your comments on the last post, even though I could still read them in my inbox. So if you left a comment and they are not in the last post, thanks for taking your precious time to leave the comments, it's always a pleasure for me to read them.
Today I want to share some BEFORE and AFTER photos from my file. We've been living in our house for 10 years now and over the years the decor has gone through quite a bit of tweaking and changes. There have been significant changes just in the living room alone. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. The upholstery was dark when the kids were little.

Before

After 1

After 2

Before

After 1

After 2

After 1

After 2

Before

After

Before (I couldn't find a before photo without Christmas decorations)

After 1

After 2

Now

Now

Wow! We've come a long way. I think everything looks and feels so much fresher and better after white paint, don't you?

Have a fantastic week, everyone.

Autumn Roses and some small changes

Autumn is a fantastic time of the year, I'm definitely enjoying it.
The English Roses in my garden have been giving me larger and better flowers that don't fade so quickly and beautiful heavenly scents that stay forever.(even when the petals are dried)

Whenever I see pictures of English Roses on other people's blogs, my heart still skips a beat!
Must be the old rose look, the beauty is so amazing.

These next three photos below were taken with the manual settings on my camera, I was experimenting.

I'm happy with all the different moods they display.

I made some small changes to the display on the little console table in our casual dining area, can you tell?

You probably won't rememeber, here's a BEFORE photo,

And here's the AFTER.

I painted the picture frame antique white, it was gold before, I added two ornate spoons which I got years ago and made a 3D framed art. I moved my French grey wire cloche and cake stand from another part of the room and placed a white teacup and saucer with some teaspoons in it. I used some old books to make the Patisserie sign I painted stand taller. The candlestick remains, you can't see clearly in the pictures, but it lends height to this little decor.

I also decorated this picture frame with four pate knives, it adds a punch of colours to the top of my kitchen bench.