Happy Summer everyone! Today I am excited to be sharing my early summer decor as part of the  Summer Home Tours featuring 30 talented bloggers! A special “thank you” goes out to our talented host, Marty of A Stroll Thru Life for organizing this inspiring event. The tours have been fabulous this week, so if you you missed any of them be sure to check them out via the links at the end of this post. If you are coming over from White Arrows Home or if you just happened to stop by today, I am so happy to have you here!

 

Most all of my free time has been spent outside working on a new landscaping project in the backyard and enjoying my flowers and herbs, so I haven’t really fussed over the early summer interior decor too much. As a result of the pandemic and stores being closed, I have mainly had to rely on shopping my own home to find ways to use items I already had in new ways, which is my favorite way to decorate anyway. It forces me to be frugal and more creative at the same time. A few vintage finds from my stash, fresh flowers, and some new pillows were all that was needed to refresh our home for early summer.

 

 

Normally I would start a tour on our porch but it is still covered in pollen and not at all “blogworthy,” so here are some photos of last year’s French Cottage Garden Style Porch which I loved. We still have a week or so of dealing with the pollen before we we can clean and decorate the porch, but I will share an update as soon as it is finished up.

 

 

 

 

 

Today we are starting off in the music room which is right inside the front door and to the left. I have decorated it for summer with bright colors, fresh flowers and vintage finds.

 

 

 

The only new items I bought for summer were multi-colored tapestry pillow covers and a yellow velvet tufted round “pin tuck” pillow from Hobby Lobby (which just reopened last week.) I combined the pillows with my favorite olive green velvet pillows, and the combo looks oh so vintage.

 

I love the summery look of the pillows and all of the other bright colored treasures on the vintage lyre table. 

 

 

The beautiful flowers are a mix of an inexpensive grocery store bouquet which has been “doctored up” with flowers from my own garden. 

 

 

When I was shopping my vintage stash in the basement I found this gorgeous antique tole candleholder that I had forgotten all about. I don’t really have the wall space to hang it, but it is too beautiful to be hoarded away in a tote. I think it looks so pretty here on display in this vignette as an interesting piece of art.

 

 

I also came across this shabby yellow frame which was perfect for a photo of my grandmother Chloe, standing among the hollyhocks “in the hills of old Kentucky.”  She is about 16 years-old here. She turned 90 this year, and she is still so beautiful!

 

 

 

“In the Hills of Old Kentucky” (1928) was an unfamiliar song to me until I came across this vintage (almost antique) sheet music online. The beautiful cover was the inspiration for my summer music room decorating this year. It has an a cappella arrangement for men’s choir on the last page, which I think might be fun to try with my high school men’s select chorus for next year’s spring concert.

 

 

 

 

 

The cover image features a pretty young girl in a summer dress with a summer hat. This gave me the idea to display my collection of beautiful “Gibson Girl” vintage ladies and fashions pictures on the piano for summer, and to put the old photo of my grandmother in the yellow frame on the lyre table.

 

 

 

It is fitting for my grandmother’s photo to be on display in the music room, as she is full of musical talent! At age 90 she can still outplay me on the guitar any day, and she sings like a songbird. She suffers from mild dementia and every now and again she forgets exactly who I am, but we can always still play along and harmonize together. She never forgets her lyrics or misses her chords. She also has a green thumb and always grew the most beautiful roses in her gardens.

 

 

I love that the sheet music and the vintage pictures have so much blue in them which is perfect for summer decorating. Classic blue is was named the “color of the year” for 2020, but in reality, blue is timeless in decor.

 

 

A couple of these old pictures are fashion illustrations. Judging from the clues that the trees are fully green, the flowers are in full bloom and the ladies have sun parasols in one of the pictures, these elaborate (probably suffocating!) fashions were likely meant for summer!

 

For early summer I am really enjoying having these vintage finds on display that I hadn’t found a spot for until now. Next month as our beach vacation approaches I will change things up on the piano using vintage coastal treasures, similar to how I decorated last year.

 

 

 

 

 

It is so simple to change up piano vignettes using different vintage sheet music for the seasons and a few seasonal accessories.  Tucking in seasonal floral picks or greenery to my everyday ivory roses in the French shabby urn is another simple trick I use for inexpensive seasonal decorating.

 

For early summer I stuck some faux fern picks in with my ivory and sheet music roses bouquet to make it pop a little more. I just love ferns indoors and out for summer!

 

 

Moving on into the dining room, I used a large fern in a boho belly basket as a simple summer centerpiece. Even though my home is primarily decorated with vintage finds, I definitely like to add a few trendy pieces in the mix to keep things looking fresh and updated.

 

 

A small whitewashed dough bowl of lemons adds a bright pop of summer color, along with the fresh flower bouquet on the vintage chest of drawers in the background. Right now I am really enjoying this simple summer table setting which makes it easy to actually use our table! (Soon I will be pulling out all the stops for my Patriotic tablescape that I will share as part of the Patriotic Tablescapes Blog Hop on June 28th hosted by Celebrate and Decorate.)

 

 

 

No summer is complete in my home and garden without lots of lavender! My French market basket is filled with a large clearance lavender plant that just needs a bit of TLC for a few days before planting it out in my landscape. Vintage cottage garden style is my favorite decorating theme and I love bringing the outdoors in, especially for summer.

 

 

 

 

 

The beautiful sunshine pouring through the dining room windows around 5:00 every evening creates such a nice summer ambiance at dinner time.

 

 

I am so excited that I will have plenty of flowers to cut for bouquets all summer long in my new cottage garden in the backyard. The bouquet in the French urn is my first summer design using flowers from my garden.

 

 

This brightly colored coreopsis was a $1.00 end of season clearance plant that I salvaged last fall. It is glorious this year!

 

The key to arranging a vintage cottage style bouquet is to just let it be perfectly imperfect in design. I simply cut a variety of flowers and herbs and stuck them down in the urn wherever they would fit. No stress!

 

 

 

 

 

When I was picking flowers I also “picked” this rusty birdcage that had just been sitting in the garden for a couple of years. I brought it inside to use as a “cloche” for summer decorating. It may end up with a whitewash, but for now I am fine with the rusty patina. 

 

 

 

 

When I was doing some summer garage purging I came across another thrifted birdcage that I had forgotten about. I also brought it inside to put it in front of the fireplace for summer. It fits right in with the rest of the vintage cottage garden style elements in the living room.

 

 

Not much has changed from my spring living room since it was decorated with garden elements and green decor that transitioned easily into early summer. I simply used a few pops of blue and my favorite summery French script butterfly pillow to refresh the space a bit.

 

 

A simple neutral mantel display with my everyday French candle holders, vintage books, moss spheres and ironstone platters is updated for early summer with a glass demijohn filled with fresh hydrangeas from our garden.

 

 

 

 

 

With everything that is going on in the world right now and some chronic health struggles I have been facing for a few months, simplicity and cleanliness in our home seems more important than ever. Because I literally couldn’t go shopping for new junk and decor over the past few months, I learned that I didn’t have to rush out and buy a bunch of new things to decorate for a new season. It has been so liberating, and I have actually enjoyed our home more.

 

Our kitchen renovation is temporarily on hold due to the pandemic (we are having trouble getting the supplies we need.) Hopefully we will be able to get back to work on it soon and I will have a new kitchen to share with you on the fall home tour! Here is the last look at our kitchen from this vantage point. You can see that with the exception of the short cabinet under the window, we have already updated all of the cabinets by refacing them with new paint and trim, and we extended them to the ceiling with beautiful moldings. The short cabinet will be removed along with the window and the “Rae Dunn” cabinet. We will be building a 1920’s style bulter pantry/built in china cabinet in this spot. New countertops and my dream brick floor is the next order of business! 

 

Most every day has been spent outside in the garden since the whole lockdown began, and it is truly my favorite place to be right now.  Over the next few weeks there will be several posts about our backyard landscape transformation, so if you love gardening and before and afters, be sure to stop back by often or subscribe by email so you don’t miss a post.

 

I hope you have enjoyed my early summer home tour and seeing how I have refreshed our summer home with some of my flowers and vintage finds. If you are still looking for summer decorating inspiration, don’t forget to check out all of the other fantastic home tours below if you haven’t already.

Now I am off to do some more work in the garden! Thanks for visiting!

Amber

 

 *Affiliate links: see my full affiliate disclosure for details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Home Tours 2020 Line Up:

    A Stroll Thru Life  , Clean & Scentsible , Far Above Rubies ,  Remodelando La Casa ,  It All Started With Paint , Life On Virginia Street

Setting For Four, Duke Manor Farm, Decor To Adore. House By Hoff , Inspiration For Moms, Pink Peppermint Design

Modern Glam , Fox Hollow Cottage ,  Thrifty & Chic ,   11 Magnolia Lane ,   Grace In My Space ,

 Hymns & Verses 

Seeking Lavender Lane ,  StoneGable , Designing Vibes ,  CITIRINELIVING ,  Our Southern Home  ,  Southern State Of Mind 

 

The Woodgrain Cottage ,  Life On Cedar Lane,  Thistlewood Farms ,  White Arrows Home, Follow The Yellow Brick Home  

 

 

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