DEBBIE-DABBLE BLOG

I am a Victorian Soul, who lives in a small townhouse that was built in the mid 1970's, not a huge Mega Mansion!! I just recently lost my Hubby Joe, who was a Retired Letter Carrier. I worked night shift as an RN on a Hospital based Rehabilitation( Physical Medicine) Unit for 37 years before I had Knee Replacement Surgery and officially Retired in 2019 after 41 years working in Direct Patient Care ... I am so glad that we retired at 62 years of age and got to spend that time together before he passed....I still do love Retirement!!!!

I DABBLE IN A BIT OF THIS AND THAT!!!!

" IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO BE WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN"
George Eliot

George Eliot was actually a pen name for a woman named Mary Anne Evans......

BLOGGING FOR FUN AND FRIENDSHIP!!!!!!

Monday, August 17, 2026

Fairy Garden Mantel & Hidden Storage, Sitting Room, 2026

Welcome to Debbie-Dabble Blog!!

I am so happy you decided to stop by!!

Blogging has always been a stress reliever for me along with an avenue to share my passions which are my home and my garden.....

I feel it is a personal Journal that, hopefully, someday, my Twin Granddaughters will be able to look back on to learn about who I was....

I will be posting 3 times a week on MONDAYS, THURSDAYS and SATURDAYS....

As always, click on each picture if you would like to enlarge it....

PINTEREST

If you would like to Pin my pictures, please click on them to enlarge them to do so....

A NOTE ABOUT COMMENTS

I enjoy reading your comments and will return the favor by visiting and commenting on your blog or reply to you directly here if you do not have a blog but I do have my comment section set to Moderation due to spammers and hackers so your comment will not appear immediately...

And since I have a very busy life, like most of us do, it may take me awhile to return your comments but I promise I will....

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In my last post, I shared how I decorated my Dining Room in a Tea Room theme for the Summer.....

Click HERE if you missed that post!!

And now for a few Personal Notes...

For the New Year, I am trying something different with my 3 times weekly posts....

On THURSDAYS, I will feature what I cooked and ate during the week, showcasing local cuisine and a few recipes for things that I actually made...

I decided that on SATURDAYS, I will showcase What I Have Been Up To in the past week, sharing events and places I went to, if any....

On MONDAYS, I will be featuring What I Have Bought or Been Gifted Recently, if anything...

It is Monday so what have I bought lately???

I went to a local church flea market, the one that I donated a ton of craft supplies to, and bought these 2 beauties for $1.50 each!

I will be using them in my Christmas/Winter decorating...

I was happy to see that when I went around 1pm, almost all the craft supplies I donated were gone!!

I hope those that bought them do great things with them....

Well, today's post is a long time coming!!

The last time I shared my upstairs Sitting Room decorating in a Garden theme for Spring/Summer was in 2023.....

After my husband Joe passed away in April 2024, I just could not manage to get to taking down the Christmas decorations in this room and in my craft room....

I guess it was some sort of a mental block for what reason, I can not tell you....

But I finally managed to attack this room, packing away all of Christmas and re-decorating it in a Garden theme....

This is the garden wreath that I made many years ago for the door to the room.....

Excuse the marks on the door, which I can not get off, as they are from tape my son Jim had on the door as this was his bedroom....

I used seed packets, bird's nests, garden gloves and a Dollar Tree sign in the center.........

I hung this shovel, bought in Ollies, from the bottom of the wreath.....

Today, I will be sharing my faux fire place decorated in a Fairy Garden theme.....

This was a piece of furniture that Joe and I pulled out of my MIL neighbor's home that they were going to throw out!

I believe it was a Martini Bar but I immediately saw a fire place!!!

I removed 2 of the doors in the center, painted it white, added some wood details to it and painted the center area black....

I covered a board with floor tiles for the hearth....

This is what it looked like for Christmas this year....

And this is what it looks like now.....

When my son Jim moved out, I painted this room yellow and added a pretty floral wall paper border.....

It originally had Jim's single bed in it but we got rid of that and replaced it with a nice rocker/recliner...

We will look at the "mantel" first.....

On the wall.....

Almost everything on this wall and in this room for that matter was thrifted.....

On the left side....

A vintage hand mirror.....

Home Interiors gold leaves with pink butterfly clip ornaments attached to them....

The sconces and mirror was also thrifted and spray painted white....

On the right side......

This vintage plate was gifted to my Mother when she turned 16 years old by a beloved Aunt...

I had many of these pieces out in my garden, set up in a galvanized tub, originally but decided to move them inside.....

I used these pieces of wood, that were cut from one of the trees in my back yard, and I coated them with polyurethane, as risers....

On the left side....

I used crystal cake stands for elevation on each side.....

I forgot to put batteries in the branch trees.....

My maternal grandmother made the embroidered scarf....

The center.....

On a wood pedestal.....

I bought the tea cup at big Lot's several years ago...

I used vintage linens throughout the display....

Colored flower lights and fairy lights light everything up....

On the right side.....

On another crystal pedestal.....

Now let's take a look at the hearth area....

I hung a Dollar Tree truck and 2 ornaments from the knobs....

I placed a large white lantern inside....

A fairy on top of it....

A seed packet ornament hangs from the center knob....

Inside the lantern....

In a tea cup with some fairies on it....

2 garden plaques from Dollar Tree hang on each side.....

In front is a teddy bear tea....

Joe gifted me these bears...

I spray painted the wicker set pink....

So what is behind the doors that I left on this odd piece of furniture......

All of my decorating magazines that I collected over 45+ years!!!

I know what you are thinking and fear not, this is another project that I will be tackling.....

Going through them all and deciding what I will keep and what will be passed on.....

In the center area, which I think was for glassware and when pulled down, could be used as a bar.....

Is where I store photo albums that are only important to me....

Meaning that when I am gone, my sons can throw these out as there are no pictures of them in them....

That was part of a huge photo storage project I did a few years ago.....

Hopefully, when this Summer starts to cool down a bit, I will be sitting in here going through all those magazines!!

I do have a large oscillating fan in here that blows directly on the rocker/ recliner chair where I sit...

The window is too small to fit an air conditioner in without popping the window out first which involves crawling up on the roof of the den to hang on to the air conditioner when doing so....

So finally, that is what my faux fireplace looks like now!!

I will be decorating it for Christmas again in October as I start the upstairs Christmas decorating first....

I hope you will stop by to visit again on THURSDAY when I will be continuing my tour of the Sitting Room decorated in a Garden theme for the Summer.....

Stay safe, healthy and most of all, HAPPY!!

And try to find JOY in every single day!

Thanks to those who took the time out of their busy day to spend a little bit of time with me!!

If you do not have a blog, PLEASE give me some way to reply to your comment, maybe by including your email in your comment. If I can not find a way to reach you, I will reply on the post where you commented so please check back......