Happy Happy Nester

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Decorating with Antique Bottles

antique bottles are a huge part of our home decor!
my husband grew up in new england and as a boy he would tromp around in the woods looking for old homesteads. he would find what was left of an old cellar hole and then he would search for the homestead’s spot that would house their trash.  he would find old tins and of course old bottles! most of the bottles we own are ones that he unearthed from the soil.  he recently, visited his parents and found some of his bottles that we had stored away in their attic.  he packaged them up in boxes and mailed them to our home and so we recently had three nice size packages of bottles at our doorstep.  it was strange opening up these boxes and recognizing and remembering these old friends. there is a whole science to identifying the age of the bottles, but for now i thought i would share with you how i used them to decorate our home.  
line up for the rest of the week:
friday
 ~ my latest inspirations
sunday
 ~ change of plans…  i will be sharing my husband’s favorite homemade salad dressing, instead of a post from my garden
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first off, i was just listening to an episode of fresh air in which terry gross interviews, jolie kerr who has written a book, my boyfriend barfed in my handbag… and other things you can’t ask martha . and she just happens to talk about how to clean bottles! she uses denture cleaner on them.  so i plopped a tablet of it in each bottle as well as some water, and lo and behold it did a great job cleaning the dirt and rust off! in the above photo, the denture cleaner is doing it’s magic on the bottles as well as our wine carafe. i don’t know about you, but i have the darnedest time getting this container clean, but the denture cleaner did the trick!

next i needed some white flowers to fill the antique bottles.  the above photo of the roses show some beautiful roses from our garden, but these roses are somewhat special since they came from our new rose bushes. when we planted these bushes they were covered with white blossoms, but when i came out to admire the flowers the next morning, every rose was eaten by our local deer.  my husband calls the deer… rodents with good public relations!  so, in another post i’m going to share what i found works against these pesky neighborhood pets!
i bought these beautiful hydrangeas from our local grocery store. i’m really enjoying them on my dining room table.  i must plant some white ones next spring!
so here are a few of our blue antique bottles. there is something really refreshing about the blue bottles.

these snapdragons are from my yard too.  the deer don’t seem to like eating these flowers… hmm, i must plant more of them!  

i just randomly placed these bottles on our shelf in our master bedroom.  we have so many bottles that i’m not sure where they all our going in our house.  and yes, that is an old antique book of, lord hornblower!

we have a very cool dining room table that we bought from crate and barrel. i love the imperfect rosewood and it is a great table for a family since the surface is so rustic and hand-hewn.  

another view of the table setting.  these bottles would also look wonderful at a wedding, maybe at the check in table or at the head table.  

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