The Cottage Journal features decorating ideas, style tips, creative inspiration, and delicious recipes - and now you can enjoy every single page on the tablet! Create a warmer, more magical home with the beauty of nature and The Cottage Journal!
It is inspiring to gaze out windows and see color in the garden once again—and bid the winter season adieu! We have many photos of gorgeous cottages and gardens to share with you in this issue. Homeowners tell us how they took their visions of personalizing their homes and put them to action with remodeling or simply blending the old with the new. Whether they find inspiration from family heirlooms or collect newer accent pieces, you will love these fresh ideas that make your home sweet home. One of my favorites in this issue is a beautifully tranquil cottage on page 47, titled Her Cottage in the Country. It has an enchanting entrance to a simply charming interior. Another favorite is the romantic influence in the interiors, beginning on page…
With its bright blooms and cascading greens, the window box ushers in the start of a beautiful new season of growth. Whether neat and uniform or lush and overflowing, the addition of a window box cheerfully welcomes spring and brings cottage charm to the home. Window boxes offer a wide array of appeal in their flexibility. They add instant personality to the facade of a cottage and invite color and sweet fragrance indoors with the opening of a window. Whether you are an avid gardener or making your first attempt at developing a green thumb, follow these tips, and try your hand at a signature cottage delight—the window box. When buying your window box, be sure to consider its practicality before being won over by its appearance. It must be…
After receiving a copy of John J. Audubon’s Birds of America as a gift from his parents when he was just 10 years old, a whole new world was opened for Gilbert Johnston. “I used to lie awake at night in bed and turn the pages,” Gilbert says, recalling the moments when natural history and art first captured his heart and imagination. Growing up, Gilbert studied history and law, earning degrees in both studies, but he says the creative side of his mind took over, and ultimately he decided to pursue a career in the arts. After law school, he traveled the wilderness of Alaska and Canada—hiking, paddling, and documenting his journey, much like the explorers who created the great scientific works of art to which he’s now dedicated his…
“Nearly everything I have is old,” says Jane Hodges, while smiling as she talks about the furnishings in the lovely 1930s cottage she calls home. Once owned by her in-laws, the bright and breezy house is as gracious as Jane herself, and she has filled it to the brim with an enchanting collection of antiques that have equally enchanting histories. Using serene shades of off-white throughout, Jane softened the vivid pink palette favored by her mother-in-law to create the perfect backdrop for the beautifully aged treasures that give her home its singular charm. The living room holds cherished pieces, such as the handsome mirrored screen passed down from her mother-in-law and a portrait of Jane’s son as a teenager that hangs above an antique desk in a washed-blue hue. A…
From as far back as she can recall, Kathryn Dixon remembers hearing her mother and grandmother teach the old adage “less is more.” “Editing is so important,” explains Kathryn, a sought-after interior designer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. “Don’t just fill up your home. Choose things that are sentimental or beautiful, and never stop editing.” It was this penchant for simple and serene that guided the house hunt for Kathryn and her husband, Tom, as they moved their young family from California to North Carolina in August 2010. It only took three months for Kathryn to infuse her impeccable style, and soon the transformation revealed a polished palette anchored by treasured pieces, such as furniture and accessories passed down in their family or acquired from decades of travel. The family’s…
Cascading layers of creeping fig drape the entrance to the enchanting countryside home that Avery Rhodes shares with her husband, Chris Akins, and their three children. It gives the house a magical fairy-tale feel, one Avery likens to Sleeping Beauty’s vine-covered castle under the hundred-year spell. “I like to think we have a slightly ‘sleepy’ household,” says Avery. “We try very hard to slow things down when we are at home and just enjoy each other and our moments together.” The open and airy interiors of this cottage definitely offer a tranquil retreat, and the pretty and polished furnishings belie the fact that an active family lives in every square inch of these sunlit spaces. Avery has created a kid-and-pet-friendly abode where daughter Willa Rose and sons Hopper and Walton,…
