It's Pink Friday again!

~ Pink Friday ~
"Nifty Nurseries"

Please visit Cozy Cottage Gifts and Decor as we join other participating boutiques at Make Mine Pink for Pink Friday this week!

Pink Friday is your exclusive invitation to “ shopping with a twist.” Each week, the Boutiques at Make Mine Pink will feature a well coordinated shopping experience with a theme - an all new approach to Internet shopping. Join us for “Nifty Nurseries” on Friday, August 1st. Browse the participating boutiques and find that special something just your decor!

Make Mine Pink is the most fabulous one-stop shopping you will find on the Internet, all in a friendly, customer orientated atmosphere. Shop from the comfort of your home.......best of all~ no gasoline needed.

Boutique participation is only open to Make Mine Pink boutique members. This will assure that your shopping experience will be the very best from quality shopping to superior customer service.

A blog award

Sweet Katie at Hummingbird Chats chose me as one of the recipients of this pretty blog award. Thank you so much Katie! Be sure and stop by Katie's blog for a visit...she always has something fun and interesting going on there. :)

Here are the rules:

1) Display blog and the link to who gave it.
2) Nominate at least 7 blogs.
3) Add links to these 7 blogs.
4) Leave the nominees a message that they received the award.

I would like to pass this award on to:

1. The Scented Cottage
2. Thriftshop Romantic
3. Janet's Creative Pillows
4. Bunch of Scrap
5. LuLu's Fluffy Ruffles
6. Mo's Cottage
7. Kattz*Cottage

Top 100 Books

The BBC say the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on their list. I've read 21 making me realize that none of these were read within the last 5 years....what have I been doing instead? I think it is time for me to rethink a few things in my life.

If you'd like to participate in this meme simply copy the list and follow the instructions below. Don't worry if you haven't read many books - the list is only opinion. Be sure to include the books you'd like to read too and those you think should be struck off the list. Feel free to list books not on the list that you deem worthy I have done. Finally, be sure to post a comment so we know where to find you! Sadly, after I posted a comment I forgot where I got this and I can't post about her here....sorry!!!

Many of these books I have seen made into a movie so I probably won't read them....somehow it ruins a book for me if I've seen the movie first.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love. (Or just write FAV next to them if you can't figure out underlining on your blog!)
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte FAV
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee FAV
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte FAV
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens FAV
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier FAV
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett FAV
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Okay....your turn now...have fun! :)

Summer in Arkansas

YOU KNOW YOU ARE IN ARKANSAS IN JULY WHEN. . . .

The birds have to use potholders to pull worms out of the ground.

The trees are whistling for the dogs.

The best parking place is determined by shade instead of distance.

Hot water now comes out of both taps.

You can make sun tea instantly.

You learn that a seat belt buckle makes a pretty good branding iron.

The temperature drops below 95 and you feel a little chilly.

You discover that in July it only takes 2 fingers to steer your car.

You discover that you can get sunburned through your car window.

You actually burn your hand opening the car door.

You break into a sweat the instant you step outside at 7:30 a.m.

Your biggest bicycle wreck fear is, 'What if I get knocked out and end up lying on the pavement and cook to death?'

You realize that asphalt has a liquid state.

The potatoes cook underground, so all you have to do is pull one out and add butter, salt and pepper.

Farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying boiled eggs.

The cows are giving evaporated milk.

I just love my recent purchases.....

from Faded Plains! My package arrived last week and everything was even more beautiful than the lovely pictures on Andrea's website. I couldn't be happier! I fell in love with the barkcloth pillow with the loopy satin fringe and just had to have it.....I may even redecorate my bedroom because of that pillow! And the tags are just gorgeous too.....I also purchased a pair of cornucopiae that would fit in beautifully with the new bedroom theme....hmmmmm.....the wheels are turning rapidly in my mind!


Thanks so much Andrea for all of the pretty extras you included with my purchase....you even stamped the tissue paper with "Paris"! Was that because I happen to live in Paris (Arkansas)? That was really a nice touch.....and I'll be back to shop with you again soon!

New feature at Cozy Cottage Gifts and Decor

Good morning everyone! Well, I took a look around last night and our house is quickly becoming overrun with........yep, that's it!........magazines!!! They are everywhere....in baskets, on tables, in magazine racks, in stacks on the floor.......so, I decided it was time to (literally) clean house. With that in mind, I have set up a new category on my website and I will be offering back issues of Martha Stewart Living and Coastal Living magazines. I have just a few listed right now but believe me there will be more to come! Of course, if more than one issue is purchased in a single order any overpaid postage will be refunded to the buyer. So, heads up! I have one of each issue and it's first come, first serve.....happy shopping! Click here to visit my new Magazines category.

Thank you (((Francie))).........

Some of you know that I celebrated my 54th birthday on July 4th this year......well, I got the sweetest surprise in the mail here at my mom's house. The mailman brought me a birthday present all the way from Georgia......from my sweet friend, Francie, of The Scented Cottage. After removing layers of sweet-smelling, fluffy pink tissue I discovered all kinds of goodies....tiny little birdnest clip-on ornaments, absolutely to-die-for Sweet Dreams Linen/Memory Mist, cinnamon candy made right there in Waycross, Georgia, where Francie lives, two sweet little bears, and a beautiful Anna Griffin portable notepad.....and did I say it was all in layers of fluffy pink tissue? Francie even sent a few goodies for my mom which I thought was extra-sweet. Thank you so much Francie for making my birthday this year even more special!

If you haven't had a chance to visit Francie's online shop be sure to drop by The Scented Cottage where you are sure to find something sweet that you just can't live without!

I'm headed to the beach.....

Only eleven more days until I board the plane and fly east to visit my friend Sue of My Shabby Mosaic Cottage for a week....I can hardly wait! We had so much fun last year and I'm sure it will be even better this year. We have a one-night stay in a bed and breakfast on Old Orchard Beach in Maine planned and the B&B is right on the ocean. I may stay awake all night just to hear the sound of the waves.....something I sure don't hear in central Arkansas! We'll stay at her family's summer camp the other nights and it is just beautiful there....nice and woodsy and very friendly. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures for you to see here when I get back home.

Debbie

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

Fourth of July is an extra-special day for me.....not only do we celebrate Independence Day, but it is also my birthday. I wish all of you a safe and very happy 4th of July!

Debbie

PS: Thanks Jenn of Thriftshop Romantic for sharing this image. :)

Everything's coming up roses.........

this week at Cozy Cottage and other participating boutiques at Make Mine Pink. The theme this week is "Romantically Roses", so if you've been considering a rosy new decor theme, or if you just want to add a few roses to your favorite decor be sure to join us this Friday, July 4th for Pink Friday at Make Mine Pink. Can't wait to see you there!