Red White and Blue Traditional

Smiling at the Memories
Goodbye To Summer

Summer.  Just say the word and images of good times and beautiful sights and sounds scroll through our memories.  For me it's the ocean at sunrise and sunset, long walks on a Carolina beach, memorizing the sounds of the breaking waves, seafood feasts and spending long summer beach days with the people you love.
  

A crystal bowl filled with an abundance of shells sits on a rough finished marble counter in my kitchen. I limit myself to bringing home one shell from each beach visit.  I never have a particular shell in mind that I hope to find  but I'm drawn to shells in limitless shades of white.  Some of them are almost identical in color and texture to the marble counter top. 

Almost every day at home I pick up at least one of the shells from my collection and run my fingers over it to enjoy the cool textures both smooth and rough and smile at the memories.

We decorated our house with the colors we love at the beach.  Our kitchen and keeping room incorporate nature's beautiful greens, blues, whites and the orange and pink of sunrise and sunset.  

I lingered forever one summer day on the beach house porch watching a beautiful small green frog sit attached motionless to the porch railing.

 

It was well worth waking up early to be rewarded with this beautiful sunrise

Our back porch is a well loved oft used outdoor living room enjoyed year round.  A porch is nostalgic and conjures up happy memories.  We relax on wicker furniture enjoying a favorite beverage, the smell of freshly mowed grass and a neighbor's barbeque, sounds of children down the street playing, an occasional bark.

The porch is our dining room all summer long.  We  linger over a good meal around the table as the sun sets and the candles flicker and illuminate faces around the table. 

Summer breezes and open windows

Lillies ushered in the summer season

  Eventually fireflies and candles provide the only light and we welcome the night time. We keep several lanterns on the porch that can be moved about as needed as well as old candlesticks I have found tucked away in antique stores.

My husband and I enjoy the porch on Saturday mornings when we take our coffee and newspapers outside in the cool of the new day.  The porch also becomes a gentleman's haven  in the evening with good conversation and festive spirits.  These rituals won't change anytime soon.  We're loaded up on fire wood and just starting to enjoy the porch fireplace again.  Time to embrace the cool fall days and plant the pansies.

It's fun to have a Lilly that isn't pink and green!

Putting away the summer Lilly dresses!  Just visited the Charlotte Lilly store and couldn't resist a darling dress with black cats that is perfect for the fall.  Also checked out the sale rack and found a great fall dress (orange, like Lilly's fruit) half price.  

This summer at the beach I picked up a copy of Essentially Lilly A Guide To Colorful Entertaining by Lilly Pulitzer and Jay Mulvaney.  Welcome to the world of Lilly! The book treats it's reader to Lilly's personal and business history, menus and recipes, entertaining in the legendary Lilly style, beautiful - and of course colorful - photographs and drawings.

Lilly - back in the day - practically lived and entertained in the kitchen of her clapboard house long before that was commonplace.  Guests never knocked or rang the bell.  They just opened the green front door with the large "L" on it, hollered "Hey Doll" and found their way back to the kitchen or pool.
 
Lilly started her fabled career selling fruit from her husband's orange groves right out of her station wagon.  She later opened a small shop on the Via Mitzner in Palm Beach and sold her oranges there.  The Via Mitzner is a series of charming stores, courtyards and pretty fountains tucked away behind  the larger Worth Avenue shops.



The half price Lilly with boots and tights from Anthropologie.  Pink Kiel James Patrick bracelet with Giles and Brother bracelet.

A "wonderful old Swiss lady" made Lilly's shifts from bright colorful fabrics that would hide the inevitable stains after a day of slicing and squeezing fruit.  Lilly's friends loved her pretty dresses, which she described as "a cross between a chemise and mumu," and encouraged her to sell them in her shop.

Lilly, who always wanted to do something, went to Woolworth's and bought enough colorful fabric to make twelve dresses to hang around in her shop.   And with that "The Lilly"was born. The pink and green world of Lilly quickly became a legend when Lilly's friend First Lady Jackie Kennedy purchased a Lilly - made from kitchen curtain material - in the 1960's and subsequently wore the shift in a Life magazine article.

Lilly is not only a famous designer, hostess and Palm Beach socialite.  She is the beloved matriarch of her family and a generous friend who loves her "peeps."  Lilly is inclusive in her friendships cherishing an eclectic circle of friends who include childhood classmates, the grand dames of society, firemen, employees and newcomers to the World of Lilly. 

Lilly has dressed three generations of the girls in my family.  I still remember my first Lilly - a floral print skirt with Lilly's name discreetly tucked among the flowers. Isn't is wonderful to slip into a Lilly and become one of her "peeps"?  The world seems brighter with good times ahead.

Lilly Pulitzer

Kiel James Patrick

 Giles and Brother