Tag Archives: home decor

Sloan’s Nursery

by

I am finally getting around to sharing Sloan’s nursery! It is by far my favorite room in the house. It has so much natural light, it is bright and cheerful, and who doesn’t love a big bold floral print? I certainly do.

We had already painted when we found out we were going to have a baby, so I just kept it. I liked the idea of the room being really white to really make the windows stand out. The paint on the walls is SW Westhighland White. It is what I call a warm white.

full roomcrib curtain detail flower frames gtf to sleep lamp and shoes pillows shelves sloan kelly embroidered changing table sideSources: Crib // Jenny Lind; Changing Table // Amazon; Crib Sheet & Skirt // Serena & Lily; Cornice Fabric // Waverly; Tassel Panels // Serena & Lily; Glider // Enchanted Cherish; Lamp // Nicole Miller via HomeGoods; Pillows // Furbish; Flower Prints // Snoogs & Wilde; Garden Stool // Sams Club; Diaper Pail // Ubbi

My thoughts…If you are looking a glider on a budget you cannot beat the Enchanted Glider which I ordered from Walmart. It is super cheap and so comfortable. I didn’t want an obnoxious color and this was perfect.

The super cheap changing table I ordered from Amazon is kind of a piece of junk, but I knew I wouldn’t be using it forever.

The Ubbi diaper pail is worth every penny.

My grown up wish list.

by

A couple things first…

So I dyed my hair brown and I am loving it. Hooray! I can check one thing off my life to-do list. You can check it out on insta if you are so inclined.

My awesome internet friend, Jessica, has started her very own blog…go follow now @ Winchester Wife.

So now for my current grown up wish list.

Untitled-5

Searching for the perfect desk for our awesome little office | Loving these custom drapes for our living room via Etsy | Saw this image of Cottages & Bungalows mag via Studioten25‘s instagram…must paint something like this for our house asap. I’m thinking cow and/or horse | Keeping my fashion simple and basic just like my dear friend Reese | In order to do this, I pretty much need the uber popular Rockstud flats.

What is on your grown up wish list? Do tell.

Agree to Disagree

by

Husbands and decor decisions. How does that work for you? Because for me…it is the most frustrating of all things. My  husband is all about FUNCTION. I know function is important, and since we have basically gutted our home, we can tailor almost everything to our wants and needs. However, that comes with its own set of challenges. I’ve never lived in this house before, so it is hard to for me to feel the space to know what it needs. But decisions have to be made.

Our main challenge is limited square footage. We are talking 1300 sq ft of living space. This house was so closed up that we have busted out walls and taken down cabinets left and right. While it has opened it up enormously, we have eliminated a lot of the available storage. With small square footage, it is important for us to utilize vertical space. To my husband, this means NO SIDE TABLES, COFFEE TABLE, LAMPS. WTF dude? How am I supposed to make this house amazing without lots of tables, vignettes, and lamps? I told him to go live in minimalist Russia.

photo(3)

Before: Chimney wall flanked by a closet and a bookshelf/cabinet.

Photo1(5)After: Different viewpoint, but you can see everything was dark and dreary and now…All gone.

Next challenge is we cannot agree on light fixtures. At all. I don’t know why but we have a polar opposite view of a great light fixture. He is against drum shades, chandeliers, and industrial influenced lights AKA everything that is cool looking. We have come to a few compromises with this, but I don’t think either of us are really happy with it.

It isn’t all bad though. We actually agree on a lot of the overall feel. He just doesn’t like a lot of stuff on the floor. And I get it…but…get over it. He has said nothing about my bathroom design, so that means he must like it. He hates dark bedrooms, but knows it is happening. He has even not totally shut down my extreme love of this leopard print carpet for the guest room. Win! I have agreed to not paint a small area of the heart pine walls. We are referring to this as our “sailboat room” because it reminds me of the inside of an old boat.

So preetttyy.

So how do y’all balance your finely tuned amazing taste with your other half? I don’t feel like I’m asking for pink walls with tons of tribal prints, so he should be thankful for that…

 

 

 

A New Chapter!

by

The offer accepted, the contract signed…that’s right my friends, we are going to be homeowners again! While we haven’t closed yet, everything is in the works and I just couldn’t keep it a secret any longer.

After our first home, I said I did not want to have to do a lot of renovations again, yet here we are. And even more than our last house. I’m looking forward to it though, as I feel the house has some hidden character that with some elbow grease and dolla dolla bills, we can make it our own. Who doesn’t look forward to the screaming matches that occur between husband and wife during home renovations?! Haha, I kid. Not really.

Like a lot of old homes, it needs work in kitchen and bathrooms, is adorned with knotty pine paneling, and has some unsightly paint, wallpaper, and blue shag carpet. I have already been pinning away and since the house has a water view, I really want to make it a fresh, breezy space. Lots and lots of white.

Here are my favorite inspiration pics. I’m sure the first of many as I plan to catalog all my thoughts on this here little blog.

Kitchen and Floors:

I can’t decide between white or a more gray color to the cabinets. I love both looks. The countertops and backsplash are currently white tile and not awful. We will probably keep it for now.

I’m pretty obsessed with darker hardwood floors. I know my husband, and everyone else, is going to fight me on this because the house is very small and everyone thinks dark colors make everything feel smaller. I beg to differ and love the contrast and richness of a darker floor. Especially if everything else is white. I am the one who knows what I’m talking about dammit!

Living Room and Den: So the house has a “formal” living room which is basically my favorite room in the house and one that is never used. The den is narrow and long, and I am still struggling with how to position furniture. More on this in the future.

Bedrooms:

For the guest room, I am obsessed with this image. I even want to paint the floor, but I already know that is not a battle worth fighting. The guest room has two added closets with louvered doors, which I am envisioning painted a perfect kelly green with the all white everything else.

For the “master” (in quotations, because it is insanely, ridiculously small), I am wanting to do my dreamy, dark, moody bedroom palette. I’m not even sure our bed is going to fit in there yet…the thought of moving furniture just made me queasy. Hate it.

Bathrooms:

I’m still undecided about the bathrooms. I love this:

But I also kind of want to do something fun and crazy. Like this:

So more thinking required on that. Luckily, the master bathroom was added in the 80s and isn’t in the worst shape ever. There is an interesting wallpaper in place, which I will share with y’all soon. I don’t really hate it, it is kind of grandma floral, but not in a revolting way.

Can’t wait to share as things progress! We don’t close for another month, so for now it will just be loads of inspiration!

All images via my Pinterest boards New House & Bedrooms.

Renting woes

by

Renting after you’ve owned a home feels like a burden has been lifted off your shoulders at first.  When we bought our first home, within weeks our washing machine broke, refrigerator broke, HVAC broke, ya know…small things. Le sigh. However, since we began renting over a year ago, not one.single.thing has broken or needed to be fixed.

Back to my point at hand, the downside of renting is your lack of freedom. Before we moved in, the owners so graciously repainted every wall in the house a beautiful shade of almond. Blegh. And they thought it would be nice to leave all the interior doors a natural wood finish. Not cute. But the rent is cheap and we have a huge fenced-in back yard which is very important for our dogs.  So, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I can work with what I’ve got without making any major changes, both for landlord purposes and financial purposes. Bottom line: I don’t want to sink a lot of money into decorating this matchbox. Here are some things I have done or plan to do to spruce this place up a bit.

Renting RulesHome Decorators Collection has a sale going on right now of temporary wallpaper. I’m thinking of using this to create a faux headboard for our guest room bed. It has many possible applications, I think a guest bath or powder room is always a great place for wallpaper.

Using “sticky hooks” and tension rods allow you to hang and drape without making holes. I used tension rods in my office to make faux roman shades, and they worked great. I’m trying to figure out how I can use some kind of adhesive hook and curtain rods so I can hang drapes, again, without making holes. I’ll get back to you on that.

Errybody get your lean on. I’m a big fan of leaning art and mirrors be it on the floor, a shelf, or mantle.  Mostly because I like it, but also because it is easy.

So you can’t paint your almond walls? There are tons of ways to add color and drama to a room besides paint. I would squeal to get my hands on that tufted sofa from Anthropologie.  A printed console table and colorful lamp shades  brighten up any entryway. And the best part is…all that can move with you when you go! So get creative with fabrics, throw pillows, and rugs to add color and texture to your otherwise almond room.

To all of you renters out there, how have you made your house a home? Do tell.

Bars r us

by

Literally. Take stock of my bar top….empty. Every time we fill ‘er up…we suck it down. Lushes Live Here.

photo(90)

My husband and I frequently argue over the definition of a lush. I am right.

photo(91)

The whole situation. It isn’t bad right? The green goes well with my favorite pillows of all time, but I’m kind of over it. I had the green in the old house and now I want something new. I’ve been toying with painting it navy, and then painting the black knobs gold. Then switch out these pillows for something like…

bar board

More color and less color all at the same time.

Pillows, Society Social | Rug, Lulu & Georgia | Cheers Banner, Furbish | Turtle Shells, Karen Robertson Collection

I realize I need some window treatments but there are two things keeping me from messing with it; one, we are renting and two, we have plaster walls. Have you tried nailing/screwing/whatever-else-ing into a plaster wall? It is real annoying. When I first saw Jamie Meares’ instagram of this ‘Cheers’ banner I knew I wanted it to spruce up my bar window area. It is on my birthday wish list {coming soon}.

Any my turtle shells are coming from the Cashie River, not Karen Robertson. See I got this notion real bad that I wanted some turtle shells. I think they make amazing decor. My hubs made a couple calls and 30 minutes later, we have ourselves two large turtle shells. Them are real fine eatin for some folks round here, so turtle shells are not in short supply.  They are currently sitting outside “drying out” and decomposing. There was still bits and pieces of meat on the underside…

What do you think? Leave well enough alone or make some changes? Do tell.