Creative with Craigslist

The living room furniture has been picked up to be returned to the store, and it's now time to start considering a new direction. I'm kind of at a loss for the moment, so instead of looking at new furniture, I've been scanning Craigslist to see what the community has in store. I came across a few decor doozies and now I just need to work on opening my mind.

Barrel furniture...so eco-friendly!

And wait...a matching dining room set. Bonus!

"Excuse me, but is that your hand on my ass?"

And a beautiful side table lamp of a guy licking a woman's stomach.

And the pefect panther artwork.

Done and done.

Opinion Time: Too Big, Right?

Furniture came today, and I think it's too big. Shane is sort of feeling the same way, but as the night goes on he said it's growing on him. We have 30 days to return it without any extra cost or loss of money, so I need some help. Should it stay or should it go? And if it goes, what should I do instead? I'm thinking just two chairs and a table or an ottoman now. Something like this. But I don't know. The room is so narrow. Ugh.

(Poor lil Dex. I woke him up from his night nap by turning all the lights on.)

My First Tulips

This is my first spring in our new house, and last fall I planted my first set of tulip bulbs. I had no clue what I was doing or if Jimmy, our neighborhood chipmunk, would eat the bulbs (he was eyeing me when I was planting). Little buds came up a while ago (remember?), but then I had a family of snooping rabbits to contend with. Despite all of the possible challenges to the future of my tulips, they are up in full bloom and more beautiful than I could've ever imagined. Take a looksy:




While Jimmy and the rabbits (a new band coming to a town near you!) have been kind to the tulips, I can't help but think that they were the culprits behind why my crocuses never came up. I haven't checked yet, but I'm guessing those bulbs are long gone. Oh well, at least I have my pretty pink tulips!

Bedroom Makeover

Shane and I are back on the house decorating bandwagon. Woo hoo! We spent this past weekend painting our master bedroom, installing a new ceiling fan, and hanging our TV. Let's take a looksie:

Before
If you recall, this room had one full wall of ugly wallpaper, and then a border that went all the way around the room. The ceiling fan hung down more than 19", which was basically like having a third...very dangerous being..in bed with us. The walls were a dirty ivory color, and the ceiling was an even dirtier white.

After!
The color is Behr's Verdigris (in the Ultra Premium Plus line of colors). The ceiling fan is a low profile, so no more feeling like we'll be decapitated if we accidentally sit up in bed while the fan is on. We still need curtains (since I hate blinds!), a new bed skirt (in white), some lamps for the end tables (I want to do something with a bold color base, like orange, dark coral, or yellow...but we'll see what I can find), and some art for the walls.

Here's another view.

On the bigger dream to-do list, we'd like to change the wood floors to be a darker color and change the trim in the room (and the whole house...ugh!) to be white. For now, I think this is way better than what we had!

No Fair Furniture

Yes, sorry, I'm on a furniture kick at the moment. That's what happens when you have a fireplace in a room that would be lovely to use in the current crappy single-digit temps, but you have no furniture to sit in front of said fireplace. We've tried pulling out the camping chairs--yes, a tad white trash--but it doesn't offer any sort of comforting effect. Couches and real chairs are needed.

So admist the "affordable" furniture search, Design*Sponge kicks today off with a post about Henry Road, complete with a picture of the most beautiful chair (below). So that leads me to the Henry Road site to check out what other wonderful furniture they have (I obviously like to torture myself), only to be in awe of all the lovely pieces. Luckily (for me), the pieces are all out of my price range or sold, but still, it doesn't make them any less drool-worthy. Going forward, this type of furniture will fall into the "no fair" category.

LOVE. LOVE. LOVE.

This makes me want to buy an antique and reupholster it...oh, wait, I don't know how to do that.

Super cute!

This one may be a tad whackier than my taste, but I still like it. It looks very cozy and makes me want to grab a blanket, my dog, and a book (or knitting).

Lovey Gifts

I came across some of the cutest couples' gifts completely by accident. And with Valentine's Day just around the corner, I thought I'd share. You can find all of these lovey gifts over at BoldLoft. Super cute!

Couches I Crave

So we haven't quite pulled the trigger on painting the living room yet. We had good intentions, but the more we talked about the color, the more we thought we needed furniture first so that we don't "paint ourselves in a corner." I believe in buying quality furniture that you love, because then it should last you a long time. But from a cost perspective, that's not always easy to do. I'm hoping to come across something amazing on Craigslist or in a resale/antique shop, but so far I'm coming up short.

IF (and that's a big, long, faraway, possibly never IF), I had endless supplies of money, one (all?) of these couches would be in my home. I found some of them through Design*Sponge's Living In feature (where room decor is based on popular movie settings). The rest were through links of links from the Living In features.

Ah...to dream.

Neve Designer Collection on ClubFurniture.com

Henning Sofa from in Living In's National Velvet room. Available through Anthropologie.

Chesterfield Sofa from Living In's Fantastic Mr. Fox room. Available through Anthropologie.

Chesterfield Sofa (yes, the same name as above) from Living In's Annie Hall room. Available through Club Furniture.

Gwyneth Tufted Fabric Collection (minus the pillows...not liking those) on ClubFurniture.com

Dear Santa, I'd Like This Chair

Through Whip Up, I found a link to an old project on Design*Sponge that I'm now officially in love with. I'm not sure how I missed this project as I'm sure I scoured the the Design*Sponge blog on numerous occassions, but now that we've found one another, I must have it for my craft room (which has not yet been started...but a cute chair is always a good jumping-off point. Sigh...I love you chair. Someday maybe I'll make another one of you to live with me.



Today's the last day to enter the birthday giveaway!

Paint Preview

Shane and I...well, really more Shane right now...are getting ready to paint the living room and dining room this weekend. Nothing like family coming up for Thanksgiving to light a fire under us. Actually, it seems that just about every Thanksgiving once the turkey is in the oven, we start hanging pictures on the walls. I'm convinced that our past condo would've had nothing on the walls if it weren't for visitors. =)

But I digress...back to the paint. I want to keep the colors in these two rooms relatively neutral and somewhat related since the two rooms open into one another. We're going to be using the Behr Premium Plus paint, which has the primer built in. I'm also hoping it just means one coat...but we'll have to wait and see.

Above is the living room color. It's called Ryegrass. The room in this pic has a lot of white accents, but our living room has a lot of honey oak trim. I'm hoping that the room ends up feeling warm and earthy.

If you recall, these are the curtains I had in the apartment. I'm going to use them in the living room with the ryegrass, which is actually one of the colors in the embroidery of the curtains. I found red sheers (another color in the embroidery) to go underneath (which means bye-bye blinds!).

In the dining room, we're using Gobi Dessert. And I'm going to take a stab at painting our ugly wood and brass chandelier red. I think the two colors will play well off of the Ryegrass and the browns and reds that I'll be decorating with in the living room. But it's also still neutral enough to allow me to change up my tablecloths...as I so often do.

I'm thinking of going for very neutral window coverings as well. This is French General's new fabric and I was thinking of turning it into roman shades. However, I also found the below curtains--not neutral--that I really love, too, and play off the colors in the living room really well. (Sans valance.)

Decisions, decisions.

Bathroom Mini Makeover is Underway!

While Shane is patching walls throughout the house, I was able to get started on the mini makeover in the bathroom. I still need to patch and paint the walls, and then I can do some decorating. But for now, the vanity is painted and the mini-blinds are gone (thank, god!).

Before

After (so-far)

The vanity. I painted the outside yellow, and painted the hardware a light silver.

The fabric roman shade. I went with the polka dot fabric. I think I'm going to use the floral fabric as a valence once the walls get painted.

Mini-blinds before.

Mini-blinds after (the back).

A Mini-Mood Board for a Mini-Makeover

As hard as it was, I actually made a decision on the fabric I'll use to turn my bathroom mini-blinds into a fabric roman shade. I ordered and now have in my hot little hands new Amy Butler fabric from her Midwest Modern 2 line. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this new fabric is going be all pretty and all alone in my ugly bathroom. And ugly bathroom doesn't appear look like it's going to be getting the big overhaul anytime soon. So pretty fabric led to wanting to paint my vanity, which led to wanting to paint my walls, which led to the need for mini-mood board. I'm hoping this is going to be a pretty cheap little makeover since I just need a wee bit of paint (I already have the towels and the fabric now), but one that makes me not hate getting ready in there in the mornings. The paint is Behr's Gobi Desert.

Below is the ugly bathroom in it's current state. I'm planning on painting the vanity the yellow color pictured in the mini-mood board. Now if only I could do something about the ugly medicine cabinet that had really bad lighting. Hmmm...I suppose that can wait.

Why I'm Not Currently Crafting

In addition to hating mini-blinds, I also hate wallpaper. Well, the wallpaper in my bedroom anyway. See that below? That's a 3/4 wall of wallpaper topped with a wallpaper border. The wallpaper border goes all the way around my 18x14 room (yes, big room). There was also wallpaper in my bathroom--same style, one wall of paper with a full room of a border. The bathroom, while considerably smaller, took 55 minutes to take down. I was sure that was some sort of record, elevating me to Wallpaper Remover Master!

On that high, I decided to tackle the bedroom. And that's where my rank dropped to Nearly Novice. To do two walls of just a wallpaper border, it took 2.5 hours! This is some truly sticky stuff. Still, I've been forging ahead. Three days of stripping behind me and I think I have just one more night left.

Here's what was left after two days of stripping (I did more last night, but didn't take pictures). There is also a small piece of border left (about a yard long) on the other wall, but I need to move the TV to get to it. Tonight...the bedroom SHOULD be wallpaper free. God willing.

I HATE Mini-Blinds

Yes, "hate" is a strong word, and therefore it is perfectly fitting for my feelings toward min-blinds. If you have blinds in your home and love them to pieces, then rock on with your bad blinds self. I, however, do not have the patience for blinds. In our new home, every window...and I repeat EVERY window, has blinds. At first I was going to embrace them. I even cleaned (like removed them from the window and hand scrubbed) 7 sets of them. And I still have 11 more (did I mention EVERY window? Yeah.). To clean 7 sets of blinds, in varying lengths and widths, with at least 20 years of grime (at least, from the looks of it!) it took almost 5 hours. Making dirty things clean usually brings great joy to me, and so I thought once they were hung I would revel in how wonderful they now were, all bright and sparkly clean. Not so much. Why? Because those stupid things still bang on the window whenever the wind blows, never make a straight line when pulled up (and rarely stay up when pulled), and never drop down correctly without being man-handled.

With a new house, I'm trying to be frugal. I know that I can't run out and by 18 new window treatments and be able to come home to a husband who won't be holding divorce papers. And I like my privacy, so I can't just take them down either. But I HATE them!

And that's where Google becomes my friend. I found the Little Green Notebook, a blog with a tutorial that shows you how to turn mini-blinds into a roman shade. Now, I'm not sure I'll like the roman shade since it's based on the mechanics of the mini-blinds, but it's worth a try, right? (please work...please work).

Jenny's Little Green Notebook version. Very sweet.

If I want to try this out, it will require dismantling a pair of blinds. If it works, yipee--success! If it doesn't, well, I'm out not only the mini-blinds (which I could care less except for that money and divorce issue I mentioned) but also fabric. And I can't really use fabric I don't like since I kind of only have one shot. With that said, the only room with one window where this will work is the upstairs bathroom. At some point we're going to be remodeling that room (new tub, new floor, new everything). In the meantime, I guess spending $10-15 on fabric to make it livable would be worth a try. And it could mean the end of the mini-blinds throughout the house as we know it. Ah....to dream.

Here are some fabrics I'm thinking about for said bathroom. There are so many great fabrics out there though, that I have FAR too many options. My choices will probably change by tomorrow.

I was thinking of painting the ugly vanity we currently have red and this fabric would be a perfect complement. (Dear Shane, if you're reading this, remember paint is not a bad thing...and red paint is pretty.)

I was thinking of using some combintion of these with one being the front, and one being the back...so that you just get a little glimpse of it when pulled up.

And here's one that I may choose if Shane vetos my red vanity idea. Maybe that said vanity could become yellow. (Love you, hubby.)

A New Home

Shane and I will be moving into our new home (yay!), so I'll be taking a short blogging break. Miss you already!

from Stevens Happy Accidents

Spring Makeover for the Bedroom

...sans wall art, though. =(

The bedroom had a bad case of the blahs going on, and with the wonderful feeling that comes along with spring, it was time for a makeover. I didn't have to do too much beyond unpacking and moving around a few more items, but it's still a fresh look since I never used any of this stuff in the bedroom before.

Here's the room...but badly needing something on the walls still! I can't decide what to do. I like the vinyl clings, but I can't decide which one is right and in which color. I also had some ideas of hanging painted embroidery hoops (empty) on the wall. There's a restaurant around the corner from where I live that has that, and it's so simple, yet so pretty. And not to mention cheap! Then there is another part of me that wants a painting for back there. Guess I need to think about it more.

Here are the curtains. I love these curtains for so many reasons. One, I found them at Goodwill for $1.75. Two, they're actually just a king size sheet that I tore in two...not one bit of sewing was required. And three (and the best reason), this fabric was actually used as the backing to the butterfly quilt that's on my bed. What the heck are the chances of finding something like that?

Here are my Anthropologie cabinet knobs turned tie-backs. Ahh....beautiful. And the ribbon was leftover from Patty's belt. Look at me being resourceful!

I got this vase/urn as a wedding (bridal shower) gift. It used to be a golden yellow color until I started using it on my balcony at our old condo. The sun turned it green (or something did). Now it matches the greens in my room perfectly. The silk leaves were used in my wedding. And you may recognize the bunny from Stacey, the Sally the dolly from Jessica, and the owl twins from Barbara.

Here's a better picture of the quilt. My mom found this at a resale shop about 12 years ago. She bought it for me because I love butterflies and the color orange. All of the butterflies are hand-stitched. There is machine stitch over the top of the whole quilt, but the binding what done by hand. I can't believe someone would just give away something this beautiful. And I think my mom only paid about $25 for it. Plus it's huge....perfect for our king size bed.