Filling in the spaces

There’s a portion of the hallway that is visible from the living room that was noticeably blank for quite some time.  I had imagined a console table with a large framed something above it for this space.  I found this black console table at Pier 1 a few months ago.

It was a little smaller than what I wanted, but it was a great price and gave me the option to re-use an existing collage-type frame we had that had a black and gold frame.  This frame used to hold pictures from our wedding.  When I finally got around to making our wedding album (2 yrs after the fact), those were removed from the frame.  This time around, I decided to fill it with pictures of things that were unique to our neighborhood.

The pictures are: the church whose bells I love to listen to, the historic Fitzgerald home, Fillet & Vine (also known as Derk’s) a great meat and three, a Garden District sign (our neighborhood), our red front door, a Cloverdale sign (the adjacent neighborhood), the Capri (a historic theater), our street sign, and a window of a church on the park.  I thought it was a neat way to be proud of our new neighborhood and the pictures turned out pretty good!

Back to the table…it has been a resting place for knick-knacks mostly, but I finally got it looking the way I want.

For now, it is home to one of our engagement photos, an old book, a flower arrangement, a vase, and a decorative tray.  The engagement photo was put there mainly because I love that frame.  The picture in the frame may change out over time, but it will do for now.  I mentioned the flower arrangement from Travis in an earlier post and the vase and tray were wedding gifts. 

The real jewel in this bunch is the shabbiest looking item – the old book.  It’s not just any old book.  It happens to be a copy of The Rape of the Lock printed in 1913.

I don’t particularly love Alexander Pope, but the book just happened to belong to my grandmother’s mother while she was in college at UC, Berkley. 

Of course, I never knew her, but my dad speaks so lovingly of her that I know she must have been someone special.  If she was anything like my grandmother, I know she was.

Projects for January

Here are a few projects that I hope to be completed by the end of the month.

Project #1 – Kitchen counters

This is definitely our biggest undertaking in January and potentially even this year!  I told you last year that we were going with a darker counter.  After looking at the different stones in person and browsing the Internet for pictures of kitchens with both light and dark counters, we opted for this beauty.

The stone color is called White Ash and I am absolutely in love!  The color looks great with our appliances and our existing ivory cabinets.  I will have to change paint colors for the kitchen walls but that is no big deal.  After this installation, we will be one large step closer to finishing our kitchen.  All we will have to do is put in a backsplash, paint the walls, paint the new cabinets (which I still have not done yet!), and install new hardware for the cabinets.

Update - just got off the phone with the counter top guy and this work will be done the first week in February...close enough

Project #2 – Blackboard nook

We have an old telephone nook in our house and I have been trying to figure out what to do with it.  It is too tall for a stand-alone picture frame and the shelf is too narrow for it to display odds and ends.  Here’s how it looks now.

My plan is to paint the inside area with blackboard paint and create a hallway message board!  I’ll add a pop of color along the inner frame maybe and make it look fun.

Project #3 – Paint the laundry room

This project is as easy as it sounds.  I have had the paint for this room FOREVER and keep finding excuses not to paint it!  I plan on using a color that we found during our quest to find the perfect dining room color.

It's the top right color.  I hope that by putting these in writing I’ll be held accountable for actually completing them!

Fresh flowers....no thanks!

So I know it’s been a while, I’m sorry.  We just haven’t done anything exciting in the house lately!  However, that is about to change.  Stay tuned for details.

In the meantime, I wanted to show you a couple of the flower arrangements I got for Christmas.  I love white flowers…LOVE them…especially when they have green accents.  I just think there is something so clean about white and green together in a flowering vase.

Here recently, I have been accumulating faux flower arrangements of this sort from a place called NDI in Brewton, AL.  Great place.  I have already shown you this one sitting on a table in my entryway.

 

For a housewarming gift, my grandmother got me this beaut!  It currently resides on our kitchen table and looks quite lovely in there (especially since I’m probably gonna go with a green and/or yellow accent color scheme in my very neutral kitchen).

For Christmas, I got this cute little thing from my brother!  It’s on a console table in the hall that I’ll share with you in another post.

And I also got this magnificent specimen from my mom!  It is breathtaking live and will look great over a creamy gold table runner that I plan on making (with my new sewing machine – thanks Debbie!!!).

Too bad I can’t grow these lovely things!