OUR DAY BED IS FINALLY HERE!!

It’s here, it’s finally here! 

I saw this daybed on YHL several months ago.  I even mentioned it in an earlier post.  I fell in love with it’s dark wood, airy frame, and geometric pattern.  I knew it would be the perfect fit in our sunroom, but I wasn’t overly thrilled about the price.  I scoured the internet and furniture stores for something comparable for months.  After Christmas, my loving husband looked at me and said, “why don’t we get that day bed as our Christmas present.” (we typically don’t do Christmas presents for each other) Needless to say, I jumped on that bandwagon real quick and she arrived at our house a few weeks ago!

 

The room is painted a pale yellow and I’ve been seeing lots of beautiful things in a yellow/gray color scheme.  So when I found a yellow and gray quilt at Target, I knew I had to have it.  The quilt looks great and even has a different pattern on the backside (see, on the edges) if I get tired of this one.

 I hope to find a few throw pillows to go along with this and also make one out of a gray sweater dress that I found with a hole in it the last time I tried to wear it.  We’ll see how that project works out!

Another sunroom update would be the addition of this old radio from the house I grew up in. 

It’s probably still functional, but I just like the way it looks!  I think it makes a great accessory to an old home and ties together perfectly with the dark wood of the daybed.

Blackboard nook update

Here’s the only “January Project” that I technically finished in January!  All it took were a few coats of blackboard paint, some chalk, and a small vase (excuse my terrible handwriting and the flash on my camera....the pictures without a flash looked terrible).

I may paint a color around the blackboard one day, but I’m very happy with the way this turned out!

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!

Our first Christmas in the new house!

This is our third Christmas as a married couple.  The first two we used a small 4’ pre-lit Christmas tree and I was accused more than once of being a Grinch.

But I did get us stockings our first Christmas so I can’t be all that bad…

Well this year, I wouldn’t even recognize myself!  In my house, we always had a real tree.  I grew up in a home built in the late 1800’s with 11-12 ft ceilings throughout.  We always got MONSTER trees.

So, now that we have a house of our own with tall ceilings, I wanted to share the joy of real trees with Trey!  My main argument, however silly, was that real trees smell like Christmas.  Trey agreed and we went on a hunt (technically we went to one place where the trees were already cut and just pointed).  We ended up getting a beautiful 9 footer.  The guys at the place we bought it bagged it and tied it to the roof of Trey’s car and off we went. 

Once we got home, Trey manhandled the tree off his car and into the sunroom.  We got it steadied and straight in the tree stand before Trey cut the mesh bag off. 

Even Cooper helped out!

After it spread its glorious limbs, Trey agreed….it smelled like Christmas!

We decorated it with white lights, a collection of green, gold, copper, and silver metallic ornaments (from Sam’s – 100 shatter-proof ornaments for $35!), a gold-pearlescent star (from Target), and a couple of homemade treats. 

I couldn’t find gold garland that I liked at all so I bought this decorative mesh stuff from Sam’s ($12 for all of it) and wound it so that it looked like a mix between ribbon and non-fuzzy garland.  I feel that if I were craftier, it might have turned out a little better, but overall I like the look of it.  The tree skirt is another non-creation creation.  I purchased 2 yards of this really cozy looking fabric and “swaddled” the tree stand to make this skirt.  Again, I like the overall look even though it will be covered with presents soon.

Outside, we put a wreath (from Target) on the front door,

poinsettias (from Home Depot) on the front stairs,

and a Reindeer crossing sign in the front yard that Debbie gave us! 

In case you can't see, our names are on the bulbs and Cooper's is on the bone.  Doesn't the front of our house look festive?

Inside, we hung stockings (one of the few treasures I have from Pottery Barn) and garland (a steal at Michael's) on the mantle,

and put up a few other things around the house.  In the hall we put up some red votives (a gift from Debbie), a Christmas canvas from Celeste, and a small tree with my collection of snowflake ornaments - every year for Christmas my mom gets me a Swarovski crystal snowflake and my grandmother gets me a Lenox snowflake...it's like a Christmas tradition.

I'll leave you with the photo from our Christmas card.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Come on in!

I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time.  With Cooper and the holidays coming up, I’ve just been too busy!

I wrote in an earlier entry that the blank wall to your right as you enter my house needed something in order to make that area feel more like an official entryway.  Especially since the back of my love seat is facing that area.  So, we rummaged through the stuff we had and were able to come up with this cute little area for very little moolah!

 The gorgeous gold mirror was the $20 Craigslist find I posted about a few months ago.  I finally had somewhere to hang it, and with the yellow accents I’m trying to bring into the room, it just seemed perfect.

  

The antique table was a wedding gift from Aunt Donna McInnish and was the perfect size, height, and style for this nook.  I looked FOREVER in stores and online for a table that was, more or less, hip height that was narrow enough to fit between the door frames.  While Alexa was staying with us, she saw the table in one of the bedrooms and suggested we use it there.  Perfect fit, thanks Alexa!

The magnolia flower arrangement is not only a tribute to Sugar Magnolia (aka Maggie Canady) but was also a gift from my mother after it was used as decor at my wedding reception.  It is from NDI, which, if you don’t know, is this place in Brewton that sells fabulous artificial flower arrangements.  They look SO real.  I actually have another on my dining room table and another wrapped at my parents’ house as a Christmas gift!  Can’t wait to open that present!

The Domino book, which you have seen in an earlier post, just provided a bit of pretty color for the table and a little height for the flower arrangement.

The wrought iron and glass tray was also a wedding gift - from Terece Shehan.  It had been used as a catch-all in one of the bedrooms, but makes the perfect place for mail and/or keys.

So there you go…an entryway for less than $50 thanks to lots of wedding gifts and a few fab finds!