Here's the Plan for Our Bedroom...

Hello! 

So, back to our house. We have been knocking out a TON of projects lately, and quite truthfully, I haven't been dealing with the mess very well, but it feels good to finally see real progress. FINALLY. 

More on those later :).

Another project that I have managed to be crazy enough to start during the existing chaos is making over our bedroom. I cannot take it anymore. Did you know that it is seriously depressing to wake up to this every morning?

These pictures are from our walk-through, so we currently have a bed in here and our dressers from our last bedroom, but that's it. We have not painted (I KNOW), we have not hung anything on the walls, and we definitely have not replaced that icky fan or the water-damaged carpet. 

(creepy mirrors)

I do want to say though, that I LOVE this house. I love this bedroom. I love the size of it! It is huge and it has the perfect spot for a king bed (underneath those creepy mirrors), room for all of our furniture, and plenty of space left over to play and walk around. I've always wanted windows on either side of our bed and now we have them. I am thankful--but I am ready for things to be pretty again.

The main reason we haven't done anything in this room (or most of the house, for that matter) is that I have been trying to save up some money. Well, I did that (!) but then was torn on how I wanted to decorate everything. When we moved into this house, I said that I was going to be more bold in my decorating choices...but I just can't. I am drawn to soft color palettes, natural textures, and clean lines. And I am happy with that. :)

With ALL of that being said...I have finally gotten around to selecting paint and fabrics and putting together an inspiration board for our bedroom. Here it is:

We already have the headboard. It's a Drexel Heritage and I got it at TJ Maxx for $250. It was extremely discounted because it didn't have the frame with it, which was fine because I was just wanting a headboard anyways. I LOVE this thing. It is huge and substantial and a true statement piece but in a subtle way.

The paint color that I have chosen is Benjamin Moore Refined. I'm going to use it at 50% though. I have about seven paint colors on our wall right now and this one is SO pretty and soft. It goes super perfectly with the fabrics for this room. I ordered about 30 swatches from fabrics.com and am SO excited to use these together. (Sidenote: When asked if he cared about using a floral fabric in our room, Bryan immediately rolled his eyes and said "I'm a guy, why would I care?" And that is why I love him ;)

I've already gotten a new quilt from Overstock (this one), and we just got it in the mail two days ago. It is awesome. I also went and got king-sized pillows last night so now we actually have pillows that fit our bed!! If only I could convey my genuine excitement over this fact--it is ridiculous.

I'm still on the lookout for an awesome couple of dressers and have my eye on several bedside tables. I would really like a mirrored set to add another layer to the room. Let me see....a woven bench or set of stools would be amazing for the foot of the bed---something light and airy though--gourd lamps are a must, and so are my favorite bamboo blinds, also from Overstock (I like that place a little too much). I'm also thinking of sticking with my favorite white curtains from Ikea for both windows. They are so airy and nice looking in real life!

We eventually want to replace the old carpet with something like sisal or a natural fiber (along with new baseboards), but that will unfortunately be the last thing we do in the house since we have so much dust and construction going on. I'm trying to be patient about that one but it is hard to wait!

We also have something fun planned for the ceilings and the only thing I'm still truly torn on is whether to stick with a new ceiling fan since we do actually use it throughout the summer (SO HOT), or go the pretty but less practical route and get a glitzy ceiling mount like the one above.

ALSO. There is this weird little corner in the room. It's about 3 feet deep and 6 feet long and neither of us know what to do with it. It's driving me nuts!

Originally we talked about building a desk for me to work at. But then I didn't want to bring work mess into our room, so that idea was nixed. Then we talked about building bookshelves, but we have those in the living room (though they can be moved...), then we talked about being a small sitting area....and then about closing it off to be an extra closet. (We each have our own walk-in closet in our bathroom though.) What do you think? Any ideas? I'm having a hard time finding inspiration for this particular problem and am just stumped.

So that's where we are with that. It's so exciting and refreshing to get going on this. I hope to hear some of your thoughts and suggestions!

Have a wonderful weekend! 

The Plan For Our Kitchen

Hi, everyone! I had to take a little break this past week (and a half) because things were just super crazy! We got home from Colorado last week only to leave a couple of days later for Amarillo...and have somehow managed to keep up with all of our normal activities as well. We also have four showers, two birthday parties, and numerous Halloween activities to go to this month...so it's been really busy but really fun. Anyways...I'm back for the moment...and I'm going to write some about our kitchen today!

One of my favorite things about blogging is that I can usually sort out some of the craziness in my head when I write out a post. So, please excuse the explosion of my thoughts regarding our kitchen in this post. It really does help ;).

Our kitchen is probably the room in our house that I dream about more than any other, and it's easy to see why when you know that it looked like this when we moved in...

Ahhhhhhhh!!! It's like a horror movie. I know! I know. But really, the room has such  potential. Seriously, I am so excited about it, I can't stand it. It opens up to the dining room with the huge bay window that I have shown you before, so it has a lot of natural light. It also has a great layout, and, like everything else in the house, is very basic and bare so is pretty much a blank slate. The only things we've done since these pictures were taken is paint the walls and put in wood floors. I've attempted to accessorize, but it doesn't do too much good in this situation ;).

The cabinets are total crap (shallow, no shelving, literally falling off the hinges), so we want to replace them. The original plan was to gut everything sometime next summer...like really...everything, and put in some kitchen cabinets from Ikea. I've read great things about them, and have seen them in real life and love the look. I'm thinking the Lidingo system in white. 

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We also wanted to build them up to the ceiling to look custom with some pretty crown moulding, put in a new sink, hardware, frame out the fridge, new backsplash, new counters, put in a stainless stove and dishwasher, build a custom vent hood, put in new lighting...the works.

Then we looked at our bank account and laughed really hard. ;)

So that plan has recently become the "in a few years when we've save enough" plan. And by a few years, I'm guessing more than 2 or 3. In the meantime though, I CANNOT live in this ugly kitchen anymore. We were trying to be frugal and just deal with it, but I just can't. I need pretty things for my sanity day after day. It's a creative drain to live in a house where everything is bare and white. SO, we have begun brainstorming a new plan...which is to paint the existing cabinets, maybe add some crown to the tops, add some open shelving, change out the lighting, build a small vent hood, add hardware, and possibly add a new faucet.

I've sketched this and researched this SO many times and now I am pretty pumped! I just bought this paint sprayer, and am planning to start sanding the cabinets and painting sometime in the next month or so. I think we are painting them in Benjamin Moore Paper Mache. 

Here is some of my general inspiration for this makeover:

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Can you tell that I want to do open shelving? ;) And that's not even all of the inspiration...it's only just the tip of the iceburg. I have a zillion other kitchen pins on Pinterest.

I love these black nantucket pulls for our drawers.

And something simple like these black knobs for our lower cabinets.

And these knobs from Anthro for the 3 upper cabinets we're planning to leave up.

We will do open shelving on almost the entire wall above the sink (but will leave the uppers on either side of the stove). I want to do natural looking shelves, not painted or anything (we'll probably stain them with danish oil), and I want to use pretty brackets similar to these, also from Anthropologie. (I would like something black though, I think.) 

We are planning to leave the open shelving even when we gut the rest of the kitchen, so I'm willing to invest a bit more in that. Cannot wait to get them styled!

I'm not positive if we'll do a backsplash right now, since I would hate to rip it up when we gut the kitchen down the road, but if we need to we'll probably just throw some beadboard up, since it's timeless and cheap. 

I can't wait for a new faucet (and would LOVE a new farmhouse sink too, but we're trying to save money...), but I love this one from Ikea:

(We need a single-hole faucet to fit our current sink or else I would go with something more elaborate.)

For the vent hood, I'm trying to coax Bryan is building something like the one in this picture...(a mini version)

He acts like he's not excited...but I know he's secretly looking forward to it :)

So there's that. I need to end this novel of a post now, but I'm excited to get started! (Along with the zillion other projects we have halfway started, haha!) Also, I painted the fireplace last week! Well, just primed it. But I'm hoping to get it completely done by the end of the weekend. And I finally got curtains for the living room! I am excited to share those as well.

Have a great day!! Thanks for reading through the mess of my head.

Are You Ready For Some Fall?

Because I am!!

I know. It's still August. And yes, I know that it will pretty much be summer around these parts until mid November...but I've always loved fall. And so many good things come along with it... cute clothing (boots!), a slice of apple pie, crisp air, and Sunday afternoon naps with football games playing in the background...ah, I am a happy girl just thinking about it. And then, for those of you who are like me (which I think is anyone who reads this), there are the decorations!! Oh, how the decorations call to me. 

A week or so ago I unpacked all of our fall decor and took inventory. I always overspend during the holidays and am bound and determined not to this year. I've given myself a $50 budget for all decor (including pumpkins) and think I can stick to it. Bryan was pretty excited about my sudden urge to be frugal :).

This is what we have. It may not look like much, but since I like to mix seasonal decor in with my normal decor, it seems like plenty to me! Also, please ignore our very stark white bedroom :).

Last year I was a bit minimal with my decor, but I really liked what I ended up with. The year before that, there were ZERO fall decorations since I was newly pregnant, very sick, and usually asleep. And as much as a I love to decorate, I always have a hard time with seasonal decor, because everything MUST match in my book, but I don't decorate with reds or oranges...so obviously that kinda puts me in a bind. 

Thankfully though, I have learned that you don't have to use traditional colors to make your seasonal decorations look amazing. 

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I am SO painting some pumpkins this year. I stocked up last year on faux pumpkins at clearance sales and am SET. All I need is a free naptime and some paint. Can't wait!

This year, since we've just moved into the new house and about 80% of it hasn't been touched as far as general decorations go, I will just be focusing on a few areas: Our front door, the dresser in our entry hall, our mantle, and our dining room.

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I would love to try my hand at these velvet pumpkins. I've found a few tutorials, but none that I'm totally in love with, so I may just make it up as I go along. 

Isn't this table set-up to die for? I love the apples surrounding the jars and the wheat. I saw wheat bundles at Hobby Lobby and am sorely tempted to go back and buy a few.

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Oh, you're about to see a sprinkling of pictures from the blog, Dear Lillie. I mean, seriously, Jenny is so so SO amazing at seasonal decor. I could look at her blog for hours (and have many times).

I love these fresh cut leaves and antique hydrangeas. Well, I really love this whole table.

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These are beautiful examples of how to style urns and vases.

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Again with the leaves. The simplicity of this really gets to me. I love it!

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I'm thinking that something similar to this pumpkin set-up will be happening on the front porch this year. And that peek of spanish moss? So very perfect.

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The texture in this wreath is awesome, as is the homemade "thankful" tree.

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So what are your plans for fall this year? Will you be going all out or just picking a few areas in your home to go crazy with? Where do you find the most inspiration?

Have an awesome day!

Inspiration for our Fireplace Makeover

Last week, I shared the progress that we've made on our mantle so far. I last left you with this:

The current look is SO much better than the 'Before', but we still have a lot that we want to do. I would really like to add more "oomph" to our mantle, along with a different brick color. The final touches will be the decorations, which I am pumped to play around with!

Here are some of my favorite images that have been inspiring our fireplace makeover.

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Edie's fireplace is beautiful, and I love the touch of color she added. It's colonial and classic with a twist and the columns on either side of the firebox are perfection.

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I LOVE this image. Those built-ins? Ahhh. Another classic, beautiful fireplace. I love the wainscoting above the mantle--this might happen to ours as well.

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The hearth height in this image is just like ours, and again, I love the classic columns and wainscoting.

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Another option we've been discussing is to make a mantle with distressed or reclaimed wood to add some depth and texture. I love the look of this driftwood mantle. This whole room is so whimsical and light--perfection!

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Here is another great painted mantle with a twist on the classic look. I also really love the white painted brick, but I'm not positive I would love it on our fireplace. Thoughts?

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Last but not least is this beautiful cottage-style mantle. I know that everyone is doing these wood planks, and with good reason--the look is truly beautiful and timeless! This would definitely add a lot of height and character to our living room if we went in this direction.

So what do you think? There are so many great looks with mantles, and it is SO hard to narrow it down to just one!

Have a wonderful day!

The New House: Living Room

I love our new living room and how spacious it is, so much so that we've been able to add two new (to us) chairs and there is still plenty of room for Parker to run around and play. 

The ceilings are fairly tall, and since the photos below were taken we've painted and put in new floors... but there are still two things that I think need some major changes.

The first is the lack of natural light in here.It's actually not as dark as it looks in the picture (I'm sitting in this room right now and it's plenty bright to not have any inside lights on), but I like for rooms to be completely flooded with sunlight, :) so we have an obvious situation. (Sidenote: Parker looks so teensy in this picture! He wasn't even walking yet....sigh.)

The second problem is this fireplace. There is nothing truly wrong with it (besides that hideous cover), but it was a little too brown and blah for my taste. Now, we have already made a few small changes to it which I hope to share with you soon...but we still have a ways to go. 

Here is the back wall--if this picture had our furniture in it, you would be looking directly at our big couch (and me wrapped up in a blanket typing this post). The room is big enough that our couch isn't even against the wall, it's about 4 or 5 feet in front of it. This also poses another small problem because I cannot stand overhead lights and would love to get some lamps or sconces near the couches to bring in some ambient lighting. 

Here is what the room looks like from the corner with the back door. You can see a peek of our kitchen and   a hallway. Our TV is on the wall with all of the outlets.

Now, there are a lot of different inspiration images I can show you for each area of this room, but we can save those for separate posts....right now, I'm going to share the general 'feel' that I'm going for in here.

I LOVE Edie's new house. LOVE. As I've said before, I'm attempting to go for more color and texture in our new house--and this style is kinda the route that I'm thinking of right now. The high curtains, the patterns, the dressed up, yet lived-in feel of it...oh, me. I also absolutely love how the fireplace is done--we are thinking of doing something very similar to ours, too.

Another, cozy, colorful, beautiful room. Our furniture set-up is very similar as well...we have everything in the center of the room.

I don't think I could ever go this bold with my color scheme, but I really love Carmel's style and all of the layers in this room.

This room has been one of my all-time favorites for years. Although I'm attempting to be more bold with color choices this time around, I will always be a blue and green girl at heart. I also adore the set-up of this space with the furniture in the center surrounding a focal point--much like our living room is right now! Beautiful.

To remedy the natural light "situation", we are really, really, really hoping to knock out that back wall and move the back door and window to go from this...

(excuse the terminator, haha, this was taken during our inspection)

To a wall of french/sliding doors and windows similar to this...

Or this...

Or this...

(Love those herringbone floors, too.)

And wal-lah! We will have the perfect (to us) living room. Hope you enjoyed my long jumble of thoughts. Have a wonderful day!

The New House: Laundry Room

We have a small laundry room in the middle of the new house. It is much bigger than our old laundry room and has an extra closet so I am one happy girl! It's also across a small hall from our bedroom which I like because it's just that much closer to where our dirty clothes hang out in the hamper until it's time to wash them.

The only problem is that it looks like this...

And this...



And this..

BEIGE. 

Lots of linoleum (which is also in the kitchen, dining, and both bathrooms, just FYI), lots of taupe paint, lots of dirt, and some not-so-pretty unfinished cabinets (which grace us with their presence in the kitchen as well).

The good (and very exciting) thing about this taupe-beige monstrosity is that it's basically a blank slate and is pure putty in this DIYer's hands :). 

As of right now, I'm thinking of some pretty tile. Maybe a classic hexagon or some sort of fun herringbone pattern. Or MAYBE a fun colored tile. (!) Who knows.

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I love marble. LOVE. 

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The doors will be painted...I don't know. I also love the idea of doing a pattern on the walls. I toyed with using a bold wallpaper, but I just don't think I can commit. My favorite stencil site I've seen so far is Royal Design Studio. If we don't go with this, I may end up doing some sort of bold color on the walls. Navy?

We will more than likely be doing wainscoting or board and batten in here because I just can't get enough of it and think it would be a good way to dress up the space. I'm also wanting to have a "drop center" of sorts with some hooks for purses, shopping bags, and keys along the back wall because I've noticed that these things tend to get thrown on top of the washer right now...and we all know that the perfect backdrop for wall hooks of any kind is a classic bead board. ;) 

  
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I also want to make sure that this room is functional. I'm thinking of some sort of pull-out drying rack and a little peg board for lost socks. Am I the only one who always has 595 lonely socks? I have our mail sorting center in our kitchen and I love it there, so I don't know what else should go in the laundry room. Right now it houses all of our cleaning supplies, detergents, iron and ironing board, batteries, small tools, and baby proofing supplies.... now that I've typed that it looks like a lot. Maybe I'm a laundry room pack rat, haha.

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I love the cabinet color in the above photo and the open shelving and bead board ceiling two photos above. I'm thinking that open shelving will be happening in our laundry room, but I'm not sure if I want to do big corbels or painted shelving or what... our washer and dryer are white so I don't want too much white and I'll already have the wainscoting going on (maybe that could be a fun color?)... we'll see what ends up happening. I'll probably change my mind at the last minute, knowing me.

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For some reason I am really obsessed with this laundry room. I love the black! I have never liked black much in rooms before. That rug is also great as well as the open shelves. I kind of want our shelves to look cluttered--lots of layers and textures, you know? I'm happy that we have the extra closet for our cleaning products so that I can make the shelving as pretty as possible. 

The lighting in this room will most likely be similar to the photo above as well. I have an extra drum shade from Ikea that I'm 99% sure will end up in this space. Talk about a happy accident!

So that's basically my jumble of thoughts about the laundry room... for the moment, at least. The BEST part about this is that the laundry room makeover will be the next big project that we do! I am pumped. I need a pretty place to do my least favorite chore. 

Am I missing anything? What are your favorite things/features in your laundry room?