Glamour Shots

I've never been a sheepskin kind of girl, but I saw this tutorial on Young House Love and thought it was definitely cute enough to give it a go. I found a fluffy white rug from Bed Bath and Beyond for only $15, so if I ruined it or hated it, it really wouldn't be a big deal. Since our spoiled pups will only sit/lay on carpeting, I figured I'd put this next to the fireplace so they would have yet another seating option. As soon as I finished cutting it out, Peanut sat right on it. These pictures just scream Glamour Shots to me.

Evolution of The Fireplace

One of the first things I noticed about this house was the fireplace. While house hunting we had a pretty specific list of things we wanted, and a fireplace was definitely on it. Unfortunately, once we got in the house and started decorating I realized how difficult arranging something on the fireplace was going to be. It's incredibly tall, has a narrow niche and mantel, and is set at an angel. Not to mention the lovely pink and green tile surround and the gold trim doors.



After painting all the main living area Toffee Crunch brown, I faux finished the niche to help give it some depth. It really helps draw the eye to the focal point of the room.





We knew we would be replacing the tile surround when we got new flooring, so that was pretty easy. Once the tile was up, we needed to figure out what to do with the lovely gold doors (I have never seen gold fixtures done well, but I would love someone to prove me wrong).



I started looking online for new doors and come to find out they run about $400 for a pair. Well, $400 is a lot of money and I could think of about 800 other ways I'd rather spend that money, so I opted to spray paint the gold. I went with black hoping it would just disappear and not really look like anything. I also replaced the beat up handles with some $2.50 brushed silver handles from Lowes. So after spending about $12 and working on the doors for about 2 hours, I think our fireplace is complete.

Big Plants, Little Plants

While looking through all the design blogs I recently discovered I've noticed a common thread, indoor plants! Luckily, our house is bright enough with the skylights and clerestory windows I think I can actually pull this off. Last week I bought a couple flowers from Target for my kitchen that promptly died (I'm ashamed to admit this is like the 6th Target plant that has died, but now I think I've figured it out, TARGET PLANTS DIE). Today I started making a terrarium (not from Target plants). Terrariums are self contained ecosystems that just require a spritz of water every 3-4 weeks. Sounds easy, right? Hopefully it will turn out a little better than the doomed Target flowers. I still need to find some moss so it's a work in progress (I need some mini construction signs) but so far I think it's cute.



While I've been flower hunting, garage sale traipsing, and thrift store digging, Jordan has been taking some amazing pictures. Ever since he got his camera back in December he's been teaching himself how to use it. He's really developing some amazing talent. He must have wanted to practice some night time shooting because all of these are in the dark.

Randomness

Looking back this was a pretty random weekend full of firsts. Saturday morning my good friend Erin, my mom, and I went garage saling. I've never been a fan of garage saling. I don't like looking through other people's junk, and I certainly don't like paying money for it and bringing it back to my house to junk it up. But I happened upon a couple amazingly inspiring blogs that have my creative juices flowing. Since I pretty much have my own home complete (although I always find something that needs new curtains or a paint job) I thought maybe I could start repurposing furniture, lights, accessories. This is a new notion, one that I'm sharing with Erin (Kidding, it was our idea together) so we are still working out the details.

For $3 we made our first purchase yesterday. They are some ugly old pendant lamps, probably from the 70s. They have updated hardwiring and are pretty solid. We will be doing something with them, not sure what. And if ends up awful, we're out $1.50 each.



As for the blogs, my new favorite that I check out 8 times a day is Young House Love. I think I've found my bosom buddies and I'm officially stalking their site 24/7. They are a young couple, just had a baby, and their blog is about restoring their 50 year old home. They have DIY tutorials, design advice, budgeting ideas, pretty much everything design related I could hope for. It's like they are writing it just for me.

The next couple of blogs are specifically about repurposing and renovating furniture and accessories. I read all of Flea Market Trixie in one sitting. Some of her items she found for free and made them into something totally cool. This blog is great for getting inspiration about what seems like ugly junk can be turned into.

So I'm in blog heaven right now. I hope that Erin and I can use some of their ideas and use the talents God has given us. I'm sure I will be posting updates on here.

Finding me at a garage sale wasn't random enough for this weekend. I hope you're sitting down for this one. We got our first piece of nursery furniture. Nursery as in baby nursery. But don't get too excited. This is premature to say the least. One of my mom's parents that she works for gave her a glider and she asked if I wanted it. It fits into the new idea of refurbishing stuff and one day we will need to glide with a kid, I'm sure. It's a little on the brown-blah side, so I'll have to learn how to make slip covers for the detachable cushions. But since it was free I knew I needed to grab it up.



And that concludes my random weekend.

Floors!

I was fortunate enough to get off work early tonight, so I'm going to take this unexpected 2am free time to catch up on what's been going on in our house. Two weeks ago from today we started our floor renovation. It started with moving everything out of the main living areas, including the kitchen and the appliances. We got to set up our bedroom with the TV and our laptops, so we pretty much ate, slept, and relaxed on the bed for the last 2 weeks. I was so excited to get our washer and dryer back in place so I could wash those severely abused sheets.

We started the demo with the tile guys showing up two hours late and removing all the old tile. The second day they laid the new tile, wrong! We paid extra to have the tile laid diagonally but they laid it straight instead. It worked out for us in the long run because we got a nice chunk of change back and the tile still looks great. See?



On the 3rd day they completed our fireplace. I'm really happy with the way it turn out.



After a weekend break Jordan and our friend John began on the wood floors and baseboards. They did a great job laying them and I did an even greater job painting all 160 feet of baseboards. With the floors done our house looks so cozy and pulled together now. It's amazing how some nasty green and pink tile can ruin everything. Now it looks the way it always should have.

The girls match our color scheme



The tile, wood, and baseboards.



The overall atmosphere of our home now.