Our own Sherry and Terry

It's twins!!  Before you get too excited, I mean our slipper chairs, which arrived today!  After some minor assembly with a little assist from Allen Wrench

they were all ready to go!  I definitely need to dress them up with some brown pillows to tie in the couch, and maybe track down this fabric to make some pillows for the couch.  I am so glad that they turned out this well, and I must resist the urge to grab a fun stool to put between them, we still need to save money!

Banishing beige

We all know it, that pale, sickly shade of yellow-y beige that many have lovingly dubbed "builder's beige."  All of the transitional spaces in our home are were this color, perhaps since there is so much space that repainting it would be a big undertaking.  As part of our plan to have all painting projects completed by Thanksgiving we decided to tackle the beige in the downstairs a few weeks ago.  I wanted yet another shade of gray but couldn't decide exactly one and was nervous about just choosing one since so much space would be committed to this color (our hallways are like one big Mobius strip).  Enter the swatches:

To see how it would look next to the greenish kitchen walls

Checking to coordination with the darker gray already in the hallway

Under the silver and white frames in the gallery

In the mudroom with the darker wood console table

Fairly quickly both hubs and I chose the lighter shade for the hallways and the darker one for the mudroom.  This was a little surprising as I was planning on just choosing one color, but it has definitely worked out having two shades.  The wonderful thing about Martha Stewart's paint collection is that she has handy little symbols to make sure that the colors coordinate, so our home still feels cohesive.  Observe!

Underneath the fun mirror I painted with chalkboard paint

Looking snazzy with the trellis rug

Going moody in the mudroom

Looks alright with the kitchen green too!

So goodbye, downstairs builder's beige, catch you on the second floor!

Crossing my fingers on this one

We had our housewarming party on the 8th, and much to our surprise most of the people that we invited actually came!  We had lofty plans of entertaining all of these people outside on our lovely paved patio with the grill going and a Bocce ball tournament.  Sadly, Mother Nature had a different idea and all 20+ of our guests were confined to the living room and kitchen.  This alerted us to the shortage of seats in the living room (the sectional seats five, which is a lot with the two of us but not so much when you have 18 extra people).  Our favorite seating arrangement ever was when we had this sectional plus another large sofa that we used before we upgraded, we were able to seat 12 with that arrangement!  We don't quite have the room for another sofa since our room is more long than wide, and a loveseat would be too bulky.  A lot of the rooms that I have seen on design blogs and Pinterest have a matched pair of slipper chairs, so I decided to start preliminary searches for those.  I also decided to try to find an interesting pattern to bring some life into the living room (forgive me) since we have a large solid sofa, solid walls, and natural tables.  Enter this chair,

The Avington slipper chair in Cloud Floral from Target, so cute!  It was also marked down to $125, which was nice enough, but when I noticed that it was a buy one/get one 50% off, it pushed me over the edge.  I figured out how to frame it with the hubs since we decided to stop buying furniture and start saving for a car (that hasn't worked the last ten times we have said it), and I really wanted these.  What gets me, every single time I have decided to spend money, is the deal.  I mean, c'mon, two slipper chairs for $225 after tax and delivery?!  Crazy good, right?  The pattern is also a perfect blend of the blues and grays without being too overpowering. 

Ugh, I hope so.  Because I really have to stop spending soon.  Like now.

Lightening the mood

Chocolate brown is only good on walls in small doses.  No one told this to the previous owners, who decided it was good for a dining room.  It was definitely very dramatic, especially with the big light fixture, but it didn't strike the mood that I wanted for our space.  I picked out the color combination I wanted a while ago, but due to its relative disuse it didn't make the cut when it came to pre-move in projects.  A good friend of mine offered to help us to paint a room as a housewarming gift (awesome idea!!), and we chose this one.  I appreciate her perfectionism, because this room has a lot of trim.  When you look closely, you notice lots of red and brown on the sashes, sills, and chair rail.  This is very frustrating, since it meant that not only were the previous owners sloppy, but the ones before them as well.  I think this room also has wallpaper under the layers of paint, which means that a full overhaul may be in the cards someday.  But for now, it looks smashing!

Mustache power!

I have been loving the recent trend of using handlebar mustaches in decor items.  When we realized we needed a little something of interest in the mudroom, as well as needing a key holder, it seemed like the perfect combination to get a handlebar mustache key holder.  And where, pray tell, can one find such an odd item?  Etsy of course!  We definitely scored with this moderately priced item, which looks pretty snazzy in the small space, if I do say so myself!

The funniest moment is when Jeremy looked at it, appreciated it, but said that he imagined it bigger.  Naturally my first thought was Homer Simpson ordering a beer in Australia (50 seconds into the clip below). 

Love it.

Eggplant no more

The half-bath on the first floor was purple when we moved in.  Now I am no stranger to purple walls, my first apartment bedroom's walls were purple, but it definitely clashed with the other colors that we chose for the house.  It wasn't too offensive so we waited a while, but the other day I suddenly couldn't stand it anymore and took it on.  Unfortunately the space was too small for two, so I embarked on this journey solo.  

Something interesting happened when I went to remove the lightswitch covers.  Keeping with the theme of the previous owners seeming to cut corners, I found out that they not only put the lightswitch cover back on while the paint was still wet, I found out that they painted over wallpaper when a huge chunk of it peeled up with the cover.  Ugh.  I glued it back down and prayed that the paint would keep it down until such time that we could pull it all up and do a proper job.  Unfazed, I pressed on, and after about six hours in a small space , just me and a paint can, the room looked great!  I love this Plumage color so much and am so excited to have it on all four walls of a room.

This time I did not fail at my attempt

We bought a patio set on July 4th so that we could actually sit at a table with my parents for the holiday (the moving van didn't show until the 6th), but it was missing an umbrella.  And I mean it when I say "missing it" because we definitely dealt with glare and a little sunburn.  So when I was in World Market today and saw rectangular umbrellas marked down from $169 to $42, I was all over them.  Took a bit of a gamble with mixing patterns, but I think they can play nicely, if only because you don't really see them together (since the umbrella is so tall).

When I got it home J was still at work, and me being impatient, I struggled to set it up myself.  Believe me when I say that this clip was the one that kept running through my head as I wrenched and twisted and shoved the thing into the base, threading the needle through the table.  The fact that I got one with blue stripes is a total coincidence, by the way.

The scene of many future gags

Our living room is the place where we do the most...well...living.  I think this is why it was the first room that we painted and the one that I have been tweaking the most since we moved in.  I waited for a while to take the final shot to post because I keep changing things in there, but since there is no clear point where I will be finished, I just went ahead and took these.  I like how the couch balances the very long room and provides enough seating so that we don't have to figure out how to arrange a chair in the layout.  The floors are nice enough that we only need a small rug for the coffee table, so it worked out that all of our stuff fit perfectly in the room.  I am envisioning lots of future family photos, and maybe even a full showgirl/juggler/elephant display in our 138th Show Spectacular.

As to the built-ins around the TV, I have to give pretty much all of the inspiration credit to Young House Love on these shelves.  They painted the backs of their built-ins in pretty much the same color (Martha Stewart Plumage) and it was such an amazing idea that I had to use it!  They also inspired me to make a little time capsule of mementos from our UK trip in a sealed mason jar on the right as well as a collection of business cards from all the Top Chef restaurants that we have visited in a vase on the left.

To finish out the look, I used the white objects I have been slowly accumulating to place in front of the dark color, then I grabbed all of the books in our collection that were white/cream or turquoise to get myself started placing objects.  I had to add my beautiful vase from Anthropologie with teal and coral because I just love it so much, so I pulled a couple of things with the reddish color to make it fit in the scheme.  One of my favorite arrangements is the full collection of the Series of Unfortunate Events books that I stumbled on in my local Goodwill, which made for a fun pop of color at the base of the shelves on the right.  So far I like the balance and the layout, although I'm sure it will change as time passes and new objects are found/acquired since I would love to use these highly visible shelves to display all of our favorite things over the years!

Getting things together upstairs

Over the weekend hubs and I decided to tackle the master bathroom.  Since our first walk through I have wanted to paint this room.  No offense to the previous owners, but it was clear that this room was heavily neglected.  It wasn't even featured in the photos on the real estate website, despite the lovely soaker tub, standing shower, and double vanities.  That was likely because of the original brass-ish hardware, filthy grout, chipping paint.  Yargh.

But, thankfully, no more!  We started with a full paint job, covering the yellow faux finish with a nice coat of Sparkling Brook by Martha Stewart.  Then, as we painted we noticed that the towel bar near the shower was held up with, wait for it...Scotch. Tape.  Yup, you read that correctly, it was held up with scotch tape.  Needless to say, that prompted us to add "install a new towel bar" to the list of weekend projects.  After the hubs successfully added new quality hardware in brushed nickel, double so that we can share the prime real estate, it felt much, much better in there.

Then I got to play with the details, noticing that the Monet print that has graced all of my bathrooms since my first apartment was rather muddy with the new bright blue walls.  So I slapped some scrapbook paper in the Monet's white frame (after hubs suggested something graphic instead of a photo) and came up with something perfect for 60 cents, score!  Add that to the fun new bathmats and acrylic accessories, and it's darn near a spa in there, at least to me.  Love it.

The second project I tackled upstairs was styling the black bookshelf at the top of the stairs.  I saw a pin on Pinterest featuring black and white wallpaper in a black hutch, and I absolutely loved it.  Same idea as the blue shelves in the living room, only with paper instead of paint.  After racking my brain for the easiest way of adding paper, I decided on contact paper (cheap, self sticking, small amount on the roll).  I ordered some on Amazon and was actually able to cover the backing in about 30 minutes with minimal problems.  Then I got to style the bookshelves and grabbed some random sentimental objects from around the home, such as my old glasses for the top of the "Girl with Glasses" book and the watch of Jeremy's that I semi-stole our first year together.  I also found an owl for the Harry Potter bookshelf at the local Ross, it was too perfect to pass up :-).  I think it will be a continuous process like the built-ins in the living room, but for now I'm happy.

Slightly closer so that you can appreciate the details

Last day as a homemaker

My real full-time job starts on Monday, which means that today was my last day to have the whole day alone in the house to focus fully on decorating before there will be more things on my mind.  So I decided to make the most of it by completing as many projects as I could formulate, which turned out to be family silhouettes, framing a swatch of wallpaper, sewing curtains, and bleaching the grout in our bathroom (slightly less glamorous/creative).  Truly a crammed day, just the way I like it!

Our family silhouettes, I think I need to add hair to mine to make me look less bald

 Beautiful Schumacher wallpaper that is much to expensive, but the sample was free!

 Oh boy, did this grout need bleaching.  All I could think was "untidy, untidy!!!"

 Sewing a $5 shower curtain from Salvation Army into three curtains, no ears of corn to be found

 Beginnings of our library with the curtains.  Still needs window seat cushions and bookshelves

 Our lovely new pub table arrived today, so simple to assemble!

Overall a very productive day, but of course all I can see are the multitudes of things left to accomplish.  Every day should get us a little cozier, a little more snug, a little more nested,

Welcome home!

And so it begins, cue the clouds, the theme music, and "The Fowlers" in diminishing yellow text.

Welcome to our little life here in the Triad, just a young married couple and their dog.  The Simpsons brought us together back when we were teenagers, we had a reading from them in our wedding, and we pretty much quote it every day, so it seems only fitting that it be our blog's theme.  So expect multiple references in every post, just FYI.

We have moved around a lot as a couple (four homes in three states so far), but now it seems that we have planted the seeds to what will become the roots of our life together.  A wonderful job opportunity brought us to Greensboro, NC, and by pure luck we found our current home over our one weekend of house hunting paid for by the hubs' new company.  We love it.  I have had two weeks between closing and starting my new job to make it our own, and so far things are progressing well.  However, I am learning that I need to retrain myself out of the renter mindset.

I'm sure you know what I mean, since most everyone rents at least once in one's life, but I will specify my own definition.  In the renter's mindset, I can already see the end of my time in a place.  Walls that are painted need to be repainted.  Holes that are made need to be completely refilled without a mark to avoid paying extra.  Anything that you want to do with the decor needs to be done immediately, otherwise you will run out of time to enjoy it and spend the rest of your home decorating life trying to recreate that perfect arrangement, or stuck in a mental pigeonhole of how things fit together.  But here, there is no end in sight.  Things that I do don't have to be undone.  Walls will stay that color until I change them.  Projects can wait for months or even years until I come across the perfect piece at an antique store or consignment shop.  It's so liberating, I tells ya.

So the purpose of this blog will be to document our journey as real-life, mortgage holding, home decorating, root-planting grown-ups.  Hope you will enjoy reading about it as much as we will enjoy living it!