Put a bird on it!

I noticed a pattern in my home.  I have put a bird in almost every room of my home.  I then turned it into a fun game by photographing all of them in a sort of scavenger hunt in my own space.  Here they are, in no particular order.  Feel free to look for them on your next visit!

As you can tell we have quite a range, from owls to pheasants, to cranes, to sparrows, to chickens and peacocks.  I don't think it was deliberate at first, but maybe at a certain point I decided to spread the love between the rooms and keep a consistent theme around the house.  I can't wait to see what else I find over the years!

The art of randomness

Reading these DIY design blogs has helped me to think of fun ideas for inexpensive/homemade art to fill the wall space in various rooms.  I have already posted pictures of my framed wallpaper sample:

 or custom framed newspapers from UF victories:

but here are a couple more.

This I created using a few old National Geographics I found at a thrift store.  More specifically I pulled a few of my favorite ad pictures.  All the women have fabulously over-styled hair and cat-like eyeliner.  The woman in the ad for a stereo in the middle frame looks just like my mom did in her senior picture, so it has a special place in my heart.  The colors are muted and romantic, so it looks perfect in the dining room.  The frames I got at Target for $9 for 2, but this can work with any matched frames.  If I lived closer to Ikea I'm sure I would have gotten them there.

This is in the guest bathroom.  I used a white frame from Goodwill and a mat purchased at Michaels.  The art itself is a page from a calendar I found on sale at Target (let's hear it for mid-January calendar sales!).  It has a nice mix of gray, blue, and green, as well as some bird pictures.  Everything is better with a bird on it, right?

And finally, another item sourced from a 1963 National Geographic:

I blew this 8 x 10 shot into poster sized at the local Kinko's for a couple of bucks.  I just love the little girl dancing with the statue!  This is for anyone who questions the value of art, and also for anyone that loves to smile at child antics :-).

Overall I have learned that anything is art as long as you love it and frame it.  For me it's pictures of birds, kids, flowers, or things that are blue.  How about you?

A little bit of you, a little bit of me

In marriage, compromises are an art.  It can be challenging to think of something that will make both partners happy, or to get at least one person to let go.  My biggest compromise lately has been in our master bedroom.  There has always been something missing on the far wall, where there was a lot of empty floor space in a weird shape and a big, giant blank wall of gray staring at you when you enter the room.  I was always thinking of a chaise lounge, or at least something long and skinny that kept with the comfortable, neutral theme of the room.

Well, as of last January, there is no more floor space.  So what did we find?  A lovely, vintage-y chaise lounge?  A small chair and side table for reading before bed?  At least something upholstered and neutral?  Nope.  This post is about compromise, remember?  No, what we ended up with is this:

A weight bench.  My wonderful husband wanted to get into a more regular routine, which I totally support, and I found a full set for an amazing price on Craigslist (complete with both heavy dust and tags still intact).  After extensive discussion, we found that this was the only spot in our house that could accommodate the odd shape and massive size.  A bit far from the upholstered neutrals of the rest of the room, but at least it fills the space and balances the room a little more.  I think we still need to add a full size mirror to the right of it, and perhaps an organizer for the free weights, but for now it works for us.  I decided that I didn't need to have yet another spot to read (I have the third floor library for that, or, more regularly, the bed itself), so I didn't need a chaise lounge or side table/chair combo.  Overall it is a daily reminder of combining my style with Jeremy's functionality, and Jeremy actually uses it, so that's a bonus.  The day it turns into one big clothing rack is the day we know we don't need it any more!

Come and knock on our door, we've been waiting for you!

I am pretty proud of our guest room, I have to say.  After years of compelling guests to crash on the couch or stay on our pull-out sofa in the office, it feels pretty swanky to have a room set up specifically for that purpose at all times.  If someone were to randomly drop in and need a room, they could be sleeping in their own private space in 2.5 seconds, no need to pull out a lumpy mattress or move aside stuff that is usually in regular use.  We got extremely lucky that the room was already a warm khaki color, which I had been planning on painting our future guest room back when we were in planning mode.  All I needed to do was add some chocolate brown stripes (the previous owners were nice enough to leave some extra paint from when they painted the dining room) and a couple of accessories, and we were set!

I have had a lot of fun styling the room since it is essentially a museum between rare guest visits.  Emily Henderson (www.stylebyemilyhenderson.com) is amazing at nightstands, so I have been trying to emulate her style with this small part of our home.  You can't really see it in this photo, but it has a dark wood tray, water carafe, water glass, lamp, and small ceramic shoe.  I think I still need to add a piece of art behind the tray and resting on the wall for more of an impact, but I'm not sure.  I'm always torn about the surfaces in a guest room since people inevitably bring lots of stuff and need a place to set it, and if I have a ton of decorative stuff they don't have as much space, but art doesn't take up too much space.  I may move that little painting on the wall above the bed to the nightstand and find something better for that focal spot.  We'll see if we ever find that perfect piece, otherwise, less effort = awesome and the small art will stay.

Let me zoom in on another controversial spot in the room:

I saw this idea in Young House Love's new book, and I tried to pull it off in my own space.  It seemed like the perfect solution for adding another side table in a part of the room where a regular sized nightstand would block the closet door.  I found the chair itself at World Market for $10 at the end of the fall season and added some hardcover books that were of similar size.  Plop an alarm clock on top and it's a nightstand, right?  Jeremy is skeptical, but one can at least set down a pair of glasses or a cell phone, I think.  We'll see how it shapes up over time.

So there it is, what do you think?  Wanna come by?

Banishing Builder's Beige 2: Revenge of the Paint Cans

As you saw in the previous post we have been painting our little cans off lately.  The most ambitious project, I'm sure, was the upstairs hallway.  The walls just...kept...going.  It felt like I would always be cutting in around the trim and baseboards until I grew old and died, paintbrush in hand, falling down carefully so I didn't splatter the carpet.  Fortunately, and obviously, death did not overtake me and we made the transformation from scuffed up beige to a warm neutral very close to the kitchen color.

You saw this picture in the previous post, but now it has a little context.  In person it's a warm, olive-y brown.  Jeremy actually picked the color, and it just happened to be an incredibly close match to the kitchen (love that guy!).  I think it looks great with the black of the gallery frames, as well as with the blues and grays of the rooms connected to it.

This is a shot from the guest room doorway looking back toward the gallery wall.  This was the largest chunk of wall, and I think it shows that the color stands up by itself, without too many things layered on top of it.  I plan to make it a gallery of the UF championship newspapers we have, but framing them is a project to handle over time (have you ever custom framed something?  Yowch!!!  Even with a 60% off coupon and the cheapest options, this one was a bit pricey!  End of aside.)  

Anyway, with a big project comes a big sense of accomplishment when it's done.  I definitely have been rocking a holy-smokes-we-did-it buzz since we finished this in early November, in preparation for Thanksgiving.  It's actually been long enough that we are playing with the idea of adding another coat, but all in good time!

Apologies for the long delay

So I have to sincerely apologize for being away since...September?  Can that be right?  I am thoroughly convinced that no one has been reading this in real time, but if so, thanks for coming back to stay updated on the process of making this house ours.  I could attribute the long hiatus to the chaos of the holidays and sheer procrastination, but the truth is something else entirely which I may or may not share someday.  For now, prepare yourself for a massive upload of information spaced out over several posts of the numerous projects that have gotten us through a long, cold winter.

First, the painting projects.  As of this weekend we have painted almost every wall in this home, sticking to a palette of blues and grays.  The rooms we have tackled since September are:

The office

The guest bathroom

The upstairs hallway

The extra bedroom

Phew!!  It was certainly a lot of work, and we still need to add a second coat of paint to a couple of walls (stairway, I'm looking at you, I didn't even want to photograph you yet, let's get it together).  Overall it feels awesome to shake off the varied palette of neon green, builder's beige, eggplant purple, and chocolate brown to create a more cohesive feel.  It also makes the place feel more like our own, even in rooms that we don't use quite yet (guest bathroom and extra bedroom, that's you).  I'll post with more details as we develop these rooms, but for now, I'm just glad that it's done!