Design Daydreams

There is a whole new meaning to "Design Daydreams" around here.  Now, instead if making a "shopping list" of things I want to buy for my home I am now literally daydreaming about those things.   Ever since we removed the wall between our living room and dining room I feel as if my house is a wreck.   There are so many things left to get done before the holidays.  For no reason other than, I want  room(s) to look especially good in Christmas pictures???  I don't know the reason so I'm asking myself.

When I was in design school there were two cardinal rules. One being never call a sofa a couch. It's a sofa.  Second.  Never hang your TV above your fireplace.  Well ladies, what fun are rules if they can't be broken and even more, what choice do I have, it won't fit anywhere else! Ha.  A lot of things would be able to take place if I could just get the guy over here to hang my TV.  Which brings us to our latest marital debate...the swivel mount.   You don't even want to know.

I thought about doing candle sconces on the side of the TV and then I really thought that would probably not be a great idea.  I have decided on topiary's.  Like these.  18" tall.  Ballard Designs.   I will probably do some candles low.  You know I love my candles. Ha ha.

This would be perfect above the TV. If there is any room left up there.  Also Ballard Designs.

There is also this huge red cabinet I have now gone to purchase twice and haven't been able to do it.  Like I am afraid I will have buyers remorse.  I now know for sure that I want it and it is for sure not in my budget this month. Go figure.  One day you will be mine Rojo Cabinet from Crate and Barrel.  One day very soon.  Even if I don't eat for two months.  This would go on the far wall of the dining room.

I am going to buy another (yes we have one in the playroom) jute rug from Ikea for the dining room. I love them.

Window Treatments I need you bad.  I took the old ones down and gave them away.  Since then, I have tried to find the perfect fabric to make my own and have found nothing. 

I love the look of these chocolate brown velvet drapes.  I may go with the Sanela drape from Ikea.  They are a nice weight and at $50 a pair for the 98" length, it's a no brainer.

I've got to tell you, I am little bit bored with all the family photos we have hanging up.  Visiting my parents does not help because they have beautiful artwork everywhere in their home. The one reason I am hoping their house sells is so that I can acquire some art. A condo just wouldn't be big enough for it all.  I recently bought a painting off of Craig's List of a barn. I love it but it needs a new frame.   So we are in the market for some new things to hang on our walls.  I will be keeping a few things we had, and still using some family photos but I have been looking at these (again Ikea, I don't know what the deal is).

This is a new poster they are carrying and I love it. If I could catch a framing sale at Hobby Lobby or Michael's this could be really nice.  Adam hates it.

I love this painting. Don't ask me why because I don't have an answer.  I think the frame sucks but again, a small problem.

I finally got my Nana's wing back chair to my house. Now I just have to pick out a fabric and make the slipcover.  We all love the chair. I sit in it everyday and blog.  It makes me miss her so much but so happy at the same time.  I hope it turns out a little but like this. This slipcover was purchased. Mine will be hand made! Scary. I may have Adam cut the two front legs down and put small casters on it.

via Our Suburban Cottage

Our White Ikea Chairs are pretty but they need a little something.  I am going to make some pillow covers with burlap and stamp bumbles bees on them.  Or maybe an H.  But once again, I burnt on the monogram.  Much smaller than these.

via Greige design.

The dresser where the TV is now we will keep in the same place and I am going to hang the mirror that prior to now, hung above the fireplace.  I have a half dozen buffet lamps in my attic and I will probably paint  a set and put them on that table .  Maybe that is where the permanent home will be for the bird house I bought at the yard sale. 

I want to move the sofa in to a new configuration but I don't know how I would like for it to look.  Did I tell you I bought these pillow covers?  Pottery Barn of course.

So that's where I am right now with the living room.  It's such a work in progress. Sometimes I start to let it stress me out and then I just have to remember how much I love doing this kind of stuff. Even though I can't buy it all at once, when it's done, it will be gorgeous.  Hopefully. xoxoxox

Design Daydreams-Dining Room Edition Part 1

Tonight I wanted tacos for dinner. Adam wanted Chinese.  I wasn't around so he ordered Chinese and when I fessed up about my yen for tacos tonight he replied "I am sorry baby.  You know I always try to give you what YOU want."  He is and was dead serious. That man lives to please me and I love and appreciate him for it.  Which is how I know even though he says he likes the dining room without a big honkin' piece of china cabinet, I'll be getting one.

This is what I'm thinking about...

I wish this came in brown or black.  For the price I MAY consider painting it.  It doesn't look like much here but in the store they have it lit up on the inside and it really is beautiful.

I have no clue where this came from but I liked the idea of glass on the top and the two drawers.

This is from CSNstores.com. I really know nothing about that website but I've heard a lot about it recently so I did a little search and saw this.

I love the idea of buying an antique dresser from Craig's List and painting it but I don't know if it would be big enough to make the statement that I need.

This of course is Pottery Barn. What would my blog be without Pottery Barn? 

I almost bought this years ago for my dining room.  It has tons of storage and I love the idea of having a little bar in the middle. Because you know, in between play dates and poop I would like to have friends over to drink. Yeaaaah right.

Ok I just love this big RED china cabinet. Crate and Barrel makes it.  I was worried it might look bad in our dining room but the color of the wall it's on is VERY similar to our new wall color so it could be done.

So basically I want something with glass doors because I want to display all of that fun stuff I got for my wedding but have nothing else to do with.  I have also collected a few things myself over the years and I am slowly stealing things I love from my mom.  They all need a home. Drawers would be ideal too because I have lots of table linen but I can always buy some cute baskets to throw that stuff in. I am always open to suggestions (less expensive ones especially). I know so many of you read great design blogs (I just wish I had one) and see cool stuff all the time. So, send it my way!!!

This is probably going to be part of a series.   I need a new rug and some art!

Design Daydreams

Well I am taking the advice of a blog reader and going to try and have can lights installed in my kitchen.  I am hoping Adam can do them himself because we are weeks away from having the walls taken out between the living room and dining room and I would love to have can lights installed in both rooms once that is done.

In the meantime, as usual, I have a million things racing through my mind that I want to do around here.  On my list of things this week is to finally paint the living room a lighter color.  Our living room is the only room we haven't touched since moving in 4 years ago.  I will also be painting the fireplace black.  I am so excited about that.  Adam and I were going to start it tonight after Aidan went to bed but we decided to hold off until the morning.  We are going to paint it in an eggshell finish. 

Here are the colors I am considering for the living room.  The yellow is probably my least favorite but I will entertain it because well "You can't knock it til' you try it." So, there will be a yellow test square painted on the wall. Haha.

Color Ideas:

Benjamin Moore Natural Linen

Benjamin Moore Natural Cream

Pottery Barn for Benjamin Moore Hush

Pottery Barn for Benjamin Moore Marscapone

Pottery Barn for Benjamin Moore Jicama

Pottery Barn for Benjamin Moore Hawthorne Yellow

Pottery Barn for Benjamin Moore Nantucket Breeze

My favorite is Natural Cream.  I hope it ends up looking good. More than that, I hope Adam and I can agree on it. I have to tell you that painting a room this light is a huge step for me. I usually lean towards darker colors.  I am sure with the black fireplace and our charcoal sectional.  It will all look good together. Let me know if there is a color you like better.

Just so you know what your working with when trying to make a decision for me...This is our sofa... I don't always have the ottoman there. 

Design Daydreams

Well it's finally happened.  Our low voltage track lighting in our kitchen has proven to be our worst purchase yet.  Well the worst one I can remember right now.   I am literally cooking in the dark.  So I am on the hunt for a light fixture for the kitchen. 

I think that sometimes have a knack for interior design is a downfall for me.  I have access to all these wonderful resources and it makes it so hard to make a decision.   I have a little dilemma in the kitchen lighting department.  Ideally, I would love to buy this and hang it above our island. 

ALTHOUGH, our island is not fixed to the floor.  It's a Crate & Barrel island with casters that can be moved.  So, I am thinking that it will look goofy when the island is not in the room.  It's rare that we move the island out BUT the kitchen is much bigger without it so I can see myself selling it on Craig's List one of these days.  I could have Adam install four or six can lights in addition because we need lots of lighting in there. 

I feel like I am going around in circles.  This is my other option.  Two of them.  Or do we think that I could do two of these and then the chandelier above?  HELP!  See how confused I am??  I'm never this bad.

Making Progress...

The other day I wrote this post about creating a picture wall above our sofa in our living room and doing some painting and making some window treatments.  Well, somewhere in between quitting diapers cold turkey with Aidan and searching for a new car for Adam, I managed to get some of that accomplished this weekend.   I really wanted to get all the frames on the wall before I decided if I was going to paint and I lost steam on making window treatments this weekend so maybe that will happen this week.   Here is what I have done so far...

I took quite a few pictures and not one really looks like it does in real life but I tried...

What I spent on frames:

The chunky silver one I bought at Hobby Lobby. It was originally $27 but every other week their frames go on sale so it was 50% off!

Same goes for the black frame below it.  It was $30, 50% off.  They were both open back frames, so I spent $16 on glass and backing.

The white frames I bought at Home Goods.  For those of you that live in Charlotte, they had tons of them in Blakeney. The three smaller ones were $4.99 each and the 4x6 in the center was $5.99. 

The black resin Fleur de lis looking thing was also 50% off of $15 at Hobby  Lobby.

I just barely spent less than $65 and I am really happy with the result.

I obviously decided not to buy the candle sconce from Pottery Barn.  It was way too expensive and I have enough candles going on here.

The chalkboard was a framed painting of a cheetah (maybe leopard) from my bedroom at our beach house.  I painted the frame with ivory craft paint and scraped away a couple of layers in some areas to make it look worn. I just ended up painting the chalkboard paint right on the glass.  I did three coats of the chalkboard paint.  I would recommend using a good quality paintbrush only because I didn't and there are lines on my board. No one else will notice but I do.

Instead of doing the FREE gallery wrapped canvas that was going to be close to $30 because of shipping, I just decided to have this black and white photo of Aidan blown up at Wolf Camera and it only cost me $8 (in large black frame in bottom right corner).  The other four frames have just a few random snapshots from our wedding and one picture of Aidan in his vintage fire truck.  

I think it will look even better when I paint the walls a new flat paint color and get my window treatments up.  Our living room is the only room we have not ever painted in our house. 

I wasn't really feeling the one word idea that I had originally come up with so I drew this tree, added the owl to entertain Aidan and drew our initials on the trunk like they are carved there. I think it turned out pretty cute.   Adam keeps calling it the Tree of Life.  He is mocking me in a loving way. Haha.

Holy hard project.  I thought doing Aidan's silhouette would be a breeze.  Yeah right.  Although once I figured out what I was doing I could now be considered a pro.  I did the original on a piece of notebook paper then traced it to this black card stock, cut it out and just used a glue stick to glue it to this blue piece of paper and cut it to fit in the frame!

This is my ledge with the mason jars.   I am definitely going to paint the shelf I am just not sure how yet. I already had it so it didn't cost me a thing.  The tall green mason jar is full of corks because I didn't want to attempt to light a candle way down in it.  The white rose I had hanging around the house from an old floral arrangement. I just snipped it close to the top and stuck it in that mason jar.  I also threw a few small votive holders on there.  I am happy with it.  My dream shelf was going to be a little bit to big for the area so I just stuck with this one.

Just a cute pic of Spike sleeping while I work.

You can find my pillow covers here, here and here.  The paisley ones I have never been able to find anywhere on their website. Do yourself a favor and if you have a Pottery Barn outlet near you, go there to buy throw pillow inserts. They are so much cheaper than in store/catalog/website.

The throw you see in this picture you can buy here.  We have two of them in ivory and we love them. I have had them for almost 5 years and they look and feel exactly the same as they did the day I bought them.

My mason jars I bought at our local grocery store (Charlotteans Harris Teeter) and the medium sized ones we were using as drinking glasses.  They come in a 12 pack and they are the wide mouth mason jars. The small fat ones I already had candles in outside. They come in a four pack. The tall green one was left over from a friend's wedding.

So there you have it. Now you can create this look at your own home if you want.  I will definitely update you when I start to work on window treatments.  Adam has informed me that the wall between our living room and dining room is scheduled to come out this week or next so I may be waiting to paint until then but I will post pictures of that as well when it happens. 

Happy Decorating and more importantly Happy Memorial Day!

Design Daydreams-A Project For Tomorrow

I have a blank wall in my living room that needs some love.  A couple of months ago, I decided I hated my window treatments, so I tore them down and gave them away.  On the same day, I took down our abstract piece of art and ledge holding some candles and tossed them as well.   I have now been staring at this blank wall for MONTHS and I can't take it anymore.  So this is what I'm going to do.  First I'm going to run to Ikea and buy their Lack shelf in white. I love those shelves!  Then I'm going to take this blank wall and make it in to a picture wall. Well sort of.  I have an old picture in a black frame of a cheetah from my bedroom at the beach house.  I'm going to paint the frame heirloom white and take the glass out and paint a piece of thin plywood with chalkboard paint in stick it in the frame.  So it will look little like this...

Except I am probably going to hang mine horizontal.  I am thinking I will write something simple like on it like

Dwell or Laugh or Grow or Family.   In big letters.

 I know everyone has heard about the free 8x10 canvas you can get and I have never bought mine, so I am going to have this picture made in to an 8x10 gallery wrapped canvas to hang there.  I might even splurge and spend the $9.99 and upgrade to an 11x14 and make it black and white.

Then I am going to ATTEMPT to draw our Silhouettes from pictures and frame them in a row.  Similar to this but in square frames.  I will probably matte them with a color I pull from my pillows on my sofa.

I am going to buy this guy:

I have a bunch of random sized mason jars around my house as well that I would like to place on the shelf and put small votive candles in. 

I want to paint the walls Sherwin Williams Favorite Tan and make some window treatments in a dark khaki horizontal stripe like these (haven't decided if I will actually sew them or fabric tape them yet).

My rough placement of picture wall:

I may or may not do the candle sconce from Pottery Barn. That would literally destroy my budget of doing this project for $200 or less.   I have two small Ikea frames that don't have anything in them and I may type up short love poems on textured paper and frame them and hang in it's place.   I am not planning on lining the drapes to they should be relatively inexpensive to make. We will see.

I really, really, really want to find a way to make this shelf from Pottery Barn and use it in place of the Ikea shelf.  Lucky for me, Adam can probably do it.  I will beg him to try and see what we come up with.  Obviously, I am not going to get this all done tomorrow but I would at least like to have the paint bought and the pictures prepped to be hung.  Window treatments will probably have to wait until this weekend.  And no I haven't forgotten that I just said a few days ago that I wanted to re do my bedroom! I am a decorating overachiever!

Design Day Dreams-I Want to Make Over My Master Bedroom

There is no way anyone thinks it crazy that I want to make over another room in my house.  I get bored easily around here.  My creative juices are out of control.   Typically I like to find an "inspiration room" and work from that.  Here is my inspiration room:

(Decor Pad)

Our Master Bedroom is a quarter of the size of this room and I would like to use things I already have.  I am all for refinishing and moving things around.  I need some new window treatments and would like a floor length mirror on the wall like the one in the corner here. 

First up on my list though is redoing an ornate frame to hang our flat screen TV in the center of.   I have been scouring Craig's List for the perfect frame.  I may just have to wait until Michael's or Hobby Lobby have a frame sale. 

This is an idea of what it would look like:

http://www.brooklynlimestone.com/

I have my work cut out for me but I am looking forward to doing it and doing it on a HUGE budget.  I will post as I go.  I just have to get through this baby shower this weekend, Aidan's party next weekend and our trip to Massachusetts the following week.  Then Master Bedroom Make Over Summer 2010 is ON!

It's Complicated -Design Daydreams

Have y'all seen this movie yet??   Adam and I watched it the other night.   I gotta tell you,  Adam was bored.  I couldn't get past how gorgeous Alec Baldwin's wife is in the movie.  Seriously though, it was alright.  Best part of the whole movie was Meryl Streep's house.  Adam and talked about it all day today.   A photo montage...

Dream HOUSE!!  I love that it is one floor. I have gotten so used to living in a ranch.  We love the landscaping, Spanish tile roof and swing.

The Kitchen.  You will have to see the movie but our favorite part is how you can see all the way from the kitchen through the dining room in to the living room. We are huge entertainers and we would love to do it more but our house in not conducive to it.   We also love a house that looks lived in and comfortable. 

The wood beams on the ceiling are amazing.  Adam and I daydream about owning a house with a living room that looks EXACTLY like this.  The furniture is even our style.

The Master Bedroom.  I loved this room but this is more of a guest room for me. I am a larger scaled furniture/master bedroom kind of gal. Adam agreed.  Big. Huge. Four. Poster. Bed. Please.  The colors and textures throughout the whole were perfect.

Master Bathroom. Double sinks. Check. Claw foot tub. Check. That's all I need.

Last but not least. The garden.  Holy garden perfection. The entire property was just amazing. 

The house alone was worth the movie.  Meryl Streep helps too. I love her. She is an amazing actress. Alex Baldwin. Ehh.  Really it was cute.  It was realistic. Even though you work and work and work, sometimes too much has happened to save a relationship.  If anyone has some extra cash and wants to give it to me, I will be building this home. Thanks in advance. xoxo