Tour My House Tuesday: Guest Room

I am so glad to be back!  On Friday, I mentioned that I would be spending the weekend at my cousin's wedding.  What I didn't mention is that the wedding was in Pittsburgh, that we were leaving first thing Thursday morning, and that we had a layover in Charlotte on both sides of the trip.  Oh yes, and I am 5 months pregnant, which makes traveling so much easier!  Thank goodness I figured out the auto-post feature on Blogger, and I had a few things ready to be posted before I left, so you probably didn't even miss me!

Yesterday when I got back, I had every intention of catching up on my blogging, and visiting all of you to see what you've been up to.  I am so sorry, but I just couldn't do it!  My smelly laundry, comfortable bed, dirty kitchen floor and exhausted toddler all crowded in ahead of you.  I am looking forward to catching up with you today though!

Over the weekend we had the misfortune of sleeping in a rather uncomfortable guest room.  It's a long story but we stayed at my grandfather's house, and he is no longer living there so it has a rather abandoned feeling.  It definitely got me thinking about what makes a comfortable visit for guests.  Come and see my guest room, and I'll keep my fingers crossed that it's more welcoming than where I've slept for the past few nights!    

The color palette includes a light and buttery yellow on the walls, with mostly white furniture and blue accents.  Rather girlie, actually, but I figure that guys don't really care what it looks like, as long as the bed is comfortable, so I'm not too worried about it!

As you can see from the photo above, it's not a very big room.  I tried to keep it light and airy to combat the small size.  The white duvet and bedding are perfect for summer, and when the ceiling fan is on, it feels very cool and soothing.

But with colder weather coming, I wanted to change it up a bit.  You might remember the quilt in the photo above from my post a few weeks ago.  I added it to the guest room as a way to take the room from "light and airy" to "warm and cozy."  Now I can light a candle instead of flipping on the ceiling fan when guests come to stay, and it's the perfect room for fall and winter! 

And believe me, with my husband's snoring, I have slept in here a few times recently.  It's very cozy (and much quieter)!

Wood Projects

You know how, when you go out to a garage sale or a thrift store, you have to walk in with an open mind?  How as soon as you think you're going to find a specific thing, you don't?  Yep, me too.  Happens all the time.  So that is why I now have three large pieces of furniture in my house that I never thought I needed, but ended up buying anyway.  Like I said, you gotta keep your options open!

First we have a Pottery Barn coffee table that appeared one Friday morning at a garage sale I happened to pass by.  (Don't you love how I make it sound like fate?)  It was $40 and had every feature that a family with a toddler needs: a drawer to hide all the stuff, an extra shelf underneath for more stuff, and a large surface area for a large basket full of stuff.  Get where I'm coming from on this?  :)

Next is a $20 thrift store find.  It's a little trunk that needs some serious love, but I am thinking that once I have loved on it a bit, it will become a toy chest for Nina's "big girl room," still in the making.

Lastly is the piece that we needed least.  A dresser that is so beat up that it was shoved between some much better looking pieces in an antique shop a few weeks ago.  My husband and I just thought it had really pretty lines, and I am imagining it with a beautiful dark stain and a marble top.  It's the kind of piece that I think could look good in a bedroom, dining room, or front entryway.  We got the owner down from $130 to $100, and for that price we decided that this dresser will be our husband-wife bonding project (you know, for all the extra time we have coming to us once the baby is born). 

I think that's why I love to visit thrift stores, garage sales and antique shops.  You just never know what you're going to find!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like...Fall!

I am spending most of this weekend, starting today, with my cousin's wedding and all the associated hoopla.  However, I thought I would leave you with some signs of fall that have recently appeared at my house!

That last one is courtesy of my daughter, Nina (with a little help from the babysitter a few days ago).  Have a wonderful weekend!

A Gourd-y Before and After

The other day I was at Goodwill.  (How many sentences have I started with that phrase?)  They have put out all their holiday merchandise and I stumbled across this little Christmas gourd for $2:

Whoever painted this gourd did it with a lot of love, and it had a little Christmas sheep and a big fat Santa Claus.  Alas, it was not my style.  But the gourd itself was in great shape and I thought I heard it begging me for an autumn transformation!

A little paint, a cute grosgrain ribbon, and my new rub-on letters.  Not bad for a $2 thrift store find!

Works For Me Wednesday: Organizing Recipes

Today's "Works For Me Wednesday" post is something that has really changed the way that I cook.  For a few years, I have been a monthly subscriber to Cooking Light magazine.  I would faithfully read each issue and dog-ear the pages for things that sounded good.  However, pretty soon, I started a nice little collection of magazines like this:

The clutter was bad enough, but the most annoying part is that I never even used any of the recipes that sounded so good.  It was daunting when I was looking for a new recipe to try that night to even glance at that huge stack of magazines!  Then one day I got all fancy-schmancy and decided to get organized:

I tore out the recipes I had been tagging for years, found a notebook and some plastic sleeves, and arranged the pages according to appetizers, main dishes, vegetables, desserts, etc.

I know it seems like a very basic idea.  (Hey!  Look at me!  I put recipes in a binder!)  But it has made a huge difference in our family's cooking.  I actually use the recipes in the book now and it takes me just a few minutes to glance through and find something I want.  In the old days, I may have spent 20 minutes paging through magazine after magazine (if I even cracked them open), with my toddler pulling on my leg the whole time.  And you all know how much fun that can be!

This works so well for me that I am planning to put together a similar book for all my decorating ideas, torn out of various magazines and catalogs.  Can you imagine having a huge binder with ideas for every room in your house, seasons, holidays, and craft projects, to pull out whenever you are looking for something new?  I am such a design geek that that I am really whooped up by this!  

This definitely works for me!

Tour My House Tuesday: Kitchen/Dining Room

**I would love to be able to show you larger photos...not sure why some of these are able to be enlarged and some are not.  If anyone has any advice for me on how to do this, I will take it!  So sorry it is not working right now!

Continuing our tour of my house...today it is the kitchen and dining room!  Last week I showed you my family room, which is adjacent to this space.  I really like that the family room and kitchen are in the back of the house; it makes me feel more protected somehow.  (P.S. Can you spot my floppy dog Frankie in the photo below?  He didn't feel like moving.)

When we went to select the kitchen cabinets, I told the guy that I wanted white with black knobs, and he told me that I was one of only three houses in the whole neighborhood (out of hundreds of homes) that had chosen white over natural wood.  He totally made me second-guess my choice!  I am so glad I stuck with it, though, because I love how the cabinets look with the dark wood floors and the black granite countertops.  It has the danger of being a very cold, stark space, but I hope I prevented that by using a warm beige-y yellow on the walls.

Above is a sweet little corner of my kitchen: it is usually covered with my calendar and any number of coupons, notes, post-its...you get the idea.  But it still feels cozy because of my little lamp and cute chalkboard!

When we chose the cabinets, we also got to decide how they were configured.  I begged them to re-orient the kitchen island so that I could have bookshelves facing away from the hubbub of the rest of the kitchen (they are facing my laundry room/pantry).  They aren't the most stylized bookshelves in the world, but they are so stinkin' convenient!

The hanging bookcase above was made by a family friend for me when I got married.  It weighs a ton and my husband practically called the Colorado Builder's Association before he let this thing hang on the wall by itself.  But it looks like it was made for the space, so I hope he feels it was worth the stress of hanging it!  Hmmm....I hope he doesn't answer that.

Yes, this is silly, but I hated the builder's poor excuse for a faucet when we moved in.  I found this charming faucet on ebay and begged until my husband installed it.  I am not sorry...it's like a little jewelry for my kitchen!

Lastly, just a little view of my dining room table with cute little vases full of...what are these?  Berries?  Some kind of bittersweet?  Do I even know what bittersweet is?  (Nope.)  

Hope you enjoyed the tour!  As you read this, my kitchen is probably covered in Cheerios and half empty coffee mugs!  I'm sure you can't relate, can you?

Mod Podge, Screws and Being Stumped

Have you ever had a room that just stumped you?  That is my living room.  I will tell you more about it soon, but the basics are that I am in the midst of trying to overhaul it, and the following piece just didn't work in my new color scheme:

I made this piece with some old fabric scraps a while back, and now the colors are just wrong for the room.  So one day I got "my shorts in a bunch" (don't you love that expression?) and changed it up.  First, I found some cute scrapbook paper and Mod Podged it (underneath the paper and on top of the paper for extra coverage) to some cardboard.

Next I found the center of the square and put a screw through it.  I have these cute little hooks that I discovered at my local antique shop/flea market for $3 each.  I thought they would be perfect for the project.  (As an aside, I have also seen similar cute hooks and knobs at Hobby Lobby for anyone else who might be on the hunt!)

Once everything was screwed in and completely dry, I glue gunned the cardboard into the frame.  
And here is the new piece!  I actually made two of them: this one has a dragonfly hook in the center, and the paper is a pretty toile in a chocolate brown.  The other is a simple French-looking black and white pattern with a butterfly hook in the center.

They look so cute on either side of my grandmother's hutch!  Below is one view of the living room that has been giving me so much trouble.  I'll show you the "before and after" of the rest of the room as it comes together, hopefully in the next few weeks! 

How about you?  Do you have a room that is "stumping" you, no matter how you try to tweak it?