procrastination: lesson learned

alternate title: why we can't have nice things.

lesson #1:

probably a year ago, i ordered a pair of monogrammed pillows from ballard designs:


with the intention of adding ribbon trim to them for our boudoir, like so:

by melissa rufty

which i did. like 6 months ago. yet failed to photograph all pretty-like for the blog. and a few weeks ago? the day before the 4 year anniversary of the day i brought a baby sterling home from the animal shelter? when i was feeling all sentimental about how much i love that dog? i came home from work to this:


and so. all i have to share now are crappy phone pictures of a bed with one pillow.

but hey, check out that grosgrain trim! with mitered corners and everything!


lesson #2:

in september, i exchanged a gift at stein mart and got a pair of black resin lamps:

i did manage to take before pictures, high five!

which i painted with linen milk paint and glazed, then placed on our bedside tables. and all was right with the world for a few months.

don't mock my salt lamp. i freaking love my salt lamp. it emits good energy and a saixy glow.

until an incident a few weeks ago wherein cstone attempted to help me make the bed.


resin lamps? do not fare well when knocked off a bedside table. sigh.

a pair of these have been ordered as a suitable replacement:


and also less breakable. time will tell...

is your household a death trap for home decor? or is it just me? anyone?

get thee to target

friends. our local target was recently renovated to include a grocery section, and it has given me the excuse to be ten kinds of all up in that store on a weekly basis nowadays. target also happens to be totally bringing it in the home decor department, and i feel compelled to share.

exhibit a, $25 quatrefoil mirror:


in not my finish of choice:


but no matter. a little gold leaf and glaze later...




i wanted an antiquey chippy look (try to hide your surprise), so i got all haphazard with the gold leaf application, which resulted in the desired finish. considering getting another one to hang above it. because mirrors need friends too.

exhibit b, $12 outdoor fabric pillows in a suspiciously familiar pattern:


headed to team stone's lake house for phase one of our lake house bedroom makeover. which brings to mind another target purchase...back in the bathroom reno days, i got a simple mirror-framed mirror there like this:


when i got it home, i realized that there was a crack in the frame that had been hidden by the packaging. being too lazy to return it resourceful, i decided to give it a little nautical flair for ye olde lake house, inspired by this:


of course, that project is still on the to-do list at present. again, try to hide your surprise.

for funsies, here's my main inspiration picture for our room at the lake house:


i'm thinking blue & white, with a hint of rainbow trout. captain fantastic spends a lot of time fly-fishing in the river that feeds the lake, so it would be appropriate, no?

the room is currently decked out in the previous owners' choices of wood paneling painted a pale pepto pink, with a lovely accent wall of metallic floral wallpaper and a smorgasboard of mismatched furnishings. big plans, friends. big plans.

operation bathroom: reveal

indeed! your eyes do not deceive you! though i will not declare the bathroom "finished," i will declare it "close enough" and share it with my interweb friends. please note that the photos were not styled beyond putting the toothbrushes in the closet and properly folding the towels. no time for that shniznaws. toss in a tube of toothpaste and a wadded-up pair of c-fan's underpants, and you've got our daily bathroom. house beautiful will not be calling on me and my point-and-shoot anytime soon, but whatev.

without further ado, behold:

BEFORE (check out more befores here and here)







AFTER (plus commentary. of course.)

the new square pedestal sink allows more room for the soap dispenser and toothbrushes without taking up more visual space. the mirror comes down over the bead board trim, which is important for those who have on more than one occasion been referred to as "hobbit-like." the light fixture, which is on because it was too dark for pictures otherwise, came from the pottery barn outlet with a steep discount and is, according to captain fantastic, "exactly like the old one." except not.

wall decor is still up in the air. recently won the fabulous magnetic frame on the right from suzanne at our southern nest, one of my fave new reads. thank you suzanne! where i really want to put it is the kitchen, but there's literally about one square foot of wall space in there. love the stripes of the frame with the stripes of the bathmat and bead board, but thinking it might give the whole place too much of a coastal vibe for landlocked tennessee. not sure what to magnetize to it either, given the rainforest-like conditions at shower time, so it will likely be relocated soon. temporarily styled the above-potty shelf with a print and some candles, but planning to display some clear containers of cotton balls and other bathroom goodies like that instead. so, you know, disregard all of that.

kept the pottery barn shower curtain i've had and loved for years and got towels in the coordinating color from the pb outlet. liked the look of the pb ribbon roman shades (which are no longer on the website), but didn't like that they couldn't be raised and lowered easily, so i made my own with a bamboo roman shade from lowe's, some fabric and ribbon a la john's journal's tutorial. works great!

tip: the lid to the tank on our potty is convex, so everything i ever set back there would eventually slide right on off. i used a little of that tacky clay stuff (like for hanging posters on dorm room walls) to secure these wee pots from local store urban gardener. like magic!

the new double towel bar has saved me i cannot tell you how much anguish over SOMEONE'S propensity to leave wet towels lying on the floor. now that each spouse's towel has a place to spread out to dry, there's no excuse! victory! wouldn't this towel rack look awesome with some coordinating leontine linens hand towels with my monogram? in the rayford style? tomorrow is my birthday. fyi.


we extended the shower's subway tile all the way to the ceiling and capped the whole thing off with crown molding. do you remember what my old shower looked like? the new shower? is like heaven. heaven on earth. delight. we removed the old towel bar and tension rod shelving and installed two tile shelves in each corner. i failed to photograph this. somewhat on purpose. because you are all now aware of my tendency to hoard drugstore bath and hair products. ashamed. but look! crown molding! pretty!


shiny white floors and baseboards. which i love. but i will say, maybe not the best choice for someone with as high of cleanliness standards as i have. i say reasonable, you say type a. i say perfectionism, you say clinical ocd. let's all just agree not to wear our dirty shoes in the bathroom, k?


contractor brad topped the bead board with a lovely chair rail and ledge. we painted the walls a soft gray that compliments the bluish-gray of the shower curtain, towels and ribbon shade detail.

and there she is!


now who's coming to the potty party?

la chaise. FINI!

french. fancy. i know. somehow i am kinda good at french. placed 8th in the state on a high school french test, then managed to place into 300-level college classes on a 7 am exam after a first-week-of-college bender. file this with my numerous other mostly-impractical skills, like being able to twist my tongue into a clover and having a degree in anthropology.

but that's not why you're here.

remember like eleventy years ago when i proclaimed that if little old ladies could upholster than so could i? no? well i did. and then i signed up for an upholstery class at a quasi-local community college in the great state of m'issip. in february. and then for months the chair sat in various states of incompletion. until this past monday night. when i. finished. upholstering. the chair.

do you hear the angels singing and see the rainbow streaking the sky as beams of light break through the clouds? indeed.

hand-me-down chair before (amongst christmas finery):


and, drumroll please, after:





thar she blows in her natural habitat, the back-lit living room:


I TAKE SUCH AWESOME PICTURES.

i also recently made a pair of pillows out of the same upholstery fabric as the chair. by hand, recall. good times. and i caved and let c-fan bring his beloved ginormous leather chair out of storage. and know what? i don't hate it. looks kinda nice with the pillow and throw even. i do, however, want to move the little chest between the chairs (which i love) to another room and replace it with something less brown, to make the arrangement a bit arier. more airy. you know. less brown. and probably hang something reflective and starbursty above the man chair.


what say you about my upholstery skillz? think they'll get more mileage than my knowledge of french pronouns and paleoindian projectile points? god love a liberal arts education.

dining room chizzairs

so my dining room. it needs some chairs. actually, it needs a lot of things right now, arm chairs being just two of those things. but i'm trying to focus here, people.

we are lucky enough to have a great dining table and set of shield-back chairs that my in-laws previously had in their dining room. the table needs refinishing, but the side chairs are in pretty good shape and have already been recovered in my fabric of choice, thusly:


the problem is that only one of the arm chairs still exists. ergo, we need to procure host/hostess chairs for the heads of the table.

now. do you ever see a trend, like pointy-toed shoes or skinny jeans, and you're all "that is heinous. i'd never do that." and then like a month later you own a pair in every color? that happens to me. it also happens to me decor-wise. for example: mismatched chairs at the heads of the table. read about it on design blogs. gagged. hated it. swore never to do it. changed my mind a week later. decided to do it in my own dining room.

i'm nothing if not open-minded.

then the other day i was waxing poetic to my father about how fancy and on-trend i am in my interior design plans and he's all, "your mother and i have used different chairs at the head of our dining table since before you were born." right...totally forgot that. mkay, so apparently my awesome taste is genetic. noted.

here are some examples from my inspiration files:

windsor smith

zoldan interiors

sara tuttle

via coco + kelly

horchow

horchow

and here are some examples of chair styles i think would be pretty neat in contrast to the shield-backs chez stone:

lee industries

calico corners


lee industries (but 'cept not orange)

zgallerie

z gallerie

or even, for an unexpected casual twist:

ikea


crate & barrel

what do you think? anybody rocking the mismatched chairs?