the lamp of my dreams

so one night when trudy and i were roaming a local goodwill, i spotted this lamp on a shelf. if i was in a cartoon my eyes would have done that googly eyes thing. ya know? the base is a malachite green which happens to be one of my favorite minerals. to make it even better, brass campaign corners add the perfect touch. the white lampshade was not cutting it and wal-mart and target weren't giving me better options. so... i found a local lamp and shade shop. i learned SO much about lamps and shades from the owner. it was a lot of fun. she taught me about scale and proportion. we played around with shade shapes that repeated the base shape but i ended up with a shape that was opposite the base shape (i feel like i'm writing "shape" a lot). it happened to have an extremely reflective gold inside which was awesome because i was planning to line it with gold anyway. i attached some ribbon with fabric glue and voila! i'm very happy with it. i turn it on every night and i love the light that the gold inside puts off. it gives kind of romantic ambiance and it's very relaxing. oh and a few days later i received a card from the shop thanking me for coming in. now THAT's good customer service! these photos are from my iphone (the only camera i'm using these days!) on my instagram.

oh hey

it's been like a month or so since i last blogged. i don't know... i just kinda got outta the habit and then i could always think of something better to do. hopefully i can get caught up soon. i finally feel like i'm doing good with things around the house. every time i look in a room i can hear peter walsh on the nate berkus show intro... "three words- too. much. stuff". i think i'm kind of ocd? or at least border line. anyway it feels good to purge things we don't need. i think it's peter walsh that also says, "for everything you bring home to the house you should take something out". clearly i'm in the spring cleaning mood.

trudy oh trudy. she is nine months now and i can't believe it. all of these pictures are from before the new year when she was 5 and 6 months old. just too cute not too post. at 7 months she started crawling. ever since then i've constantly been watching her and picking her up. our house is so not child proofed. these tile floors cause a lot of stress in my life. poor girl has bruises all over her legs and even one on her head. she is crazy. she has two bottom teeth that are cute cute cute but sharp as *#$%**. and she likes to use them. she still loves momma's milk, formula, any of the baby food fruit flavors (even though we really try on those veggies and chicken dinners), and yogurt bites. she tries with the cheerios and gets them in her mouth but a lot of them end up popping back out. 

she loves strangers and still tries to get everyone's attention so that she can smile at them. and wave. she LOVES to wave at everyone. she recently started clapping and gets really excited when we say "yaaaaaaay!!!" while she claps.

5 months

6 months

cleaning house

so i've haven't been blogging for awhile. i'm very excited to start blogging again, especially to READ blogs. i have found that whenever we travel or decorate for holidays... i get really behind on everything. i've been trying to tackle my to do list lately. i promised myself (totally cheating right now) that i could get online when everything was done. i struggle to keep things tidied up (really working on this), not to be confused with dirty. grant and i are both pretty clean people but i think messy is a better word. our bedroom is messy. things get messy because unfortunately i am an extremist. my mom used to joke that my room (in high school) looked like a tornado hit it or it was immaculate. so right now i'm working on getting everything immaculate and then keeping it that way. now just to describe how ocd i can really be when it comes to cleaning.... i'm not just talking dusting, vacuuming and laundry. i'm talking cleaning the couch, armchair and anything upholstered (i got a carpet cleaner/hard-surface cleaner/upholstery cleaner thingy for christmas.... BEST THING EVER), cleaning out the vent of my blow dryer, cleaning out all my kitchen cabinets, my closet, my bathroom cupboards, trudy's wardrobe, medicine cabinets, fridge, under the bed, re-organizing our books, cleaning out the garage, cleaning the inside and outside of our cars. going through my makeup, steaming anything in my closet that needs it (no more being late to church), anyway i could keep going but i'm kind of getting discouraged. ha. sooooooo i'll hopefully be done with all this by the end of this week? not making any promises. 

one thing that has been keeping me from getting all of this done is my phone. a few years ago grant and i bought droids. it was an awesome buy one get one free deal and since grant most definitely needs a smart phone for his job... it was perfect. well my droid screen broke and we were due for an upgrade and so i got an iphone. first i have to say that as far as droids go... i don't really have too many complaints. the droid makes it easier to personalize much more than the iphone but the iphone is amazing. i love it. i feel like it's my little toy. i just got a case that i ordered for it in the mail and i love it! i jumped on the instagram wagon and haven't regretted it since. the photo a day challenges are such a fun and easy way to document things in every day life. just another version of a journal. here is mine for the month of january. (everybody interprets things differently and that's what makes the photo a day challenges so fun. a few of mine that may be confusing... #3- i adore color, #4- what comes in my letterbox, #6- bath time with trudy makes me smile, #16- that morning i woke up to a beautiful bouquet of organic greens, #28- a quote that sheds light).

follow me @brittbarnes04

"he's coming to the party?"

so behind and just trying to get through my to do list before i come back to blog land. 

just saw this and almost peed my pants. i can't stop watching it. 

p.s. having a blast on instagram... follow me! @brittbarnes04

changing it up

shortly before grant and i were married, my mom told me that her and my dad had planned to buy us a bedroom set for a wedding present. i was ecstatic. extremely grateful with an extra ounce of guilt. it just felt too generous. which should probably be my parent's middle name. oh i love them. and miss them :(. the set has been great for us. we got lucky here because our bedroom is huge and our set is too. but now that we've finally been able to spread them out and really enjoy them, we'd like to break up the monotony of the pieces. we're prepared for how HUGE of a project this is but excited for the change too. eventually when we buy a house, i'd love to put different pieces in different rooms but we don't have that luxury for now. 

for awhile i've really wanted to find a pair of vintage sconces. i love a little hollywood regency influence but am learning fast that too much of it can go in a gaudy direction. back to the sconces. so one night i was telling grant about my love for them and what i pictured etc. i hadn't really put any effort into searching for some because... well i don't know? not even three minutes later he had found some on ksl (utah's amazing classified source... seriously NOTHING like it in any other state)(craigslist doesn't even hold a candle to it). they were everything i pictured and MORE. czechoslovakian crystal sconces from the 50's. complete with european electrical plugs (we have to use a converter). which in our humble opinion, only makes them better. one thing that makes these eclectic treasures slightly inconvenient is that the light fixtures fit only european size bulbs. but thanks to ebay and only a few dollars we had them here in 2-5 business days. we didn't know where we were going to put them but knew that they belonged in our home somewhere. 

a few weeks later while we were out and about estate sale-ing, we stumbled upon an old junk shop. we were out in the back in a barn when i spotted a big gold mirror on the wall. $15 dollars later it was ours.  after trying every wall and not finding a good spot, we decided to take the mirror off the dresser and put  up our new beauty. after that we added the two sconces and voila! we are planning to change up the dresser but for now, here is our before and during. oh and i better make sure it's known that grant polished every single dusty crystal. which made quite the difference and now the lights are super shiny! and hopefully i will figure out how to conceal or distract away from those annoying bulky cords.

before:

during:

my hot chocolate even tasted better

well i am just loving all the comments from my last post and i've read them like a million times. i wish i could click "print" in the comment section and then print all of them and put them on the wall. sometimes you just need a little pick me up... and kind words can truly go a long way. so thank you ;)

i consider myself to be a practical person. kinda? well i mean for example... if i buy anything to put in my closet, i have to always be able to think of different ways to use or wear it. well... let's just say... i'm loosing that little voice in my head. things are getting easier to justify and it's scaring me. i guess it's the result of always going shopping with trudy.

so to get to the point, i asked for this little beauty for christmas. yahoo that it's from tjmaxx and cheaper than buying it from kate spade BUT did santa pay $12 for a mug? yep. is that very smart? no. but i'm pretty sure i feel like..... probably at least 2 times cuter when i drink from this versus any others.

p.s. it is comforting to know that kate spade's dinnerware is mostly lenox and backed with a great warranty.

but i don't wanna put it all away

i'm having a hard time wanting to put away all the christmas stuff. that may or may not be because i am being lazy. grant has been sick this week, lots of throwing up and yuckyness. then trudy got sick. she has actually had a cold for a week or so but the last two days have just been so miserable for her. last night she had a fever and i could barely handle it. i have never felt so helpless. i am very excited for it to go away.

i've kept my thoughts and feelings to a very minimum on this blog. i have many reasons behind that but i think it's mostly because of things that were said about me on another blog. reading what was said unfortunately added to my deep deep insecurity of feeling like all people hate me. i'm feeling uncomfortable being this revealing about my thoughts but something is making my fingers keep going. i don't say that to search for comments like "what? nobody hates you", it just really is something that i can convince myself of about pretty much everyone. and since i consider myself to be pretty introspective, i feel frustrated that i don't know why or where that insecurity came from. when i think about some difficult things that i have been through the last few years and then this "everybody hates me... i'm just gonna go eat worms" complex i have, it puts me in a sad place. i don't feel too ashamed about admitting that because i feel like it's very human and mostly people do the same thing with their own insecurities. i have found myself thinking way too much about what people will think of this or that. i don't have a big warm and fuzzy solution to all this. in fact i don't even know why i'm typing it. prayer helps though. prayer helps with everything.

i can't leave the house because of trudy and so i've been watching 3 shows every day. the nate show (which i usually try and watch every day anyway), anderson cooper and dr. oz. here are some random things that have bugged me this week... yesterday on anderson cooper he had on the man behind "thedirty.com". i had never heard of this website before but it's basically a place where you can go post crap about anyone. it's so stupid. nik, the creator, spent the whole episode trying to explain to anderson (and the entire audience) how he is god's gift because when people are exploited like they are on his site... they end up becoming better people. i really couldn't believe what i was watching. you'd think the concept of the site is ridiculous enough but to make it even more lame... if someone writes crap about you and you want it removed, you then have to pay a monthly fee of 12.99 AND that doesn't even guarantee removal of your posts! all it does is put you at the top of his priority list so he can review what has been said and then decide himself if you are really what other people say you are. what a freaking tool. you can watch clips from the episode here.

i love watching dr.oz. i always have. i find his passion for health and explaining things to be very refreshing. i always love when people are passionate about something. however it's annoying to me the way he goes about drawing people in to watch his show. whether it's him or the way they advertise for it, it's stupid. it seems like the main goal is instilling fear in america. i can hear the announcer guy in my head right now "don't miss the HUGE bad habit YOU are DOING RIGHT NOW that may kill you tomorrow!" i mean really? like i said, i think dr. oz is great and i don't need titles like "how you are giving yourself cancer"to make me want to watch it. there are things that we need to know but putting fear in me just makes me feel stressed out and uncomfortable. like i'm not buying all the vitamins we need and the coke i am currently addicted to is going to kill me. so anywayyyyyyyyyyyyy onto happier things.

we made this little banner from this tutorial. i wish i would have done mine bigger like hers but then sometimes i like the size of ours.

i found rifle paper's holiday card collection at anthropologie on sale and snatched it right up. who doesn't love rifle paper co? i'm really looking forward to framing them and putting them up next year. i found the tin at a thrift shop and loved it. it reminds me of the cards.

i got this a few years ago at a flea market. it's our advent calendar. it's really fun to turn to the next day. i hope our kids love it!

and finally trudy's first ornament. it's rudolph from the classic rudolph 

that plays on tv every year. it reminds me of my childhood. and it's way cuter in real life.

bye bye christmas!
linked up here.