details add personality

i bought this lamp for trudy's room before i got pregnant, i purchased it at "Family Dollar" for like $3 or something. i recently added some fun trim and i like the femininity it gives to the little setup. i love looking at all the ribbons and trims at the fabric store, don't you? i just need more projects to use up the little collection i have.... any ideas?

the office/guest room

the office/guest room has been a blah room for me. when decorating, if there is a room or even nook in your home that you love... you continue to put all your favorite things there. at least that's how it is for me. i love the living room and dining room most of all. so naturally that is where all the good stuff goes. not that the other rooms are bad or something. is this even making sense? well anyway my point is that i've been ignoring this room. i should call it the brown room. there are a lot of fun little nick nacks and treasures in it but all the basic furniture is brown.

grant's parents gave us an antique desk and barrister bookcase when we were first married. we love them a lot but plan to at least paint the desk. i put some wrapping paper in the backs of the bookcase (not pictured) to give it some pizazz because we decided we didn't want to paint it. well grant decided that actually. and i'm fine with that. since this room also functions as a guest room, our sweet and awesome couch is a sofa bed. it's one of my favorite favorite finds. i will have to take a better picture of it. it's super retro looking. we bought it off craigslist about two years ago and scored pretty big with it. the owners told us that it had been sat on less than a dozen times and never slept on. they were trying to get rid of a lot of things and so we gave them $70 and drove away with this chair, two glass coffee tables (very hollywood regency and just perfect), the sofa bed and a box of old books. it was amazing. while a dining room chair, high chair and dresser are all on the project list before anything in this room.... i've been keeping my eyes out for solutions to cure my office issues. these pictures are from my instagram and i'm counting them as a "during" check in. since we've furnished the room, hung certificates and artwork, threw in an area rug and put some curtains up... it's definitely not in "before" stage.

i married adventure

two summers ago i was browing through a local indoor flea market. it's one of my favorite places to walk around here in the city. while looking through a booth that was mostly books, i saw the most beautiful book i'd ever seen. even the title was perfect. it's weird to say, but i felt a connection to it immediately. not that i was crazy to read it... i was just so drawn to it's design. sometimes you just have to judge a book by it's cover. the book was marked $7. when i went to purchase it i noticed a sign that stated no purchases under $10 could be made with a card. and i had no cash. so i told myself that i would just come back later. well i did go back. but it was a week later and the book was gone. i've never regretted not buying something so much, like i did with this. so i told grant about it and we started searching for it online. this only made me regret not getting it even more. to find the book cheaper than $60 was nearly impossible and if i did they were copies that were beat up with scratches and too much fading. more common prices ranged from $100-$400. yowza. for a book!? little did i know... this book is quite the coveted piece in the design world! my searches were pulling up all sorts of design blogs and magazines. i was surprised but then... not very surprised. i've even seen pinterest boards that are all about this book. here are just a few shots showcasing it's beauty...

lonny

elizabeth bauer designs

house beautiful

vintage girl

apartment 412

habitually chicfast forward to a few months ago, grant was out driving to work when he spotted a used bookstore. he pulled over, went inside and asked if they had the book. thought it was probably super far fetched since it's hard to find online, let alone in the first bookstore he stopped at. he asked the clerk if they had it and he said yes. he told grant that he was selling it for $20 and grant thought for sure it must have been the paperback version he'd seen online. but then they pulled it off the shelf and there it was!!! in all it's beauty. he brought it home that night and put it on the coffee table. when i walked in the room he said, "notice anything different?"i don't think i need to even tell the rest of the story.

first upholstery job

upholstery jobs just seem intimidating. i mean right? BUT, i've always wanted to try one because let's be honest.... they are always the best transformations. it's very satisfying to see a before and after that look completely different. so i figured that if i started small... there'd be less of a chance that i'd mess it up. 

p.s. i've tried to take good pictures of our living room and dining room at different times of the day and because i don't know anything about photography or editing... i just can't seem to get the lighting quite right. the light that comes through the windows washes everything out. but oh well, i'm no professional and you get the idea. i hope my attempt to upholster something small will inspire someone! this one was super easy. in fact, it was easy enough to make me want to try it out on the seat of a dining room chair... hopefully a post on that is coming soon. but knowing me, you can't count on anything (meh... must. get. better). linked up here.

behold... the ugly little bench stand thingy,

here it is in it's old, yucky scuffed up state.

before:

so we painted it white and stapled it right up.

(fabric is a thrifted pillowcase)

after:

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. linked up here.

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. linked up here.

before:

during:

wall collages take forever

we spent thanksgiving in vegas. the day we got back, albuquerque turned winter on. the winds are so frigid here. and i think cold wind is the worst. i finally organized my google reader so i'm excited to get back on that. trudy girl is cute as can be and deserves five thousand blog posts. today she is six months old. i'd be bragging about her but there are too many cute pictures of her and not enough time to choose which ones to post. besides.... we are still decorating for christmas!!!

p.s. here's my attempt at some paint swatch wall art. fun!

my free window treatment

wanna know what i hate buying? curtain rods. especially when you have to get one for every window in your house. they just seem like such a complete waste of money to me. curtains are fun to buy but usually way overpriced (in my opinion). for the kitchen window i planned to use some mustard colored burlap i had. i asked grant to find me a big stick. a cool one. he was more than happy to and found the perfect stick (of course). so we drilled some holes, put some hooks in and hung it up. then i tied strips of the burlap to it. so there ya go. a free window treatment! linked up here.

linked up here.