On My Radar: September

Tek Gear black cropped pants / Thrive upholstery furniture / Modern home accessory / West Elm bentwood furniture / Tek Gear Fleece Sweatshirt

1.  I am kind of in love with this chair. It looks mid-century modern, but super comfortable. And it comes in so many colors of the rainbow! Not that I want a rainbow, but the hard decision would be what color to buy! 
2. This Lee Jofa Groundworks fabric just does it for me. Pillows, curtains, I want it all! 
3. I am hooked on super-comfy clothes for lounging around at home. I discovered the Tek line at Kohls and it is super soft and stretchy. I don't do yoga, but I am totally capitalizing from it's benefits! 
4. This Bentwood table from West Elm is a fun find. It has mid-century vibes and the wood look that I am crushing on right now. 
5. I have always been a fan of leopard. In fact, I took Peyton shopping the other day and she picked out a pair of leopard pants and a leopard cardigan. I couldn't be more proud of her if she was mine. Oh wait. She is. 

What are you crushing on this month? 

Squeaker in the House

I think there is a theme occurring where I forget I have this blog and a month goes by and I go "oops." Bad blogger. In my defense, I feel really badly blogging when I only have an iPhone for pictures. Color me an amateur! I think I will try to stick to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday posting schedule. I should be able to commit to that, right?! Ok, so I missed Monday. And it's Wednesday night.  Baby steps, people, baby steps.

So in mid-August we added a new member to our family.  Meet Bugsy.

image from here

No, not that Bugsy. (I crack up every time I see that picture...)  This Bugsy: 

This little spunky guinea pig has quickly been a source of entertainment in our house. Doesn't he look like a little chick or a little popcorn ball all popped up?! No? Just me?! 

On the first day we brought Bugsy home with us, I had to do a little demo in my kitchen. Peyton had let Bugsy run around like he was born free. And of course, since we were huge scary giants, Bugsy ran to the nearest corner he could find. That corner happened to be the corner where my cabinets met in the kitchen. And apparently, that corner happened to have a hole where the baseboard did not fully cover the gap between cabinets. Bugsy found the hole. So there was Peyton, crying her eyes out that she lost her pet on the first day and I was freaking out wondering if he got between the floors in the house and did he get into the vents because goodness knew, we'd never get him back.... (Drama, much? Yeah.)

So I yanked the baseboard off with my bare hands and there was Bugsy, cowering at the back of the cabinets. Folks, I thought I was going to squish the little thing as I was pulling him out! But we got him out and my war wounds (4 cuts/scratches on my hand) are all healed now. When you bleed for them, that's when you know they are family.

Bugsy is a happy little squeaker now. He likes to jabber nonstop when we let him cuddle on us, and he does little "pops" (jumps) in his cage all. the. time. Every time Bugsy pops, so does the bedding. All. over. my. floor.  But he's so soft, and so cute that you just have to forgive him. And just LOOK at his spiky hair! Isn't it hilarious? I call it the sputnik tushy. Tell me you don't look at that shot below and think "sputnik tushy."

No? Just me?!

Eclectic Living Room

I don't know if it is because my house is slowly moving towards more neutral colors (which usually bores me to tears), or because I have a dark wall that I want some colors to play on, but lately I am really drawn to a riot of colors. Call my quirky. Using Michelle Armas' Pamela print as a jumping-off point, I threw some items together for inspiration. This makes for a very eclectic living room but I am really crushing on the colors and how they play together.

Ivory / Tyler 56x20" Storage Ottoman Bison Brown / Thrive Taylor Chair / CB2 Saga Credenza / Parsons Bookcase / Moroccan Table / Crate & Barrel Vera Table Lamp / Moroccan Stool / Basic Pillow Cover 18 Inch | Ballard Designs / 20x20 Bright Yellow Cotton Velvet Pillow Cover- Square Decorative... / David Hicks La Fiorentina - 13x19 Designer Pillow Cover - Wine &...

On My Radar: July

I know we are technically in August, but here is what I have been crushing on in July. Heck, I'm still crushing on them!

Large Lacquered Rectangular Box / Industrial Task Table Lamps / CableBox / Pamela Large Prints / Nest™ 9 Plus - Space-Saving Food Preparation Set by Joseph Joseph / Pie™ Timer - 60-minute Kitchen Timer by Joseph Joseph

1.  Pink Lacquered boxes from the Container Store. I love lacquer boxes--I would love to get a set of these for my coffee table. I would use one of them for my Iphone and Nook charging cords, because I always find myself throwing those cords on my coffee table and I think they need a home. Maybe the other could be for the TV and cable remotes. 
2. Joseph Joseph kitchenware--I want everything in this line! My favorites are the bowl/measuring cup sets, the timer and the spatulas. Such fun pops of color for the kitchen. And check out the space saving/organization of that bowl set! 
3. Bluelounge cable box--another organizational nirvana item. Hide all the cords around the TV? Yes, please. 
4. Michelle Armas prints. I am seriously crushing on the explosion of colors on her artwork. Must. Have. 
5. West Elm's Industrial Task Table lamp--gold, industrial, light. Trifecta. 

What's on your radar this month? 

A Month's Worth of Blogging in One Post!

I'm such a bad blogger. I have had vacation and have also been doing a lot of things around the house this last month, and in the insane dash to complete said projects I completely ignored this blog.  So, let me get you up to speed with what I have been up to. 

Vacation-we went on our yearly family vacation to Minnesota. My aunt has a cabin up on the lake and every year my parents, my brother, his wife, my two nephews and Peyton and I go up for a week. Oh yes, and we all took our dogs this year too-all three dogs. Which is really like having 3 extra kids.  I didn't take any pictures (ok, I took two-blame it on the fact that I still haven't replaced my camera that kissed the ground and went berserk). Mostly I played with the kids and caught up on reading--seven days of being able to read books and magazines--now that's what I call bliss.  

Around the house I took the plunge and painted one accent wall a really dark gray-almost black. I then decided to paint the adjoining walls white to make more of a crisp contrast.  Excuse the mess-I took pictures of in-progress shots and haven't yet taken pictures of the room put back together. Also, in recent days, I painted the teal door the same gray as the wall. 

The dark color is Iron Ore, by Sherwin Williams and the white is Nebulous White, also by Sherwin Williams. I basically took the darkest color on the paint swatch and the lightest color on the paint swatch. (If you REALLY want the full story, I initially bought a different shade of white and put it up on the walls and it looked pink. Talk about an expensive mistake!) I'm not sure if I'm really in love with the dark wall yet. I think it is the carpet and the age of the home. It's really hard to go modern in an older house. But I knew I would always wonder if I didn't try. I figure with all of the painting I do, it is not going to kill me if I have to repaint. At this point, really, it's almost expected of me. 

The art on the wall is a photograph my brother took--he is an ahmazing photographer--check out his photography at his website! If I had a money tree you better believe every single one of his prints would be on my walls. 

I have this vision of buying a couple of my brother's photos- this one and this one- and having them on the wall. The one thing I absolutely love about the dark color is how the colors in the photograph pop off the wall. But it's a big wall and it needs big art. (And for big art, one must have deeep pockets. I suck at math, but I do know that much.)  I have played around with doing a gallery wall of sorts--moving the TV to this wall and putting artwork around it.  I found one artist that I love-Michelle Armas. I ordered her Trellus print, and I am eyeballing her Pamela print. I can see the colors really jumping off the wall. (Jumping in a good way of course, not like "I'm a stalker and i'm going to kill you way. I need to stop watching late night TV, yes I do.) 

I also did a quickie project where I re-tiled my entry way floor. I used Armstrong's vinyl tiles from Lowes in the Crescendo Amber Glow Limestone Finish. 

While I wouldn't call this a long-term solution, the vinyl tiles are  much less of an eyesore than the pinky vinyl floor that was previously there. I give you exhibit A: 

For less than $50, I was able to upgrade to this: 

Much  better. Though I swear the first picture drives me daft--the lighting/Iphone snapshot makes my carpet look pink. I swear it's not. I still need to paint the entry walls white. 13' high ceiling in the entry way and I'm in no rush to haul out a ladder and precariously perch while holding a paint brush. This is where a butler would come in handy, I say. 

So there you have it-the last month's worth summed up in six pictures and roughly 8 paragraphs. 

15-minute Mini Spruce Up

My hallway is currently cluttered with miscellaneous odds and ends that have been shuffled from room to room while these projects are going on, waiting for a home.  In an attempt to get SOMETHING off the floor today, I did a quick tidying up of the cabinet under my bathroom sink using things I had around the house.  So not only did this take all of 15 minutes, but this project was free and sanity-saving.

Since it's not a big ,/Ta-dah,/,/, let's start with the before shots:

 

In case it's hard to tell, all that really happened in this cabinet was odds and ends were thrown in with complete disrespect to organization. It was complete chaos. Middle earth went to war on these grounds.  And somehow, a bottle of aged mouthwash spilled all over the cabinet floor, so the contact paper lining the base of the cabinet was grungy.  (I am pretty sure mouthwash does not age well, like wine.)

So I peeled off the grunge and then I grabbed the last roll of my neighborhood friend, the faux Grass-cloth shelf paper and laid it down.

Then I grabbed two of the plastic drawers there were littering my hallway and crammed them in. Literally, I had to cram them in. The cabinet is too narrow for any self-respecting sized storage, so I actually had to angle the drawers in order to be able to slide them out without restrictions. Which, actually, angled things drive me nuts so we shall see if this is truly sanity-saving. I have to resist the urge to straighten them.

So in went toilet paper rolls, cotton-balls and q-tips. Oh my. On the top I threw my travel cosmetics bag. Then on the other side, I didn't really have anything that worked for smart storage, so I kept the basket there that holds Boo's brush and spray and some cleaner products. I took some measurements and next time I head to the store I'll try to pick up a shelf so I can pack in some more organization. But for now, this is where I am at.

Not bad for a free 15 minute session, eh? Anyone else have super-small cabinets that are laughable when trying to fit in organizational tools?

Organizational Nirvana

So I've been in Minneapolis the last couple of days on a trip for work. Had two days worth of meetings and manager bonding time and I literally walked right by The Container Store on our way to dinner and bowling at Pinstripes next door. I was oh-so-tempted to abandon work and go nuts with organization nirvana. 

Speaking of organizational nirvana, it's time to loop you into a project I worked on for the last couple of weekends when I wasn't busy staring at the gray splotches on my wall and listening to them talk to me... "pick me," "no, pick me!"  

But I digress. I left you behind on the train that was headed towards organizational nirvana (I figure if I say it enough, you will believe it's an actual honest-to-goodness-state-of-being).  I'll be nice and start with the "after." 

,/Ta-dah,,/,/

So now for the story. For those of you who dislike long-winded chatterboxes (guilty), feel free to scroll down to some yummy before & afters.  So for the 6, 7 years I've been living in this house, Peyton and I have been trekking up and down the stairs every morning to get towels for our morning showers. Why, you ask? Because we're crazy. (Actually, I'm pretty sure she would point the finger at me, since Momma had to get out the paint brush for this one...) 

Basically, when we moved in this house, the closet was dingy and dirty and just needed a total paint job to make it habitable for nice fluffy towels that actually touched our skin. So, I just shoved stuff into it and years went by. Fast-forward seven years and this is where we were--trekking downstairs to get towels every morning and this: 

Finally, I decided that it was time to tackle the closet and get it cleaned up. I emptied it out and hauled out all the shelves and pulled out what I had left of the white paint I used on my doors and trim.  The shelves were fairly easy-- when I pulled them out, I labelled the back of one edge so I would know which shelf they needed to go back to (each "shelf" had two sections that slid together to make one shelf, so I needed to make sure they would match up when I returned them to the closet.)

Then I hauled them downstairs, laid them all down and put a coat of primer and 3 coats of white paint on them. I should note, two coats would have been fine. But that tan couch you see to the side of the picture? Yeah, that had to move out right after I started this project. I've been trying to get rid of it for years and my parents found someone willing to adopt the couch on the one weekend I was working on this project. So, I had to move all the shelves over and they got scratched up since they weren't yet fully dry. So, that led to 3 coats of paint needed.  

The most exciting part was when I started painting the inside of the closet. So you can get a true idea of how grungy it was when I started (and why I didn't want clean, body-touchable towels resting in this place...): 

See? Grungy. Ew!  So after I primed and painted and let it dry for a week (maybe two...) I put the shelves back in and turned back to my trusty buddy, the faux grass-cloth shelf paper.  That led me to this: 

Then I gave some serious thought (that lasted all of five minutes) to what I wanted this linen closet to do for me. I decided: 

1. Store the fluffy soft towels right next to the bathroom so when Peyton and I shower we don't have to trek downstairs every. morning. (Most important.)
2. Provide a central location for the hamper for our dirty clothes so Peyton can stop trekking (we sound like hikers, don't we?) in and out of my bedroom and dumping clothes half in the hamper and half on my floor (I am perfectly skilled at making my room messy without her lovely assistance...)
3. Store cleaning supplies and miscellaneous light bulbs, batteries and whatnot (yes, whatnot is an actual thing).
4. Store First-Aid kit so the seventy boxes of band-aids scattered throughout my house are consolidated into the blob, err--one central location. 
5. Store additional sets of sheets (purchase required). Over the years we seem to have retained the odd miscellaneous mismatched sheets for random sized beds. Most perplexing. 

So with that decided, I first hauled out the basket we have been using for our hamper and was able to fit it in at the bottom of the closet with the removal of one shelf. I then found random baskets around the house and dumped their contents out in order to make this linen closet look pretty (whereas other locations in the house are now not pretty-but the road to organizational nirvana is definitely messy. True Story.). So, I stocked it up and here is where we are today: 

Just for good measure, let me throw in a Before & After: 

So even though I made do with what is currently available in my house, I have been online browsing the Container Store for some fun organizational containers. Such as this: 

Oskar Box

 And this...

Rugby Stripe Bin

But that's for another day. For today, that's one day I don't have to go downstairs just to take a shower upstairs. What a novel idea.