Tuesday

Nightstand Makeover

I'm so excited about how our master bedroom is coming together.  We've actually been sleeping in our guest room because we were waiting on our bed to be delivered.  We wanted to paint and get everything done before the bed got here because that just made the most sense.  We actually got the bed in about a week ago and I absolutely love it.  We've had "hand me down" furniture in our room since we got married and although it's great, it was so nice to get something new that we absolutely love!  I can't wait to show it to you.

So this weekend we decided to paint the walls.  I had been going back and forth on painting it or not and which color to choose.  I really wanted something bold and rich, but I was a little scared to go dark.  Well, I trusted my gut and just went for it.  I painted the walls black and I couldn't be more thrilled with the result!  The color is actually Black Basalt by Ralph Lauren.  It's black with just a hint of charcoal.    

Here's a little peek.


I'll share the rest of the room soon, but for now I want to show you a quick little makeover I did on our old nightstands.  I painted them yellow to match our old bedroom, but I definitely wanted something different this time around. 


The yellow was fun, but I wanted something more neutral so I could easily change up the accent color. So I went with Behr decorator white.  It's a good true white without be too warm or too cold.  


I also removed the backplates from behind the handles to make it feel fresh and current.


You can see a little peek of our bed here!



Can't wait to share more soon!

Friday

Sun Art

Have you guys ever heard of Sun Art?  I can't believe I've never heard of it before, but I came across it recently on a trip to the craft store and thought it would be fun to experiment with.  It's so easy to work with and makes the coolest art.  It would be great to do with kids too.

I bought mine at Hobby Lobby so I could use a coupon and save a few bucks, but they have it on Amazon too.


It's pretty self explanatory.  But you basically place objects on the paper, set it out in the sun for a few minutes and then rinse it off.  The sun reacts with the paper to turn it a deep blue color and the portion where the object was stays a light blue.  

I wanted a botanical vibe so I used several different plastic floral stems that were pretty cheap.  It really doesn't matter if they look super fake because you're just going for the silhouette.


The package says to add a few drops of lemon juice to the water when you rinse it for a deeper blue.  I didn't have any on hand so I used a few drops of lemon essential oil.  I think that did the trick.


I think a collection of 8 or so of these would create a really pretty gallery wall.  I used one in my entry way and a few more on my living room gallery wall. (I'll be sharing that soon).



It's so hard to take a picture of a picture isn't it?  The glare always gets me.


The bamboo cart is a thrift store find.  It was looking more like an 80's microwave cart when I found it, thanks to the black plastic wheels.  Thankfully that was an easy fix.  I just switched them out with these brass wheels from the hardware store.  I think it makes such a difference!  Here's a peek at what it looked like before.


I had already taken the wheels off in this picture (they are sitting on the shelf), but you get the idea.  I can't believe what a difference it made just to switch those out!  

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!  We'll be busy painting our bedroom a bold color, hope it turns out the way I have envisioned it. :)

Tuesday

BSHT Fall Tour

Today I'm sharing a little bit of my fall decor as part of the Blogger Stylin' Home Tours hosted by Lindsay at The White Buffalo Styling Co.  It has been so fun to follow along and see all the beautiful fall decor everyone has come up with.     


If you are coming over from Julia's blog, Cuckoo 4 Design, welcome!  I'm so glad you are here.  I haven't had a chance to do a ton of fall decorating this year because we are still settling into our new home, but I did want to add a few fall touches.  Fall is definitely my favorite season of the year.  I grew up in Florida where we didn't really get to experience the seasons so that is one of my favorite things about where we live now.  The cool air, rocking on the front porch, pumpkin everything, I love it all!

Speaking of front porches, I decorated ours with mostly traditional fall elements this year.  These huge mums were on sale on Home Depot for $6!  I couldn't pass up that deal and they really help bring the fall feeling to our front porch.  



My husband's childhood wagon makes the perfect perch for our pumpkin.  And my two year old thinks it's so fun to wheel it around the porch.  Simple decor and free entertainment in one, it's a win win!   


For the inside of our home, I chose to keep things really simple with an earthy vibe.  I'm really drawn to earthy elements anyways, so I love incorporating them during the holidays too.



My mom found these cute little mini sparkling apple cider bottles at the dollar store so I thought it would be fun to include them in this fall-ish table setting.



I always find it hard to resist the flowers at Trader Joe's.  They are so reasonably priced and always add such a nice, fresh touch.


Moving into our living room, I changed up our newly revamped sofa table a little bit to make it feel a little more like fall.


My husband rarely gives any input on the home decor front, it's just not his thing, but this house has sparked something within him.    So as I was decorating this little area he told me to wait because he had an idea.  He ran into the other room and grabbed this cowhide remnant I've been hanging onto and placed it right on top of the trunk.  I actually really liked the texture and warmth it brought in.  Before I know it he'll be taking over this blog!  




Our fiddle leaf fig survived the move, despite having it's leaves hanging out the windows of my in laws car.  It was the only way we could fit it in there and I just knew it wasn't going to make it.  Somehow it pulled through and I'm so glad!


I kept our mantle pretty simple too, with a small spray painted foam pumpkin, some brass deer, and a few books from my thrifting stash.




Thanks again for taking a peek at our fall decor!

Be sure to check out more of the tours tomorrow, starting with Rhoda from Southern Hospitality!

If you want to see more of my projects, be sure to check out the projects page or tour our last house here!

Monday

Fall in Love Room Plans

I'm happy to announce I'm participating in a fun room make-over series with a lovely bunch of talented bloggers.  We are all picking one room in our home to redecorate over a 6 week period.  Since we just moved into our home I have lots of rooms that need attention, but I've decided to go with my daughter's room.  Before we sold our house, I was planning to turn her nursery into a big girl room so I've been gathering ideas for a while.  Here's what the room looks like now.  I'll be keeping a lot of the stuff in here and switching a few things out.  




Here's a general idea of the direction I'm heading, but I've been known to change my mind so who knows what the end result will be!


I'll be pulling a lot of inspiration from my daughter's play kitchen.  It has most of the colors I want to include so it's a good inspiration piece.  I plan to repaint a french provincial style dresser that I already have in a light greige color with gold hardware like the World's Away chest above.  I'm open to color recommendations if you have any!  I'm using an ornate mirror I have in my stash, spray painted gold, to go above the dresser.  It's sort of similar to the one above.  We bought a teepee for our daughter for Christmas last year, but we never really set it up because there wasn't a place for it.  Her new room has the perfect spot for it so I'm excited to get it all setup as a sweet little reading nook for her.  Little miss requested a pink room, so I'm going with a sort of barely there raspberry, similar to Sherwin Williams Anemone but lighter.   I'm also using this chair from my old office because the color ties in perfectly.  We also used it for her monthly pictures when she was a baby so it has special meaning. 

 I'll be posting updates throughout the six week period and doing a full reveal at the end.    

Here's the full list of participants.  Can't wait to follow along!

Friday

One Table - Two Different Looks

We knew when we bought our new home that we wanted to make most of the furniture from our old house work.  It feels a lot less wasteful and there's no need to buy something new if you can rework what you have!  It's also a lot easier on the wallet.  

This little table was a craigslist find that I spruced up for our last house.  


I loved the bright orange for our outdoor space, but that wouldn't really work in our new home.  We didn't really have a place for it outside, but we wanted something to go behind the sectional so you weren't just staring at the back of the couch.  

I gave it a few coats of gold spray paint (Rustoleum Gold Metallic) and it looks like a new piece!  



I'm always amazed at what a little paint and new styling will do to make something look totally different!

Wednesday

Bamboo Shades to make your windows look larger

Before we even bought our new home, I started filing away images of ideas for window treatments.  They offered to put blinds throughout the whole house for us (at an additional cost of course) but we declined because I knew I wanted something different, at least in a few of the rooms.  There are some rooms where blinds just make the most sense so we did install them ourselves in those rooms, but I wanted to do something different in the family room. Our old house had larger windows with pretty crown molding.  That was one of my favorite things about that house.  So when I walked into this house with basic, average sized, windows (even though they are great) felt a little squatty.  


(before we moved in)

So to fix that problem, I went on the hunt for some roman shades that would be slightly wider than the window and a little longer too.  I ended up going with these from Home Depot.  I needed them to be roughly 48" by 72" and I just couldn't find any that size in our local stores.  I had a little trouble finding that size online too, so I was happy to come across these.  I really like the color.  It's not too yellowish or too brown.  The color is called driftwood and it's pretty much the same color as driftwood.  Appropriately named I guess. :)  They actually match my dining room light perfectly.

I snapped a pic of the sample they had in the store and it's a pretty accurate depiction of the color.   


I hung them using the same method I mentioned here and it really made it much easier to hang them and get them all even.  I ended up hanging them about a foot higher than the window to give the illusion of a longer, taller window.




Don't judge my pictures too harshly, taking pictures of windows is quite the feat!  I've only noticed one negative so far with the shades.  They are a little see through.  I may end up adding a blackout lining if we feel like we need a little more privacy, but for now I'm loving them!

Friday

Affordable King Size Beds

We've talked about getting a king size bed for the longest time.  We've had a queen size since we got married and I'm ready for a little more room.  My husband is a big guy, and although he'll deny it, he kind of likes to hog take over the bed. :)  We held off on buying anything until after our house sold because we definitely didn't want to have to move it up and down the stairs twice.  So now that we are getting settled in, we've started searching for something new.  I've always dreamed of having an upholstered bed so I knew that was the route we would go.  I thought about DIYing one.  I almost always go that route.  In fact, most of the furniture, if not all, in our home is DIYed, from Craigslist, or thrifted, but when it came down to it I realized it just wasn't worth the frustration and hastle.  At least not right now.  So I've been scouring the internet and local stores to try to find the best deal.  I found a few that were ok locally and a few that were great but not in the budget.  Ultimately I found the best deals online though.  We finally settled on one from Wayfair. (number 1 below)  I think it actually ended up being the cheapest of all of them.  I wanted something classic that I would easily tire because we plan to have this bed for a long time.  This one fit the bill and was neutral enough to work with pretty much anything, which is great because I still don't have a definite plan for what I'm doing in there.  They also offered free shipping, no tax, and a 10% off coupon if you signed up for their emails.  So it ended up being a great deal.  Here are a few of the other contenders in case you are in the market for one yourself.

    
 1   2   3   4   5

I'll be sure to share the deets when it arrives!

Wednesday

IKEA VITTSJO hack

I've always loved the clean lines of the IKEA VITTSJO series and the fact that they are oh so easily hackable.  I bought a few before we moved with plans to use them in our office.  Then when we sold the house I decided to just hold off until we got settled in our new place.  

It didn't take me too long though to whip out my can of gold spray paint and get started on these once we were mostly settled in.  Here's a what I started with.


Here's what they looked like after a few coats of gold spray paint (Rustoleum Gold is my fav).  I also used a clear spray coat as well to give them a little extra protection.


The shelves were a combination of glass and the black/brown looking "wood" that IKEA uses for a lot of their furniture.  I wasn't a fan of how that was working with this piece, so I used some marble contact paper that I had leftover from my daughter's play kitchen makeover to cover the boards.  It is the Marble Carrara Gray contact paper from Design Your Wall.  I highly recommend this stuff.  I'm always amazed at how much it looks like the real deal.  It's also super easy to work with.  I had trouble getting it straight on one of the pieces and was able to reposition it several times without messing it up at all.

So after a little work, it turned out like this!









Overall, I'm really happy with how they turned out!  I think I'm most excited about all the storage and the opportunity it gives me to be more organized.  I'm so much more productive when I know where things are.  There is still so much more I'd like to do in this room, but I feel like I'm off to a good start.  

And just in case you thought I had my act together, here's what the other side of the room looks like.  Just keeping it real :)  We will get there eventually!