Plants + Sewing Room

So...ever wondered where the inspiration for all those awesome wallpapers comes from?  Here's one:

 various "Acanthus" prints in wallpaper, tile, sculpture, stencils, fabrics

actual Acanthus plant (Acanthus mollis, a.k.a. "Bears' Breeches") 

And, just as a teaser...

Mood board for my sewing/craft room, as I slowly accumulate things I need to pull it off - which includes several variations on a black-white-green acanthus-y  "damask" theme. 

More on that when I actually get working in that room - gotta get the laundry room painted, then the craft room is next!

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Wildebeest: Kitchen Chalkboard

Man, I hope every day this week goes as quickly as this day has gone.  I'm ready for a three-day weekend!

I have an update for you this week (kitchen pot rack: finished)!  And a couple of new projects - mostly just painting - to (a) get done this week and then (b) blog about.

In the meantime, since most of the rest of this week is going to be about the kitchen (and since I have nothing prepared for today, since I spent the weekend doing nothing, more or less), allow me to show you the chalkboard I made for my pantry door earlier this year:

Whee!  It's very simple, and very lightweight, since I wasn't confident about this hollow-core door's ability to hold much weight (especially since there are shelves on the inside of it).

It's simply a piece of Masonite, with the edges sanded smooth, which has been primed and painted white.  I taped off the center and used black chalkboard paint (3 coats), leaving a "frame" of white board around the outside edges.

I love having a chalkboard in my kitchen.  It looks awesome on the pantry door; and it's been soooo useful.  I don't forget stuff at the grocery store anymore, now that I can turn around and add something to the list the second I realize I'm out of it.  YAY.


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Entertainment Center Clean-Up

Before: 

dog butt!

HUGE.  Blocky. Dark.  Heavy.  Also broken, and falling apart.

And this is a console table from World Market that used to be a fishtank stand:

After:

Clean!  Open, lighter appearance.  Consolidated.  Also, no visible cords!  I bundled together the ones that showed, and taped them to the back leg of the table with black electrical tape.  :D

Bonus:  I hooked up all the speakers correctly on the first try! There's hope for me, yet.  ;)   ( I still want a flat-screen tv when I grow up, though). 

Everybody have a FANTASTIC weekend!

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Dining Room Artwork - For Free!

I finally decided on a mirror for that empty wall in the dining room...and since I can't afford to go out and buy the perfect one at the moment, I went ahead and hung artwork there instead, in a frame I already had and wasn't using.  Problem solved!  Hee.

This is the part where I plug someone else's website -  I made this Buddha poster with BlockPosters.com.  The photograph itself is from a free desktop wallpaper that I downloaded and the cropped into the right shape.  I upoloaded the .jpg to BlockPosters, which enlarges an image and slices it up, rendering it into a .pdf file so it can be printed out at home on several sheets of paper and assembled into whatever frame or other display format you wish.  And it's completely free! 

The bar over the poster is a carved wooden tapestry-hanger that I got from Earthbound Trading Company at the outlet mall in San Marcos, TX last year.  I have a pair of them - and while I have hung tapestries from them, I find I really just like the sticks themselves.  I really like this one above the poster:

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Notes On Blogging and Lurking

I read a lot more blogs than I have listed on my profile.

If I like your blog, I've either read the entire thing, or am in the process of doing so in my spare time. 

I don't often comment, and when I do, I hardly ever link back to myself.

I don't want to be famous.

I don't want to make money doing this. Ever.  It's just fun.

I moderate comments only because I'm terrible at keeping up with them - moderating them helps me make sure I don't ever miss the opportunity to read them all and respond to them.

If I don't respond to your comment, don't feel neglected.  I liked it, and thank you. :)



Peace, y'all.
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Living Room Update II: The Living Room!

I've posted bits and pieces and small vignettes before, the couch cover that I'm still not done with, and a bit about the changes I've made to the windows at the South end of the room, but I haven't shown you the entire space yet since I painted.

note: this picture from last week? I've totally changed it, LOL.  Check back tomorrow.

Here's the actual "living room" part of the giant space that encompasses my living room and office area.  Sadly, I'm not done with the couch cover, as you can see - it still needs cushion covers!  I have such trouble photographing this room, because of the positioning of the windows and the light fixtures in the room - something always makes it too dark or the wrong color - this is pretty close to the actual color of the walls.

The next two shots, though, capture the actual color pretty perfectly.   Warm, soft, dove-grey (Behr's "Woodsmoke").    

Going clockwise around the room, behind and to the right of the couch is the fireplace, and this pair of shelves that house my DVDs and other media.  One of the shelves was built by my father before I was born - a couple of years ago I took it apart , cleaned up the joinery, which was falling apart, re-stained it, and then built a mate for it with a slightly shallower profile.

On the other side of the media shelves is a small L-shaped hallway that leads back into the master suite. (It'll get its own before-and-after in coming weeks).  It got the same grey paint that the living room did - the doorway and hall are less of a visual obstruction when done in the same color scheme.  There's a painted picture rail at about shoulder-height in the hallway, below which is my "family" photo wall - black and white photos of my friends (taken by one, who is an *awesome* photographer), a shot of me and my best friend together and another of me and my boyfriend that I simply printed out in black and white to match.

Above the white "picture rail" will eventually be painted a blue color, sort of an homage to the blue domes, doors, and archways that you see in the traditional architecture of the Mediterranean and Middle East.  I haven't decided on the exact shade of blue yet - until I do, the "sky" in the hallway remains grey. We'll just imagine that it's raining in there at the moment.  ;o)

To the right of this hallway is an empty wall with the aquarium and stand that I wrote about here;  and past that the door to the entrance hall, and the window that separates the office and kitchen - but that's another post!

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I'm pleased to say that the planned  color scheme is coming along exactly as I hoped it would - and that I'm happy with it.  I hate, hate, hate it when I get halfway through a project and then realize that I just don't like it, because either it's not working the way I thought it would, or because I've already changed my mind about it before it's done.  

That said, I do have a bit of a tweak - a new element I hadn't originally planned to add, but one I feel I need, and am very excited about.  You'll just have to wonder what it is until I give it its own post.  0:)


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Living Room Update, Part I: Office

My "office" is parked under a window at the North end of the living room space, framed by floofy curtains and overhanging vines, making the space feel private and lush while you sit at the computer goofing around on the internet.  0:) The desk is an old Ikea piece from nearly a decade ago, given to me by a friend's mother.  It works, but it's a bit big and blocky; I keep meaning to replace it with something more like this, but so far...?

The Ikea KAUSTBY dining chair that I picked up in the "as-is" section for $20, and for which I sewed this seat cushion made from Ikea's SARITA sheer curtains in a peacock-blue.

A small view of some of the little things on my desk that I keep there simply because I enjoy looking at them:  a tiny clay pot with a Jade plant in it; a red Moroccan candle lantern from World Market, a stack of old Shakespeare stories from a thrift store, and a tiny clay "Garden Goddess" figurine made for me by a friend.

A wider view, with magazines and books-to-be-read, and a carved wooden tray (also from World Market) that contains necessities like pens, a small pad of paper, my cellphone and camera chargers.

 Part II tomorrow - the actual living room.

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Meditation Space Available (Inquire Within)

Good morning!  Happy Monday, too.  Wanna see what I did over the weekend?* 

My heart really, really wants this just outside my  back door - to relax in on a rainy day, or sit and meditate in on cool mornings...

(Picture credit unknown - please comment if you know where this came from)

Mine would have one of these on it:

(The Hangout Place)

And lots of brightly colored lanterns and candles hanging above and all around:

(TripAdvisor.com)

But instead, I have this:

usairnet.com's heat index for Aug. 21st

*sound of brakes screeching* 


Oh, well.

For years I've simply plopped down on whatever expanse of floor in my house was available, sometimes with a pillow or a blanket under me, sometimes not.   These days, though, it hurts me to sit on the floor - so I'd been thinking about building a raised platform to pile cushions on top of.  Something a bit more springy than the hard floor.

Where, though?  Here, maybe, I thought, in this little empty corner of the living room under the windows:

It's out of the way enough, lit - but not heated, thankfully - by the windows all around, with a view of the garden outside and already sheltered by plants.  This picture kept springing to mind...

(photo by Di Lewis, from the book India Style by Alexandra Bonfante-Warren)

That's made of pallets!  Pallets, which are available for free just about anywhere you look - I found a stack of them behind my local grocery store over the weekend, and picked out several nice, relatively new ones from the pile (with permission, of course).  I took two apart and used the slats from both to make a new, sturdier top on one, sanded it, and painted it.  A few pillows, candles, and houseplants later...

YAY!!!

Aside from the pallets, this entire space was made with stuff I already had - candles, plants, the little ceramic cuppa-sand with incense sticks in it...

The little plant here I separated from the big palm-y looking one hanging over the area - a Bird of Paradise.  ...does that make this one a Chick of Paradise?

I really, really wanted to get a little brass Ganesh for this corner - and I found one at World Market over the weekend that I almost bought, but, it'll have to wait until payday.

In the meantime...

THAT didn't take long!  Silly kitty.  This is Rabi  (pronounced "robbie").  I was fully expecting this little corner to turn into a dog bed the second I turned my back, but Rabi and his feline brothers and sisters claimed it almost immediately.  I don't mind sharing. :)


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Meet My Master Bathroom

The master bathroom is probably the only room in my entire house that hasn't been re-done a thousand times in the past six years.  I love it just the way it is.  It was also the first space in my house to be made over, when I first moved in, because I can live with just about anything left un-done, except for a soft, relaxing bathing space.

Enjoy!

Nearly floor-to-ceiling curtains over the shower (Ikea's LILL mosquito-net/mesh panels) to diffuse light from the window in the shower, but not block it.

Mostly monochromatic, with coke-bottle-blue glass accessories, blue matting on the artwork in the room, and blue candles (well, they used to be blue, they've faded to a really weird purple-gray.  I need new ones).   

You can see in this shot that the trim molding and doors are painted the same as the walls:  I did that to keep white trim from "chopping" up the room, visually; and also to help the space feel more calm and floaty.  The bedroom outside is painted in almost the same color; the curtains over the double-doors that divide the two rooms are the same ones as the ones that hang from the canopy railing on the bed.  (My closet, on the other side of the door in the picture above, is also painted to match).



Frames, candle holders, and cabinetry are all the same tone of dark brown-stained wood.   In fact, I stained the cabinets myself.  Here's a shot in better light (from a couple of years ago - different plant and curtain)...

And here's what they looked like before/during the transformation:

Yes, I actually sanded down the wood and re-stained the cabinets - indoors - instead of just doing a faux-bois "stain" paint treatment on them.  This project is part of the reason I started doing that, actually - I think I'm STILL vacuuming up dust from this project, and that was five years ago!


One day I plan to replace the large, frameless mirror over the vanity with a pair of tall, narrow, framed mirrors with a small shelf underneath each one to hold small items (makeup brushes, etc.).  Here's a picture I drew on a couple of years ago when I was trying to decide if I wanted two mirrors, or a wide one higher on the wall...

...but I'm definitely sold on two mirrors.  I even know which ones I want, and all the why and how.  I'm just waiting for that bag of money to show up on my doorstep, lol.  What I don't know is what to do with the light fixture above the mirror (visible in the first picture) - I hate it, but I have no clue what I want.  I'm hoping that I'll know the right one when I see it, but nothing's jumped out at me yet. 

And the inspiration for the room?  Was twofold - I'd had a brighter, pale-aqua bathroom in the apartment I lived in before I moved into my house, with lots of beachy things - shells, grasses in a vase, grass baskets - but I wanted to darken the look, make it more rainy-day and less cheerful.  And then I fell in love with Candance Olsen, and this bathroom from her show:

Candace Olsen

This is WAY too shiny and modern for me; but I looooooved the color and the restful, spa-like feeling.  And the double mirrors with shelves!

I said I'm happy with the master bathroom as is - and that's true, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be more beautiful - there's no such thing as enough.   As I said, I'm planning a mirror thing and a light fixture thing.  I'm also constantly on the hunt for the *perfect* rug to go on the floor in here;  and I'm planning on doing something fantastic with a couple more (small) houseplants in the window above the shower.  Updates as soon as I'm done.  :)


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Table Top August

Patty over at Colors Dekor has declared August to be Table Top Month - I was a little late to join the link party, but I still wanted to play along. :)  Please visit Patty's blog to see lovely tabletop arrangements on her post from Aug. 2; and for all the other lovely pictures and posts that she shares with us!

My favorite tabletop arrangement from my home is this one, from my living room:

The table itself is a sort of mishmash of parts:  a glass table top that I had leftover from a small (and broken) 3-legged round table; a wicker patio table base I found for $5 at a garage sale, which I took home, cleaned, and spray-painted black; and a silver etched tray from Ikea. 

The plant on it doesn't actually belong to me, lol.  A friend brought it to me last Fall to "fix up" - the plant was in need of some new soil and a little bit of TLC;  after it grew in nicely my friend decided to leave it in my care where she could visit it from time to time.  It's become a running joke between us - every time she comes over, I ask her if she's ever going to take her plant home, and she replies, "Maybe next month."  :o)

My favorite item on the table - maybe my favorite item in the whole room - is the little incense burner, which is a ceramic African Violet planter filled with sand that someone brought to me from the beach, and a silver-and-garnet necklace that I wrapped around the top.

Though not a "table top", this arrangement on my fireplace mantel is a favorite of mine, too, for the colors, and for the way the light reflected in the mirror catches the glass and silver and makes them sparkle.


(Can you tell I'm a bit of a plant nut?  Between these two pictures, there are seven visible in this post - I have something like forty-five in all, at the moment!) 


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Dining Room Update!

Two months later...!  Man, I'm bad at this.  I promise to get better, though. :)

In June I talked about the round table I'd been looking for/thinking about building for my dining room, and the one I found on Craigslist for only $50 which was perfect:

I showed you a couple of my plans for the room...

...Which is coming along pretty well so far:

catbomb!

My heart wants new chairs - the Agra and Rajani (wood, not white) from World Market, in fact - but next on the list is the bay window.  As you can see in the sketch above, and the floorplan I posted in June, there's a window seat missing from this photo.

I waffled for the past two months about whether to build an actual window seat that looks like it came with the house, or to build or buy a cute little bench to stick underneath the window.  I have a bench-top with no legs that I may set up in there for the time being, but I've decided to go ahead and build a "real" window seat, mostly because of the storage opportunities it will offer.

First things first, though: sometime in the next month or so I'm planning a Curtain Excursion to Ikea, where I'll get (among other things) the LILL mesh/mosquito-net-like curtains I want for this bay window, along with the DIGNITET  tension-wire system to hang it across the entire bay (like in the sketch above).

I'm also planning a trip to the hobby store at some point this week to buy some leading for the windows in the china cabinet.  I absolutely adore diamond-shaped leaded windows, and I'd drawn some lines onto the glass windows in the hutch with a Sharpie to test-drive the look:

...and I LOVE it.  I can't wait to make it more permanent. :)   I haven't decided whether to paint the insides of this piece teal yet;  at the moment, I'm leaning towards not screwing up a gorgeous piece of furniture.  But it does need new hardware, and I'm nine kinds of excited about finding something awesome to use.

I'm also on the hunt to find the perfect mirror or artwork for the empty wall opposite the china cabinet.  I have a great frame I could use there, but nothing to put in it...yet.  Onward, to teh internets!


P.S. - Whoa, this is my 50th post!  I'm such a n00b, lol.  ;)
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Bedroom Update!

Remember the sari-quilt that I hung on the wall last week? 

I brought a shelf in from the living room over the weekend, slapped a curtain up on it, some candles, and the Buddha statue that had been living in one of my gardens in the backyard (I'd taken the garden down a few weeks ago to re-do it): 

Yay, candles!  

Media storage is a BIG issue in the living room - there's lots of furniture in there, but only so much hidden storage for all the CDs, DVDs, and yes, even old VHS tapes. I could never figure out what to do with all the tapes - they're so big, the cases were all ratty with age and use, we hardly ever watch them (but are keeping them around until we replace them with DVDs), and I couldn't ever figure out what to do with them in there. So they're on this shelf, under the curtain!  Secret storage, tee-hee! 


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I have more updates for you this week, since I finally got around to taking some serious photographs over the weekend.  I'll show you more of the bedroom, my master bathroom, the little things I've been doing in the living room since I painted it last month, the new dining room table, and a bit about that china cabinet I talked about last week, as well.


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Candles

No reason.  Enjoy.

* copyright ME, by the way.  Most of the time I don't care, but these are actual art photos, so, you know. :)

A Round Tuit (Bedroom)

First of all, I apologize for being *horrible* at making follow-up posts!  HOW many times have I posted about ideas and things I was going to get around to and then...nothing?

Well, here's one!   Remember this sari-quilt that my friend gave to me a while back?

With the help of some old wooden brackets and some sections of wooden flagpole salvaged for me by another friend from her workplace (thank you!), I hung the quilt on the wall of my bedroom last night:

I'ts just too beautiful NOT to look at every day, but I wouldn't dare put it on my bed where it would be ruined by my cats.  It's almost folded in half - I really wanted both the rectangular center and the overlapping chevron-y/parquet-floor-like pattern of the sari borders to show (and if there are any quilters reading this who know what that's actually called, please comment and let me know so that I can sound like less of a doofus in the future). 

It needs something underneath besides bare wall, though.  There's a long, low bookshelf in the living room that I'm thinking about bringing in.  More on that later. 

<3


(Also, following up on the follow-up thing...hee..I shall endeavor to get you some updated dining room pics over the weekend!) 


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Testicular Fortitude and Painting Furniture

Surely you've figured out that I love blue in all its forms - especially teals and turquoises.  


I have a special place in my heart (at the moment) for worn, distressed, teal-painted cabinets and chests and doors.  

from around the interwebs

I also have this china cabinet in my dining room, which I love with all my heart: 

It was a gift from my ex-in-laws several years ago, who'd purchased it to stage a home they were selling, but then didn't want to keep when they moved. 

I've arranged all my herbs, teas, and spices in pretty little jars and boxes inside the upper cabinets - inspired by the *awesome* pantry cabinets at The Aunts' house in Practical Magic (which is one of my all-time favorite movies):  

 images and other wonderful things from the fansite Amas Veritas

I'm also test-driving a diamond-y window leading pattern (like this) on the glass doors by way of a Sharpie marker and a ruler, hehe.  The plan was that I could easily clean the marker off the glass if I hated the look - but I love it, and plan to upgrade to decorative press-on leading from the hobby store on that fated "One of These Days."

MY question is - do I have the balls to paint my china cabinet a distressed teal?  Do I paint the whole thing, or just the inside? 

(I SUCK at photoshop, lol)

??

Hmm.

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