Meanwhile, In Living Room Land

This week, I have lots to do in the living room.  I'm finally making that day sofa cover, and I'll get to talking about this "new" couch I've alluded to in the past few weeks.  I'm also juuuuust about ready to start re-arranging the entire thing.  You heard me. The entire. Thing.  You'll see.

In the meantime, some inspiration pictures, which also serve as hints:

via Pinterest

Decorology

Pinterest

Apartment Therapy

Wildebefore + After: Floor Lamp

So, that lamp I was priming last week. 
It got a shiny silver paint job, and a $13 Ikea  OLLSTA shade, painted silver to match...

Here it is, tucked into a cozy little corner that is quickly becoming my favorite thing in the newly-rearranged living room. 

(I'm still working on re-arranging everything, and de-cluttering certain areas, and futzing with the houseplants.  My camera's working again, though, for the time being. So that's good.  Real update on that coming soon!) 

HGTV via Pinterest

This was my inspiration.  This is a room done by Candice Olsen, on her show Candice Tells All.  I fell in LOVE with the silver floor lamp back there by the windows.

Obviously, mine's no designer lamp - it's a spray-painted thrift store find with an Ikea fix.  But it's silver.  And I loooove the way it glows through the silver shade.
:)






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More Ideas For Projects I'm Never Going To Get Around To

So, that back patio of mine...

ooh, ahh.

Wouldn't be awesome if it looked like that, but with grass in between the stones?  Actually, it does.  And it's fantastic when I remember to take the weedeater to it every week, but who has time for yardwork? 

::crickets::

But looking pretty cool doesn't solve the real problem with it, which is that the stones are (a) really, really, really rough underfoot (because I didn't smooth out the concrete enough when I made them, and I should've used cement anyway, NOT concrete, because it's full of tiny rocks! Ow!)   Also, (c), I'm actually kinda bored with it.  And (d) if I'm going to have to dig some of it up to put up posts for a pergola-type-thing overhead...why not just scrap the whole thing and do something new? 

With me? Awesome.

So I keep seeing stuff like this...

O_O

And this...

if my toes could drool...

I mean, really, can't you just feel that soft, smooth wood under your bare feet?  I really wish I could find the photo I'm thinking of - I saw one not too long ago that's *gorgeous* and *perfect*, but did I bookmark/pin/save it?  Hell no.

It was little more than a "Hey, that's neat", until I remembered that in my hoard stash in the garage, I've got two buckets of black marble chips, another bucket of stones in assorted sizes/colors that have been in and out of gardens and fishtanks for years, a huge pile of lumber that's technically usable but which I know I won't ever really build anything with, including a couple of small heavy timbers and some end-grain pieces, a couple of spare bags of sand (for re-doing the base underneath the patio)...and I think I have some weed-blocking cloth in there somewhere, but I'm not sure. I even have a couple of gallons of deck sealant/stain sitting around in my paint hoard supplies.  Even if I have to buy more weed-blocking cloth, that's an entire project for like $20, done almost entirely with stuff I already have.

see also: breezy net sheers, moroccan lantern, hanging plants, live grass, time to do all this

Yeah?

Like I have time to do that.  But it's a neat idea.


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Motivation FAIL

Actually, it's more of a daunting thing.  I am daunted by the craft room.  There's just SO much to do, and every single step is huge and time-consuming and tedious (since it involves slowly beating back the last advance of what very nearly became the beginning of a serious hoarding situation). Not to mention the fact that the rest of my life has gotten so blindingly busy lately that when I get a minute to myself I hardly know what to do with myself aside from just taking a nap, I'm so stressed out.  UGH. 

I'm planning some more work in there this coming weekend, if I get a minute and am feeling up to it; but for the time being, here are some photos I've collected via Pinterest to keep me inspired as I trudge along through the details of getting the hard stuff in the room taken care of so I can move on to the fun stuff:
  

from

The room's already gray and off-white (and green, but, we'll deal with the floor another day).




Soft linen, aged wood...

from

Gray/cream, warm and touchable wood.

I love the mirror, too.

from

Nom nom nom.

from

These blue shutters kill me.

Huevos

When life hands you lemons...paint them blue!   :D  Okay, maybe that one's just me.  But in case you hadn't noticed, I'm kind of a fan...

blue stuff in/around my house

Somewhere in my bookmarks and inspiration files is a folder called, "If I Only Had the Balls To Paint the Whole Thing Blue."   In truth, I have a blue room - I have three, in fact:  my master bedroom, master bath, and bedroom closet/dressing room (which I never finished, in case you actually remembered that/were wondering).  But oh, if I only had the balls to do this...

Delight By Design

Anthropologie

from the movie Eat, Pray, Love (those columns!)

An Indian Summer

Hmm.


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Blogfail + OPP (Other People's Pictures)

I can't seem to keep my brain in my head this entire week.  I've completely forgotten what I was going to post today, and I didn't even have a draft with notes in it to pull from, like I normally do.  So, instead...

Is that gorgeous or what?!  That's from a made-over factory-turned-home featured today on Dear Designer's Blog,  which is awesome every day, but this post, and this bedroom in particular, are just gorgeous. 

And while we're on the subject of  rooms/things that I find beautiful and inspiring (because I have just decided that we are): 

...I don't rememeber where I found this!

In case you hadn't noticed, I adore art walls.  And I secretly love white spaces to LOOK at...I've tried living with them before, and I always feel like the most obvious thing in the room.  I'm a hider.  I want big fluffy dark things to curl up in and peer over the back of to see what the people over there are doing.  But I love looking at white spaces. :)

la maison boheme

I love, love, love

1. blue
2. turquoise
3. curtains
4. window seats
5. tufted furniture
6. piles of pillows
7. wooden floors
8. huge windows                               I mean, this picture, COME ON.  Lurve! 

...I didn't make a note of the source on this one, either. :(

 I also absolutely covet a tufted ottoman like this one.  I've been meaning to build one for years, but I've never gotten around to it.  And actually...no, that needs a post of its own, never mind.  0:)

And, lastly...

some catalog a million years ago

I love the line of these tables (and these...and this...), and one day, when I grow up, I'm going to build this entertainment center.... ah, dreams.


See you guys tomorrow. :) <3


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Oh, My, Starry-Eyed Surprise

This is my bedroom:

This is my bedroom on drugs:

Just kidding.  That's the main hall at Hogwarts with its enchanted ceiling.  I have, however, always wanted a starry ceiling, and have recently been thinking about doing something along those lines in my bedroom.  (I realize how seriously girly that sounds, but it rates on the Boyfriend-O-Meter, so it's all good).  

Because, well, this:

Country Living

And this:

 (unknown)

And this:  

(dangly star)

I have all this paint sitting in my garage - greens and blues and blacks and purples - I could do this wonderful sponge-y cloudy thing like in the teal/peacock picture, then stencil little gold and silver stars - ooh, constellations?  Who knows!
Then again...painting ceilings...LOATHE.

I have way too much left to do in the craft room.  If/when I move on the bedroom ceiling* it'll be weeks and weeks from now.  I'm just thinking out loud, and dreaming a bit. :)






*And yes, the bedroom ceiling does need to be re-painted.  The blue color on it is from two years ago, and was never touched up after that paint job.  It's also the complete wrong blue, and always has been, but I let it go, because, hey, it's just the ceiling.  Also because I didn't have any ideas on what to do with it until recently. 


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"Organization"

My internet bookmarks folders are full of inspiration pictures - rooms I adore, artwork that inspires me, color schemes, etc.  (Me and everybody else, hehe).

I really need to stop labeling links "Oooh" and "LOL" and "omg" and "Hee" and "wow!"  It makes it hard to find things quickly. 

On the other hand, I'm always in for a surprise.  :)


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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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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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