My Signature Style

Since moving to a new house in a new place I have been just a bit obsessed with re-decorating and re-organizing. Of course, some of that is due to necessity (moving from a 900 sq ft condo to a 1500 sq ft house requires adaptation), but some of it is that I am really eager to settle into my own style.

For those of us who are decorating impaired, we go into other people's homes and think how great everything looks and how well it all coordinates, even if we wouldn't choose it for ourselves. The problem is, we have no idea how to transform things we see and like into beautiful decor for our homes.

Enter Fieldstone Hill Design and their Decorating for Dummies program...or more nicely said "Style Bootcamp"!

It's a completely awesome series on this blog that teaches you how to Overcome Decorating Paralysis (my biggest issue and the best post I've read on how to begin decorating), Define Your Style with Photos, and Make a Signature Style Board. I devoured these posts and will now delight you with my own style board that I made. Enjoy!

I now have a dedicated Pinterest Board to My Signature Style as a place to collect pictures of not just things that I like, but things I would be proud to have associated with me and my home. Going through this series (and blog) is a wonderful naptime (or more) activity that I highly recommend for all you decorating dummies out there.

Just so you know, my "Don't Buy Word" is cheap and just thinking about that one thing has really changed my shopping habits already. Don't get me wrong, I still love a bargain, but it has to be more than that before I'll take it home with me. So glad I came across this blog!

Music Monday: Far From the Home I Love

"Far From the Home I Love," Fiddler on the Roof

When we first knew we would be moving this summer I immediately thought of this song. 

How is it moving week already??

Colorado and the people here have become our family and it completely surprises me that I've been able to keep it together as well as I have so far.

So, this song has become my anthem as I travel to a metaphorical "frozen wasteland" (which is in fact a high dessert) as we clean out our home and move ahead to our new adventure:

We'll keep you posted througout moving week, including an incredible video from the lip-sync-off party our friends threw for us! You're not going to want to miss it! 

Book Review: The Perfectly Imperfect Home

The Perfectly Imperfect Home, Deborah Needleman

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

I really loved this book! I think this is the perfect "coffee table book," filled with short little sections of fascinating information with a lively cover and pictures inside to match. I would have, however, preferred photographs to the drawings, just because sometimes it was hard for me to see what they were trying to express and photos would have done that better for me. That being said, the pictures matched the feeling of the book, which in some ways did more to show what the book was about than photos could have conveyed. The point is, anyone who is looking to style-up their home in anyway should read this book! Sure, some things in it were terribly impractical with small children, but it had loads of great ideas that could be sifted through and carefully applied no matter the situation you found your home in. I would really love to have this book as a constant go-to manual in my home!

Some of my favorite tips or quotes:
"Create cohesion with your bowls, bins, and boxes by having them share common colors or materials."
"Quite simply, the more designated places you have for specific items, the less your entry will end up resembling a junkyard or a branch of the post office."
"Save the super bold for the smaller pieces, like armchairs, pillows, and throws."
"Say no to symmetry. You don't want too much of a good thing: OD'ing on symmetry makes a room dull and stiff." (Something I may tend to do.)
"Irreverent Accents: These are small, whimsical touches that show you don't take the objects in your home too seriously: snapshots stuck into the edge of a beautiful antique mirror..."
"Jollifiers are sentimental things that spread joy every time you cast your eye upon them. They are among the easiest decorating tools as the require no skill, no complicated understanding of color, texture, or composition."
"Mollifiers...[are] the stuff that you allow into your home because as awful as it may be, it makes someone else happy...A really chic person can mollify because she puts love before style -- and she can look upon the offending items as amusing, or at least part of the package."
"When mixing patterns, the rule is to connect through color and contrast through scale."
"This might sound counter intuitive, but to create a beautiful home, you need a bit of ugly."
"Use similar frames to unify a diverse grouping of pictures."
"You can make little 'nothings' -- postcards, notes from friends... -- look terrific by giving them a special place or treatment. These mementos can also be mixed to great effect with good pieces of art."

Okay, that's quite enough. I just don't want to forget the really important ones before I have the cash to buy the book for myself.

I Kinda Love Colorado

Nick left for work at 5:50am this morning and plans on putting in at least a 12.5 hour day, if not more to avoid going in to work tomorrow.

When we agreed to do graduate school this is what we signed up for -- occasional crazy days, typical 11-hour days, and a lot of vacation flexibility so long as it doesn't coincide with a conference or big publication. It's not easy all the time, but even if one had told me how lonely some periods of my life would feel I would have still agreed to it.

In fact, we maybe agreeing to it already. I'm not going to go into specifics, but Nick has/will be applying to eight (possibly nine) jobs this winter. He's headed out of town for a "job interview" Sunday and will be back Tuesday (quick trip). He's applying for jobs across the country leaving our family's future completely unpredictable (which is a real change from its completely predictable past).

I have done a lot of reflecting recently because of all this "Momy-time" I've been having recently, and the thing that surprises me the most about our time in Colorado is how much "it feels like home to me." I don't really know what I was expecting when we moved here, but living in Utah for school never felt like home, and I was there for 3 years. I always felt like a visitor saying "I'll be home [in Oregon] for Christmas" and now find myself saying "I'm so glad we'll be home [in Colorado] for Christmas."

One of the first pictures we took on our very first "let's explore!" walks in Colorado.

Maybe it's because so much of me has happened in the past 5.5 years. Thinking about where I was as a person when we moved here and where I am now just blows my mind! My 21-year old self would not have believed what I am capable of doing now or what I was capable of becoming.

Dolled Up in August 2007

Dolled Up in September 2012

(Geez! I figured how to pose for pics, fix my hair, trim my eyebrows, cover up zits, and wear clothes! Holy Cow!)

I wonder if that's what home is...maybe home is a place where you become the person you were always meant to be. That takes stretching, and stretching takes time. Don't get me wrong, I was stretched plenty in college, but places don't feel like home so much to me as the people that helped me through those times of stretching. Mostly Nick, but also my roommates and friends who held my hand and dried my tears through the flour gooping up in them (long story...okay, not that long: flour fights). In Utah it was the people I ended up missing, and here it's going to be the people but also the places where created our first real home.

 

One flour fight of many in college. So fun!

I kinda love Colorado, a lot more than I thought I would after 5.5 years. I'm going to really try to enjoy the snow this year.

Christmas Stockings Unveiled

I know you all have been anxiously anticipating the unveiling of our family's homemade Christmas stockings, I know I have!

I do fear that I may have built them up maybe more than they should be...but here goes nothing!

The pictures are definitely a bit wanting in their...greatness...but let me tell you a bit more about these stockings. The blue one on the left is Nick's, the one with the red is mine, the one with the bow is Alexa's, and the last one that looks terribly out of place is Jesus'. The one for The Sneetch is still floating around in my head, hopefully soon to be an actual physical stocking, although I'm debating making a girly one and a boyish one or just a neutral one. My brain has definitely been stretched a bit on this project.

Each of the stockings (aside from Jesus') have three things in common: their shape, that patterned fabric which also matches our homemade tree skirt that I put together last year (pictures to come), and the guiding hand of my friend Lorayne. She's the angel who painstakingly responded to panicked calls/texts/emails when things seemed impossibly desperate and I needed a wise and experienced hand to hold my metaphorical one as I learned how to sew and do this project at the same time. I love her so much -- she is a saint!

Here are some details: Nick's stocking is a fake, but still very elegant, satin fabric. I want our stockings to reflect something that the person would pick out for themselves (as best as I can make them anyway), so I wanted Nick's to be (a) blue, (b) simple/not too cutesy, and (c) classy. His cuff is just appliqued to the front of the stocking, and his was probably the easiest to make.

My stocking is, I admit, my favorite, and was the first one I did with Lorayne watching my every move. I knew what I wanted from the moment I got the fabric, so this was the easiest to plan out and execute. The red details are just appliqued to the front using the same method as Nick's stocking, aside from the rosette and the button which are very delicately hot glued to the stocking. Awesome, I know!

Alexa's stocking is an off-white fleece with a beautiful clearance sheer overlay fabric on the front. Hers is the one I'm least satisfied with because I feel like the bow looks out of place and I don't really know what to do about it. I'd add tails if I knew how to make them look like they were attached to the bow and didn't think they would cover the sheer fabric's pattern too much. Oh well, I've got time to think about it still.

Jesus' stocking was actually originally Alexa's stocking, but when it was mostly done I couldn't figure out a way to incorporate the patterned fabric into it. So I was at a friend's house and her family had a stocking for Jesus that they could put in behaviors to change or actual gifts to give to others each year as a gift to Jesus. I loved that idea and almost immediately realized that was the solution! This stocking will probably not hang over the fireplace with care with the rest of the stockings, but instead in some special place where we can remember the true meaning of Christmas easier.

So there they are! To maintain their niceness I'm unfortunately going to have to be a little Nazi-ish with our kids and their grubby little fingers as these can't go through the wash. Nick told me that his mom would line the interior of their stockings with bread bags and then the kids could pull out their bags and return their stockings safely/cleanly to their hanging spot. We'll definitely be doing that!

When I make The Sneetch's stocking I think I'll take pictures along the way to show you how I made them and make a little tutorial post. It's probably nothing groundbreaking, but maybe helpful if this is something you'd like to do! Merry Christmas!

Like to Love in 8 Steps

Thanks to Mike's Camera, Walmart, Goodwill, and Hobby Lobby, I was able to transform a once liked area in our house to a now much loved area in our house, and here's how:

Step 1: Have a place in your home that you want to re-do.

 Step 2: Go to Goodwill and buy some perfectly good lamps for $3.99 each.

Step 3: Cover any area you don't want painted with painter's tape (tip: I only covered a portion of the cord, but I should have covered the whole thing or put it in a plastic bag and sealed it off with the tape as a small section of visible cord is now tinted yellow).

 Step 4: Go to Walmart and buy a glossy version of whatever paint color you want. I chose Bauhaus Gold, which turned out to be a really pretty mustard yellow.

 Step 5: Spray paint your lamps. The taller one only needed 2 coats, but the shorter one got an additional coat after I took this picture.

Steps 6, 7, and 8: Print new pictures and buy new frames (50% off making them only $5 each from Hobby Lobby), buy new shades for lamps ($4.97 each from Walmart), and replace new loved pieces with the old liked ones! YAY!

This was such a fun and easy (did it in a day-ish) way to freshen up a look that was a bit tired, which I will definitely be doing again! This refreshing project isn't exactly done, however. I think I am going to make some cute bookends for my little book collection, I may spray paint the frames a charcoal or something a little less harsh than black, and I may add a couple more pictures on either side of the wall to take up a little more of the space. We'll see where my creativity preferences take me!

I've found my tastes have changed a bit, so now the question is, what do I do with the perfectly good things I can't seem to find a use for right now in my little house right now? Oh well, that's a project for another day!

***In other news, we're one of the 795 couples being profiled by LDS Family Services (our adoption agency) on their website as of yesterday! Woot woot! Check out our extremely awesome profile by clicking here.***

#49: Grow a Plant

Late Spring we decided to plant a small garden in our raised garden beds we built on our back patio.

As a quick side note, do you remember what our patio looked like when we moved in? I'm really just proud of how much we've done whether or not anything grew. But I digress...

Our feeling on our garden was that we'll plant it, water it, and let the sun and the dirt do their thing. If something grew, great! If not, we'll try something different next year.

On our first attempt at gardening we have had 8 strawberry plants, 1 bell pepper plant, and 1 watermelon plant that have thrived in our little garden. There was, unfortunately, one casualty: our beloved cantelope didn't make it. Fare thee well our little withered friend.

Our strawberry plants when they produced fruit for the first time!

Nick and Alexa water the garden together practically every morning. It's so cute!

 That HUGE plant Nick is watering is our watermelon plant. It definitely has a Manifest Destiny approach to the garden.

 Alexa and I just after we finished enjoying some delicious strawberries. Yeah, my bangs need trimmed - back off!

We actually were able to grow things! Who knew my science teachers instructing me on photosynthesis were actually right! We will definitely be doing this whole thing again year after year! Go Sun, Dirt, and Us!!

Dreaming and Doing, Pt. 2

Did you know you can re-finish countertops? Our ugly laminate countertops are going to look slightly less ugly because we are going to re-finish them! Probably not until summer, but still super exciting for Nick and I!

Guess who made this little discovery as part of her doing instead of dreaming escapade a few weeks ago? I'll give you a hint, it wasn't this cute little cheesy bundle of craziness:

Nope, it was me! You see, after I had my fill of longing for what I did not have I decided to do everything I could to change my circumstance. That meant I got to work on cleaning, tape measuring, pamphlet reading, and discussing with friends about changes to make in our home.

As a result of those efforts we went on a date to Home Depot and purchased blinds for the sliding glass door (which turned out to be way less expensive than I originally thought), looked into re-finishing our cabinets (which is my next big project right after cleaning out the garage), and then stumbled upon a countertop re-finishing kit (a project we've decided to take on this summer).

Crazy-mixed-up world we're living in these days when working actually yields results. Color me surprised.

Fill in the Blank Friday

I'm having bloggers writing block, so my solution is to play a fun mindless game via blogging (and then shower, because, well, it's time). Now I just want to go a clean and decorate the house! But not go to Ikea...I think it's evil that they trap you in and make you spend 20 minutes to find a parking space. Evil I tell you!

1. My favorite room in my home is  __the living room     because ___our home is not that big and that's where most of the action happens.    

2. My current decor style is ___traditional meets poor graduate student income      but I wish it were more ___contemporary. I like the warm tones in my home, but I'd like to incorporate more accent pieces in the decor and furniture instead of on the walls. It also seems like a lot of flexibility/opportunity is given to that style whereas traditional has been set for years.___

3. I wish I could redecorate the ___"master bedroom"___ in my house to make it more decorated and cohesive. Seriously there is one big picture on the main wall, or marriage certificate on another, and a picture from our wedding on another. None of the frames match and really it's just so boring and does not reflect us at all!___

4. My dream house absolutely has to have ___a huge library with 3 walls of built-in bookshelves, preferably chalk-full of the best books of all time! This room would have glass french doors opening to it the 4th wall would be a huge window with a large sit-in window seat smothered with pillows! There would also be the most comfortable reading chairs ever created in it, not too comfortable you'd fall asleep, but so amazing that you don't even realize you've been reading for days! Yeah, I haven't thought about this at all...___

 Bigger window, books along third wall, and comfier reading chair. Perfect, no? (source)

5. One house item I am willing to splurge on is a ___reading chair. See above dream room as to why.___

6. A decor trend that I just don't "get" is ___modern. There is nothing cozy about it and I just think a home ought to be comfortable, not streamlined for the sake of being different or hip. It just isn't homey to me.___

7. ___Splashes of red___ is a little touch that makes my house feel like home. (Red just makes me happy.)

DIY Name and Birth Stats Print

Yup, I made that. For Alexa's room. Now, Nick thinks it's a little silly to put "word art" up in a room of someone who can't read it, but I figure decorating her room is not really about her at all at this point in her life. I like it, it's not my favorite thing ever, but it will spice up some wall space no problem.

Happy Thursday!

Music Monday: This Christmas Time

This Christmas Time, by Lonestar

So much to be grateful This Christmas Time! I posted this song last year when we were hoping for another little girl to be with us, but even though there's been a lot of heartbreak between now and then, there's been so much more joy and hope and love.

Yesterday during a conversation with a friend Nick and I listed the three top things we were grateful for just off the top of our heads. Here they are:

                                                        Nick's List                          Rachel's List

                                                       1. Family                            1. Family

                                                       2. Christmas                      2. Adoption

                                                       3. Home                             3. The Gospel

I think between the two of us we covered the most important things in our life right now. And in regards to Nick's second thing on his list:

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew.  "Christmas among the rest.  But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.  And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"     A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

A Cleanliness Confession

I'm kinda ashamed to admit this, but here it goes:

I pretty much always have a clean house.

That feels really good to get off my chest.

The past few days I've let things slip a little, which means 4 un-ironed shirts on the couch and a basket of unfolded laundry in the living room. A couple small clutter piles on the counter-tops, but that's really about it.

So last night I spent an hour and a half after I put Alexa to sleep to tidy the place up. It's addicting because as one thing gets put away, it feels so good and I want to do more!

I am more than slightly embarrassed by this seemingly good obsession because some of the best moms I know throw cleanliness to the side and instead go on grand adventures with their children, teach them how to do wonderful and exciting things, and are so bushed by the end of the day that there is no energy left to clean.

I'd like to be more like that. In fact, I actually had a previous post all written up where I took pictures of my little piles of messes around my house to prove that it's not always clean, to convince myself that I can throw cleanliness to the wind and be as random and spontaneous as these other great moms I know.  (Especially blogging moms. It seems the first thing blogging moms honestly admit to the blogosphere is that their house is not always clean.)

But the fact is, most of the time things are pretty tidy around here. Maybe things will change as Alexa gets older, but I really don't think so. She already helps to put her toys away.

Alexa and I rarely get out of the house. Any out of the house activity can only last about an hour, and then it's nap time again, so it's just easier to stay home and let her roll around on the floor with me and her "frienemies," a.k.a. her toys and stuffed animals. She has just as much fun doing that, and I love it, too. We do go out a few times a week to the park or on a walk, but the time spent outside the home is pretty minimal. Not a whole lot of adventuring around here, I am sorry to say.

So, for me, a clean house is essential to maintain my sanity. Since I spend most of my time here, and relax on occasion (which was the problem last night--I wanted to read but the shirts needing to be ironed were in my reading spot), then things have to be tidy.

This maybe a surprise to say anyone that knew me circa 1986-2006, but getting married and making a goal to "never go to bed with a dirty or messy house" while on our honeymoon really helped. There's nothing quite like waking up to an empty couch and no dishes in the sink. It's a fresh start to a new day.

I'd like to say I'm a cool, adventurous mom, but for now, I'm learning to accept myself as the mom who is teaching her 5-month old how to put her bottle in the sink when she's done eating.

Super cool, I know.

I'm starting to explore black and white photo-ing, and I thought the low color contrast of these would be a good place to start.

D-I[love]-Y[ou]

Have you seen this type of cute thing on the web or at Target?

This one came from this Etsy shop.

I know I have, but didn't want to shell out the money for something that I thought I could do myself. And then it hit me:

Why don't you do it yourself?

So I did.

I downloaded the font from here and made this cute little thing then framed it and put it in Miss Piglet's room. How fun, right?!

 The best part is you can put any phrase you want in there, so as my likes and her likes change, so can the wall art. So glad I did this, and it was SUPER easy!

Jewelry Box Magnification

So the lower drawer of my jewelry box looked like this, and my jewelry was on the dresser:

buttons, safety pins, honorary pins I never wear, broken necklaces, and Nick's mission mementos--all things we want to keep but that just take up space.

To solve my cluttered problem I took this idea from my friend Lauren and came up with this:

 

I used these tools to get me there, along with a glue gun, and for some of the more textured pieces, some super-mega glue:

The tools used were wire cutters, a razor blade, pliers, and a file. The plate on the left are the trashed excess from the little trinkets on the right. We also beefed up a couple wimpy magnetic clips.

And now my jewelry box actually has jewelry in it! Novel concept I think.

The magnets I used are here and I have plenty extra for more little trinkets I find and don't want to trash.

1,826 Days and Counting

Boy, we look so different! Most importantly, I think we both feel different since that day. We feel better. Like better versions of those young kids.

Not like 5 years of marriage is enough to age someone significantly, but we really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into 1,826 days ago...but I think that's for the best--he may have backed out!!


You wanna know something? Before we got married I made a list of everytime I got the feeling that this was the right thing to be doing. One of those things on that list was something my mom said to me:

"He respects you as I as I do."

Another was something my sister, Jen, said to me:

"You and him would have a happy and loving home."

Another is something my friend, Rachel (really not me), said to me:

"He is so nice."

Ya know, I think I made the right choice. In fact, I know I did. There are many things my wonderful husband is not, but he has all the important stuff down! He even made a picture slideshow set to the tune of this wonderful song. Talk about a smoothie!

People say that your wedding day is supposed to be the happiest of your life, but I disagree. How can that day compare to last night, watching those pictures on that slideshow of the life we have built together, and then playing with our little nearly 10 week old daughter, and then going to sleep in our home that we have made our own?

If you couldn't guess, they don't even compare. Not even close!

Oh Christmas Tree!

This is our annual-ish Christmas Tree Decorating Celebration! Enjoy!

Happiness is... A Family Project

We're not quite sure why, but in our family we can't seem to keep ourselves from jumping into home improvement projects.  We love working together on something to make our home a better place.  And the fact that we bought a 30 year old home that was in serious need of some work means that we have an unlimited supply of projects to work on.  We look forward to the day when these projects will be great chances to work with our children and teach them the happiness that comes from hard work and the satisfaction of improving something your own head and hands.  Here are a couple of our recent attempts at home improvement:

Painting

When we moved into our new place the whole thing was painted in this terrible peachy-pink color, so we decided to do some painting, changing to a cream over most of the house with a red accent wall in the front room and a blue accent wall in our bedroom.

We got the color for the blue wall right on the first try, but it took us 4 tries to get the red right and 5 tries to get the cream to the color we wanted.  Thankfully Home Depot sells small sample sizes of paint for only a couple dollars each, so we were able to buy a lot of colors, paint small sections of our walls, and then see what the colors would look like.

Once we settled on the colors it was down to the painting.  We learned a little about ourselves in the process.  Rachel was obsessed with drips and getting things absolutely perfect.  Nick painted about twice as fast with about a third of the precision.  Thus Nick was relegated to using taping around windows and using the roller while Rachel was in charge of all corners and tight spaces.

A Smattering of Pictures

I do love making my house feel like home, but honestly it's not really easy for me. Sometimes it takes a while, like this project. My fear: what if I put in all this work, and hate it...or worse, someone else hates it.

Well, on Monday, Nicholas and I did it together. Wanna see?

This is what we started with (a big, scary wall):

Happy Birthday Rachel!

It's Rachel's birthday today, so...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RACHEL!!!!

This morning she got dressed in her "birthday clothes"...

 And then she got her birthday present...

I love you Rachel.  Have a great day!

Biting the Dust... or Water

Some of the best pictures of someone water skiing (or wake boarding or knee boarding or tubing or...) are often pictures of them right as everything goes horribly wrong. For example, here's a great shot of me knee boarding head first:


See how graceful I look? Here's some more of my finest:




And just for good measure, here's one of Rachel: