Going through some photos, I’ve realized how much older Drew and I look now from when we first started dating. I know I haven’t grown height-wise but we definately look younger. This photo is from Drew’s Junior/Senior Banquet at Heritage (his Junior Year, my senior Year).PS Check out that sweet dinosaur flip-phone!
I’m painting the walls grey. When people hear my say this, I think they are confused because being a graphic designer – and hints from my wardrobe (today I’m wearing cobalt blue pants and a leopard cardigan) they expect me to add crazy bold colors on the wall. While I’m totally for that, I also have an indecisive mind that likes to change things up a lot and often. Sticking with a neutral-y color on the walls allows me to add bold color with my accessories and allow for my taste to be swapped out easily without re-painting. And unless you want to volunteer to help us paint the incredibly tall vaulted ceilings over and over again – we’re sticking with a grey.
Now comes the challenge of finding the perfect grey. Grey can be made from any of the ROYGBIV colors, so greys can look different depending on what you put next to them and the lighting – thank you Color Theory 101. Story: Drew and I visited the fab homes at the Parade of Homes last weekend. One house we saw had lots of grey walls – however there was the one shade in the foyer that with the type of sunlight hitting it caused the walls to be purple/lavender. Eww.
Soo picking the perfect grey isn’t officially done – I have a few picked out that I plan to take to our new home first and view them in the lighting there. I also plan to paint test samples on the walls so that I can see how it looks in real-life. When I figure out my perfect grey, I will let you know the 411 – until then here are the colors I picked to try out.
And here are some grey colored rooms that I got my inspiration from…
This weekend – all us sisters will be together since Jess (who lives in MN) is home for Labor Day. Just wanted to share this gem of a photo when we went to Disney with my parents and Grandparents when I was in 3rd grade. We’re a pretty tight knit bunch still today – though we probably fight less that we all don’t live under the same roof.
I love Ikea. I could live there – really who couldn’t? They even have bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms and more set up for living. Yea the TVs and Computers might not work but still they’ve got a lot going for you already. So this past Saturday Drew and I went down to see our friends Serah & Gabe in Kenosha. Since we were half there already, we figured we’d add another hour to our driving time to visit Schamburg, IL.
We arrived at opening (10am) – did some exploring and got their awesome 99 cent breakfast, Drew even said you couldn’t even buy all those items at the grocery store for 99 cents. The main reason we went is because we are thinking of getting the Karlstad sofa sectional for our living room – I’ve seen it on a lot of blogs recently and I love the fact it’s got modern lines to it, the grey color, and it’s slipcover, meaning you can wash it. I really love the set-up and layout of Young House Love’s Karl sofa, as they call him.
My goal for this trip was to get Drew to fall in love with it. Right after sitting down he said it himself, I really like this one. (SCORE!) We also tried out a few other couches because we’ll need to eventually get some new ones for the family room. Here are a few others we liked.
Also while we were there, we wanted to check out the Vittsjo pieces. I’d recently seen them done in numerous ways via Pinterest and was wanting them for our new house. We were all ready to get them when we got down to the lower level – and saw the box was 100in long. Yeah, that definitely won’t fit in our little scion. Luckily my parents were up in MN near that Ikea over the weekend and brought home two of the pieces we wanted – just one more to get next time we bring a larger vehicle.
I’m hoping to paint those yellow, like the photo below from Centsational Girl, as long as that goes with our color scheme in our living room – still got to figure out the vision for that room.
Overall our trip to Ikea was a success, even though we ended up only buying ourselves cinnamon rolls that time – but we’ll be back! Funny: when we got in the car to leave I discovered this facebook post Drew posted – that kid! The trip wasn’t that bad, no idea what he is talking about! 🙂
Recently, my macbook pro had an incident where the logic board when bye bye (for the 2nd time). When I went in to get it fixed the Mac Genius asked if I had everything backed up. I lied and said yes but the started to get worried. I hadn’t been backing things up because last time this happened they didn’t delete anything.
I just got it back on Wednesday and the first thing I prayed for was that my stuff hadn’t disappeared. I had tons of file and photos that I would like to keep. So once I got home I immediately backed up everything on my external harddrive (which had 400g empty space – what was I thinking?). While doing so I came across many blast from the past photos. I kept finding great and some hilarious photos and immediately emailed them to all sorts of people, which made this process take 10x longer.
This little incident has inspired me to post each week (trying for Fridays) a blast from the past photo. This week is a photo from a Fine Arts Trip to Denver, Co. We had a few days to explore the landscape and took this photo with some of my closest friends at that time (and some still so). It’s crazy that this photo is legit – the background totally looks fake but I promise, it’s not!
PS. The second from the left is my friend Heather who is an amazing photographer. I’ve recently been working with her to update her photography brand logo, look and website. Go check out the site we are just putting the finishing touches on 🙂
Yes the name of this post totally comes from the new show of the HGTV Design Star winner, “Shop this Room“. At first I thought it was a dumb name, but I totally get it. Sometimes you don’t really “get” the design concept of a room until you go shopping – and that is what I have been doing. Window shopping, online shopping, and real store shopping.
My weakness is Target – that’s where I’ve done the real store shopping. I have decided I could buy *almost* all the new decor for my house from Target and I would be perfectly happy. There is something so bad about that place that you walk in for ONE thing, yet you leave with TEN. As I’ve been dreaming of our new home, I’ve made a few purchase that are starting to help shape the vision of our new home.
For the Bedroom: White Duvet Cover
For the Bathroom: White Ruffles Shower Curtain
For the Kitchen: Lemon Towel & Striped Rug (both not available online)
I’ve also been doing some window shopping, where I’ve taken photos of things I like but weren’t sure about how they’d fit into our new home. So until I come up with a vision that utilizes those items, they’ll stay on my phone and this blog. I recently hit up World Market and took photos of these items that I loved…
For the Bedroom: Curtains, Chandelier
For the Kitchen: Yellow Ikat Lamp Shade, Teal/Silver Pendants
Our home buying process is continuing, without too much stress – let’s hope it stays that way! We had our home inspection on Monday and found two minor things that the sellers are taking care of. We also met with our lender on Wednesday and all is set for that – just have to wait now and plan!
Update: We heard from our realtor that the seller’s found a house, but could be bumped if they don’t remove their contingencies. While we think it’s safe for them to do so, they are unsure. I think the plan is to move up closing to September 12 and them rent it out for a week. We’ll see how this ends up. They have 60 hours to decide what they will do – however this can’t impact our sale – which is comforting.
So planning… I stopped at Sherwin Williams paint store yesterday and picked up the HGTV color books to begin this process. I’m starting to determine colors for the house, but I end up changing my mind a lot. One room I have pretty set is the family room – located on the lower level with a walkout to the backyard. Here are the photos of it again…
This room will be where we’ll put our larger tv, and be more of the lounging around room to watch movies and play games. This will also be a good spot of when Drew has his friends over and they want to play video games. We’ll still have the living room which is just another family room that I can hang out it. This will also work well for family get togethers. One area for the kids, one for the adults. Here is a mood type board that I put together to show how I plan to decorate it and make it feel not as much as a basement.
Our plan is to paint the walls that Drizzle color, do some DIY white wainscotting below to make it feel less basement-ish. Then use the existing chairs we have from Pier 1 for some color splash, and pull in those same colors to use to accent the room. We’ll use our current brown slipcover sofa – but will be updating it as soon as we have the funds to something in the lighter brown hues. We’ll probably end up with a love seat and a sofa – like the current owner’s do as well. I’d love to get a bright green rug in a fun print to pull in color into the floor and presto – a complete room! Another thing we’ll add is colorful floor to ceiling curtains and other colorful accents to complete the walls. Those can be added over time as I find things I love (or to spray paint!)
And we’re back – summer that is, and so is my garden! Most of my plants did not survive the winter – due to the lack of insulation I gave them, so I started fresh this year, giving all my pots a complete dumping. This year I planted: dahlias, canna lilies, lilies, gladiolus, caladium, begonias, and some annuals I picked up at Steins. Right now the annuals are bringing pops of color to our two decks, while we are waiting for the bulbs to grow more (they have just started emerging from the soil). I can’t wait until next summer where we’ll actually have a house to plant things into the actual ground, not a million pots! Also, we’re so thankful for where I work Holland Bulb Farms, that there is a never ending supply of free bulbs at the end of each season!
Green Bell Peppers
Sedum - one of last year's survivors
Peony - Another survivor of last year
Trusty Ikea Aloe Plant - growing strong since 2010
And while were talking flowers, I went over to my parents a bit ago to take photos of what was blooming: allium, iris, and double tulips. Last fall I helped my mom plant over 300 bulbs – I’m glad I got to go over and take some shots of them. They’ll hopefully make it onto our ecommerce sites soon!
Siberian Iris
Allium
Double Fringed Tulips
Bearded Iris
Poor little baby, not even a week old and all of her lady friends (her mom, aunts, and grandma) were playing dress up with the baby for some cute photos. We even had a couple incidents with pooping while being naked – but none the less, she sure is cute! In a few weeks we’ll try a few of the more adventurous poses we had in mind that she was just too little to do.
I’ve learned it’s pretty tricky photographing newborns… you just gotta keep snapping photos and hoping one looks good between all the mistakes. There’s a blooper I threw in just because she still is a cutie even when she’s not liking the photo taking process.
Later on she was sleeping and looking like she was having some rough dreams, I laughed that she was probably dreaming this scene of us trying to get all these cute photos again.
Just had to make a special post to dedicate my love to this sectional sofa. I soo soo want this for when we purchase a house – it might become part of the “needs checklist: large enough family room to fit this couch”. I love the color, style, price and the fact that I could fit my whole extended family on it! Thank you Young House Love for the obsession – ps LOVE the color scheme of this room too.
(photo source: Young House Love)
Kelly Moore
