the kids' room

finally the day has come to post the before and after photos of the kids' room! christie, my decorator, posted the pictures on her blog and she did a great job writing about it, so i decided to just cut and paste onto my blog. i will interject my comments in RED, but first here are the BEFORE pics:
awful brown walls!and, the AFTER with christie's writing:
I recently helped my client Hilary decorate her kid's room. The room is shared by sister/brother duo Reese and Matson, and Hilary wanted to give it some personality, color and a pulled together look that worked for both kids. She already had all of the furniture in the room (reese's bed, mattress and box spring were given to us by our dear 85 year old neighbor whose wife passed away in may), the chocolate brown drapes, the crib bedding (made by my sister-in-law and previously used by my nephew), and an idea that she wanted a bold green for the walls. We chose Hep Green by Sherwin Williams for the bottom of the wall, and Limelight for the top. The furniture arrangement stayed close to how she originally had it, except we swapped the bed and the crib to create more room in the play corner, and to fit the kitchen. We added Ikea Lack wall shelves above the existing Ikea Expedit to display frames, and treasured items, like the adorable ceramic lion sun clock that their grandmother painted for them (and the car, plane and helicopter handmade in hungary and the clown doll that's been around since before i was born and the girl vase named hilary :). Below are a few of the hand-made items in the room (including stripey the snake hand knit by reese's gram). You can see more room photos right here on my flickr photostream.

Including the beach ball pillow (which my kids play with ALL the time!) from my last post, I created a number of personalized, easy to make decorative items for the room that I think really add to the room's cute factor. I created monogram wall art to hang above their beds. For Matson's, I used wood letters that Hilary already had. They were white, so I spray painted them orange, and glued the "D" to a 12x12 inch gallery canvas that I wrapped in an Amy Butler fabric that we used in the room.

For Reese's initials, I blew up a Microsoft Word font to 450% and cut the letters out of coordinating blue card stock, and mounted them on fabrics used in her beach ball pillow. They are framed in square frames from Ikea that Hilary already owned.

Reese's quilt and brightly colored sheet set are from HomeGoods and her bed skirt I made using striped pink/white fabric that is simply hot glued to the underside of the metal bed rails. When they want a change, it will be easy to pull off with no damage to the rails. (admittedly i was quite skeptical of the fabric choices christie was showing me together, but i followed her advice, stepped out of my box, and now i love it! and, i can't see anything else on reese's bed. she really wanted pink in her room and when i vetoed pink walls (which she still talks about) i told christie we HAD to have pink on her side of the room. she pulled it together so nicely!)


They already had this Ikea kmart lamp (which i really like), which simply got a face lift with the orange fabric trim.


In lieu of closet doors (we didn't have them to begin with) we went with some white shower curtains that I embellished with fabric (inspired by fabric from one of matson's baby burp cloths made by my sister-in-law) to create a one-of-a kind closet closure.

This charming lion is the elementary school (i think 5th grade art class.) artwork of Reese and Matson's Dad Matt. It was previously framed, but it did not quite match the new room colors, so I gave the frame a face lift with orange paint and added fabric to the mat to make the lion really shine. In the playroom corner of the room, there is a water color flower also done by Matt that received a similar framing face lift, which you can see here.


it's me again... so that's the first completed room of our house and i love it! it's so bright and cheery and fun - perfect for my little kids! here are just a couple more pics i wanted to put up...


happy decorating! :)

pansies

i planted pansies today.



i don't know what our yard will look like this winter, but i think i'll appreciate a little color. i'm hoping their cheery yellow and purple blooms make me smile each time i pass by.
i did a tiny bit of research on pansies and this is what i found. did you know the name pansy is derived from the french word pensée meaning "thought"? one website said it is a fashionable Victorian flower and is supposed to be the flowers of lovers. Legend has it that pansies could transfer the thoughts of sweethearts without spoken words. When near pansies, it was believed that one could hear their lover's thoughts. They were a popular ingredient in "love potions", and have been written about by Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and many others.



really? all i had to do was plant some pansies to understand my husband??? wow. i think i might have a money making machine! come to our house to understand your spouse. just walk around the pansy triangle three times and your lover's thoughts will be revealed. ha!

the whole family went to pick out the pansies. of course the kids thought the cart was the funnest part.

pb vs. the real deal

the latest pottery barn catalog arrived at my house yesterday and reminded me of a post i meant to post a couple months ago in july when the first fall issue came out. i could not believe it when i saw the woven wine bottles in the catalog.
i have those wine bottles! {i tried to recreate their picture, but their's totally won out. you get the gist though.}

first i looked at the price and could.not.be.lieve.my.eyes. for those three bottles the total cost was $557! just in case you didn't say the numbers in your head you can read it - that's FIVE HUNDRED FIFTY SEVEN DOLLARS! WWWHHHAAATTT??? i then read the description and low and behold they were from hungary! the very place i got mine! but i DID NOT pay FIVE HUNDRED FIFTY SEVEN DOLLARS for them. no way!! and i didn't walk into a store and buy them {not that there's anything wrong with that}, but mine come with a pretty unique story. wanna hear it? good, cause i'm gonna tell it and then i'll tell you what i paid for mine.



i wish i could remember the name of the place where we went, but i can't. :( it was about 45 minutes from the budapest city centre. i went with my friend, kristina, and her friend stacy, who is a buyer for a company called europe2you who ships items like these wine bottles and pottery and all sorts of things over to the usa to sell them - with a much bigger price tag! {she may even own it, i can't remember} we went to this warehouse with dusty antique furniture stacked to the ceiling. the owners name was janos and oddly enough after this meeting i saw him all over town! at the mall, walking down my street several times {we lived on budapest's antique street}, and at the train station at like 6:00 in the morning one time! anyway, he didn't speak any english, but he could understand some and stacy spoke a tiny bit of hungarian so they made it work. why didn't i get a piece of furniture? i don't know! i wish i would have now! kristina did and she's so happy she did. i'm happy i left with some wine bottles though. i thought they were a nice piece of hungary to take back with me. there were tons of them getting washed up and ready to be shipped to the usa. i picked three and paid janos about 9200 HUF, about $50 USD!



eat your heart out pottery barn!! :)

the yard + patio

i told matt the other day that we moved into our house at just the right time to see our yard come alive. it seemed like each day something new was blooming. the only problem is we don't know what anything is! we are learning.

my parents helped us complete the patio by generously giving us their old patio furniture and an awesome grill. thank you mom + dad! it's wonderful to sit outside on the patio for saturday morning breakfast or in the evening with a glass of wine (and mosquito spray!). the fountain where the fish, chip + cheeto, live is in the background of this picture. if you have any experience with maintaining and/or cleaning fountains or ponds please advise. we are new to it.
my favorite...the foxtail fern.
complete with a storage bench for children's toys. i'd like to put some cute outdoor pillows on here (like these or these or these), but i hesitate because i figure they'll be in the same place as the inside couch pillows - the floor!
matt is still enjoying mowing the grass - he likes that kind of thing. it's a small yard so it doesn't take very long. his parents generously gave us a lawnmower for a housewarming gift that i think he'll break in this weekend. maybe he'll cut down those things growing in the front yard that i think are weeds and he thinks are trees.



our friends and family are always welcome to come hang out with us in our backyard!