A Place To Hang My Jewels

Last year when Nick was laid off for a few months he had a lot of time on his hands.   When my birthday came around he decided he would make my gift rather than buy me something.    He had seen me look at wall mounted jewelry displays before and knew I would like something similar.    By finding antique knobs and drawer pulls, along with an vintage cabinet door, he was able to assemble the perfect jewelry display.   It is one of my favorite gifts he has ever given me.  It meant so much that he put so much thought and time into making it.   The only downside was a few weeks after my birthday we were starting to pack up our house to put it on the market.  It didn't make sense to drill more holes in the walls to hang it up (especially since it would need anchors - it's quite heavy).   So I had to wait almost 5 months to hang up, use and see my beautiful birthday gift every day.

Now it's finally up in our bedroom near our closet and above my jewelry chest.   It holds my favorite pieces I wear most often and it makes it so easy to pick out what I want to wear each day.   Not to mention, it's serves as a version of art on our wall.

Bed-y Bye

Until we moved into our new house Nick and I slept in a full size bed, for way too many years.   It's almost comical now to figure out how two grown adults and two large dogs fit into such a tiny bed (plus Nick is very claustrophobic).  I think I had literally spent years sleeping within 1 ft. wide section of the bed.  Our new bedroom is about 14x15ft. giving us finally, a room large enough to upgrade to a king size bed.  We now happily sleep with the two dogs snuggled in the middle and not right on top of us.  It's lovely!   We feel like we are on vacation in a fancy hotel bed almost every night.   The bed, from Jordan's Furniture, is cream colored with a slightly distressed look and two drawers for extra storage in the front.

The only downside of a new bed is buying all new sheets, duvet, pillows, comforter and heated mattress pad (as far as I'm concerned the most critical piece of bedding).   Luckily, when we moved in we had a 10% off coupon at Overstock that we used to buy the mattress pad and duvet.   Our sheets and comforter came from L.L.Bean and the pillows from Home Goods.  The rug is also new, we found it at a L.L.Bean outlet store.  It's 8.5x11ft and mostly light green, blue and cream,  tying in the colors from the duvet nicely.

Also found at Home Goods was new lamp for my side of the bed.  Nick for some reason
hates lights so he opted not to put one on his side.  So much for a balanced look.  Anyways, the lamp was only $40 and I love how it's diamond pattern matches the design of the duvet.

Next up is some more artwork and new curtains to cover the balcony door (where the dark blue curtains are in the pictures above).

If you can't buy it, build it

Happy New Year!  Here's to 2014!

Our new house is almost double the size of our last house.  Double the size means double the amount of furniture needed.   Moving in itself is costly, so there wasn't much left in our budget for furniture.  We did purchase a new couch, bed and mattress, but that was it.   Nick thought this might be a good opportunity to build our own furniture and save some money.  He had taken a few woodshop classes in high school and he really liked it however, he hadn't built anything in years.    In searching for easy to follow plans, he found Ana White's website.   It's fantastic, with so many options and its fun to see how others, who followed the plans, projects came out .    So far he has built a coffee table and dining room table and plans to try out more.

His first project was a coffee table for our living room.   Here it is unfinished before we stained and painted it.

We saw some where (not sure if it was a magazine or blog) a driftwood color stain and instantly loved it.   We decided to spray paint the legs cream for a two tone look.   The table is the perfect size for the space.

Our next project was building a dining room table.   When we have family over, it can be up to 10 people, so we knew we wanted a table large enough to seat everyone.   The dining room is luckily a long room so we had a good amount of space to work with.

We chose a walnut color stain that would stand out from the blonde maple colored floors.  I just love how its rustic feel pops against the formalness of the room.

It was so nice to have in place before the holidays.  We are using chairs currently, from the kitchen table but soon will have two 8ft. church pew benches on either side.   Can't wait to have those in place.

Deck the halls!

I love Christmas, it's my absolute favorite holiday.  I love the decorations, the music, movies, food...everything.   I'm was so excited this year to have a new house to decorate.  The vintage style colored bulbs are our favorite, we used them around the porch and on our tree in the living room.   In our "parlor" we had two ceramic lighted trees with the colorful bulbs (one from my husband's Nana, the other his mom found at a yard sale).  The front staircase banister was perfect for the lighted garland and ornaments.   I will be sad to take it all down this weekend...the house always looks so empty without the bright, cheerful decorations.   However, it might just be a good excuse to shop for some new non-seasonal decor, especially when flea market season comes around.

Shades of Gray

Our current cabinets are white, and by white I means slowly turning more chipped, yellowed and scratched up.   We haven't done much to the kitchen at all since we moved in four years ago.  Originally, there were large pine colored square knobs on all the cabinets.  Within weeks we bought brushed nickel knobs and pulls but never got around to re-painting.  There is also wood color molding around cabinets, it makes the kitchen look dated. The whole time we had planned on painting them white.  However, the other day my husband mentioned painting them antique white.  I wasn't too crazy about it, we have a lot of bright white and I thought it would clash.   When he went out to get some paint chips for the antique white he picked up some grays as well.   I don't know why we hadn't thought of gray before hand but we loved it!  We bought a few samples to try out,  two were too dark, the third was perfect, Ashes by Behr.   It wasn't too dark and not too light.   Our kitchen is open to the dining room and living room which are all painted a pale gray (Titanium by Benjamin Moore).   By painting the cabinets a darker gray I think it will really make them stand out.

We chose the color on the right:

Also, I will finally get to incorporate some white subway tiles, every kitchen with them looks amazing!   I think the white will help break up the grays in the kitchen (between the cabinets, stainless steel appliances and the walls, it is a lot of gray).   We also realized we had some black, gray and glass colored tiles left over from our bathroom remodel that we originally planned to use for a backsplash.   By splitting them up into two rows we will be able to make a border that goes around the entire kitchen.
 

My husband is going to start the kitchen next week,  can't wait to see what it will look like!

Dining Room Update

Wow, I can't believe it has been so many months since my last post!  In the fall I was so busy with work there wasn't a lot of time for antiquing, thrifting or blogging for that matter.  I can't wait for spring to come so I can get back out there again.  

In the meantime we did end up getting a wool braided rug from LLBean for Christmas from my parents.   While I originally wanted to get a blue/green/yellow one, my husband thought it would be too "matchy matchy".   We ended up going one with red, greens and touches of yellow and blues.  It helps add some other colors into the room.  We love it so much we are saving up to buy another braided rug for our living room.

Here is the whole dining room put together with the chairs we painted and upholstered ourselves, the Brimfield table (with one leaf in) and our vintage hutch.  

Here Comes Peter Cotton Tail...

Happy Easter!!  A few months ago we visited a local antiques fair where we had purchased the wooden christmas trees in the fall.   At the time the same vendor with the Christmas trees had these colorful cardboard Peter Rabbit puzzles.    We passed at the time which we immediately regretted the next day.   Although we do not have children yet (fingers crossed we will sometime in the next year) I already know I want the nursery to be a Peter Rabbit/ Beatrix Potter theme.   So when we visited the same antiques fair in January we stopped at the Christmas tree vendor again and to our surprise they still had the Peter Rabbit puzzles!   We were not going to let them go this time so we snatch them up quickly for $20.    I did a bit of research when I got home, the puzzles, Peter Rabbit Puzzle Box 4142, were made between 1915-1930's by Milton Bradley of Massachusetts.   I was amazed the colors had stayed so vibrant and the cardboard was in such good shape after 80+ years.   There are 3 puzzles total and no are missing pieces, which I also find pretty incredible especially being a child's toy.   My plan is to find a way to frame them while keeping not ruining the cardboard or condition.