Brass free - Part 2

One of our resolutions this year is to replace all of brass that is currently in our home. We started by changing out our door knobs. Read about that here.

Since we are working on redecorating our bedroom, we knew we would be replacing the old ceiling fan with some new, thus getting rid of more brass.

While on one of our recent trips to Lowe's I dragged Justin to the lighting department to look at what they had. I had no intentions of really finding anything - I just wanted to see what they had to offer. I personally thought that we would have to look online for something, but I was surprised to find a nice looking ceiling fan that I liked and Justin loved the price too. We didn't purchase it at the time but we both agreed when we were ready to make the purchase this would be the one we took home. 

The other weekend I took a short weekend trip to my parents with my brother and sister-in-law. Justin was planning on coming up Friday after work but thought he should stay home and get some much needed things done around the house. We missed him at my parents but I think I might go out of town more often...Justin did so much stuff around the house in only two days! One of those was surprising me with the new ceiling fan. When I came home (to a very clean house), I walked into our room and noticed that the room was so bright. Our old light only had one bulb but this new one has four. It makes such a big difference in the room. 

I was so excited that Justin had not only replaced the old ceiling fan but in so doing also taken one more step towards updating our bedroom. I have a great husband! 

I am so grateful that Justin worked so hard to get the light up before I got home. If you have every put up a light or a ceiling fan you know just how hard that can be but to do alone  He is just so great!!

Peeping Tom's

Before you starting thinking that we actually had someone peeping into our windows, let me go ahead and set your mind at ease: we have not had anyone peeping into our windows. But if someone wanted to, it would have been really easy since we have not have any window covering on our front two kitchen windows since some time last year.

When we started updating our kitchen over a year ago we never thought it would have taken so long to complete. To see our kitchen updates from start to finish click here, here, here, here and here. Once the work was all completed (well...we would love to get new flooring, counter tops, and back splash...the list never really ends), we took down the old flimsy binds with the plan on putting new blinds and some curtains up to add more color to the kitchen. After spending hours looking at Pinterest and other online decorating idea books, I decided to skip blinds and go with Roman shades.

With the decision made I went on the search for some fabric. Since I am not a big fan of buying fabric online I thought I would be limited to the few fabric stores we have around here and got a little frustrated. I had head about this great fabric store in Brookhaven, so one Saturday Justin and I made the trip and found some great fabric. The sad part about all of this is how long the fabric sat in our closet waiting for us to make the shades. Our newly painted and partly decorated kitchen sat like this for almost 7 months.

I knew I was going to have to get someone else to make the shades for me since I don't know to use a sewing machine, but it took much longer than I thought. After looking around for someone to make the shades I was disappointed to learn that professionals charge almost $500 for two shades. I know that some of you are thinking, "I didn't pay that much for mine!" Don't worry Justin would never allow us to spend that much money either. Crossing professional made curtains off the list was easy, but now I was back to square one. I was talking to some friends one night and told them my struggles. One friend said she would be happy to help me with the curtains. This friend just happened to be an excellent seamstress and very crafty. Check our her blog Designing Emily!

After getting her all the materials she started working on the shades. At first we were working on them together. Really, she would work and I would take pictures. We soon realized that she could finish them up a lot faster if she didn't have to wait on our schedules to line up. Within a few weeks she had the shades finished. They look great and really complete the breakfast table area. They really did turn out just like I imagined. I am very happy with them!

Now Justin and I don't have to worry about people looking into our kitchen window anymore. I love that we are now able to close the curtains at night. I know this is silly, but I feel much safer at night knowing that people walking or driving by can't see into our house.

Symmetry in the Bedroom

When we decided it was time to redo our room I was over the moon with excitement. I took out my notebook of home/life inspiration and started showing Justin everything I liked. I think I might have overwhelmed him just a little. I also went a little over the top by researching everything I wanted for the room. Almost everyday I would show Justin something I thought would look good in our room. He was nice enough to appease me and say that he liked whatever it was that I was showing him or he would in the nicest way possible say that he really didn't like it. I think he is over it now because when I show him something he just says "I am not sure, let's just wait a little longer."

I thought we should pick everything we wanted for the room, save, and get it one piece of furniture at a time. It made sense to me, but Justin thinks differently. He felt and still does feel that we should get one thing at a time and see what it looks like in our room and then move on to something else. I have come to agree with him but not after a lot persuading on Justin's part.

Now on to the symmetry of the our room. When it came time to make our next purchased Justin and I both agreed the next thing we should get was nightstands. Our old ones just weren't cutting it anymore. You can't really see our nightstand in the picture but you can see that they are two different sizes and shapes.

When we first started talking about the nightstands we decided that we didn't want our dressers and nightstands to match. It would have been easier to just get a whole new bedroom suite, but we wanted to mix things up. So I started my search. I came across many nightstands that I liked but none that I loved. Then one day I found these. Justin approved and we ordered! It was just that easy!!

I never told Justin, but I was a little nervous about the color. It is always a gamble when you order something online. However all that changed when I saw this at my door.

I quickly tore open the boxes and left this mess for Justin to clean up. I was so excited to get the old nightstands out of the room and get our new ones in place.

The color is perfect and they look great in our room. My old nightstand had a really small drawer and Justin's had two big drawer. This drawer is deep and is great for storing books, chapstick, a book light, notebooks, and pens. I love the shelf for my puzzles. I know I'm a dork who likes to do puzzles before going to sleep.

Finally, a full shot of the symmetry in our room (which has been five years in the making!). I love how the nightstands look in the room. I can't wait to keep going with the room.

Brass Free 2012, Part 1

Here is a little update we did a few weekends ago. It's nothing big - just something we have wanted to do for a long time but just gotten around to getting it done.

In January, when Justin and I were thinking of some things that we wanted to accomplish in 2012, we decided to set a goal of removing all the brass from our house by the end of the year. We don't have a lot of brass in our house - just some door knobs, a few light fixtures and the fireplace cover...oh, and our shower door, but that's a whole other project in itself.

We have take the first step toward brass freedom by replacing all brass door knobs in our house. I know it doesn't make a huge difference in the overall look of the house, and I'm sure most people won't even notice the change, but it's just a small detail that helps our home look more up-to-date. Just look at this knob...you can see the scratches, and it just looks old.





Like I said, this isn't a big change but I think they make the doors look a lot better. What do you think? Next time you come to our house, make sure you take note the new knobs!


We will keep you updated on project Brass Free 2012.

Bedroom Makeover...Finally!

Over the past few years, Justin and I have been updating our house room by room. We have finally decided its time to work on our master bedroom. If you listen hard enough you will be able to hear me say THANK YOU! Everything in our bedroom is either from our high school/college days or given to us by someone. About a year ago, I started looking online trying to find ideas for the room, but we put the room on the back burner when we started updating our kitchen. The kitchen is done and now its time to revisit my ideas for our room.

I didn't take any pictures of our room before we purchased our bed and bedding, so you missed out on seeing just how drab our room looked for the past two and half years. This is what our rooms looks like right now. Don't let this picture fool you - yes, the bed looks great but as a whole the room is still a bit drab and needs some love.



We found our bed at a local home decor store and got it at a great price. It's very similar to the bed in the picture below from Restoration Hardware (which I loved), but at a much better price. Our bedding was purchased a few months later while we were visiting NYC. We kept our old pillows and added a couple of new ones. Still not sure if we will keep all them when its all said and done but for now we are keeping the pillows as is.


We're hoping to replace pretty much everything in our room except for the bed and bedding. Since almost everything is leaving we can go in any direction. The hard part now is knowing what to do next. But now let me show you around the room. Do we need new dressers or what? This dresser was given to us just after we got married, and while it serves its purpose, it's very big and heavy. The mirror above the dresser was a cheap one we found at Home Goods. We when first got married we didn't want to spend money on furniture or decorations for the apartment because I was afraid that it would be a waste of money and wouldn't work in our home (once we brought one). I will get to the blinds and curtains a little later.



I got this tall dressers when I was in junior high. It is a solid piece of furniture but its small and I am not a big fan of the color. I am not sure if we will reuse it somewhere else around the house or if we will get rid of it. But I do know that this dresser has served me for a long time and has been great...it's just time to update.

In the view below you can see just how small the dressers really is. If you look closely you will see a small mirror leaning again the wall just next to our bed. This mirror came with the dresser but had a really ugly frame around it. We had great intentions to re-frame the mirror but never got around to it. Plus it really isn't a full length mirror. So we are adding a new floor mirror to our list.

Here is a better view of the poor mirror. Its a little embarrassing. Yes, that is tape on the floor around my current nightstand. We have been looking for new nightstands and I wanted to see how much bigger some of the nightstand would be compared to my current one.


Now on to the curtains: The curtains we are currently using in our room are the curtains that we used in our room in our apartment. They are a neutral color and might work somewhere else in our house but just not in our room. In our apartment we had one window so we only needed two curtain panels. Now that we have two windows in our room we need four panels. Its time to retire the two panels and update to four. The bamboo blinds came with the house and will be gone soon also. We have never liked them but have not gotten around to changing them.

As you can see here we have a brown rod and brushed nickel rings. I am not a big fan of mixing the two finishes but these, like everything else in our room, are from our apartment.

When we moved into the house we just used things from our apartment instead of buying new stuff. We wanted to give thought to all of our purchases and make sure we wouldn't regret buying anything. So now we are going to fix all these problems and soon we will have a room that we are more happy with.


As you have seen we have a lot to do in our room. I have been looking online for pillows, rugs, curtains, and furniture, anything that would caught my eye. I have found lots of stuff but I am taking it slow to make sure that we love everything that goes into our room. At the end of the day we want a room with lots of patterns, a natural color palette with some pops of color, a reading nook, and a relaxing peaceful place to begin and end each day.

Here is a list of some things that we need/want.

• New nightstands
• Dresser and chest
• A reading nook
• Full length mirror
• Art work
• Curtains
• Rug
• Chair
• Pillows
• Lamps
  

We will keep you updated on the improvements we make to the room.

Christmas Explosion 2011

I LOVE Christmas time!! I love that for one month out of the year we take down all our normal home decorations and put a huge tree, decorate it with lights and put lights on the outside of our home. If I had my way, I would decorate my house according to the next holiday all year round. Instead of taking down Christmas stuff and putting up our normal decor, I would be putting up Valentine stuff. Luckily for Justin, our home decor does not follow every seasonal holiday. I do however put up a wreath and maybe a few other things, but nothing to the extent of what we do for Christmas.

I hope you enjoy looking at some of Christmas decor. I know enjoyed putting it up.


One of our projects for 2012 is to update our mantel. I would really love to paint it white and get rid of the brass. I like the brick but it needs little love to make it the focal point of our living room.

I really loved the way my tree turned out this year. After watching numerous videos about how to use deco mesh, I think I finally got it! Our tree was full of red and silver ornaments that coordinated. However, we had three very special ornaments on the tree this year. The first is an ornament we got on our honeymoon in Puerto Rico five years ago. The second is an ornament of the Radio City Rockettes we got on our first anniversary when we went to NYC. The third one is an ornament we got from Paris when we went there last year on a mission trip.

Around our Kitchen

Our kitchen is coming together very nicely. Now that we are done with the hard part (sanding, removing wall paper, and painting) we can move on to shopping for new furniture. When we started looking for new furniture we knew we wanted a white breakfast table and maybe some yellow or red chairs. I wanted to keep our kitchen open and fresh. We had a dark table in the kitchen before so we knew we wanted our new table to be white. After searching every store in the metro Jackson area and many online store we found the prefect table.
Tada!!!!



I had seen many versions of this table in the past few months so I was very excited to find one that would fit into our price point. The white really pops against the blue walls.

However, we kept falling short in the chair department. I did find a few red chairs online but they all looked like they should be in a 50's diner and that was the not look we were going for. As for trying to find a yellow chair, well that wasn't working out either. Since we were doing most of our shopping online we couldn't get a good idea of what color yellow some of the chairs would really be and we didn't want to have to send anything back. We knew we would find a chair we loved but we would have to moved on from the red and yellow chairs and start looking at aluminum/metal chairs. There are many different styles out there these days. After checking all our favorite online stores and comparing prices we landed on these.


We love them! They are a little cold in the morning. We are looking for cushions but holding off until we have our curtains in place.

After finding the table and chairs we moved on to looking for some kind of storage that would double as a place for us to put our keys and mail. I spent a lot of time looking online and in many antique stores trying to find the perfect piece of furniture that would fit the small space. I wanted something different than just another table. Since we started redoing our kitchen I have been on the lookout for a piece of furniture that would fit under our family calendar. I kept falling short in my search and almost gave up, but I was excited when I found this bookcase. The color is white and it looks a lot better than this wood color.


I had never given any thought putting a bookcase in the kitchen but when I saw this one, I thought it would be perfect for cook books, keys, and our mail.

During my online searching I'm always coming across great finds. This cube shelf was one of those great finds. Knowing I needed something to go on a wall next to the sink, my initial thought was to just put up some artwork, but when I saw this I changed my mind. This now houses some of our coffee mugs, and some other kitchen stuff.



Now, onto OUR kitchen. Here is what our kitchen looks like now. We are still needing curtains and a few other things but other than that, its done. Justin and I are really happy with how everything turned out.

Our Fall Decor

Before we put away all of our Thanksgiving/Fall decor, I wanted to share what our home looked like during the months of October and November. This post will be mostly pictures (there's not much to say about pumpkins and candy corns).

We didn't carve a pumpkin this year. I was a little disappointed because Justin has carved some great pumpkins in the past and knew this year would be no different. Since he failed me, I guess next year he will have to carve two to make up for this year. :)






I made these cute candy corns with poster board and yarn. You can make your own too. I found the idea on Pintrest.


Now, that Thanksgiving is over, it's time to put everything away and start putting up our Christmas decorations!!

Guitar Hanger

I am really excited about this post because I am getting to share a small project we did in our office as well as give Justin's mad guitar skills a shout out. As many of you know Justin is a great musician, as I am writing this he is telling me not to say that, but I think he is great so I am going to let everyone know.

Now, onto the reason of this post. On any given day you could walk into our home office and see Justin's guitar and guitar case lying on the floor, taking up all the floor space. I am not sure why he never used the guitar stands he had but for whatever reason the guitar always ended up on the floor with the case wide open. In our dream home he would have a sound proof music room but at this point in our lives he is having to make do with a music/office room. After tripping over the guitar one too many times I knew something had to be done.

Don't get me wrong, I love it when Justin plays his guitar - I just don't love it when I can't walk into our office. So while at a music store one Saturday afternoon I convinced Justin that he needed to get a wall mounted guitar hanger. Let me back up a little...I really have no problem with Justin leaving his guitar out, my problem is with the open case on the floor and the fact that he always put his case in the back of the closet and had to remove almost everything from the closet to get to his guitar. So, not only was the case always sitting in the middle of the floor but also almost everything in the closet.

I never thought I would love having this hanging on our wall!

Once we got home, Justin put up this new wall mounted guitar hanger. I LOVE IT and Justin does too. Now the floor of our office is guitar-free. Also, Justin is able easily access his guitar whenever he is in the mood to play his guitar...which is all the time.



I never thought I would be this excited about a wall mounted guitar stand!

Well, I spoke too soon!! When I came into the office to upload my images this is what I found. Now, you can see why I was so excited to get the other guitar off the floor.

This guitar that is normally at church but Justin brought it home to practice. I hope he plans on bring it back real soon. I can't stand having all this stuff on the floor in the office.