Yeah, Yeah, I know

I promised more house photos. But, you see..... school started. And my house decorating (and cleaning for that matter) kinda went kaput. I'll get back to it. But until then, you must must MUST check out the hilarious Catalog living. It's the blog for all of us who love catalogues, yet wonder: Who actually lives in these rooms?

Ta ta for now.

(thanks to Coal Creek Farm for the link)

Home Sweet Home....Vol. 1

Hey everyone! I am now officially living in my new house!! I'm more tired than I can remember being, but so happy. A lot of you told me that decorating my very own house would feel different, and I believed you, but I didn't know just how satisfying it could be to do whatever I want (within budget, of course)!

So, with no further ado, I thought I'd share a few pictures:



This is the house, with my favorite accesory: a HUGE dead tree. Nothing says welcome home like a dead tree. I'll take care of it....as soon as I can afford it.

I've been busy in the past two weeks, and I have these bruises to prove it:



First of all, I painted nearly the entire house. The only rooms that I haven't attacked with a paintbrush are my office, the garage, the laundry room and the guest bathroom. I'm not touching any of them except the bathroom in the near future. I'm thinking a pretty light green. Soooooooo my house has gone from being this color:



to this color:



I know in the picture it doesn't look a lot different, but trust me. It is. I love this color. It's called pale gold and in some light it looks yellow and in others it's kinda tan. I love love love it. It's pretty.


Since I only designed my Tiffany inspired bedroom last year, I wasn't ready to let that color go. However, I went with a tiny bit less bright blue, and I changed my window coverings:




As you can see I haven't finished, and I don't have anything hanging on the wall yet. These things take time.

I'm especially proud of what I've done in the walk in closet. I took it from three walls of this:



to two walls of that and one wall of this:


*cue angels singing. Am I right ladies?

That's right. I ripped out a shelf and hanging rod with my two bare hands, a rubber mallet, and a hammer and then hung all of those lovely shelves. BY MYSELF!!!

I've also changed the lock on this door:




and this door:




and one other one that I forgot to take a picture of.

Again, BY MYSELF!!!!



So, that's all for now. I'm tired and the other rooms are still too messy to take pictures of.

*******Addendum********

After I broke down and cried on the phone to my mom after my first full day of working on the house, she and my darling dad came and spent two days working on the house with me. I don't know what I would have done without them. Seriously. My dad fixed my kitchen faucet, my toilets, hung blinds, etc. My mom ripped out REALLLLLLLLLY ugly shelves in the entertainment center niche in my family room. The entire thing was painted black. She requested a picture of the after. I wish I had a photo of the before so that you could see the difference, but trust me, it looks worlds better.

Here it is now:

What I did... Vol. 2: "Close, But No Chandelier"

When I moved into the condo I decided I wanted to go the full girly girl route with my bedroom. I based my entire design plan on the following:



I do not personally own any Tiffany's jewelry and frankly, I'm not willing to spend that kind of money on jewelry for myself. I'd rather have someone else buy me some (and we all know that ain't happening any time soon.). The fact that my own taste in jewelry leans more toward the funky than the classic hasn't stopped me from wanting a little blue box of my very own. Instead of buying a piece of jewelry just for the box, I decided to create, for not much more than the price of this teeeeeeeeny tiny little Tiffany's box,



this one



that I get to sleep in. Pretty huh?

I pretty much started from scratch with this room. I bought a new bed for only $100 from Ikea, and instead of bedside tables I chose to hang floating shelves on either side of the bed for a total of $40. Not too shabby, eh?

Then I bought two new lamps for $80 total and they are gorgeous:



They are made of acrylic and when they're lit they almost shimmer like the chandelier of my dreams.

I also found these super cute curtains for $40:



when I first found them I couldn't decide if they were the most fabulous curtains I'd ever seen or the most horrible ones. I'm glad I was brave and bought them instead of my normal boring route, 'cause I think they give the room a little something special.

A couple of weeks ago on a visit to my parents' house, my mom and I went shopping at our favorite little antique shop ever where I found this beatiful plate and creamer set:



totally unneccessary, but completely adorable. In the same vein are the vintage hand embroidered peacock pillow cases (from a different antique store):



that I had the same internal struggle over as the curtains.

To finish the whole thing off I used a duvet cover I already had, and bought a set of new Tiffany's blue sheets and two fluffy white rugs that I can't keep Austen off of.



In the end, I have a room that I love so much that I clap with glee when I come home. Not too shabby, not too expensive, and way better than that bracelet.

What I did over my summer vacation: Home Edition.

For those who don't know, I moved from my second floor, one bedroom apartment into the first floor two bedroom condo my parents own here in Vegas. On a list of my 100 least favorite things to do in the world, moving would come in hmmmmmmm somewhere around #3 after teaching Sophomores to write research papers and gall bladder attacks (Have I mentioned that Summer '09 was the summer of the gall bladder attack? No? Oh well, that's another post for another day).

Anyway, moving in required rearranging furniture, figuring out what went where, painting, and cleaning. Luckily I had two things going for me:

1. My sister Christy took some time off work to help me get started, and

2. I'm a teacher, and therefore have the summer off.

I painted the main area of the condo a pretty medium spring green. It's really serene and lovely, and I can use some serenity in my life.

I've added a few new items to my decor, and I'm pretty pleased with them all. First of all, I moved out of an apartment that had wall to wall carpeting into one with laminate floors. That meant that I needed area rugs for the living room and master bedroom. At first I thought I could wait awhile for those purchases, but after two weeks of watching the corgi hair monsters chase each other around my living room and Austen's pathetic attempts at jumping on the couch I was convinced otherwise. If I waited any longer Austen and I would have both needed therapy.

I planned on buying this rug:



for $220. I like it a lot and it had the right colors, plus I loved the pattern. But, in my shopping I found another rug with similar colors for $65. I like the second rug even more than I liked the first one and it was WAY less than half the price. That made my stingy little heart sing, and Austen's neurosis recede a bit.




Additionally, right before I moved out of my old apartment I was sitting on the floor in front of the table I was using as an entertainment center and because of my gimpy foot, I needed help getting up. I put my hand on the table to use as support and stabilization so that I could stand, and as I stood I heard "CRRRRAAAAACK!" and immediately began to weep. You may ask yourself, "Maury, why you cry? It's just a table!". But, you see, this table is not "just" a table. It's a table that my grandfather created with his own two hands out of cedar that he himself harvested (probably illegally) from the foothills of the Bighorn mountains, planed in his shop, and then carefully pieced together. Additionally, this table was in my home as I grew up making it important not just to me, but to my entire family. I was also crying because here was obvious proof that I am a big fat fatty. My body weight alone killed a family heirloom.

Luckily, my father is an incredible at wood working, so my table is sitting in his shop awaiting the end of cabin season when it will emerge phoenix-like and take its rightful place in my livingroom.

Long story short, I needed a new console table. I bought this one:



That cost me more than I've spent on any one piece of furniture in my life. I resisted spending the money, but my mom told me that I needed to grow up and buy big girl furniture. Thank you Mom. It was an interesting experience to buy furniture that didn't come in a box and need to be put together with wooden pegs and an allen wrench.

Of course, now that table makes my dining room set:




look kinda silly. I think I'm out of my "Early Chewed By Austen" phase(Luckily for him, so is Austen).

All in all, I'm really happy with the result. I have a few things left to do, but for the most part it's done.





Pretty, huh?

Next time: The Bedroom.....

Who loves ya baby?

I'm a mama's girl, and I'm not ashamed. It helps when you have a mom like I do, because she makes it so easy to be one. As we grew up my 5 siblings and I fought over who she loved best, citing pretty convincing proof. The problem was, each of us had a compelling case. It wasn't until we were all adults that I think we all (with the exception of Matthew who still believes he's the ONE. We let him think this, it's just easier. If you know my brother, you know what I mean.) realized that Mom's love for each of us couldn't be ranked on a scale like that; she loves each of us differently.

I won't attempt to explain her relationship with any of my siblings, but I want to talk a little about her relationship with me. I'm my mom's baby girl. I think that there's something special about a mom's last girl, not to say that my mom's other girls aren't special to her, I just think that as I grew up she knew I was her last chance at girliness. Added to this is the fact that all three of my sisters left at once after my 9th grade year and Mom and I were out numbered and had to band together. Anyway, on to the reason for this post today.

My mom, dad, and Aunt LuAnn just went to Wyoming to spend some time with my grandma who at 98 years old has finally reached the point where she can no longer live on her own. To call my grandmother stubborn would be a vast understatement, and we all envisioned having to drag her bodily from her house as she spread-eagled the front door with her fingernails dug into the door frame. It didn't quite work out that way, as she ended up in the hospital with a terrible case of pneumonia and then my father tricked her into the long term care facility by telling her she was simply changing rooms. I know it sounds cruel, but if you knew my grandma, you'd understand the need for such devious trickery. Bless my father's evil genius.

This trip was to see Grandma and to dig through the vast amounts of "treasure" my grandmother has been compiling for the past 45 years: quite an undertaking. A few years ago my mom and I went to visit and saw what we could become if we didn't change. We were scared straight and each went right home and cleaned out a couple of closets. Anyway, my mom called each of us asking if any of us wanted the super special collection of limited edition Native American plates made by the Franklin Mint. Shockingly, she got no takers. She asked me, "Is there anything you want from Grandma's house?"

Whenever I think about my grandma's house, the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of my childhood come rushing back. My favorite room in the house was the front bedroom. It was the room I most often slept in when we visited as it's location just down the hall from my grandfather and his epic snoring made it less desirable than the rooms in the converted garage.

It was my mother's old room, and I loved to imagine her lying on the bed gossiping with her girlfriends, primping at the tiny, built in vanity my grandfather lovingly made for her, or picking out an outfit from the closet. Apparently when my grandfather built the house my 15 year old mother dreamt up a lavender and white color scheme, even making a bedspread in those very colors in her home ec class at school. My grandpa loved his Cargy Vee, but he couldn't resist a bargain. As a result, the entire house was painted with the garish colors of the bargain paint bin resulting in among other things, a flamingo pink living room. As horrible as that was, my mother had something even more devastating awaiting her. All she wanted were white walls, but as she ran into her room she was greeted with screaming neon yellow. She sobbed in agony, knowing that they would stay that color (my grandparents didn't have the money for new paint) forever.

They didn't. Some time between my mother's high school years and my birth my grandmother wallpapered the entire room in flocked floral wallpaper. As a child I loved to sit on the floor and pet the walls, amazed by the texture of the paper. The wallpaper at our house certainly didn't feel like this! When I shared this insight with my mother she responded with something like, "I should hope not!" It took me a long time to understand what she meant.





That wallpaper became a source of laughter and ridicule among my family members over the years, one more charmingly strange thing about my grandmother's house. Even when I knew I should hate that wallpaper, I just couldn't. I made fun along with the rest of my family, but each time I visited the house I'd sneak into the room and surreptitiously stroke the walls.


So, when my mother asked the question, "What do you want from Grandma's house?" I laughed and said, "I know I can't have it, but what I'd really like is a piece of that flocked wallpaper from your old bedroom." Silence on the other end stretched for a moment, followed by "Really?" We laughed about it and then I admitted my life-long love for the horrible wallpaper. I knew it would go no where. My mother isn't the type to go into her mother's house and willfully destroy anything. She's a rule follower and worrier (good thing I didn't inherit that! Ha!) and I didn't think any more about it.

When my mother called me and said, "I cut you a piece of that wallpaper," you could have bought me for a nickel(I earlier posted a combination of two sayings. My sister corrected me and I'm now ashamed of myself. Ashamed forever.).She even sounded a little defiant when I questioned her about it, saying "You wanted a piece of that wallpaper, so I snuck into the room and cut you a piece from right near the window." I pictured her sneaking into that room armed with a pair of scissors and a mother's love, defacing her mother's home in order to get me a piece of wallpaper that she personally found hideous.



That's love baby. Love.

Who's the favorite NOW Matthew?

There's something you should know about me. I'm very fancy. I love pretty, sparkly things. I spent a good deal of time--from the time I was 15 until I was about 26 trying to deny my girly pinkness. I can't really 'splain it, but I did. Then I became BFFs with Jillian and she helped me shake off the shackles of the past and claim my inner princess.

So, for the past few years I've had a secret inner desire: I want a chandelier over my bed. Yes, a full blown, crystal covered, big honkin' girly chandelier. To be completely and brutally honest, I'd like a bedroom a little like this one:



There are a few problems with this. I don't have the money for a room like this, and I rent my apartment. These two things limit my ability to be as fancy as I'd like.

My mother has embraced my desire for a chandelier even though she cannot imagine how she of all people had a daughter who wants one. She's suggested a few alternatives, but nothing has worked until now.

A couple of weeks ago we were in a little antique store in Hurricane, Utah when I found these beaded wall sconces:



for a really reasonable price. They're a good alternative considering how portable they are while still giving me the sparkly fanciness I crave.

So here they are in my room on either side of my window:



They look good, huh? I also want to share my other bit of fancy:



This wall was made with four sheets of wrapping paper from Papyrus and cost me $10 total. You see, I'm not only fancy, I'm also kinda crafty. And cheap. Another example of my cheap craftiness is this wall:



Where I turned a broken door to an Ikea cabinet into a frame for three pictures I took in England.

You may now be asking yourself, "Why is she telling us this? Does she just want to brag?"

My answer is this: I live alone and only had my dog to share it with. When I asked him if he thought it was pretty this was his response



Which means, "I don't do pretty."

So all I have is you. So, do YOU think it's pretty? Please respond, 'cause I'm not only fancy, I'm also needy.