Fabrics!

Welcome to Monday morning! The sun is shining . . .  so that’s good. How was your weekend? Was it as eventful and yet uneventful as mine?

Checklist for this past weekend:

• Pack up camping gear only to find out the Canyon is closed due to flooding

• Cook our tinfoil dinners in the oven and eat them outside our apartment

• Roast our smores at the mini-mall by the other canyon while making conversation with couples waiting for their restaurant reservation

• Sunny Saturday morning bike ride

• Flood my parent’s basement while washing our car

• Spend a good part of our Saturday moving soaked boxed from one room to another

• Sunday brunch with the entire family to celebrate our little niece, Avery

• Sew some pillow covers for the couch

• Clean out our storage closet for the furnace maintenance man

AND look what showed up this weekend

I also received a birthday card in the mail from my In-Laws and my MIL was sweet enough to remember I had wanted an Iowa Hawkeyes t-shirt to match my hubbies and had sent that as well. I love surprises! So, hopefully this week (my birthday week) I can surprise all of you with some little projects I’ve been working on.

Foo Dogs!!!!

Foo dogs, I think, add a creative, bright, eclectic feel to a space. Now, obviously you could get this same kind of feel with some other accent piece, but foo dogs are what I am loving. I had never drifted toward asian design or accent pieces in the past, but I have come to love the architectural build and just completely unique look of asian inspired pieces.

I found some "Foo dogs" at my parents house, but they were small, leaned too much towards the lion looking side and just didn't sit right with me. THEN!!!! Last night I walk into Hobby Lobby to grab another canvas for a project I am working on and spot these:

These guys are more Foo dog looking, they are lighter and have a more creative pose. They are also larger than the "Foo lions" my parents had and I have been needing some larger objects around the house to avoid the trinket-nick-nack look. The best part was that these little guys were $15 a piece and %50 off. $15 for these two guys?! How could I pass it up?

BUT. After 10 minutes of walking around with one under each arm I put them back telling myself two things: 1) I  shouldn't spend money on these little guys because I have maxed out my design budget for. . . .  a while. 2) We are moving in two months and I can not be bringing things home that I will have to pack up and move. The new rule, until we move, if something comes in then something must come out.

However, by the time I fell asleep last night I had figured out a solution to my two reasons not to but them: 1) I am selling our old lamps which will cover the cost of the Foo dogs and 2) they will take the moving space that those old lamps were going to take up as well as the "Foo lions" I had found at my parent's house. So, guess who is coming home with me today after spending only $16.02? These guys!

Yes. I am excited. Extremely.

All that being said, check out these foo dogs used throughout these rooms. I haven't decided which bold color my little guys are going to be. I am leaning towards either the usual blue or perhaps orange!

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I'm ready to get my "Foo" on.

Design for Less

My husband and I use our bedside table lamps every single night and for long periods of time many of those nights. I couldn’t ever imagine not having them now.

Remember my bedside table lamp dilemma right here?

Well check out this little beauty. You can get one for $119.91 right here. 

 

Now, see this little beauty? My husband and I bought two last night for $32 each from right here.   

What a steal! I loved them the first time I spotted them, but seeing this more expensive comparison just the next day made me feel even better about the purchase. We’re excited to add them to our bedroom. I haven’t decided if we are going to add some color to the shades or maybe do some mum decals inside of them so that they show through when the light is turned on.

I'll keep you updated.

Console table!!- almost finished

In order to stick to my monthly design budget, I buy items over each month to make sure I am buying exactly what I want. So, over the last few weeks I made a trip to Ikea and scored myself some files, drapes (which I returned), a bookshelf and legs.

Then, our lamp for our console table arrived. . .

We love how it looks, but you will have to wait for the console table reveal.

Next item of business, my in-laws arrive this week for my husband’s graduation. So I’m trying to get the last of the little things put together which required another trip to Ikea, of course. My biggest goal was to get a plant, some flowers and picture frames. Friday, though, I was checking out Ikea’s new products and I almost fell off my chair when I found it. . . the perfect throw. Da da da!!!!!

  I have been looking for the perfect throw for a while now and, whether they were cheap or stinking expensive, all of them lacked soft texture, cuteness/style  and bold and bright color.

Once I spotted the throw in store I made a bee-line for the stack and instead of picking up the blue, which I thought I was going to buy, I snatched up the pink. Yes, it is a girlie pink, but I couldn’t pass up that bright happy color. I began telling my sister all the reasons why this was the perfect throw and pretty sure I ended up selling 3 throws to ladies around us who overheard me yapping about them.

With a budget you have to play a little give and take. I held off on some bigger frames and the plant I wanted in order to get the throw. I am more than happy with my choice. So, with all the recent deliveries lately, our console table is almost complete. Just a couple more pictures and what not. I will show you the finished product later this week.

I did break in the throw though with a Sunday afternoon read-a-thon. It is so soft, the perfect thickness and I would hand these out to every passer-by on the street if I had the cash to do so.

Here are the flowers/plant and lacy plant pot I picked to bring a little bit of spring into our home.

We also finished the headboard this weekend! It turned out great! I'll post pictures tomorrow.

Our new addition to the Living Room

Late late lastnight my husband and I purchased a lamp for our console table. 

This lamp

It had gone on sale, only $5 cheaper, but I told myself it was a sign. Like all design purchases I make, I told my husband all the reasons why this was a good purchase. It’s pretty much to make me feel better but I pretend it is just to show him that I’ve thought this purchase through and not wasting money even though he already knows I’ve thought it through because I’ve been talking about it for the last three days.

My biggest pull for this item was that I don’t mind DIYs and even find pride in them, but sometimes it is worth spending the $35 on a brand new lamp instead of taking the same amount of time and money to redo an old lamp to make it look new.

 Imagine two pictures hanging to the right of the lamp and the console table filled with colorful accessories, 

filled picture frames and a small plant names Herbert.

So, our slate blue little man will be donning the newly assembled console table in the corner of the room. There is currently a mock lamp in its soon to be home just to give us an idea of what it will look like. Having that extra source of light has already brightened up our living room so much.

My Sunburst Mirror Find

I have been pining over the gorgeous array of sunburst mirrors that have filled so many beautiful rooms over the last little while and the prices has always been just as grand.

I considered attempting the many DIYs that are out there right now, but, before I could buy the supplies, Target came to the rescue. Insert awesome enough mirror here:

This little puppy costing $24.99. I called my husband from work, explained how much money and project time it would save me AND HIM and he was sold.

It was not gold as had been claimed online, but a couple coats of Gold Krylon spray paint and my mirror was here.

This is the. . .

Before:

 And the. . .

After:

(Please excuse the masking tape that is our future headboard)

I was afraid to post the current after picture because right now I know that the mirror looks too tiny for the space, especially after seeing those chunky Ikea pictures frames in the before, but once our headboard is built and we get our new side table lamps, I'm sure it will all look proportionate and stylish.

Worse comes to worse, I can make one of those beefier DIY sunburst mirrors or the Ikea picture frames can go back up. I've already have thought of two other places I would love my new mirror to go.

I won. . . and fell in love all over again

Thanks to Abbe at Studio Ten 25 I won a giveaway to her stylish shop ShopTen 25. It took me almost a whole month to decide which piece I wanted most, but I finally decided on the plastic moulded rocking chair, we're lacking in seating at our house.



As I waited for it to arrive I began to doubt my decision. It would be too tiny, I'd heard other people say only a munchkin could sit in it. I then began telling my husband to not expect anything amazing so that he wouldn't make fun of it when it came out the size of a barbie dollhouse chair.

However, a week later this guy was waiting for my man and I when we got home from work.


My husband loves this design stuff now. He offered to cut the last taped side of the box and immediately grabbed the chair from my hands and asked for the tool kit so he could put it together.


In no time we had an assembled chair and and within seconds I was in love. It wasn't too small, it's comfy and it fits our apartment perfectly, a normal sized puffy chair would have been too big for the space. I'm also so grateful to have some white furniture in this very black family/dining room. The pictures do not do it justice. I need a new camera.



Now all I need are some light colored floral fabrics to change out my pillow covers. Spring is here and my apartment doesn't look like it. How gorgeous is a colorful pillow going to look in that chair?!