A Nugget and a Doodle

Again, this room isn't completely finished.  I have a feeling all my posts in the short term are going to start like this!  I had grandiose ideas of art projects, but ran out of time before our move, and was still wavering creatively when I did have the time.  So I probably won't get to it for a while, but the bones are in the room.  This isn't a typical little boy's room, but then again, I don't have a typical little boy.  I have the most special nugget in the world!!!! Here are some rooms that inspired my direction.  I tagged these on Houzz way back when. First there's this super neutral room, and I was immediately smitten with the nightstand and updated retro feel, and that's what sent me down the mid-century modern path.

I'm excited to share this one with you.  This is not my own creative genius, and I've seen it done over and over on other blogs and on houzz and pinterest etc.  And in spite of that, I still had to have it in our own bedroom.  I don't know how many times I've blogged and asked you to ignore the stacks of pallet wood in the background as it's for a future project.  Well this, my friends, IS that project.  We did a feature wall behind our bed with pallet wood for a really earthy, organic feel. We very closely followed the method from another blog that was so inspiring and their finished product is stunning.  Where they chose to whitewash their pallet wood, we wanted ours to be a bit darker because everything else is light and airy in the room. All the pallets, except for one, were pallets left at our construction site during our build, so we TRULY reduced, reused, and recycled.  One of the helpful tips from the blog I referenced above is to just cut...

I'll get to the pictures, but first I just want to clear my own air.  My head is in a much better place today.  I'm feeling less frustrated by everything left to do, and suddenly just feeling so grateful to start a new routine today.  Today is also day 1 of renewed focus on the diet and exercise a day long overdue!  I got out for a walk this afternoon, and although the hills in our community are a killer compared to the flat cookie cutter suburbia area where we rented for the past year, it's such a pretty walk.  75 degrees, sunshine, a constant breeze... we really live in a beautiful part of the country, state, and metroplex.  Some phone snapshots from my walk today... Now on to the namesake of this post.  This is the wacky room in the house - the colors sort of diverge from the same color palette that's repeated through the rest of the house.  It was one of the first rooms that started coming together in my head, and the vision was an e...

Hi guys!!  Sorry to keep you hanging.  It's been two weeks and two days since we got the keys to our new house, and I'm horrified to say we're still not finished unpacking, let alone all the decorating I am literally dying to do.  A lot of our time went to nonsense time sucks, and a lot of our time went to buttoning up all the loose ends associated with renting the house we were in for the past year.  The house is looking and feeling more like a home, but we were really hoping we'd be done, like sit-on-the-patio-and-enjoy-the-sunset-each-night-from-here-on-out type done, and we're nowhere near that point. We got our keys on Friday afternoon, April 11th.  It wasn't until about an hour AFTER we got our keys that they finally got the floor guys back to do the final coat of polyurethane on all our wood floors.  So given the insane circumstances of the late stages of our build, and how late it all ran, the building company we used worked really hard to get us ...

Sit tight friends, I'll be back with an update as soon as I have time, and I sadly have no idea when that will be.  We thought taking 2 weeks off of work would give us a day or two of downtime, but it's insane how badly we underestimated even the simplest aspects of  moving in. So a couple pictures for you... First is my battered and bruised arm from moving boxes and furniture.  You might notice the bonus blisters on my hands from painting!  Those aren't shadows folks - those are battle wounds! Speaking of, here's a peek at the work in progress! And now I have to get back to work.  I promise once the dust has settled, and then of course once it's been dusted again, I'll be back with photos and a play by play.  This post was kind of just a test to see how much our slower than molasses country internet is going to hamper my speed.  If you care, browsing seems fine, but it took me longer than I care to document just to upload these 2 si...

WARNING:  Natural wood enthusiasts may experience difficulty breathing or heart palpitations while reading this post. Recently I refinished our master bedroom nightstands to be used in the guest bedroom , and after successfully stripping the bold red mahogany stain, I decided to do the same to the top of the triple dresser.  We're going to use the dresser as our tv stand in the living room.  I had planned to buy a new piece of furniture, but mom and dad were using this dresser in their rental, and had no plans to use it in the new house.  We were actually going to sell it before we moved from Wilmington! For starters, this is the dresser (before):

First I want to thank everyone for the prayers - the neighborhood made it through that heinous first storm of the season unharmed, except for some sod that's floated away to Mexico.  We will be certainly looking into an underground storm shelter for our yard very soon! While there are a number of mistakes still left to be fixed, they have really made GREAT progress in the past week, and it gives me hope that this really will all be over soon.  It's funny - I frequent an online forum for others building a home, and there's one particular thread where everyone updates on where they are in their build.  At any given time there are newbies who just bought their land, or just got permits, or are starting to dig, framing, and all various points of finish work.  There's this tangible excitement and giddiness the newbies have, that I, too, had in the beginning.  I thought my builder was just the most adorable creature, flaws and all.  At this point in our project...