Changing and Rearranging

We have been making big changes in our main living area of the house and now I am finally getting around to sharing some photos of our updates. I think it's really interesting to see how our needs have changed and how the space has developed over time. The first thing I wanted to show off are the awesome built in stairs that Eric made for under our staircase!

This is a project we have been wanting to do since we moved in. The previous space under the stairs was inaccessible and basically unusable and a waste of space.  We had some bookshelves stuck back there but we really couldn't get to them and they didn't give us as much storage as we wanted.  The new built in shelves are very wide and very deep and allow for plenty of storage for our games and extra kitchen goods.

The top section of the shelves will one day be a reading nook for Echo but for now it's a place to hide the cat food so Echo can't eat it (babies love to eat cat food, don't ask me why). 

In order to be able to access the shelves we had to do a little furniture rearrangement and this is the new setup. It is a much cozier arrangement and allows for better conversation and a better spot to sit by the fire since the furniture is closer together now. We even found a nice little nook for Echo's easel and her little rocking chair.

The area by the front window has changed too since we swapped out the round table that was in this corner with the rectangular table that used to be in the dining room. Eric is now using this corner as his work desk for when he works from home. It's great because he has a lovely view out in to the front yard and plenty of light. He also sold his IMac and works exclusively on his new Chrome Book and his Ipad so he doesn't need much room. We almost never use the loft now because we have pretty much stopped watching tv altogether and Echo hates being confined in the small space up there, preferring to have free reign of the whole house. The consequence of this is that we are using our "formal" living room a lot more now and not really spending much time in the the loft. Plans for how to revise the loft space to make it more usable are in the works though.

We got a cool new firewood holder so we can have dry wood inside and it fits nicely with the new furniture arrangement (it needs to be filled up more though!). The house is starting to feel like a greenhouse because I had to move so many plants inside to save them from the freezing weather but it makes everything feel a little fresher and greener so that's nice.

Here is a picture of the new dining room arrangement. I actually think the round table fits better in this space. Unfortunately this area wasn't very clean for this photo, oh well.

I also felt the need to change out the art on the dining room wall so I got a huge poster sized print of one of my photographs and framed it for this wall. I'm loving the updated look. The glass in the frame is a little too reflective though and messes with the photograph, I'm working on a solution to this. I'm moving the art that used to be on this wall up in to the loft where I'm making a gallery wall.

Here is an aerial view of the new downstairs space. Sometimes I think it really helps perk up your spirits to rearrange and redecorate a space. I think this is just what we needed and we are appreciating our house in a whole new way now.

Spring Break Splurges

I have been on Spring break this week (one of the great things about being a teacher) and I did what I typically do on Spring break, shop! In my college years I would always spend Spring break shopping for clothes and while I admit that I still did a little of that most of my shopping was centered around the house this year. I went a little crazy for plants this year and bought quite a few. Here are some pictures of the new plantings around the house.

My new hanging basket, and Angel Wing Begonia

Regular old Begonia

Mint, Lemon Balm and two Red Bell Pepper plants

More pepper plants and some succulents I got for the sides of my strawberry pot

I also scored some sweet home decor items over my break. I have been looking to add some more metal to our living space to offset the warmth of all the wood. Here are two pieces I am pretty excited about.

I had been searching for some metal letter for a while and had my eye on some at Anthropologie that were just a bit more than I wanted to spend. Over break I spotted these at Urban Outfitters for 2 for $12! I love the way they look on our mantel.

Eric's parents came up this weekend and his mom brought us this awesome metal card catalog. Call me crazy but I am totally in love with industrial metal storage units, I was pretty excited about this one.

We are using it as an end table but also discovered that it is the perfect size to hold our DVD collection, it's a win win!

I'll be back to work tomorrow so new posts may be slow to come but they will be here eventually :-)

Design Inspiration

Well the exciting news is that we are closing in less than two weeks! The not so exciting news is that we still have a ton of paperwork to do. We need to get our final insurance paperwork finished (we're planning to do that today) and now that the loan is out of initial underwriting they are requesting more documents that we have to scrape together. *sigh*

To keep myself entertained and excited about home buying I'm doing a post on interior design inspiration. I've been slowly collecting images of interior design that inspire me and embody the feel I want in my own home. I would love to be at the point where I can start making deliberate design decisions and not just using whatever is laying around and our new house is a chance to do that. Interior design for me is a balance of things that have personal meaning to you, things that are functional and things that you picked out specifically for their design. Somehow it all seems to come together. I am a pretty sentimental person and I'm a big fan of having items that were gifted to me proudly displayed on my mantel. In the new house I want to continue this and also add some design touches that I choose because they will help me give the room the vibe I want it to have.

So, with that in mind, I'm collecting images that give me that warm fuzzy feeling in the hopes that I can create a similar feeling in my own home very soon.

Things I love about this room include the amazing roof, the guitar in the corner, the pendant light and the colorful blanket on the bed.

Here's another one with a guitar, maybe it's because of the house I grew up in but something about having musical instruments out and accessible just makes a place feel warm and inviting. Any trip to my parents house always involves either guitar strumming or a drum circle or some kind of impromptu jam session at some point in the evening. I also love the tree imagery in this room and the contrast between warm and cool. 

Love this dining room, the lamp is exactly what I want in our dining room. I like the distressed look of the table too but the style of furniture is not quite as modern as I would want to go.

Now this is a table that is rustic and modern, just the way I like it. Eric and I want to get a big long table with benches like this some day when we have a mess of kids :-)

On this one I love the gray wall color of course and the industrial light fixtures are to die for. The ladder as an umbrella hook is also a cool idea and because I am a photographer part time I am definitely drawn in by the camera and tripod sitting in the entryway.

Oh wow, love this room! While it is much more industrial feeling than our house it reminds me of it because of the wall of windows (which I think was the reason I feel madly in love with our house to begin with). I showed Eric this picture and we both loved all the plants and how fresh it made the room feel. We have big plans to incorporate plants in the interior of our house. 

Love the wall color and the shelving in the corner. This is from the same house as the picture above.

And same house again, I am so in love with this place. More gorgeous plants, gray walls and beautiful hardwood floors. I am also pretty smitten with that coffee table.

So that is it for now, just doing a little daydreaming about what our house will look like one day. Maybe this will give my readers a clearer vision of what I mean by rustic modern. I will most likely continue to collect images of spaces I love and share them here.

I Love Atlanta

This is a little off topic but it's something I've been thinking about since last weekend. Last Sunday Eric and I took a little hiking trip up at Vickery Creek in Roswell, GA. I like a trail that has some kind of payoff, either a scenic overlook or some kind historical significance. This trail fits the bill on both counts and it runs right along the Chattahoochee river which make it another win in my book since I love trails that go along water. At the end of the trail you get to see some cool mill ruins that date back to the Civil War and you find yourself almost in the middle of downtown Roswell. After the hike we headed over to Swallow at the Hollow for a yummy BBQ lunch including fried green tomatoes as an appetizer. As we were digging in to our delicious lunches I got to thinking about how much I love Georgia, specifically the Atlanta area. It's the perfect mix of Rustic and Modern with Southern tradition and the cultural opportunities that come with any big metropolitan city. It's a place where scenic hiking trails and rustic Southern cooking live not 20 minutes away from world class restaurants and museums. I love that I get to have the best of both worlds here. Every time I think of moving I stop and ask myself if there is any other place I know of that can offer me what Atlanta can, the answer always comes back no and I couldn't be happier to be staying put in the place a I grew up in. I love you Atlanta! Don't ever Change!

Just a few pics from our hiking trip to Vickery Creek

Eric on the snowy trail

Photo courtesy of Eric :-)

The Chattahoochee

Us on the covered bridge near the end of the trail

Covered bridge

Eric enjoying some BBQ wings at Swallow at the Hollow

Fried Green Tomatoes, just another thing to love about the South

Dresser Redo

Things are moving right along in the buying process for our new house. We turned in all our loan paperwork this week and hope to have all of that resolved and the loan in place very soon. We also recently found out that the appraisal went very well so we are good to go on purchasing home owners insurance. This is all great news as we are slowly getting closer and closer to our closing date.

Here is a little before and after post about a dresser that was a hand me down from my parents. I don't remember where it originally came from, I just know that it was used when we got it and that it used to belong to my brother. It's a cute little dresser but badly needed a fresh coat of paint and some updated hardware and I finally got around to making some changes to it this weekend.

Before picture of the dresser, it's a little dinged up and pretty horribly cluttered on top too.

Before detail of the old hardware.

When deciding how to redo the dresser I kept in mind the color scheme and style that Eric and I have been talking about for the bedroom in our new house. As I mentioned before, my current color fascination is for everything gray. We have decided that we want to paint the master bedroom in the new house dark gray and the adjoining bathroom light gray. We want the new bedroom to be different shades of blue and gray with some red elements as an accent color. With all this in mind I decided to paint the dresser a light gray color and add some red accent pieces to it. Here is the result...

After- painted a light gray and updated hardware.

I silk screened a red gazelle on the top of the dresser to add some interest. The gazelle image was inspired by art deco motifs depicting gazelles.

Detail of the new hardware.

Newly organized drawer, it will never be this nice again ;-)
This drawer reorganization was inspired by a post from apartment therapy 5 Tips for Organizizing Dresser Drawers

After picture, back in it's original space and de-cluttered a bit.

As with any project, the cats couldn't resist the urge to be a part of it. I ended up with little gray paw prints all over the floor and this cute picture of Reese "helping".

Hopefully I will have some news on the house buying front next week. Until then I will just keep posting about my interior decorating/design ideas and how they relate to the new house :-)

Color Pallets

Going to Home Depot and staring at the rows upon rows of paint colors can seem a little overwhelming. Eric and I have already put a good deal of thought in to the paint colors we want to use in the house and are using a very intentional color pallet. We are both naturally drawn to earthy, subdued colors and have pretty much decided on a color scheme of grays, browns and ochers with a little hint of muted blue/green for the house. The only wall that is staying as is will be the back wall in the loft area which will remain the lovely, earthy, brick red that it currently is. Here is a picture of some color swatches I picked up at home depot to use as inspiration. You can also see in the bottom of this photo a few samples of flooring that I picked up (more on flooring in the near future).

When I look at all these paint samples they bring me a lot of happiness, I can just picture living in a space with these colors and they make me feel very peaceful.

The wall color I am the most excited about at the moment is gray. For some reason I am crazy about gray rooms, in all shades and temperatures. Right now the plan is to use gray (in various shades) in the master bedroom, master bathroom and guest bedroom. I've been collecting photo inspiration for gray rooms and here are some pictures from design blogs that I've gathered. These are just a few of the gray rooms I'm digging right now.

 

Makes me excited to get in there and actually start painting! Right now Eric and I are in the midst of acquiring a home loan and homeowners insurance. Yes, this involves lots of paperwork :-P But it's all good, we're getting a house!

First Interior Pictures

Here are some pics I took while we were in the very early stages of starting paperwork on the house. I will post more detailed before shots once we close and I can actually spend some time in the house. Still, this will give you an idea of what it looks like, we think it has great potential!

Living room, main floor. Look at that fireplace!

Living room with a view in to the dining/kitchen area

Master bedroom

Hallway with linen closet and Eric :-) You can also see one of the spare bedrooms to his left

Spare bedroom, this will be my studio when it's fixed up

Loft looking down in to the living room. Logan is checking out the loft area.

Loft area, I love these funky windows and the brick color on the back wall is totally staying

Living room looking toward the dining room, loft, and out on to the back deck

Back deck looking in

So as you can see there is lots that needs to be done, the first things we are planning are replacing the appliances, redoing the floors, fixing the leaky pipes, some minor roof repair and painting of course :-)