Pendant Lighting Installation

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Since becoming a homeowner, my new favorite store is Lowes. Whenever we get a free weekend afternoon, I feel like I am always in the mood for a Lowes trip, whether necessary or unnecessary. Lucky for me, a few weekends ago we found ourselves in this wondrous place and I found myself walking down my favorite aisle: lighting. I've had major light envy since we bought our house in December. We scored this amazing Roth and Allen pendant light on clearance at Lowes for about $40 to replace the nasty light we have in the kitchen.  I've recently begun scheming how I envision our kitchen to look: simple, farm house-esque, and cozy.  It's one of the few rooms in the house we've sort of left untouched and have made no major changes to, besides painting it all white (it was originally orange and green...yes)

You can see the ugly light we had previously in the space.  

  

Rich spent a good portion of the day taking down the old light, repainting the space underneath, back at Lowes to buy mold for around the light, and re-hanging the new one.  Ellie was a faithful observer to make sure dad didn't fall off the step ladder.  

 

Once it was complete, we were so happy with the impact this little light had on our space.  I love how simple upgrades can really add character to a room! I have so many more plans for this little space this summer and I can't wait to watch the space transform.

Sources: 

Wall Paint: Benjamin Moore White Dove

Light: Lowes Roth and Allen: sold out.  See Similar

Place Mats: Pottery Barn: no longer in stock.  See Similar

Table: An old find by the hubby many years ago

Cushions: Ikea

Sunroom progress

A mentioned a few weeks ago how we'd made some progress on our sunny sunroom!  We decided to go ahead and make this our working space as well as a lounge space, so we opted to move a large chair and a half and our desk downstairs.  Not only does this make this room more functional for us, it frees up great space in our new upstairs den.  

If you remember this room started with bright yellow paint and custom made sunflower valances-YUCK!  I think we've come along way in making this a tranquil space.

Here are a few pictures of how this room is progressing and a few thoughts on what we still hope to add to this room as well as a reminder of how this space began:

Before:

After:

To Do List:

Bamboo Blinds
-Cover large chair
-Add pillows
-Gallery wall over the target storage cubicles

Source List:
-Paint Color: Sherwin Williams Sea Salt
-Chair: Craigslist- ($50.00)
-Pillows: Homegoods (planning to replace)
-Rug: Target ($100.00)
-Desk Chair: TJ Maxx ($99.00)
-Desk: Target
-Starburst Mirror: TJ Maxx ($12.00)
-Storage Cubes: Target (not pictured)
-Desk Lamp: Target

Our Sunroom: From SUNNY yellow to coastal cool

We've arrived and I am so happy to have arrived in a nice freshly painted home!  Selecting colors from hundreds of miles away was no easy feat, but I was so pleased to arrive and be so happy with how the colors turned out.  Rich did a great job with the help of his dad and uncle in taking this house from dark green to coastal chic in a matter of days.  We have a few more rooms to do still but I wanted to share a bit of what he did while I was away to our sun room.


From our very first walk through in this house I knew the sun room was a really fantastic bonus to this house.  It had beautiful french doors, lots of open windows, but it also had one major issue.  It was very YELLOW.  Not peaceful calm yellow, more like sunflowers exploding everywhere yellow.  The previous owner had a very different style than us (as you can see with the sunflower curtains), but we knew at the time it was nothing a coat of paint couldn't fix.

To begin with, we knew we wanted a really cool and neutral color scheme with this house.  The previous owner was very fond of green and deep earth tones, so every room in the house was going to need fresh paint.  Being loyal to sea salt, I knew we'd be using Sherwin Williams Sea Salt in at least one room. We chose to use it in the sun room and bring it into the main living area off the sun room, since it was the focal point of our house's living area.  

Here are a few colors we tested for the sun room (notice the yellow underneath..yikes!)  The top left is Sea Salt, to the right is Jogging Path, and bottom right is Healing Aloe (Benjamin Moore).  We knew the darker Jogging Path didn't fit but we were having a hard time with the other two.  Sea Salt had a bit more green blue as a base, and Healing Aloe was more blue based. Since we have had success with Sea Salt in past, we decided that was the best bet.

So here was the before of the sun room window (with the previous owners "stuff"):

After: I think it opened up the room so much!

Five On Friday

It's Friday!  Thank heavens for a weekend of rest.  In celebration of our new (to us) house we are finally under contract on, I'm going to make this week's Five on Friday house lusting themed.  Here are 5 things on my wish list for our new digs:

One:  Rugs USA Rug for our living room.

Rugs USA Rug

A nice new cozy rug is the first thing our new living room is missing.  We've got some big leather sofas in our space, so I think this light and airy cream rug would soften the room up a little bit and bring some warmth to our hardwood floors.  Also, RUGS USA is always running great 70% off 
deals.  

Two: Outdoor Patio Dinning Table

Our new house has a great back deck.  If you know much about me and my husband, we love sitting outside and enjoying the afternoon and evening.   If Santa had some extra money lying around in his sleigh, I would absolutely be scooping up this new outdoor patio set for some Virginia dinner parties chez nous!  What do you think?

Three: Fancy Living Room Lighting

 

Lowes Orb Light

I'm guilty of falling for this lighting trend.  The orb lighting is just what our living room needs to give it a touch of modern elegance.

Four: Banquette in the kitchen

Our kitchen has a bit of an odd corner space that would perfectly lend itself to a banquette.  I can absolutely see us here for breakfast and dessert time.  We've looked into it and I don't think it'd be hard to put in ourselves. I LOVE this light.

Five:  Patio flowers against the wall

Our backyard and the back of our house would look perfect with some beautiful lattice and vines.  It would suit the colonial feel of our house and bring some gorgeous beauty to our outdoor space. 

House Hunting and White Kitchens

With the news of our impending move, we've finally gotten the chance to house hunt a little bit as we try to figure out where we will be calling home for the next three years.  Coincidentally, this home buying period of our marriage has always coincided with what I shall call the "White Kitchen" phase of my life.  I want all things white in my home decor (have you seen our bedroom?) and that includes my kitchen.  I have been scouring the Virginia housing market trying to find my white kitchen, knowing full and well what will sell me a house is the kitchen.  So, for now, I will bring you my white kitchen dreams and go back to my full time gig of browsing realtor.com for my white kitchen fantasy....

Those glass cabinets are my dream.

I love the batten board and how its painted creamy blue!

How a new rug is changing my life...

I've never really been a rug person, but in the redesign of our master bedroom, I can't help but begin thinking if a rug would be the perfect finishing touches to our cozy room.  I had my eyes on the market for a Moroccan inspired shag rug and low and behold, Rugs USA had the perfect summer sale (70% off) to make my inspiration and dream a reality.    A few clicks of the button and a rapid delivery time of 3 days, here we are and I am in love!

Someone isn't allowed in the bedroom, but demonstrates her velcro golden tendency by waiting in the threshold until we come out.  It is irresistibly cute.

I could snuggle and stand on this rug forever.  

Rug/ Rugs USA

Our Master Bedroom Redone!

Following our wedding, one of the most excited projects I wanted to work on was our master bedroom in our new (to us) rental townhouse.  The room is huge and our measly queen bed was just not quite giving us room to sleep comfortably, nor was it filling up the room nicely.  We also lacked the essentials like matching side tables and a dresser of any sort.   Living in Charleston, you'd be shocked at the lack of furniture stores to fit our needs!  Coming from North Carolina we were used to being surrounded by different stores.  After what felt like weeks of searching for an upholstered headboard that ALSO included wood (Rich's one request), we found the perfect set at Ashley Furniture.  We decided to get the side tables, which included a built in place to charge our phones and a tiny sliding table to place morning coffee.Check!  We also decided to get the King Bed and the Dresser and mirror to round out our bedroom update.

I've been drawn to the serenity and calm of an all white bedding set.  We used a ton of Pottery Barn gift cards to purchase a new sheet set, duvet, shams, and euro pillows to round out our look.  I used the pictures below as my inspiration, mostly because the photos made me want to dive right into these beds and never leave.

Hanging our gallery wall

Since moving into our townhouse I've dreamt of gallery wall in our upstairs loft.  Luckily I married man who knows how to work a drill and find a stud and in less than an hour we had ourselves a gallery wall.  We look forward to finding some new photos of our adventures to take a prominent place on our new wall.  What do you think?

A boring wall that leaves so much to be desired.