What Inspires your Decorating?

Well if we are at a standstill in the construction process I might as well pretend to decorate right?

I believe this was a place setting at West Elm at one time.  I pinned this picture probably two years ago and it doesn't link directly to the source but I think I remember that is where it's from.  Anywho..When I saw it I instantly wanted to incorporate these colors and textures into the Jack n Jill bath at the new casa.

I love the different variations of green and the bright white with a little rustic wood thrown in.  

I want the kids bath to be playful but not too youthful.  Nothing is set in stone yet except the vanity...

The countertops will be Grey Expo from silestone.

The dark stained concrete floors...

And this fun West Elm light.

I'm going to bring in the wood tones with two mirrors in a shade and texture like this mirror that was super inexpensive at Garden Ridge.

Now for the fun stuff(the accessories)!

I love these green giraffe curtains as the shower curtain.  It's playful and that's where I want to go for the kiddos.

I fell hard for these animal hooks from anthropology a long time ago too.  I hope they still have them or I can at least find something similar and paint it white if need be.  I just picture 3 different animal heads holding the kids towels!  

This owl light switch cover resides at anthro too.  I'll admit I have never bought a thing at Anthropology because I'm a cheapo but I may have to splurge for these cuties.

I think they will add a perfect bit of whimsy to our fairly basic bathroom.

And although I'm tempted to do some super cute more childish art on the only wall that I have to decorate in the space I don't know if I can pass up this butterfly display.  

I think these Free Printable Butterflies that BHG.com featured would look awesome on the wall in the wet area(the shower and toilet are in their own little room). 

Now don't hold me to it but that is where my mind is right now and well really it has been for a while;) I suppose I could always move in and have a change of heart but I am still loving that place setting as inspiration!  My mission will have to be to find some mint green and other green tones to really follow through with it.  Have you ever been inspired but something like a place setting or something like it before?

Funky Friday Finds

Hey guys!  We interrupt the not so regularly scheduled posting about building a house for something a bit more wacky and fun.   After living in our rental for a year and a half and before that focusing on staging the house we sold I am chomping at the bit not to just move into the new house but to play with it! Every once in a while if I see a good deal on a pillow or a candle holder I will get it and set it aside in hopes that it will get used in the future.  So I have some fun stuff to pull out when we get there but I came across some fun stuff today and I have to share.  Now don't hold me to it but I'm thinking of starting a Funky Friday Finds series where I feature fun and maybe out of the box things to decorate with.  I LOVE the surprise element of decorating and have always had my eyes peeled for something "different" to put in a room so lets see what I can come up with on fridays.  You with me?

Today it's all about plants.  No matter what your taste or thumb color it is always nice to have a little green inside.  I think the more simple the better because it's hard enough to remember to water the potted plants outside and we try not to add anymore chores to our to do list these days.  That being said I think you can go simple but go fun!

Deck the Walls

She doesn't know it yet but I've wanted to do this for my friend/client Lori in a special place but now that she is moving to the Big D I may just have to do it at my house instead.  When you need to add some interest to the walls I think something like these succulents all framed up would be awesome mixed in with family pictures and nick nacky finds.

And...Hello cool with a K!  One letter or a whole word would we awesome almost anywhere.

I also love the simplicity of this air plant that you could either hang or sit on a table top as well.

How about these concrete planters for the wall?

These guys are actually the type of planters that I envisioned placing in graphic rows of 3 or 4 over Lori's fireplace(or mine;).

Want something even more funky for the wall? 

This planter made from bamboo and what I think are air plants would look great hung by itself,

used as a centerpiece or how about 3 of them hung on the wall together.  

O.k.  as I type I'm falling more in love with all of these and starting to thing I may go against my own rule of not having too many plants inside.

Oh and I can't resist these awesome reclaimed pillar post turned succulent wall art. I need these too.  I'm in trouble.  How do you decide when there is so much awesomeness?

 Contain the Fun

I don't think fun should be contained at all but let's   just step away from the standard clay or ceramic pot for a minute.  I  fell hard for these guys and could see myself going a little nuts for these unexpected and colorful friends.

Just look at him in all his orange glory!

Au Nature-al 

We can keep it natural all around and yet still be funky.  This grass in an eggshell would look good sitting absolutely anywhere, bookshelves, tables, bathrooms..whatever, where ever.  You just can't go wrong adding a touch of grass to a room.

 How about some air plants in urchins?  Yes please!  If you need some texture in a room here ya go!

 Show your interests

You can stick a plant in almost anything.

Wine enthusiast?  

Wouldn't that be a great gift for someone who is if your not?

Just have something to say?  Consider writing a little message on any potted plant.  Whether it be chalk or not you could do this on any simple pot but I do like the fun shape of this one.

You can't moss it up;)

Really you can't.  People have been decorating with moss forever.  Whether it's covering a wreath, a ball, a cardboard letter for your initials, you name it.  It always adds some fun color.  But lets make it a little funky now.

We can put it in a lightbulb and make your run of the mill terrarium a little more interesting.

These would look great on any shelf or nightstand.

Oh and these cuties had me at hello.  What an awesome and so simple centerpiece on your table or in the hubs office!  Guys need green pretty things to ya know.

The best part about all of these is we aren't talking about high priced items to add some spice to your home.  Many of these you could do yourself but most are all very reasonable and fun little quirks to add to life because let's face it life isn't quirky enough at times.  Here's hoping lots of not so funky stuff happens at the construction site this weekend and I can share some progress next week!

Details on a Whim

I'm excited to say I have a little more hope today!  I kid I kid...Yes we are absolutely ready to get this all over with and move in and on with our life but no I'm not totally hopeless. 

But....when there are crews working on the casa it does make me feel like someone slipped me a pill of relief. Even if it was just half of one I'll take it.

Lets start with a pic of the kitchen progress shall we?  Again another bad camera phone pic but you get the idea!

Yeah we finally got the pocket doors fully installed AND the sheetrock went up over them!  This is huge people!  Typically only one thing at a time happens over here and this was a biggie.  You see the kitchen cabinets couldn't be installed until that stinkin wall was done.  Oh but wait...remember our cabinet issue in the last post?  Well you may notice a few cabinets are now gone.  Since every cabinet except for the one in the kids bath was wrongo the cabinet guy agreed to fix what was absolutely necessary and not charge us the extra 1,700 that he had decided to charge from he original quote.  So although they aren't like the plans (that we paid someone to draw up so this wouldn't happen) we agreed to just move on because time is $$.  I'll share some of the details on how all that works in a later post. 

O.k.  The details...On a whim

Well I'm not an on the whim kinda girl when it comes to well anything.  So when hubs called me and said the sub called and there is an issue with the door frames and trim I knew I would have to get out there to actually see the issue and figure out what would be best.

So here was the problem.

It's not a huge deal right?  Ideally You would just go with bigger trim but that isn't in the budget and the subs already had all of this size trim ordered and with them.  

So the alternative that we came up with was to slide a piece of the same trim right in between the top and side trim.

Here is a side view that will make sense of all that trim speak.

Then I had to decide if I liked the look of the trim all lining up along the outside..

Or with a little 1/2 overlap on the sides?

We went with the overlap because it gives it almost a craftsman look and looks a little less like a spur of the moment fix like it was.

I think it looks pretty good actually and adds a nice detail.

Now look at how the other side of the kitchen looks!

This is from inside the playroom looking into the kitchen and laundry room there on the right.

It looks so different not having those big openings into the kitchen.

This was the before from a different angle.

 Here is another grainy before picture form the master bath.

After:  The pocket door is all closed in and your peering into what will soon be our messy closet.

Almost all of the trim is up at this point.  I think it will be done today!  

Below you'll see we decided to extend the trim 3" outside of each window.  We did this because someday we would like to place trim all the way around the windows and we didn't want to have to redo the window sills.

We have 5 or 5 1/2 inch baseboards(I can't believe I can't remember) and they just so happen to butt up right against the window sill in the dining area.  We decided to make the sills continuos under the windows here because if we ever do get around to adding trim around the windows it would have left this teeny tiny area of wall between the pieces. (does that make any sense?)  Anywho it would have been odd but now we can really beef up the trim around the windows some day.

You may notice there are lots of little areas that will need to be cleaned up and patched.  I've already had the blue tape out;)  If you have every bought a new house or built you know they hand you a roll of blue tape and have you mark any uh oh's you come across.

This is how the open doorways look all trimmed out.  Your getting a sneak peek of the cheap and yet adorable light I found for our teeny tiny hall into our  master bedroom.

And that folks is my thrown together post about the happenings so far this week and it's only Wednesday!  Oh and if you follow on facebook you've seen my Hallelujah  picture below...

We have an electric pole!!!!!!!!!  Can you imagine the excitement running through my bones when I can flip a switch and see the lights come on?

Thanks for giving a rip ;)

Quality Control is a Full Time job

Hi there.  We have gone a little forward and a little backward in our construction progress this week. We thought it was all forward but some things just weren't "measuring up".

First off let me show you what hubs has been up too.  You may remember we had this glorious old hunk of oak that we were going to use as our mantle?  Well it didn't work out.  The builders guys didn't get it level and things would just roll right off of one side of it so hubs had to knock holes in the wall and remove it himself.  He decided he would just build something himself instead and we would use our little beautiful hunk of wood somewhere else.

I couldn't decide if I wanted this one to be rustic or sleek so he went with a sleek look and if we want to we will beat it up later;)  It may serve us well to take out our aggressions on it right now though;)!!!

Agression..Hmm.  That brings to mind things like this.

You see it right?

Way uneven pendant lights.

A pretty yet also crooked pantry light.

No picture of it but fan blades put wrong side up even though it was written and circled on the box.  Light switch put in the middle of a little wall at the end of the hall.  Remotes for fans just put in random places on the wall.

Lights not moved out of the way of the attic ladder like we discussed. 

Then little things like this can light below.  I'm positive that things like can lights not fitting just right happen all of the time in construction but man those pendants are way off!  It's so obvious.  

There were a couple of things that were correct!  Yahoo!  These fun west elm lights were put in the jack and jill bath as they should have been and they weren't crooked!:)  Happy girl.

This light was just right in the guest bathroom..Wahoo!

EEEEERRRRRRK!  We got to looking a little closer at the cabinets and got a little overwhelmed.  There were things like this where the wood is splitting.

Corners were not sanded well.  

I don't know.  I mean we have to say things about almost everything that is done in our house and it is so exhausting.  Sometimes we wonder if we are wrong by bringing up every little thing but you kind of have to.  It's a huge investment and these cabinets cost us more than the original quote yet they are all wrong.

There are big hunks out of pieces that will be very visible.

Now when I say they are all wrong I'm not talking about nicks and sanding and such.  The piece below and every single cabinet in the house except the jack and jill bath are not correct:(

I thought something seemed off with the master cabinets because they didn't go all the way to the wall like they should?  So we took the tape measure out and low and behold it is several inches too short.  The big drawers are deeper and wider than they are suppose to be yet it is still too short.  This changes where the outlet under the cabinet goes and many other things.  The large drawers are also suppose to open but the cabinet guy decided to just nail the top large drawer to the vanity instead of making them real drawers?  huh?

Then we decided we should measure everything.  Wowza's!  The kitchen is very different from the plans.  We had our architect draw up plans so there was no guessing:(  There was alot of guessing and no measuring done.  Cabinets are in the wrong places, doors that should be 1' 10" are 1 foot.  And..there would be 6 inches of open space where the oven sits.  There are many more issues with them but it will bore you and make my head explode so I'll stop there but if I had it to do over again I would go to my trusty IKEA and do my own kitchen again.  We would have already had it installed ourselves too.  

I'll leave you with this half positive note.  This process sucks but it's gonna be a great house someday!! We are going to have a huge party if we survive this but I've already warned our friends that it will have to be a potluck because of the sad state of our bank account these days!  Thank God for good and understanding friends!