Archive - May, 2007

Dining Room Display

May
31 10
comments

I started setting up the dining room, now that all of the kitchen stuff is out of there. I’m most excited (and most daunted) by the built in buffet.

dining room

Many of you already know that I have a kajilion white vases (some of you have been asking where they are!). I haven’t really found a good place to put them in the house. I had used our low bookshelves in the old apartment like a mantle, but now those are in Brandon’s office.

white vases
in the old apartment

Well, I thought I may as well try to make them work in the dining room. I couldn’t use the really tall vases, but I was able to fit most of the smaller ones in. I have to be honest though – I’m not crazy about the whole look. I like the mix of sizes that I used to have going on, but now with just the smaller pieces it seems a bit meh. Plus I can’t decide if the look is charmingly eclectic, or just cluttered. I love everything in there, but I’m leaning towards cluttered.

dining room

My other thought was to maybe just embrace the mish-mash of items and keep going with it. Throw in some more pattern, make a paper garland to hang from the shelves, add a bunch of little felt pom-pons… my crafty nature is showing! I do like the idea, but maybe not for my own home.

dining room

I will be putting up wallpaper in the dining room eventually, so I like the idea of having all of the pattern on the walls and keeping the display simple and mostly white. Something is also really appealing about just having plates in there. It would be so much cleaner, visually. Er, then again… sometimes more is more.

See? I’m flip-flopping. I’ll live with it for a while – It’s easy enough to change around.

link    Dining Room  •  10 Comments  •  May 31, 2007

*snooze*

May
30 0
comments

So tired. Need sleep. Working on technical drawings/posters for clients, last-minute. Will post soon.

xoxo,
Nicole

link    My Life  •  0 Comments  •  May 30, 2007

Haha, Brandon.

May
22 4
comments

Very funny.

Happy anniversary to the man that left this little surprise for me in the kitchen:

Haha, Brandon.

(Three years have gone by so quickly.)

link    Kitchen  •  4 Comments  •  May 22, 2007

Kitchen Progress

May
17 7
comments

kitchen progressOur kitchen is really coming along nicely now!

I’m excited about being able to cook again. I want to bake cookies and wear my adorable apron from Sommer Designs. I want to make lasagna from scratch (we make really good lasagna – homemade sauce and all). I want to make yummy salads with walnuts and strawberries and spinach. I’m ready for a kitchen.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Our counters won’t be here until next month sometime, which also means no kitchen sink until then. Still, we’ll have everything else and the space is actually starting to feel like a kitchen again.

Here are some of the details:

kitchen mosaic

A quick picture by picture explanation… There are two windows and a door to the backyard, so I was hoping (remember, I can’t sew) to make something for them with the Amy Butler fabric I bought. The green knobs are from Anthropologie. They’re a little much, but I think they’re really cute. I figure that by using the more classic drawer pulls, that will tone down the crazy knobs! We’ve had that clock for a couple of years now, and I think it will look good in the kitchen. Then there’s the overall look in the middle – a doctored photo from the IKEA website (those are the Lidingo cabinets). The light: nothing amazing, but nice enough. The countertops will be Saddle Brown Zodiaq (quartz). The stove and all of the appliances are stainless steel. And then there’s my print from The Black Apple (with an egg – how perfect for the kitchen, right?).

Soon. Very soon now.

link    Kitchen  •  7 Comments  •  May 17, 2007

The TeeVee

May
16 13
comments

We don’t have a family room, or a den, or a finished basement. We do have a living room, and we do most of our living in that room (haha), and that includes watching television. The floor plan is a little limiting – there is really only one spot where the TV can go and only one wall where the sofa can fit, so they’re opposite each other. It works just fine. If I’m going to be facing the TV even when it’s off though, I want it to look as nice as it can.

TV

the TVHere it is in the old apartment too (photo on the right). Pretty similar. After I posted that photo, Holly from decor8 said that has the same TV and the same stand (from west elm)! Pretty funny.

I was glad that it fit so well in the new house because I really do like it a lot. We have a gazillion video game consoles that I just can’t stand looking at all the time (you can see the Playstation 2 above the DVD player there, but there are 3 more systems behind the doors). The stand we had before was from IKEA, and it was all open.

What do you do with your TV? Is it behind closed doors? I like it when people do that, but I don’t think it works for all spaces. I know in my home, it would be a big hulking piece of furniture (and everyone would know the TV was in there anyway!).

p.s. I painted the living room! It’s “wild aster” by Benjamin Moore.

link    Living Room  •  13 Comments  •  May 16, 2007

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