Oh my! There are (at least) 4 stray kittens living under our front porch. How did I not notice them until today? I walked out to check the mail and I saw the little cuties playing by our stairs. I walked down to see them, and they all scuttled back under our porch.
I’m waiting to hear back from my step-mom because she works for a vet and she’ll know what to do. I put a bowl of water out there, but I don’t think I should feed them (not milk, I know). Poor kitties! They are SOOOOO cute.
I’ve been playing around with a photo that I pulled from Benjamin Moore’s “personal color viewer”. The wall color for the living room (wild aster) and the kitchen (bronzed beige) are there, and then I’ve been swapping out different wallpapers for the dining room. Photoshop + me = true love 4ever.
Yes, I sort of love this. Is it too much?
wallpaper by Orla Keily
Of course that isn’t my house, but it’s a pretty good representation. I do have my orange chair in that same position and you would see the wallpaper behind it like that.
This is another strong contender:
wallpaper by Romo
I have a tendency to come up with some nutso ideas for the house. I don’t usually follow through. I have been planning to wallpaper the dining room from the start, but I’m not sure if I should tone it down and stay within the style of the house or just go for it. I want to just go for it and be bold! Brandon is actually really good at reining me in (but um, he’s asleep right now, so…).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So tired. Need sleep. Working on technical drawings/posters for clients, last-minute. Will post soon.
xoxo,
Nicole
Very funny.
Happy anniversary to the man that left this little surprise for me in the kitchen:
(Three years have gone by so quickly.)
Our 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:
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.
