Tag: Dining Room

Styling Anastasia

This post is sponsored by Loloi.

You remember the blue Journey rug from Loloi that I styled a while back, right? I love the chance to play dress-up with my house, so I was excited about switching things up with another room.

And guess what — this is a competition.

To celebrate the line’s release, Loloi invited eight design bloggers to participate in a styling contest. Super fun, but the best part is that the winner will get a $1000 donation made on his or her behalf to the charity of their choice! A win for me would be a win for Rebuilding Together. They work with low-income homeowners, bettering their houses and their communities at the same time.

The Anastasia collection features traditional rug design elements made modern in scale and in the patterns’ distressing. There are bold colors (indigo, ochre, teal), but they’re tempered by creams and cool silvers. Our library has a whole lot of wood in it, especially from this angle, and the rug adds visual and tactile softness to the room.

Like last time, this rug is not a permanent addition (alas!). Nor are the chairs, which I added to echo the blues in the rug and pick up on the color of the sofa in the next room over. And since it’s a bit of a fiction, I set the table in our home library for dining — even though you guys know we really eat our meals in the dining room.

You have until midnight, October 14 to vote for your favorite room. Hopefully it’s mine (hint, hint) because I’d love the win for my charity, but everyone did an amazing job and chose equally worthy causes. Go check them out!

The Anastasia Rug (AF-07 in Sand/Lt Blue)is available from Wayfair and RugsDirect.

September 30, 2015
So You Need a Leather Dining Chair
There’s a leather chair, with a certain shape and metal legs, that has been popping up here and there lately. Have you noticed it, too? Sort of a cushier version of Charlotte Perriand’s les arc chairs. After coming across one for the fourth time, I took it as a sign to round them up and present them to you, for you may have need of a good looking leather dining chair. I try to be helpful like that.
1. Roadhouse Leather Chair, CB2, $249 (also shown in the first photo)
2. Leather Schoolhouse Chair, Rejuvenation, $219
3. Fernando Chair, Jayson Home, ~~$695~~ $566
4. Giron Brown Leather Chair, ABC Carpet & Home, $745
May 6, 2015
Making Over the Dining Room

This post and giveaway are sponsored by GE reveal^®.

Our dining room had creamy white walls when we moved in, and a large freestanding oak hutch that the previous owners left to us. Brandon and I plunked our dining table and chairs in the room, filled the hutch and arranged a display on its shelves, and that was about it. I would love to put up wallpaper eventually, but we still have some work to do on the first floor that will have us opening up the walls so it doesn’t make sense to paper them now. I was growing tired of the wall color though, and I figured it was time for a new coat of paint.

The dining room windows are north-facing and the house next door is pretty close, so we don’t get a ton of natural light in there. I didn’t want to go too dark with the walls since I had already painted the adjacent room black, so I chose Benjamin Moore’s ‘Basking Ridge Beige.’

It’s a subtle, historical pink, one shade darker than the color I used in the nearby library. I love the way it turned out, but at night the room still read as really yellow.

I’ll be working on four projects over the next four weeks, making over rooms with just $100 from Target and GE reveal^® LED light bulbs. I knew right away that the dining room would be my first pick for this series, because swapping out that old fluorescent bulb would definitely improve the look and feel of the space. I also decided to use sheets of wrapping paper that we had on hand to line the hutch, new candleholders that I’d repurpose as vases, and napkins that played off of the pierced metal hurricanes.

I put together this video, detailing the changes to the room.

So much better! We eat every meal in our dining room, and we need the light on more often than not. The wall color looks far more true with the new bulb than it did before. Also, I’m so glad that my idea for fixing the lighting fixture with parts from a decorative knob worked! That hole in the bottom of the glass always bugged me.

Ah, the table. It would be lovely to have fresh flowers all the time, but of course I can use the candleholders for their intended purpose too, and the napkins work with them either way.

The dining room was fine before, but it’s making me much happier now.

I’ll be hosting a Twitter chat with GE Lighting, along with Mandi from Vintage Revivals and Brooke from All Things Thrifty this Thursday night at 7:30 Central. I hope you can join us!

Also, Target will be holding a demo day for GE LED bulbs (including GE reveal^®) across the country on March 1 with $1 off coupons. The bulbs are also on sale, buy two get one free March 1-7 with no coupon required.

Giveaway

If you had a $100 gift card to Target and GE reveal^® bulbs, what would you bring in to update your dining room? Comment below for a chance to win your own #100reveal makeover!

See the complete rules for more information.

I’m so excited to be a GE reveal^® #100reveal sponsored blogger. Opinions are my own, projects have been chosen by me, and additional products used in the project were selected by me and provided by GE reveal^®.

February 24, 2015
A Fall/Winter Holiday Table

This post is sponsored by Target.
Shop Home Décor for modern luxury made easy.

Thanksgiving is just a couple of weeks away, and then we’ll be looking forward to Christmas! To get in the spirit of the season, I set a festive fall/winter holiday table with items I already had on hand mixed in with some new finds from Target.

I wanted to work with gold and silver for most of the decor, but a red runner made a colorful base for everything else to play off of. I love the way the polka dot fabric napkins look with it!

I added candlesticks in two heights, and then picked up several sizes of silver frosted mason jars. I used the smallest jars to hold tealights as intended, but instead of putting candles in the others, I used the larger ones as flower vases.

The table was set with our everyday silverware and classic white plates. So many of us have those standards on hand, but they felt more special with gold chargers at each seat.

The centerpieces were fun to arrange. I think that white ‘flower’ is in the cabbage family. Plus berries! I always go for the berries this time of year.

All together, the mix of metallics and the candlelight feel perfect for special occasions. I’m looking forward to using the decorations throughout the year for other dinners and holidays, too!

November 10, 2014
Fornasetti’s Chiavi Segrete Wallpaper

This may be the new choice for the dining room. If I’m not going with clouds coming in, or a grayscale forest etching, why not hedges full of keys?

Cole & Son

Design Crisis

Cole & Son

The wallpaper design is Fornasetti II Chiavi Segrete, from Cole & Son. It’s lush, mysterious, and just a bit sinister. Perfect for the Victorian, yes?

It solves a few of the problems that I had with the other options. It’s meant to be a repeating pattern, not a mural, so the application will be seamless. And it’s pricey, but less expensive than grisaille wallpapers I wanted. I have high hopes for this one! Samples are on the way.

June 2, 2014
Grisaille Wallpaper

I know what I want to do in the dining room. Problem is, I probably can’t.

Barnaba Fornasetti, Elle Decor

Sasha Bikoff, Domaine Home

The first design above is Fornasetti’s Nuvole mural, from Cole & Sons. The second features a hand-painted wallpaper design by de Gournay. There’s a reason you tend to see this style in high-end shelter magazines, and not, say, in the homes of bloggers. Grisaille wallpaper tends to be ridiculously, prohibitively expensive. The only relatively affordable version I’m aware of is the Etched Arcadia mural from Anthropologie, which I’ve wanted for a good two years now.

Anthropologie

Kristin Perers, House & Garden

I’ve thought a lot about the flow from room to room downstairs and determining where I’d like to go bold with color, where I want to be more restrained, and where I want to add pattern. I love the black walls in the second parlor, and an amazing wallpaper to play off of that in the dining room would be perfect.

I’d go for the Etched Arcadia Mural, but it’s only 9’x12′ and the ends don’t match up to form a repeating pattern. The design’s 9′ height would work in the dining room because the baseboards and ceiling beams shorten the 10′ vertical wall space by just enough, but the problem comes in from the 12′ length. Even the two shortest walls are a couple of inches too long, and the longer walls would definitely have a visible seam somewhere. I like the look of a framed out mural, but the room is chopped up with doorways and windows, so there isn’t a good blank wall for it.

I’ve been looking around the house, wondering if there’s an alternative spot that would work. Maybe the bathroom design goes in this direction instead of floral? That’s still a bit up in the air. As for the dining room though, I think it’s back to looking at more wallpaper options.

May 27, 2014