Bedroom Redoux

Do ya'll remember seeing this.... my new furniture? My "I never had matching bedroom furniture before in my life" furniture? It's a momentous occasion. Maybe you heard?

So, in preparation of the arrival of my.... uh hum... can I say it one more time? New Furniture... I'm paintin' and lookin' at floorin' and dreamin' and so I want to show you how it's goin'.

How about a new rug to go on my wood floors? I kind of like this one.
or maybe this one...
and have you seen the new PB spring bedroom catalog? I love this pillow..
and this one too... They even go with a little glass picture frame I recently bought in pretty shades of purple and blue. And I found a lovely cream quilt for the bed, a perfect match, at a great steal.
And now for my paint color dilemma, which is solved. I just need affirmation from you. So, don't tell me other paint colors I ought to pick, just listen to the ones I did pick and say, Ooh! Ahh! that will be so lovely together!

drumroll please:

After much thought, several trips to several paint stores for chips, looking at them in daylight and nightlight, praying over it, (just kidding... sort of), and trying all shades of greens, blues, purples, yellows, blah blah, blah.... I finally picked...

Adobe white for the walls.

Bone for the ceiling

White for the trim.

You heard me.

Some of my friends cannot believe it. I have even been teased about it on facebook. I'm fragile, so don't tease me, Okay?

Next decision... draperies. Maybe a natural linen? or should I spring for some color? light sage? how about blue? No, I have too much blue in my house already. Plum? I think I might tire of it. Hmm? What's a girl to do?

p.s. just gonna admit it, the pictures? I got them off two websites. I hope they don't mind, cause I'm spending lots of money at their stores. Furniture is from BassettFurniture.com, and pillows and rugs from Potterybarn.com. Please think of it as free advertising!

When The Going Gets Tough...

Hire a professional!

Hallelujiah, I have called for reinforcements, and reinforcements have arrived!!
Really, you could park a car in my walk in closet. Jealous? Just be glad you don't have to clean it out. Becuase now that my clothes are out of there, I can't park in my garage. Maybe I should goodwill away some clothes.
Since day one of living in our house (6 years now) I have woken up every morning to cracked ceilings. I know I should have had my builder come back and fix them while the house was under warranty. Have you ever gotten to a point where you hope to never ever see your builder again? Yep, that's why I have stared at cracked ceilings for 6 years.
They are finally being fixed. And bonus, I've decided to get crown mouldings in the bedroom. which will solve a multitude of bad builder problems. . . we hope.

Stay tuned, more to come. . . paint colors. . . it's a dilemma!

These things take time.

A whole week has passed since I embarked on this journey of redecorating. Still, the only thing I have to show for it... new paint on one little ole bedroom. (forgive the carpet stains, the carpet cleaner is coming probably before I get this posted.)

This used to be one of the boys' rooms. It will soon be my guest room. It's going to house the cast off furniture from my bedroom. It will also make a temporary bedroom for me and Steve while.... drumroll please.... professional painters paint our room! Give me a break, it has 10 foot cove ceilings!

Anywho, lots really has happened. I settled on a color scheme for our room, I ordered new curtains and have them and a new curtain rod ready to put in the guest room... once the carpets are cleaned. I made umpteen trips to Lowe's. I hired a painter, and that alone took hours and hours. And me, myself and I painted the guestroom. I went up and down the ladder probably 300 times because I had to cut in the ceiling four times and I still see touchups that need to be done. (I'm not too good on ladders, you may recall.)

The ceiling is ceiling white (gasp!) and the walls are Linen, EB12-2, from Eddie Bauer Home. Now before you designery people tell me I picked the wrong ceiling color in the photo above, let me explain myself. I have chosen to use my white matelaise (sp?) in this room, the curtains are white and brown houndstooth (no, not cream) and there will be some white furniture painting going on when the weather warms up, enough. So, please, keep the total picture in mind and don't think I made a huge mistake by painting the ceiling white.

So, if you are still reading this, please help me pick out a new media cabinet for my living room. You all know how this works don't you? I already know which one I want, I just want to hear your opinions, also. All of these are sized appropriate, although some offer more storage than others, I can use any of these. Tell me... which is the right one.. remember I ordered ivory leather with rolled arms and nail head trim for the sectional.... okay go....

Is it:

curtain number 1?

Number 2?
Number 3?
Or curtain number 4?
Thank you for traveling this journey with me!

~ Dana

52 things, new furniture and more!

It has been a busy week or two at our house. I can't exactly remember what all we've been doing, let's see, a trip to the cabin, where all was well. a visit to a Home and Garden show where we signed up for duct cleaning. They're coming this morning and I still have to whip two rooms into shape so they can access all the vents.

Furniture furniture furniture! That's all I seem to think about. I've rearranged my room three times and decided upon the best floor plan. I've drawn umpteen schematics for all the rooms of my house, using Ethan Allen's wonderful design tools I told you about. I've picked furniture on numerous websites and pulled them all into one page where I can create inspiration boards.

And Saturday we went shopping!! I found the perfect sized sectional at Leather Interiors. Imagine this as a 5 seat sectional in ivory kid-glove leather and antique nail head trim. Pretty swanky, huh? I love it. And a bonus that I haven't told you about, I'm also getting... for the first time ever... in my whole life... although I have always dreamed of it.... brand new bedroom furniture!

I am so excited I could pop!

You may be wondering if we hit the lottery? No! But we have been saving our money. I shopped smart and got great deals on President's Day Sales, did you know this is a common thing furniture stores offer? And the time has come. I am finally getting furniture in our bedroom with no broken doors, falling hinges, drawers that are stuck, or duct tape holding it together. Okay in all fairness there isn't any duct tape, not in my bedroom anyway.

With all this excitement, is it any wonder that I have fallen off the wagon of my new-found quest for healthier living? I have forgotten to take my vitamins. I have forgotten about my pumpernickel bread. I have forgotten my daily juice, etc etc. So, this week, my recommendation for a new, healthier me (and you too if you care to follow along) is re-centering my self. Finding balance. It is simple to do, It means taking time to sit and reflect, pray, meditate, whatever you want to call it, spend time just breathing and listening to the calm. By the way, the calm is NOT the voice in your head that is scrambling the signal telling you every thing you need to do today. The calm is that place in your head, your heart and your spirit where you find peace and quiet. It is there. Just rest long enough each day, and it will find you.

Now I sound like a guru or something. Thank you for all your wonderful friendship. Although I've been less than frequent with my news, I appreciate all your wonderful comments. Thank you for reading! Stay with me and watch the transformations. I have a lot of painting and decorating to do in the coming weeks!

Love, Dana

Online Design Tools are Like Virtual Shopping.

In my quest to decide what shape my new living room furniture will be, I've been scouring the internet for product dimensions, fabric options, etc. The most helpful website I have found is Ethan Allen. They have a breezy quiz that will help you define your style, they got mine spot on! If you sign in as a user (for free), then you can make and save idea boards with clippings of products and even upload images from other stores you are considering. But the icing on the cake... they also have a very easy to use space planning page where you can customize the shape of your room to scale and place furniture pieces on your floor plan to see how things work.

Also helpful are the painting websites such as Behr, and Valspar. Both sites allow you to choose room types, or upload photos of your own room, pick paint colors or see their suggestions, and virtually paint the areas of your room, and even some accessories.

It's been really helpful for me to plan my room out in advance of making those pricey investments in furniture. Try them out, it's really fun!

52 things, I lost track of the weeks!

IDEAL (tm)

I'm giving up my sweet-n-lo(tm) for ideal(tm). Ideal is a derivative of natural plants and a few other ingredients. It claims itself to be 99% natural.

Here's my review. It is a slightly more bitter taste than I have acquired for the pink packet, but I think I can get used to it. It has more of a granular texture and I definitely prefer it over the other new natural sweetener on the market, Stevia (tm)... both in taste and dissolving quality.

The science on artificial sweeteners is not clear to me, but I figure Ideal has to be better for me than a saccharin based sweetener. And it is approved for those with diabetes, not that I am, but if you are, you might try it. It can be substituted for sugar in baking recipes, measure for measure.

Coupons are available on their web site.

The 4 Corners of My Living Room

Welcome to my living room! No, I have not invited you here for coffee, sweet tea, sherry or wine. I have asked you here today, because I am desperate for advice. My living room is a problem room, which is like a problem child in that no matter what you do, it never really behaves well. It might look okay to the casual observer, but it is a rebel.

So here is the problem, and it is largely architectural in nature. Have you ever noticed that architects of middle class homes (assuming an architect drew our house plans) do not consider furniture placement, or traffic flow, or balance or I guess much of anything. But because I don't have the time/energy/confidence in the rebounding market to knock out a few walls and remodel, I'm going to try to solve this problem with.... SHOPPING!

Corner 1

Corner number one has a staircase and a back door , so traffic flow to this corner is non-negotiable. I must be able to reach this corner.

Corner 2

Corner two of my living room is the entrance that guests use the most, our front hallway. Yes, guests enter this room by coming down that long vestibule, which by the way, you can see all the way down the full length of the house and if I place my couch against that wall with the pretty picture, you are a sitting duck to anyone who comes in the front door. . . weird fung shui thingy.

Corner 3

This corner of my living room is the pathway to the kitchen and laundry room, the corner that we most often enter from. It has a nice giant wide opening. This is also the pathway to the master suite, which will be featured in another desperate story later.

and Corner 4

The fireplace. The supposed focal point of any room. Only ours is always obstructed by the arm of a piece of furniture, not to mention it is pretty small in scale for the size of the room, which seems large enough on paper, 17 x 18. BUT, once you allow for all these access points at every corner, you realize this room is not really large enough to handle much furniture comfortably.
Now let's take a closer look at this corner. This is an experiment. I call this, let's live with this idea a couple of weeks and see if it grows on us. YES! My couch and love seat are crammed together. I am debating about getting a sectional sofa. I had this idea that maybe one problem is that my room has no corner to anchor it. So, I thought a sectional might create one. I also thought it would be nice for me and steve for tv watching. And with Daisy always on the sofa, Steve rarely gets to sit with me anymore.

Imagine if these two pieces of furniture were connected in the corner? What do you think? Do you think it would work? I measured, and I'd have to be very selective about the size of a sectional. I would have to stay at 90 inches on one side, but could go up to 120 on the other side. But I am scared. Because I am the kind of person who likes to rearrange. And what my friends say is don't! It limits your ability to rearrange. Hmm. Okay. Or maybe I just rearrange all the time because I am never really happy with it. And if a sectional gave me an anchor, I might stop rearranging? Be honest with me. What do you think?

I would also like to point out that my window is in the wrong place. I don't think I will be moving a window. But notice how my chairs under this window are not centered? nothing has ever been centered under this window. Do you have a window like this? What did you do to achieve a balanced look in an unbalanced room?

AND! Ugh! I hate this wall! It is so huge and I have never known what to do with it. I hate the tv on the sideways sitting shelf. I think the shelf is way too large for the room, and what in the world do you hang above the tv? Everything I try looks out of scale, or competes with the fireplace for attention, and really does a tv need something hanging above it? ugh! I don't have a clue what to do here.
And then there is this architectural faux-pas. A practically useless bartop that borders the kitchen. The bar is too high and too narrow to actually eat at. I used to have barstools here, but the tile is too narrow to actually set them on. AND it takes about another 2 feet out of my already shrunken living room to allow room to walk around them. I am considering having new floors put in and removing this tile area, and even having a narrower counter top installed on this bar area. I dunno? What do you think?

Now please don't say put the sofa on the tv wall, because we tried that too, and we don't like it. A. the fireplace is out of view, and B. there is no wiring for our surround sound on the stairway wall, and an estimate to put it in was astronomical, because of the stairs.

So, these are my living room issues. Advice? Buy a sectional? Or just move?

Arctic weather looks pretty, but...

Since a picture paints a thousand words, I'll let these pictures tell my story. Please leave your condolences in the comments. Thank you.

52 Things, Week 5 and it's a bust!

Turkey Bacon. Lots of opinions on this product. But let me share mine with you. First off, I LOVE LOVE LOVE bacon. I've eaten more than I should have in the last year. SO in this effort to be healthier, I decided to give turkey bacon a try.

Honestly, I could get used to it. Like, as if I were starving, I'd also eat Spam. But here is what I learned AFTER buying and eating turkey bacon:

The Nutritional Label stats for turkey bacon are for one slice. The same label for real bacon is for two slices. According to turkey bacon makers, one slice is a serving. But according to pork bacon makers, two slices is a serving. In our house it's more like three or four. But the point is, that skews the nutritional guidelines. While it appears that turkey bacon is healthier for you, if you eat two slices of it, as you would pork, then you aren't doing yourself much good. And if you don't like the taste, you might as well eat pork.

But if you really want to be more mindful of eating healthier, I would say skip bacon altogether. But who's going to do that?

Perhaps the option that makes the most sense to me is, limit your bacon eating to two slices. Buy lower sodium products, and eat it only occasionally. Once a week maybe? One friend suggested buying the center cut bacon as it has more fat trimmed from it. However, to me, it just seems as if the slice is smaller, so what the heck? Just eat less bacon.

And that is my week 5 tip for being healthier. Eat less bacon!

p.s. In the new book, "Eat This, Not That", the winner is... real bacon.