Things that have caught my eye Dec 14

I don't know about you but when I'm browsing the internet on my phone or walking through a store and I want to remember something I snap a picture on my oh so handy iPhone so that I can go back to it whenever I want.

Here are a few of the things that have caught my eye lately.

I am LOVING all the Gold and Black everywhere. 

I love it so much that I decided to redo our Master bedroom to use those colors.

The Master is still a work in progress because I am being picky about what I want to go in there.

When I was browsing Target for curtains (which I do frequently whether I need them or not) I saw these gold curtains and snapped a picture because I couldn't decide whether they will fit the space the way I want or not. 

I love all the wood signs everywhere and I really love the look of words burned into the wood.

I am determine to make one someday soon.... I hope.

I LOVE everything about this outfit. 

I loved it so much I pulled what I had in my closet to try to match this for Thanksgiving.

I mostly love the frame, for umm.... EVERYTHING.

But I'm really into the vintagey prints right now too.

Aowyns room is all vintage so this would be so cute in there.

I see Subway signs like this everywhere, but its always places in New York or California and as cute as they are, they are never what I am looking for.

When I saw the Subway sign with all the glory of the South I had to have it, but the nearly $100 price tag made me choke a little.... so I did what any smart shopper/crafty crafter would do.... I took a picture so I can make it at home.

This picture is blurry because I wasn't sure if I was allowed to take pictures... so I quietly hid my phone and took one anyway.... its totally legit, right?

I want a table like this for behind our couch upstairs.

I really really want this table in my living room upstairs. 

I also really want the old apothecary ones that are the rolling carts... these pieces of furniture make my heart pitter patter.

Ahh the beautiful black and gold.

Some more the of the vintage charm goodness.

Our bathroom downstairs is navy blue and yellow and I "love" this for an empty space I have in there... but I'm debating about whether or not a heart that says love in it is appropriate for the bathroom. Maybe? Maybe not?

These beauties are NEEDED in my house.

I want them on my dresser in the master and as many other places as I can put them.

I'm just waiting for the handle sale at Hobby Lobby and they will be mine... oh and the courage to make the 45 minute trip over there with the kids.

I really want this print to go above the piano in the family room.

I really want some library barn pully's to go downstairs too. 

Every time I find them online they are sold out.... so as soon as my luck wins out I will have some of these bad boys in my possession.

This whole space just speaks to me.

There is a wall in our master bedroom where I want to do this. 

I have a feeling that it will take forever to get this to come together... (read that as: stupid Las Vegas and its inability to fulfill my vintage/antique obsession.)

$50 price tag? For that? 

Just wait till I get some burlap, paint and canvas and its on.

That pillow... oh that pillow.

I have a NEED for that Bakery sign in my house.... even though I'm not a big baker, its really just the beauty of the sign that matters right?

This redo!! Wow! I love everything about this space. I love the giant clock and the bench and the center piece and the buffet.... and everything else.

I stood there and looked at this forever debating whether or not I wanted to buy it.

In the end the fact that I had NOWHERE to put it, or even an idea of where I wanted to put it won out and I left it at the store.

I love the house on it. 

I really love the whole sign.

In the past I have just bought things because I loved them and usually ended up with a garage full of pieces that I loved but had no where to put them, so I stopped buying things unless I knew exactly where I wanted to put it.

Again, nowhere to put it, but I still loved it.

This is one of the first things on my list of things to make at the first of the year. 

It will go in the downstairs family room.

Oh the gorgeousness. 

Lets just take a second to gaze upon this beauty....

Need more time?

Man I love this whole piece.

I will be doing this with our desk, sometime in the near future.

This color combo just makes me happy. 

Aowyns room is these colors and I love to just go hang out and look at all the greatness that these colors are.

Oh swoon!!!

I love all the books and the ladder... one day, one day. 

I need this sign to go above the window in my kitchen.

Man, Ive got a lot of projects this year.

This needs no explanation. 

I will own something like this someday.

Its probably the one piece of furniture that I dream about and search for everywhere I go.

Its just perfect.

For a little while I debated on doing something like this as our headboard in the Master, but in the end a tuft headboard won out. Ill post about my headboard hunt soon.

I want one of these so badly... but that requires having the space for one of these.... and that is something we really don't have right now, so for now Ill just dream of the day I can have one of these.

This is what I am going to do with the vanity in my bedroom. I just love it.

I am also doing something kind of like this to the dresser/tv stand in the family room.

I have something kind of like this in our master bedroom. I love the idea of a shelf on the door with the mirror. 

Ill have to post my mirror soon to show ya'll what I did.

What girl doesn't love Tiffany Blue?

Such a cute idea for a jewelry station.

I want one of these mirrored dressers in my house... anywhere in my house will do.

I would really love to have it in my Master, but I won't be picky, I just want to own it.

I'm not huge fan of animal prints, but I do love this outfit.

It screams comfy yet stylish.

I.must.own.

I used this chair as inspiration for my chairs upstairs in our sitting area.

I love the tuft look.

I want to do this to the dresser in Landon and Tayton's room. 

Their room is vintage America, think Route 66 diner type feel.

I think this dressers colors would be perfect in there.

This piece just needs to be in my house so I can love it and look at it everyday.

La sigh! Its just a thing of beauty.

Am I the only one who takes pictures of everything that they love?

I promise I take pictures of my kids and husband too.... really I do.

O Christmas Tree

My favorite part of decorating for Christmas is by far the Christmas tree, it just makes my soul smile. It's where all the memories live and where the spirit of Christmas past resides.

I love to decorate the tree and talk to the kids about each and every ornament.

I can remember where each one came from.

I can remember who made what and the trip down memory lane always puts me in the Christmas spirit.

Take a walk with me down that oh so marvelous memory lane.

Topping the Tree.

Noah's grandparents send the kids new Ornaments every year.

They always send them right around Thanksgiving and we open them after the tree is all decorated so that we can add them to the tree. 

This is one of my favorite ornaments, It was Braddocs first Christmas and something about it just makes me a bit giddy inside.

Every year we try to go to Disneyland. We have been pretty good about making it every year, but this year since we had no job for half the year we had to cut our Disneyland trip out of the mix (that was such a hard thing to do, we love Disney).

Noah and I always pick out an ornament for us as a couple.

Of course it usually is Mickey and Minnie.

I love all of the Santa worshipping baby Jesus ornaments that we have collected over the years.

I love that it really portrays the true meaning of Christmas.

One year I had several friends (who know me so well) buy me deer ornaments.

I love that even though we don't live near each other anymore I can remember them every year when I decorate the tree.

Noah's family (on his dads side) is from Ireland (the McGuire clan) so this year, as my Christmas present, his Grandparents sent me this glass spun ornaments made and sent from Ireland. I love everything about it.

Of course our tree HAS to be covered in Alabama ornaments. I think we have about 20+ and we usually get a new one every year to add to it.

Noah's Grandpa (Pop Pop) is fantastic at wood work. 

I have several little things he has carved to go around the house and then a Santa and Mrs Claus to go on the tree. I love them. 

I love the tree all lit up at night.

My favorite thing to do it sit on the couch and just stare at the tree.

This year I doubled the light strands so that the tree would really sparkle.

I love that the tree is in the middle of the room upstairs so I can see it from every room. 

Its the way it should be. 

We get a family ornaments every year at Disneyland too.

Usually it says the year on it but sometimes it doesn't.

I always let the kids pick it out.

Twinkling lights on the tree fill me with glee....

Merry Christmas.

I love seeing the ornaments moved to the bottom of the tree.

I know it will be one of those things I miss the most when they are grown.

I love to get as many pictures as I can of the kids in front of the tree.

I love that no matter where we are upstairs I can usually get a picture of the tree in all of my pictures.

This year the kids picked out their ornaments from us.

Landon picked a Mickey Nutcracker since he and I went to see the Nutcracker Ballet.

Aowyn picked out a Minnie Nutcracker because she wanted to be like Landon.

Tayton picked out this glass Mickey.

The kid is notorious from breaking ornaments, I have a pile every year of ones I need to glue back together, so I'm really hoping this little guy survives.

Braddoc's ornament. 

He has been obsessed with all the different Mickey character movies this year, so this ornament was very fitting for that.

I just loved this ornament, so it had to be mine and Noahs.

I love seeing the random ornaments moved and placed on the same branch with others.

Again I know its something I'm going to miss when they are grown.

This was my babies first Christmas ornament.

It makes me smile every year.

One of Noah's ornaments from his childhood.

When we got married I realized that he had TONS of Noah's Arc ornaments. I guess with a name like Noah you will probably end up with some Noah's Arc things.

Noah's Ornament from the year he joined the military.

Anyone who knows my husband.... I mean really knows him, not the shy, quiet guy personality that he portrays to everyone, knows that Goofy and Noah are kindred spirits, so a football playing Goofy is a must for this husband guy.

I love all the ornaments that the kids make and bring home to me too.

Its so fun and a bit sad to see how much they have grown each year. 

My babies are not babies anymore.

I am sad that its almost the first of the year and the time we take down the decorations.

I think I might just leave the tree up longer then everything else.... sounds like a solid plan to me.

Im linking this post up to Serenity Now's Friday link party.

Family room

We just recently moved across country from Alabama to Las Vegas and decided that since we did not know where we wanted to live exactly or how long we would be here, that we would rent a house. 

I am not in love with the house, but I love the area and the school that we are zoned for is a 9 out of 10, which as a friend of mine says, "Is like finding a unicorn in Vegas." So we went ahead and rented this house. It works for us and is a great space for Braddoc and his sensory troubles. 

I hate renting. I want to redo paint colors, tear down walls, put up new blinds, do bead boarding and chair rails and all the stuff that makes my heart happy... but for now I will have to be happy with just decorating our builder basic rental and dream of the day we own again.

Downstairs we have a giant open space. Its about 20x18 and because its such a beast of a room I decided that I wanted to split it in half and do a family room area and a kids play area. 

I broke one of my cardinal rules of decorating when we moved in and did not wait patiently for the right decor. I just wanted to have it done because the Holidays were coming up (we moved in the middle of October) and so I put whatever we had left over from upstairs, up on the walls in this space. 

I HATED it. 

I never went to down there.

 I ignored how messy it got and took no pride in the space at all.

 It did not make me happy, or make my heart pitter patter when I went down there. 

I actually got to the point where I avoided the space as much as I possibly could. All of the furniture was just haphazardly spaced down there and there really was no "zones" or organization at all. 

The decor that I did put down there had no consistency and it was just plain old BLAH!!

And of course the space is my kids, upstairs is mine (decorated wonderfully) and downstairs is theirs (not decorated wonderfully). I don't like it down there and neither do they, so of course they come hang out upstairs and bring all their toys and messes into the living space.

I realized pretty quickly that something needed to change down there.

 So right after Christmas (the first time we had time) hubby and I moved the furniture around so that we could create two spaces.

A TV/Family room space and a play area.

Once that was done I had to sit down and decide on what I wanted to do to decorate the space. This is of course the funnest part, but it can also be super stressful. I love seeing so many ideas and gathering up different pictures of things I love, in an effort to decide on what I'm really looking for in a space.

It can be hard to make the final decision on what you want in your space.

I wanted to make the space cozy and homey and I NEEDED it to be a place where the kids would want to be. But I also need it to be a space that functions well as a play area.

I started looking through pictures of curtains and color palettes trying to get an idea of what kind of color scheme I wanted in this space. I knew that I wanted some soft white colors as well as natural wood colors because our piano is a medium natural wood stain. Our couch is a light green and so I wanted something that would work with the couch color as well.

I didn't find any curtains that jumped out at me and even though I found color palettes that I liked nothing was really falling into place, so I decided to take a break and clear my head and come back later with a fresh start.

I had to make something for my daughters room so I went and dug through my fabric bucket and gasped when I ran across several yards of duck cloth in Waverly Folk damasks print.

I knew right away that this was the print I wanted to go with and so I sat down and started a board on Pinterest. 

I quickly found so many pictures that pulled my visions of the space together.

(all pictures have the links to the original source)

I fell in love with this picture and most definitely want to use that lamp (thankfully I just got one at Target).

I love the combo of the green and dark blue as well as the white and the dark and light wood tones.

Everything about this picture screams cozy and comfortable to me.

 here

There is a little skinny wall when you hit the bottom of the stairs, right before the room opens up and I have been racking my brain ever seen we moved in, trying to figure out what to do with this space. It is too awkward right there for any furniture so I really have to get creative.

I love this concept to do on the wall. Its not an area where the kids can destroy the pictures that are low down and it perfectly fills the space.

I have several dark blue, white, light blue and wooden frames to put in this area. Yeah for FREE!!!

here

Above our piano is just a big open space and I want to fill it with multiple things and of course Antique anything speaks to my soul so I am going to use as many wood, black, gold and white antique things as I can find to go up in that empty area. 

Here is where the patience is going to have to come into play because I have no idea where I am going to find all the "chippy charm" goodness in Vegas. When we were in Alabama I had my pick on just about every street corner, its definitely going to be more difficult here.

here

Our TV is sitting on an old dresser that I am going to paint white and chip up/distress and then I am going to stain the drawers a dark walnut color. But on either side of the TV is big blank space that needs to be filled so I am going to scour EBay to find some grain sacks like in this picture to put into frames and hang up in those empty spaces. I think I will need two deep on each side and then I'm going to make a big reclaimed wood sign to go above the TV.

here

I am so excited to get to work on this space and show the progress as it happens.

I made the curtains and did them double layered with another navy and white damasks print today and hung them up already. I stole the blue and green pillows and blankets I had stashed around the house and added them down there as well. The space is far from being done but its already so much cozier. I'm ready to go curl up with a good book and hang out down there.

Stay tuned for the progress updates.

Go here to see the rest of my Pinterest board ideas for this room.