Blogworld happenings

I dont' spend as much time reading blogs as I used to before the world of 2 children.  BUT, I do get on whenever I can and woke up extra early today and have been perusing some of my favorites...  And I was kind of blown away by all of the exciting stuff everyone has going on!!!  I thought I'd share some congratulations...

Jenny of My Favorite & my Best is trying out to be in the next Design Star:

And Newell Turner wants her in it!!  (Jenny, will they have beeps on when  you talk?? ;) ;)

...Brooke & Steve Giannetti's pink bathroom was in the NY Times....

{so exciting and would love to take a bath in there (if it were mine of course!!!) ha}

Eddie & Jaithan have had so many good things happen to them that I will simply say, read this if you haven't already.

{this is one of my favorite redos.. DANCE}

Seleta's house was photographed for next year's Southern Living Magazine Christmas issue!!!  (And she got my favorite photographer & friend, Helen Norman!!)

{i want our families to be friends}

And, the most special of all, Jennifer of The Newlywed Diaries had a beautiful baby girl!!

{Baby Elliot Claire}

Congratulations to mommy & daddy!!!

I'm sure I missed out on lots of great happenings but just wanted to share these few.  Love you all and am so excited and happy for you!!!

I'm out for the weekend...  Headed to Hickory, NC for some work on our coming furniture line.  Have a great one!!

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Before & After: Client's Neutral Living Room

{The one-day deer head...  I'll explain later}

My client Diem & her husband Joe (and their two adorable boys- Charley (3) and baby Harry) were looking to make a few changes in their living room.  They wanted something a bit more sophisticated & grown up, yet still comfortable and kid-friendly.   It's the living room and they have an informal family room off of the kitchen so they were looking for something a bit more formal than what they have in there.  Diem's love of neutrals inspired the design which is a mix of shades of gray and pale yellow-creams.  (Diem & Joe wanted to keep the wall color.)When I first visited, it looked like this:

We're still not completely finished yet, but here's how it looks now:

{That's Charley on the sofa!}

Here's a close-up of some of the fabrics on the velvet sofa:

Here's a close-up of the chairs & colorblocked linen pillows I had done by Paul David Designs:

When we were setting up the living room, Diem told Charley (3) that the figurines below were Indian.  He listened carefully and then proceeded to call them "Aliens" for the rest of the day.  I love 3-year olds.

And here's Mr.Charley himself sinking into one of the new chairs:

{i can't handle him...  he's such a good little guy!!}

We started the process of styling Diem's cabinet using her brother-in-law Derek Larsen's pottery:

{Diem's got a shopping list now for those 2 bottoms shelves!}

Derek will be busy ;)

Here's another view of the room before:

And here it is now:

I had a really tough time shooting because of the light, but you get the idea.  (Straight into the sun)

...And now let's talk about the deer...  the "one day" deer...

I just got word from Diem that Joe came home and hates the deer so he has to go.    He's calling him "RoboDeer" which is actually pretty hysterical. 

{At least we got RoboDeer's pic!}

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Baby's Room Rug

I love change.  Rooms in my own home can start to feel dead to me if I don't freshen things up, rearrange, and/or add items every once in a while.  Justin's carpeting in the nursery hasn't fared very well...

... so I was thrilled when we stopped at Ikea the other day and found this yellow & navy graphic rug for around $150:

It was just the thing to cover up the havoc we've wreaked on the cream carpet. 

{Good luck to you, New Rug!}

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Arcimboldo

{National Gallery of Art}

Last week, Dave & I got the chance to sneak away to the National Gallery of Art for an afternoon.  We don't seem to enjoy the city's museums nearly enough so when we have vacations at home, we try to get in to see one. 

{tourists in our own city}

We didn't have much time - only a couple of hours- so we made sure to hit up the Guiseppe Arcimboldo exhibit - visiting from the Louvre- which leaves this January.  I'd never heard of him and was thrilled with what we saw:

{Bowl of vegetables at first glance}

...When viewed with a mirror under the painting - which is how they had it set up- you can spy the funny face made entirely out of veggies of "the cook:"

There were a few of these & I loved seeing them, many of them fairly grotesque (which for some reason I really love... remember my old men on the Da Vinci wall?) with things like plucked chickens for a noze or cheek.  yuck.

Arcimboldo was born in 1527 and eventually became the court portraitist and festival planner for Emporer Maximilian II (r. 1564- 1576) and his young son Rudolf II(r.1576-1612).   He was known for the incredible imagery and costumes he created at parties and performances.  I imagine crazy bright beautiful shows and tables overflowing with food & drinks & flowers... 

Arcimboldo was not the tradittional court portraitist in that he began creating people's likenesses out of objects such as fruit, flowers, books and plants.  He would often create a person out of objects having to do with his profession, such as this librarian out of books:

The best-known of his work is the Four Seasons, presented to Maximiliam as a gift on New Year's Day 1569: 

Each "season" is created out of things from that season, for example, Autum is full of apples, grapes, and leaves.  It's hard to see on my computer screen, but some of my favorite parts of the paintings were the tight bits of foliage and flowers.  I think they'd make beautiful textiles.  (Especially Spring's chest, top right.)

Below is "Vertumnus, a portrait of Rudolf II re-imagined as the Roman god of metamorphoses in nature and life, with Rudolf’s face composed of fruit and flowers, symbolising the perfect balance and harmony with nature that his reign represented," (jack.rusher.com)

I loved Arcimboldo's cheeky take on people.  His art is not beautiful in the traditional sense but it makes me smile and they are definitely conversation pieces.  I also just love nature and seeing people made out of bits of it is a fun surprise. 

My absolute favorite part of the exhibit, however, were the volumes of botanicals and animal books (there must be a better word, but I can't think of it right now ;) they had under glass around the exhibit.  They were incredibly beautiful.  Seriously I was going crazy.  I want ever single one of those books.  I never really realized how many botanical books must really be out there.  We tend to see the same ones reproduced over & over but there so many more out there.  I wrote every single one of them down and plan to do some research and wee which, if any, have been reproduced.  They were so old (1500s-1600s) yet still so vibrant, many of them done with watercolor & gouache. 

I could see how people want to collect them.  (Ok, I want to collect them ;) 

Anyway, I'm off to start the day.  We had such a realxing vacation & I pretty much finished up plans for my DC Design House proposal.  Now I just need to do the design board.  I also put together a portfolio of my work(using blurb.com) because they want to see a porfolio for any new designers.  I really liked working with the blurb program and am pretty happy with the results, but the photos came out a little yellowy  (All of my funky greens look a little too yellow and are a bit off.) and so if I'd had more time, I'd try to figure out from blurb what was up with that.

Have a great day and happy new year!!!

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Christmas Present

I'm so sorry if I'm totally driving you crazy with our Better Homes & Gardens article but I've been meaning to share the article on here for readers who weren't able to get a copy.  (And, it really was the hi-light of our year; I'm not gonna lie.)  If you click on the pics (photos by Helen Norman), you should be able to see them larger. 

{Stockings by Handmade Pretties on etsy...  I loved the title of the article because "Christmas present" applies to living in the present moment which we really try to do and also to our baby Justin who was born on December 22nd just 3 days before Christmas... Go Joanna! }

{I'm always walking into the house carrying beautiful flowers with my cutie sitting there waiting on the stairs for me;) ;)  .. hee hee I wish.  I've gotten lots of emails/ calls about my bag & boots.  The bag is by UGG and the boots I'm wearing are MUDD... both from a few years ago.}

{You might notice they brought in a new coffee table by Wisteria to replace our lucite one & my cow hide rug wasn't in the shot.  We filled one of my glass lamps with glass ornaments. } 

Here's a photo to compare: 

{A year later at our house means changes...  Obviously I've rearranged the floorplan since then.  (This happens a lot.)  I've also replaced the Arteriors glass table lamp with the Arteriors glass floor lamp.  (It actually took over 4 months to get to me and was once of the first things I ordered for our living room but wasn't here in time for the shoot.)  I've also moved our cow hide into our bedroom and reaplaced it with an antiqued wool rug.}

{I love how beautifully these gifts were wrapped and I love that they were able to use so many of our own things in the shoot.}

{Isn't it funny to read your own quotes???   hahaha  I think I meant that nothing's really set in stone around here, that we're picking thigns up and adding traditions as we go each year.  I took the photo of Dave & Christian making the showman last January during one of the snowstorms before the photo shoot in February.  }

{looooooove this pic...  On the shelves, they brought in some copper to add to my white ware which was so pretty & warm.  Of course now I want some.  We borrowed the ironstone platters & cakestand from my friend Donna at On a Whim Antiques in Lucketts, VA for the shoot. The rest of the pieces are mine and I found the ceiling medallion I propped up on the shelves for only $1 at Goodwill five or so years ago.}

{and they were able to sneak an extra little page in at the end which I love...  Christian had such a blast opening the bulldozer toy over & over.  what a champ.  The food was beautiful and we used a milk glass urn turned upside down with a plate above & below for a makeshift cakestand.}

And here's a close-up of the beautiful table Jessica Thomas did:

She used my silverware & china over my Pottery Barn plates and little polar bear Christmas ornaments for name tags.  - my handwriting on them- yay! ha    The vintage fabric draped over the parsons chairs really added something.  I found it at Goodwill years ago as a set of curtains and it's gotten a lot of use.  I even made a blanket out of some of it for Justin's room. 

And, I was also picked as the blogger of the month which was such a nice surprise:

The funniest thing is that I was at an antique store this Fall & almost bought that exact little squirrel nutcracker (old, not new of course)  for Christian.  He was $32 and I didn't buy him- what is wrong with me?- and had regretted it since.  When I saw it on the page I wanted to kick myself! :)

Thank you so much again to the team at Better Homes & Gardens: editor & writer Joanna Linberg, stylist/producer Jessica Thomas, and photographer Helen Norman  & her assistant F.J. Hughes. and all of the in-house people like Shelley Caldwell who put the story together and to field scout Bonnie Broten...  You guys are truly the BEST.  Thank you, thank you. 




ps- I'm really trying to take a break & stay off of the computer this week so you won't see much of me until Monday!! :)

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

*The caged lantern in our entryway is by Minka Lavery...  I have gotten tons of phonecalls & emails about it and I think may have been discontinued.  The wallpaper in our breakfast nook is also discontinued.  Our front door is "maple leaf" by Behr and our kitchen cabinets are "witch hazel" by Behr.  I used the book Leonardo's Notebooks for the sketches in the entry.

Countdown & treats

{3 more days!!!}

{The Better Homes & Gardens team made the adorable glittered construction paper chain garland over the chalkboard for us & I love it!!  It's one of those things I'd planned on making more of but didn't.  Glad we saved it.}

Yesterday our babysitter. Lizzie, surprised us with a box full of homemade cookies.  Her mother is a friend of ours and teaches at the high school with Dave -and has brought cookies in for the family before from Lizzie- which mysteriously never seem to make it home. 

So this time Lizzie brought 'em home to mama.  ahhhhhh yessss...  I was all alone when she dropped them off and got to work on them immediately:

But, unlike my husband, I didn't eat them all and saved some for my family. 

(I tried... there were too many.)

I also have a neighbor who is one of those people who seems to do it all.  (Melissa, if you're reading, this proves my point because -somehow- you even  have time to pop in here!!)  She & her daughter Claire dropped off some pumpkin bread the other week and I didn't get a picture of it because it was gobbled up too quickly but it looked like this and it was Heaven:

{photo from allrecipes.com}

I'm always so touched (and thrilled to be the recipient!) when people bake for the holidays and share it with others.  It's just one of those fun things that I try to do every year but don't always get to.  (like this year...  although there's still time??  maybe tomorrow??  There's always Tollhouse break'n bake.)  

Do you have any special pre-holiday tradtions?

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

So Close!!

Sorry for the lack of posts - as you probably know, work's always nutty right before the holidays!  I just wanted to drop in with a little recap of what we've been up to.

{our front door}

This year we got a bit further as far as outside Christmas decorating goes than last...  We got lights up outside, but Christian wasn't happy with them because they're not the "pretty" colored lights. 

{image via mrlimodenver.com}

I feel his pain... I remember thinking that way back when.  I could possibly be swayed to the colorful side...  There's something wonderful about terrible Christmas decorations.  It's definitely got to be better than the dying leyland cypresses I strung up with pretty white lights...  It's a process.  (We planted them too close to our house so the roof overhang kept rain from getting them.. ehhhhhhh.)  Maybe next year we can have alive shrubs strung with lights.   I'm also kind of craving the big vintage colored lights my grandparents have on their house. 

We got a second tree this year for our family room.  It's artificial but I'm really into it because it's flocked:

I'll attempt to take better pics later!  Dave & I camped out in the family room this weekend because I love being near the tree so much.  I wish I had one in our bedroom too.

And, whenever we can squeeze it in, we've been playing Christmas music & dancing:

{I have really big hands}

In my area it's 97.1 that plays nonstop Christmas music.  love it.  I think they probably stay in business just because of their month of Christmas music. 

Delilah anyone???