The Decorating Process

So, okay. I get asked by a lot of people for help decorating (which I love doing) but I don't think it's that difficult once you break it down. I honestly think the hardest part is getting started. From there, it's basically as tricky as copying. Yep. I am a big fat copier. So is every other decorator out there. There is nothing new under the sun, so let's just get that out of the way now.

There is no need to feel bad about not being original. Most people cannot just come up with inspiration out of the recesses of their brains. You know the expression that the best writers are great readers? Same idea. We get inspired by others, who were inspired by others. I used to feel like I wasn't good at what I love because I wasn't coming up with my own ideas. Silliness. There is no room for feeling inferior here. Decorating should be fun!

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let's break down this process.


I am going to use my kitchen as an example since that's what I am currently working on.


First, gather inspiration. You can browse Pinterest, magazines, books, blogs, or even Google images. I use all of those mediums for inspiration, but my favorite is still Pinterest. So for my kitchen, I just typed "kitchen" into a Pinterest search. Any image that made me stop to look at it, I would Pin it to a kitchen board.

Once I pinned several images, I began to see a pattern; I really love white kitchens the most. Every image I pinned had white cabinets. So I searched white kitchens. With each step, I would discover more of my taste and narrow even further to discover exactly what I want in our house. Through this process, I discovered I really loved the farmhouse style, so I searched that:

That search brought up some of my favorite kitchens ever. Like, as in, I clutched my hands to my heart and sighed and I am pretty sure I turned into that emoji with the heart eyes. You know, the images I couldn't get out of my mind and just kept thinking, "If I had THAT kitchen...... *sigh*". I think you guys know what I'm talking about.

Farmhouse 5540

Jennifer Rizzo

All 3 above are Skies of Parchment

All of these kitchens are pretty similar. I picked out the common elements I *loved* and I am incorporating them into my own kitchen.

-White cabinets

-Beadboard backsplash

-Warm wood tones

-Open/glass cabinet doors

-Farmhouse style sink (more on this in a second)

-Bridge faucet

-Dark hardware

-Chandelier style light

After putting my wishlist together, I had to figure out what I could afford to do and what would be practical in my kitchen. I really really wanted a farmhouse style sink, but it wasn't practical for my budget or for the laminate counter tops I currently have. The counters are in good shape and honestly, they aren't my dream counters, but they far from bug me, so they stay. SO, the dream sink and butcher block (wood) counter tops are out, BUT I can make up for it! Instead, we found a HUGE beautiful white cast iron sink and I got my beautiful dream chrome bridge faucet and I LOVE it. Like, a lot. So I am totally cool with the compromise.

I instagrammed this last week as I was priming the cabinets. 

***All the heart eyes***

:)

The biggest change is still an ongoing process. That is the painting of the cabinets. I researched the best paint, process, and products for painting the cabinets, but the biggest obstacle was choosing a color. There are so. many. whites. So many. Like, a crazy amount. Once again, Pinterest to the rescue. I will share that process another day though if you like because picking the right color for any room or project... that is a WHOLE other story. 

So the process of decorating is really just a process of discovering taste, looking at beautiful images, setting a focus, then copy it with a few adjustments here and there. It's really not that scary or complicated to tackle a room makeover once you have a vision and some inspiration! I hope that maybe knowing a little more about my process will help you guys if you have been feeling stuck or frozen on a certain area of your home. Getting started is the trickiest part! Happy decorating, guys! :) 

Lydia's Room

Hey all! I am taking a break from painting (and painting and painting...) the kitchen cabinets to show you guys the progress in Lydia's room.

As with all rooms of the house, it is a work in progress. Her nursery in our apartment was the one room I considered "done", but after we moved into our house it kinda sat bland, boring, and messy until I found some inspiration. As I mentioned before, the theme of this house is s-l-o-o-o-w when it comes to decisions and projects. I don't like rushing myself to get something done before I have an exact idea of what I want and how I want to do it. Otherwise I get "buyer's remorse" or, in this case, "decorator's remorse". I have had that one too many times, friends, so I have learned my lesson the hard way.

As I said, I was a little stuck until I came across this image on Pinterest:

I used The Sherwin Williams Chip It! tool to get an idea of paint colors, and finally had the inspiration to get started!

This is where we started the day we saw this house:

And honestly, it wasn't much different from that for over a year.

This is the same view today:

We chose to use Comfort Gray for the walls, and it is truly as lovely as everybody says. It's gray, green, and blue depending on the light and time of day, and I kind of love that.

I still have a lot of plans for the room, but I will just show you the pictures of the progress we've made.

Right now I am distracted with the kitchen, but there are a few more projects to do to finish up Lydia's room... you know, until I get the urge to change it again ;) 

..... back to painting I go!

Kitchen Plans!

...

......


You guys. Kitchen plans. I mean. Kitchen. Plans.


Ahhhh!!! I am so excited! This means that the kitchen refresh is in the very very near future. I have been thinking and planning and scheming where this kitchen is concerned since the day we put an offer in on this house.

It takes me a long time to research and plan a room like this. Really, I don't think I would have been ready to do the kitchen before now, and this summer marks 3 years since we moved in! With an investment like this, I like to be 550% certain before I make a move. I have been browsing pinterest, magazines, books, and anything else decor related trying to come up with the perfect plans for our kitchen. You guys, most of this stuff I am about to show you has been purchased and either installed or in my house just waiting. That basically means I am the most excited person ever because the kitchen project is REAL. It is legit happening. Basically I just need assistance where the power tools portion of the kitchen is concerned. Other than that, we are under way!

So anyway, here is the plan:

We have sort of a farmhouse/cottage/french country thing going here.


We are keeping the existing cabinets and counter tops, but we are painting the cabinets white and installing crown and trim to make them look a little more custom on the upper cabinets. The lowers will be getting feet (I adore feet on cabinets).

We are installing a back splash in the form of beadboard and adding corbels. New light fixtures, sink and bridge faucet have already been installed! The painting of the cabinets will hopefully begin next week. Here is a peek at what we are working with:

Not terrible, but not exactly what I'm going for if you know what I mean. Also, that refrigerator is a bad diy experiment gone wrong. Yikes. So that will be addressed somehow, I am just not exactly sure what that solution might be yet....

Here we go! Kitchen refresh, here we come!!!

By the way, all kitchen sources will be shared once it's all completed, if anybody is interested.

Have a great weekend and Happy Mother's Day to all the moms, but especially my mom who has sponsored this blog post in the form of keeping Lydia last night, allowing me the time to write this. Love you mom!! Thank you for everything you do!

Outdoor Progress (And No Fuss Flowering Garden!)

Happy Friday! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend in store. We have some good stuff planned. It should be a busy, but fun weekend!

I am back with some progress to the outside of our house. We started working on the curb appeal of this adorable house practically the second we got the keys! It is certainly slow going, though. Something about our house is that the previous couple that owned it only lived here a few weeks a year. They have family in the area, but live far away, so they kept this house as a vacation home to come visit grand kids. Because of that, some areas of the house didn't get as much attention as they needed, and the yard definitely suffered. Our "grass" is still more weeds than actual grass, and the beds have been a battle ground between me and these weeds. That is a WHOLE other story though. For another time... yikes.

SO anyway. Having said that, there has still been much progress! I am truly starting to love and appreciate the outside of our house. The couple living here had also made the house wheelchair accessible. The first thing we did was remove all the ramps. The wood was rotting in all of them and I am pretty sure that a colony of black widow spiders was living under one. Seriously. SPIDERS. GIANT BLACK ONES. I didn't look closely, but they were all hanging upside down from their webs. Yeah. No.

Also we found a snake skin under the one in the back yard. Yuck.

Since we moved in we:
-Removed all rotting wood ramps
-Painted shutters and front door (they had used a terrible flat paint that was fading and peeling)
-Switched out all hardware on the doors from brass to oil rubbed bronze finish
-Painted the kick plate on the front door
-Power washed all sides of the house and driveway/walkway/patios and washed windows
-Dug out every previous shrub (more on that in a second)
-Shaped the beds and installed edging
-Planted all new shrubs
-Trimmed trees


You guys, some of this stuff only took a tiny bit of effort but made a huge difference. For instance, just taking time to wash the outside of our windows a couple times a year basically doubled the amount of light we get in our house. I am not exaggerating. All the dirt filtering the light makes a difference.

The door and shutters were red and seriously tired and worn looking. As in, I thought we needed all new. But of course a lovely can of Wythe Blue paint by Ben Moore (mixed in Behr outdoor paint) made all the difference. Here is a far off picture of what we inherited:

I mean. Pretty cute here, too.

And here is a picture I took this week:

I love the door and shutters so much now!

Like I said, the weed battle is still far from over. In fact, I think they are gaining more ground than we are. Especially since a certain 3 year old loves to blow the dandelion seeds.... But it's hard to be mad about that!

The biggest change was digging out all the shrubs. I didn't like any of them and our cottage style ranch was begging for some kind of flower somewhere to bring some more color to the front of the house!

New flowering shrubs add so much color and charm!

The weedy side of the garden... but, progress!

Every plant we added is flowering. If you are going to add shrubs, they might as well flower. That's what I always say. They are also all extremely low maintenance (I made sure because 2 kids doesn't leave a lot of time or patience for fussy plants). We added 3 knockout roses, 2 carpet or mounding roses, and 3 phantom hydrangea plants. Some day I will go into further detail about these plants and what went into the choosing process. It was a lot of research, that's for sure. Ain't nobody got money for replacing dead plants.  

I am working more on these weeds and will do another garden update this summer once the hydrangeas bloom. 

It's easy to become frustrated with the lack of progress in certain areas of the yard, but it's important to look back at where you started and see the progress you did make. It overwhelms me sometimes to think of all we have yet to do, but when I see where we started it inspires me to keep working and putting the effort in that this house deserves. Everything we do adds to our home's curb appeal, which ultimately puts value into the biggest investment we ever made, so it would be silly not to keep going!

Have a great weekend friends!

Things are a little different now!

Hey all! I don't know if anybody will ever see this since it's been silent over here for about oh, something like, 4 YEARS. I love my little blog and I have lately felt a strong desire to return to it. It's a little different now, though!

Since my last post, when my daughter was 1 week old (yikes!) we bought a tiny little ranch style house, went through some crazy ups and downs of life, and had another baby! My son, Bennett, is now older than Lydia was in my last post. Nothing will make life go by faster like having 2 kids!

I still love decorating my home and diy'ing anything I am brave enough to try (or slick enough to talk people into helping me with *wink*).

I figured I would kick this off with some pictures of our house. This is our house as we bought it almost 3 years ago. (I can't believe we have been living here 3 years!) In fact, these are the pictures from the listing that the real estate agent took, which means you will get a look at the lovely furniture of the previous owners.........


Anyway....

Here they are! I will be posting updates about the progress we've made since these pictures were taken, and about the updates we are planning still! We certainly believe in a s-l-o-o-o-w approach when it comes to home improvement, but that is the pace that works best for us, our family, and our budget. Here we go!

Guest/Kids Bath

Back Guest Room (Now Nursery)

Lydia's Room

The Master "Suite" (hahahaha)

The Master Bath

I know what you're asking yourself. The answer is yes. Yes you may pin the above images for inspiration.

Okay, maybe not. BUT hopefully over time my house is becoming a slightly more lovely and happy place to be.

the best thing that ever happened to me.

little miss lydia jane is here. she's 2 weeks old today and i really can't believe that.

here she is 1 day old in the hospital.

 

she was born wednesday, august 22nd at about 3 pm. she weighed 6 lbs 13 oz and she's the most beautiful little baby in the world.

 

 

on thursday, august 16th i went in to my obgyn for my 39 week appointment. i had extremely high blood pressure at 140/100 and protein in my urine (which is apparently really bad). i had also gained 3 lbs in one week, which is also bad and may be a sign of pre-eclampsia. they sent me straight to the hospital for monitoring throughout the day. if my blood pressure remained that high they would have induced me that day. it thankfully went back down a bit so my midwife felt comfortable letting me go home. i had been having issues with blood pressure throughout the second half of my pregnancy, so we decided i would have the weekend to let her get a little bit more ready for life outside, then we would induce labor monday night.

 

we went to the hospital monday evening around 7 pm. they started me on cervidil at about 8 pm. i was only 1 cm dilated and 50% effaced, so they needed to soften my cervix before they could start me on pitocin. i had the cervidil in for 12 hours and it was removed the next morning to start pitocin. i started contracting on my own before pitocin was started, so i was optimistic about the day. throughout the day though i was maxed out on pitocin and my contractions were 2-4 minutes apart, but they weren't intense enough to bring miss lydia out. they were pretty wimpy and i knew it. i was able to talk and laugh with my family all day without any issues, so i had a bad feeling she wasn't coming that day.

 

by 4 pm they stopped the pitocin so i could eat and shower. i wasn't allowed to eat anything while in "labor" so i was actually relieved when they stopped everything. the frustrating part was that even if it wasn't intense, i had been in labor all day and when they checked me i was only 2 cm and 70%. even so, it was nice to stop everything and get a break and prepare for the next, most horrible of experiences.

 

that evening my midwife told me they could do another round of cervidil (which i didn't think would do much so i didn't love that option) or we could use some sort of foley catheter bulb to manually dilate me. she thought that was the best option, so i agreed. this was a mistake. well, in the end it worked and helped me deliver my little girl, but oh. my. gosh. was it horrible. basically they stuck a tube through my cervix, then they inflate it with a solution to artificially dilate me. it wouldn't have been so bad except that my cervix is so high and far back that i thought she was going to push the baby up through my face. it was completely terrible. i had to leave it in all night and it was horribly uncomfortable and kind of painful. not to mention awkward because there were tubes coming out and taped to my leg. it was quite an experience.

 

by morning i got a new midwife. michael. i was surprised at seeing a male midwife, but all i wanted was for him to take the terrible tubes out. when he did that and checked me, i was 6 cm dilated. the only problem is that since it was done manually, there was no guarantee my body would respond with real contractions, even on pitocin. michael decided to break my water in order to help the process, then pitocin was started. that's where it all started to progress super fast.

 

this all happened about 10 am i think. the nurse started me on pitocin and i started feeling contractions. like, real ones. legit make you want to punch people in the face for asking you questions kind of contractions. i knew these were the real deal. they were no joke. i had planned on having an epidural, so when the nurse told me she wanted me to have a "few" regular contractions before calling for the epidural i was a little annoyed. i was particularly annoyed after a "few" turned into a lot and instead of calling for my epidural, the nurse was emptying the trash cans in my room..... um, no. i am told at this point i became kind of a handful. i don't remember much except the pain. apparently i asked the nurse how much longer it would be and she said she was just about to call until my husband asked her a question, which i have been told earned him a death glare from me. i don't recall this, but i totally believe it.

 

after the epidural things got a little fuzzy for me. and everything happened so fast. suddenly i was given a mask for oxygen because the baby was in distress. every time i had a contraction her heart rate would get messed up. i don't really fully understand what was happening because i was sort of in a fog. the nurse was telling my family about the problem instead of telling me. i was confused and in pain and i felt like the mask was kind of a barrier. i know it was necessary, but it didn't allow me to ask any questions or try to figure out what was going on.

 

the nurse started preparing for a c section. she was trying to take blood, calling people and basically running around kind of panicked. then whenever i had a contraction she was glued to the monitor, worrying about the baby. my family all came around to pray that lydia would come out on her own and that we wouldn't need a c section. it was a scary few minutes, and i didn't fully realize how scary. i didn't really care what had to happen though, i just wanted her safe. i was feeling so much fear for her, then suddenly i was in so much pain. i was feeling enormous pressure and pain, and when they checked they realized lydia had come down on her own, i was fully dilated, and i was just about ready to push. they gave her a little more time to see if she'd come down any more on her own so i wouldn't have to push as long.

 

michael came back to deliver her and i swear i love that man. i barely had a chance to talk to him or get to know him at all, but i love him for taking such good care of us. i pushed for about 35 minutes or so, and then she was out!

 

i really can't describe that first moment when i knew she was here in the world. i suddenly just burst into tears because i was so happy and relieved. he set her on my stomach for a minute and she was still kind of yucky and she was a grey-green kind of color, but she was the most beautiful thing i had ever seen. she was wiggling around and i immediately loved her.

 

i needed a lot of stitches and she needed to be cleaned and looked at. apparently when she came out the cord was wrapped around her neck twice. i didn't know that until much later and it makes me cry just thinking about it. phil said they told him that was probably the reason for her distress, but everything was perfect and her apgar score was a 9. the nurse said she was shocked at how quickly things turned around and she was sure i would be having a c section. i know it was because i had so many people praying for me and the Lord was looking out for me and baby Lydia.    

 

the induction was such a long process. i am still not sure if it was the best decision or not. phil thinks it was because if we would have waited longer to go into labor naturally, the cord situation could have gotten even worse. that's what the people at the hospital told him anyway. in the end our beautiful, perfect baby girl was born so i really can't say it was the wrong decision. it was just a very trying and difficult process that maybe could have been avoided if my blood pressure hadn't been so crazy. either way, labor is hard so i'm not sure we'll ever know if there was a "best option". i just thank God for this crazy little munchkin he put in our lives.

 

 

 

 

she is the best thing that has ever happened in my life. i'm so excited to watch her grow and find out the person she is going to become. she truly is a little miracle baby that God has put in our lives and i'm so blessed and thankful that i get to be her mom.