31 Days: Day 3 Pinterest

I am so slow and late to the Pinterest bandwagon, but I have arrived people!

Add one more addictive online social media outlet to my list. But this one has a really useful purpose. We are moving sometime in the next year (loud sigh), god willing, and I need somewhere to put all these thoughts of how I want to decorate. I mean a new house really is just a blank canvas waiting for me to virtually dress it up! I don't know if this counts as created with my own two hands but it definitely takes a creative vision to decorate a house that doesn't exist yet, don't you agree?

So today I am going to focus on the Master Suite of my imagined not yet mine house:

http://pinterest.com/blueleafdecor/dream-master-suite

What do you think? Love it, hate it? Suggestions?

Thanks for the Mention

Thanks for the mention in a recent blogpost by Lark Crafts. It never gets old when someone admires your work enough to write about it and share it with others.


Thank you Lark Crafts and Beth Sweet.

Benefits of Nature

Nothing like a little Mother Nature to inspire you to revamp your basement. And by revamp I mean: gut. And by inspire I mean: flood with water and require you and your husband to break out into hysteria.

All things in my household have taken a back seat due to the unrelenting rain we got here in Central Pennsylvania. The ground was saturated and after a few more storms than it could handle our basement filled up like a soup pot waiting for the dinner bell.

My husband and I scrambled at 10:00 at night with wet-vac and buckets in tow but eventually the battle was lost. The next several days were a blur of ripping up carpet and tearing down drywall. We were left with a completely blank slate and an insurance check. Not necessarily a bad thing!

We installed some faux hardwood flooring that is actually WATERPROOF. No buckling, bending,or mold. It's made from some type of magic rubber. Your basement floods and you just yank it out, let it dry, clean it off, and reinstall. Still some work but none of the cost of new flooring and it looks great!

I painted the walls a slate blue and added wainscotting along the bottom to brighten up the space. We got some new wool area rugs from a bargain store and some new throw pillows for good measure. I finally convinced my husband to rid ourselves of some old school college posters (this was his man-cave before kids) and added some Mediteranean art that I did. I added a houseplant onto one of the small window ledges to give the basement some life.

All in all I like it better than what we started with.

Slate Blue

I am not usually a blue person. I gravitate towards the warmer end of the color palette. In fact, I usually group all cool colors into the category of "the color of institutional bathrooms." Harsh. I know.

But I have had a change of ways. A complete 18o on this thought process. All of a sudden I am dreaming of ways to incorporate more blue into my home. Not just any blue, SLATE BLUE. I don't know what it is about this color, but I am hooked. I am working on some new pillow covers. Just repainted a front entry piece, a coat rack, and some curtains all with variants of this lovely color. Here is a look at my painting project yesterday to repaint the shelf in my front entry (that just happened to be picked up at a yardsale.) Before it was just a typical wooden shelf that I didn't look at twice. Now stunning (in my opinion) just because of the color.

What are your thoughts on slate blue? Check out other frugal but beautiful ideas at The Shabby Nest for Frugal Friday!

Ikea How I Love Thee

When I was a kid, probably around nine years old, I visited Ikea for the first time. I should have realized then my love of interior design and the power it can have over your emotions. I was with my best friend and her mother and somewhere along the way we could not contain our excitement and were scolded by one of the sales people for climbing on the beds.

Thing is, I am now 32 years old and I have the exact same reaction every time I go there. I want to sit in all the chairs, roll on the beds, and touch every piece of fabric. It is usually a blur of adrenaline and overabundance right down to those lovely Swedish meatballs. My husband commented this trip that I am marketing executive's dream come true with all those strategically placed extras: "Oh I need that!..and that!...and that too!"

This trip I did manage to restrain myself a bit and actually stuck to my list, a first for me! I picked up a new mirror for our living room, new curtains for the office and living room, some dish towels, some fabric remnants, and a new houseplant that really belongs to our three year old son. (He is obsessed with them.) Once I get the curtains ironed and hung I can finally take some photos of our "White Out" office/craft room. Then I will promptly start working on my list for the next Ikea trip! Check out some of my purchases: Ekne

Lill