spaghetti dinner, year 14

This weekend was the Fourteenth Annual (My Maiden Name Here) Spaghetti Dinner.  For fourteen years now, all of the women in my family get together and have my Aunt P's spaghetti sauce, which is delicious.

Its a lovely time to stuff ourselves and sit around and chat with family.

Its also a fun time to do jumping jacks with Aunt P!

Or you could play with Denise.

These two crack me up.

Can't wait till next year!

sconces around mirror

I've been contemplating putting sconces on either side of my dining room mirror.

I'm not really a fan of plug-in sconces, with the wires hanging down, so that sort of limits things.  We're also in a rental, so I'm not really wanting to hardwire sconces in.  I'm not even wedded to the idea that sconces would have to be lighting--they could be purely decorative, or candle sconces.  I'd also like something....interesting.

This would qualify as interesting.

I love these wheat sconces in Candace Bushnell's house:

image via Dear Designer

A pineapple sconce would be cool:

This bubble crystal sconce is gorgeous, but a bit out of my price range:

This gorgeous Ravenna sconce from Ballard:

Vintage tole flowers:

Palm fronds:

This brass duck head is my favorite.  If there were two, I would get them. But there's only one.

picture ledges in dining room

Remember my post about how I loved the picture ledges in India Hicks's dining room?

The day before I posted that, my grandmother put up picture ledges in her dining room. Great minds think alike! I saw it for the first time on Easter--doesn't it look fantastic? Its mostly pictures of all the grandkids (and great-grandkids---see some familiar faces in the top left corner?).

I can't wait to do this.  I must get a new house immediately.

upholstered bed

If you read Little Green Notebook today, then you saw this featured DIY upholstered bed from Jen at Organized Design.

image via Little Green Notebook

I have been stalking craigslist for a pair of matching twin headboards  for the boys for months, figuring I would paint them, but I haven't seen any that I've liked.  This, however, seems pretty cool. I already have one Ikea bed and I think I could adapt this design.

The bedroom looks like this, and the bedding is a turquoise/navy/green/orange mix:

I'm thinking that a navy blue and white simple graphic would be nice for the boys' beds.  Ideally I'd like a white background with a navy pattern, but I haven't found much like that.  I'm considering these fabrics:

Vertical Stripe White/Navy

P. Kaufman Slick Navy

Mill Creek Oskar Sea

Dwell Studio Bella Porte Twilight

With the exception of the plain stripe, all of the patterns seem kind of busy paired with the bedding.

I love this one (I have a lampshade in a yellow/white colorway), but I wish it were reversed, so that the background was white and the trellis was blue:

Cadence Deep Blue

Or I could do a slightly larger scale chevron, but in turquoise:

Zippy True Turquoise

If anyone has run across a navy chevron, let me know, please.

And then the outlier:

Chipper Chartreuse

I love the Chipper pattern, but it doesn't come in navy, and there's already so much green in the room.

And, if I wanted to get REALLY CRAZY, because you know, I haven't learned my lesson that crafty stuff rarely works out in my favor, I could simply upholster the headboard in a plain dropcloth and paint the pattern on in navy, like this.

We all know how successful my painted shower curtains were.  Decisions, decisions.

coral rooms

One of the fun things about Pinterest is that I've started to see patterns and similarities in pictures I'm pinning.  I seem to be pinning record numbers of coral rooms. (Aqua is also a front runner.)

image via Design Seeds

Image via lonny

image via Shannon Berry Design

image via Aesthetic Oiseau

image via The Lenoxx

image via Little Green Notebook

image via My Favorite and My Best

image via Odi et Amo

I love love love this door.  Am sort of indifferent to the foyer behind it.

My one complaint about Pinterest is that they don't seem to have enough servers for the amount of traffic they have.  I have difficulty getting on the site at peak traffic hours.  

animal doorknockers

Recently I was searching for lion head ring pulls for my black sideboard.  I have yet to find ones in the size I want for a price I want to pay (well, I found them here, but they are sold out.)  However, when looking for large lion head ring pulls, what comes up most often is lion head doorknockers.  I was discussing this with my sister, and it turns out she was looking for a doorknocker, and that set me off on a foray into animal doorknocker-land.  There are some totally awesome doorknockers out there, did you know that?  

Like this lion head:

a federal eagle:

 this dragonfly:

or a horse:

or this bird

a giraffe:

or a fish:

Bailey at Peppermint Bliss used this Anthropologie fox knocker and turned it into this:

How about this awesome eagle on a door? 

image via Holly Mathis Interiors

I'm dreaming of the day we have a house of our own and can paint the front door a vibrant color and put up a cool doorknocker.  

shower curtain FAIL

Bryn's mention of my new rug is blowing up my little corner of the internet---those of you dropping by from Bryn's blog, welcome.  My friend Marisa has told me I should post something new and witty for all of you stopping by, but I don't perform well under pressure and now I have stage fright, so you'll just have to read about my shower curtains instead.

The Mister's bathroom is on my list of projects to do this year.  I've had a few ideas, but the Mister's bathroom is putting up a good fight.

After the Mister put his foot down on a pink bathroom, I decided to keep the yellow walls and turned my attention to yellow and gray shower curtains.  Of which there are none in the whole wide world.

So, I decided to make my own.  How hard could it be?  (Hear the foreshadowing? Dun dun dun....)

First fail:
I will paint a chevron pattern on a full size bedsheet from Walmart!  All I have to do is make buttonholes for the curtain hooks, and hem the bottom of the sheet.

One problem....when I said I had learned to sew, I should have written down how to thread the machine.  Numerous tutorials on YouTube later, I am still unable to thread the machine.
(Cost so far: $8 for one full size flat sheet, $12 for fabric paint and brushes.)

Not giving up!  I will paint a plain white shower curtain!

Second fail:
I find a plain white cotton fabric (not polyester or pvc--harder to find than one might think) shower curtain at Target.  Its a waffle weave, which I'm afraid might be hard to tape off, but I will try.

Have I mentioned that math is not my friend?

I fold the shower curtain in half and get a center line.  From there....uh....I bet there's math involved!  Eff it!  I will just free hand some chevrons.

One row later.....that doesn't look very even.  And how am I going to evenly tape off seven more rows?  Ok, lets have some cookies and put that back in the closet for a while.

A few days later....my sister (who does math-y crap for a living) comes to visit. I make her do the math.  She figures out that I need to put in a chevron every 11.84 inches, both vertically and horizontally, with one at 11.something else.

I stare blankly at her.

She says, "have you considered maybe just buying that $90 shower curtain you liked so much?"

I put the shower curtain back in the closet for a while.

(Cost so far, $14.99 for a white shower curtain, $8 for tape, $20 for two gray bath mats plus a few hours of my life I will never get back. )

Third fail:
I am at Target yet again (I live there), when I see this shower curtain, which was not at this particular Target the last four times I have been to this Target and looked for this particular shower curtain.  Woot woot!

I hang this shower curtain.  While I like the design (very David Hicks--am I the only who thinks that Target has a bunch of design bloggers on the payroll?), the color does not work with the yellow walls.  The curtain is a strong deep yellow, while the walls are a creamy yellow with unfortunate peach undertones.

The other thing that doesn't work is the curtain rod.  It breaks as I attempt to hang it.  (The above picture is my mother in law holding it up--see her hands?)

(Cost: $14.99 for shower curtain, $18 for two yellow diamond bathmats, and now I have to go buy a curtain rod.)

So!  So far I have spent $95.98, and yet have nothing but a shower my husband can't use until I buy a new curtain rod.  The bathroom wins this round, but I'll be back.  Preferably with an idea that doesn't involve me making my own shower curtain.

my new rug!

My rug is here!

Please pay no attention to the mess behind the sofa....just feast your eyes on the rug.  

Peter, as usual, said "oh, how BEAUTIFUL!!!"  Gotta love that kid.

How awesome is Bryn for picking this out?  As soon as I looked at the selection she sent I knew this was the one.  I am a teensy bit wishing I had bought the 8x10 size, because that would be even MORE AWESOME.

Clearly I need a new coffee table now.