New curvy tufted headboard

The last three houses we have lived in, my bed has always ended up on a wall under an off-center window.  I have dreamed for years of having a tall, curvy, upholstered headboard, but since my bed has always been under a window, I have instead stuck to low, open headboards in front of window treatments designed to fool the eye into thinking that the window is centered.  (You can see our last bedroom here, and the bedroom before that here.)

In this house, however, my bed is up against a solid wall without a window.  Huzzah!  Good things come to those who wait a really long time.

A few weeks ago I was browsing craigslist, looking for an ottoman, when I came across a beautiful black, curvy, tufted headboard with nailhead trim.  It was already sold, but there was a tumblr site in the ad, and it turns out you could order a new headboard in a few different shapes and sizes, and in nearly any color you want.

Look what showed up yesterday:

It hangs on the wall with two D-rings and picture hanging hooks:

I am really happy with this headboard. It was made by Chrissy of Love Shack Designs, and if you are local to LA  or San Diego you should totally check out her website; she has a number of cool designs and was so easy to work with. I would love to get Princess a headboard like this when she's ready for a big girl bed.

This room is still a work in progress, but its coming along.

Color My World week 2: decor item

This week I'm using my pink and orange combo in a decor item.  I found a rug at HomeGoods that I loved on sight, and was the inspiration for the color challenge.

The rug was 96 inches long, and was a bit too long for the space.  I cut it down so that it fit just inside the room, and hot glued the edges under.

There was a big piece of rug left over....this seems like it could be a wall decor item, doesn't it?  I think it will go on the wall over the towel rack, once I figure out if I should frame it or mount it.

Next week I'll be using pink and orange paint.  Nothing like an orange toilet to perk up a room.

I forgot to mention last week that at the end of this challenge there will be a linky party where you can show everyone how you added color to your room!

Check out these other wonderful bloggers and their color choices:

Ange - The Blooming Hydrangea
Anna - A Newfound Treasure
Carmel - Our 5th House
Cassie - Primitive and Proper
Jadyn - Dutch.British.Love
Jessamie - Bird and Branch Redesign
Julia - Black Tag Diaries
Julia - Pawley's Island Posh
Kristy - Hyphen Interiors
Lisa - Shine Your Light

Maury - Life on Mars

Shaunna - Perfectly Imperfect
Shelley - Crazy Wonderful
Suzy - Saved by Suzy
Tiffany - Living Savvy
Tiffany - Worthwhile Domicile
Vashti & Jamie - Like me Some...

covering the high window

There will be lots of flash photography in this post.

The high window in the dining room, while contributing to the light and airy feel on our first floor, lets in just a bit too much light.  The light streaming into the dining room bounces off the glass table top from about 10 am to 3 pm, searing our retinas with the glare.

that window up there on the right corner

My requirements for this project that it be extremely cheap, and that it not put any more holes in the wall.  Although I am not exactly following the terms of my lease and the "no screws in the wall" clause (ahem), I am trying to keep the holes to a minimum.

My budget for this project was $5.  I immediately blew the budget by renting a ten foot ladder, which cost $22 for twenty-four hours from Home Depot.  In order to get the ladder home on top of my minivan, I had to buy racheting tie-downs, which cost $17.  (Bungees were not strong enough to hold the ladder securely to the top of the car.)

First up, we tried a tension rod (another $1.97!) with a curtain we already owned.

I did not like this at all.  I didn't expect to, honestly, because I knew that the tension rod wouldn't work with the angled part of the window.  That small open strip still let light in onto the table.  Plus it looked stupid.

I brought that down, hunted around for some spray glue, and raided the garage until I found a sheer curtain from Ikea that used to reside in our living room two houses ago.  I was loath to cut up this curtain, because Ikea doesn't make this pattern anymore.  However, since I was already so far over budget, I decided to suck it up and use what I had.

I measured the window and cut the fabric to the appropriate measurements.  I sprayed the back of the fabric with glue, then started smoothing the fabric out with my hands.  This is sort of like putting contact paper down--you will always get bubbles.  I kept pulling up, respraying, and smoothing out the bubbles.  By the end of ten minutes my hands were covered in glue, much like in second grade when you smear Elmer's all over your hand and peel it off like a second skin.  Good thing I wasn't lighting matches.

And the finished product:

The fabric is very sheer, so while it blocks the direct, glaring sunlight, it still lets in a fair amount of light.

Petrie sofa, finally

My sofa arrived for the third time this morning.

And for the third time, there was some small damage to the upholstery behind the cushions.  I guess Crate and Barrel is incapable of making a sofa without some defect in it.  We are keeping the sofa, however, because the damage spot is small and in an inconspicuous place, and we need a place to sit.  Crate and Barrel is still going to get an earful.

Looks pretty from afar, doesn't it?  

temporary; recycling queen, meeting people

We are acclimating to living in California. (Not that southern California is so hard to acclimate to.)  Our town is a pleasant place to live; pleasant weather, pretty surroundings, and strip mall after strip mall after strip mall after strip mall.  You can't go more than twenty feet without hitting another strip mall, and remarkably, most of the retail space in each strip mall is fully rented; there are few empty storefronts.  There are three Targets within 2 miles of my house.

Regardless, I still have this feeling of....unreality...about living here.  Like I don't really LIVE here, I'm just here visiting with all my stuff, in a really messy house.  I live here, but its not home.  It feels temporary.  I once worked with a colleague who relocated from California to New Jersey, but her partner stayed behind in California for work.  She had lived in New Jersey for two years, and mentioned how she just didn't feel that she had moved to NJ, that she was still a California resident.  I thought that was weird at the time--you live someplace for two years and you haven't moved there?--but now I understand exactly how she felt.  I don't have that feeling of here is my home.  On the other hand, I've only been here two weeks.

It looks different here.  I've lived most of my life in suburban New Jersey.  As an adult nearly all the towns I lived in had a New England-ish feel to them, with homes dating to the 1600s and large housing stock of older homes.  Clapboard housing and lots of deciduous trees.

Here....there are palm trees.  I don't know why this freaks me out so much, but it does.  The sky feels bigger. The roads are bigger.  "Little" main roads in our town are THREE LANES WIDE in each direction. My entire town seems to be row after row of builder-grade stucco kinda-Mediterranean style homes and apartment complexes.

I always get a jolt of surprise when I go out of our development and get a full glimpse of the landscape.  There are mountains to the right and mountains to the left.  Big mountains.  Snow-capped mountains.  It looks exactly what I think New Mexico should look like.  I'm living in the West!  And I am weirded out by that.

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I have become an avid recycler in less than two weeks.  I now recycle every conceivable thing in my kitchen that I can. Why, you ask?

Well, when I lived in NJ (yes, shut up, Lisa, you used to live in NJ! WE KNOW! I've become that old guy who tells the same three war stories about his time in Korea), I lived in towns where the municipalities provided trash services, and you did not have to pay a monthly fee for it.  Then, last year we moved to Westfield, and had to pay for trash service from La Cosa Nostra a private company.  There were four trash companies to choose from, and the cost was about $45 a month.  They would even pick it up from the back of the house, I didn't have to take the trash cans out to the curb.

Flash forward to two weeks ago, when we moved in, and I had hundreds of cardboard boxes and dozens of trash bags of packing paper.

My new town does not provide sanitation services.  Trash here is also provided by a private company.  ONE private company.  This company charges $11 per month to pick up my trash.  Not terribly expensive. However, I do not have the choice to take my business elsewhere if I don't want to use them.

This trash company will pick up ONE trash can full of trash. (And one full of recycling.)

ONE TRASH CAN.

The garbage truck is automated.  There is one guy who drives the truck.  He pulls up along side the curb, where I have placed my dainty, petite trash can (with the appropriately color-coded top) handle side out according to the very explicit rules, two pincers come out of the garbage truck and grab my trash can, and it is upended into the top of the garbage truck.  If I leave additional trash on the curb, a) the HOA lady will come tell me off, and 2) the garbage truck will drive away, leaving those bags on the curb.  No extra trash allowed! That garbageman doesn't get out of the cab for garbage!

If you load up your minivan with your extra trash and take it to the dump yourself, the dump will charge you $50 to throw it away.

Accordingly, I have become that woman yelling shrilly at her family "what's wrong with you people WE RECYCLE get that milk carton out of the trash!!!! Have you no shame? Be a good steward of the earth!!!"

It may have cost me more money to have Uncle Junior pick up my trash but he took whatever I put out and didn't give me an attitude about it.

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Have you moved every 18 months for the last ten years?  If yes, how do you go about making the new place feel like home?  Tips for meeting your neighbors when you have never ever seen a single person alive in your development? (Zombies live here.) The guy across the street has the General Lee up on blocks in his driveway, but aside from knocking on his door and professing our shared love of the Dukes of Hazard, I haven't met too many people here.

Color My World week 1: inspiration

I'm joining a group of wonderful bloggers in a color challenge called Color My World.  The idea is to use a new color in my house.  I'm going to be using pink.  And orange.  Together!

I know, I'm supposed to use a color I haven't used before.  Except have you seen my house? Its kind of a rainbow already (green, navy, teal, aqua, coral, cobalt blue, yellow, orange, hot pink, light pink, red, charcoal, beige....).  The only colors I haven't used so far are light gray and purple, and that's because I don't particularly like those colors, so....pink and orange it is!  I think this should count, even though I have pink in my daughter's room and orange in the boys room and the bathroom. My long time readers might remember that I tried to do my daughter's room in pink and orange last year but it failed and then morphed into pink and brown and green so really, this is my second attempt at pink and orange.  This time it will work.  I hope.

I'm going to be decorating my powder room on the first floor.  Its off the foyer, in a little hallway that contains the garage entrance and the coat closet.  I envision it as being a little jewel box of color that surprises you when you open the door.  Sadly, since I am renting, I won't be painting the room pink or orange, but will be working with the cream colored paint and builder-grade vanity that is already there.

Here are some pink and orange inspiration pictures to get us started:

via Caitlin Creer

via Caitlin Creer

via

via

L'orange for the win!

Check out these other participating blogs for some more color inspiration.

Ange - The Blooming Hydrangea
Anna - A Newfound Treasure
Carmel - Our 5th House
Cassie - Primitive and Proper
Jadyn - Dutch.British.Love
Jessamie - Bird and Branch Redesign
Julia - Black Tag Diaries
Julia - Pawley's Island Posh
Kristy - Hyphen Interiors
Lisa - Shine Your Light
Lisa - Trapped in North Jersey
Maury - Life on Mars
Shaunna - Perfectly Imperfect
Shelley - Crazy Wonderful
Suzy - Saved by Suzy
Tiffany - Living Savvy
Tiffany - Worthwhile Domicile
Vashti & Jamie - Like me Some...

Ikea Janette curtains for the dining room

This weekend the Mister was a curtain-hanging machine--he put up curtains in all the bedrooms, which makes me so happy.  There is very little architectural detail in this house--there is no molding on the windows or doors, and every window has ugly vertical blinds.  Curtains cover up the ugliness.

Since we were on a curtain roll, I decided to put up the blue Ikea Stockholm Blad curtains that I discussed in this post.  We went to Ikea, I put the blue curtains in my cart....and then my eye fell on these Janette beauties.

Stop the presses--navy blue, teal, aqua and a citron green curtain?  That incorporates all of the colors I need to work with in the playroom?  And even has teal and aqua like the living room, which the dining room is open to??  And they are less than half the price of the curtains I was originally getting?  I could get six panels of the Janette for just $75, or two panels of the Stockholm Blad for $60?  SIGN ME UP.

Another super exciting development is that Ikea has curtain hardware for going continuously around corners:

That is a flexible piece of silicone that you bend to fit around the corner, and screw in to the curtain rod on either side.  This allows you to hang curtains in the corner.  I can't find the curtain rod online, but it came in regular and extra long sizes (up to 154 inches, which is the one we used).  I bought two extra long rods, five brackets, two finials, and one bendy corner piece, for about $45.  That is ridonkulously cheap.

And here we are with my beautiful new curtains:

Here is the corner:

The sliding door in the playroom remains to be dealt with, as does the high window in the dining room.  I have ideas for both.  The sliding door in the playroom will probably get a valance or a cornice board in a navy ikat fabric.  I may try to glue some sheer fabric to the high window, like I did with the china cabinet in our old house.  However, I need a ladder to deal with that window, which I don't have.  I have zero desire to spend $100+ on a ladder, so I am suffering with the blinding sun glare on the glass tabletop for the moment.

Its coming along nicely, isn't it?