vintage dots

oh yes... two of my favorite things!  I love the vintage, antique, old style look & I love love love polka dots... so here's a brand new kit in the shop vintage polka.dot No. 1!  Go ahead & check it out if you'd like... I hope you'll love it too.

& the layout I created with the kit!!! The photos were all taken in our house of some things that I really love the most: antique chairs {especially the children's ones painted & all chippy}, green Ball jars & buttons {oh yes I have many!}, the curtains in our kitchen {red & cream gingham with old trim} & the old looking hardware I searched for to get just the right look to compliment our off white  painted cabinets & beadboard of our kitchen.  

cool thing too, the old ledgers & note papers that are included in the set were found in some of my grandparent's belongings... I'm so happy to be able to preserve that in a whole new way! 

{robyn}

our dream...

Six years ago Dan & I made one of the scariest, most exciting, amazing decisions of our lives.  While living in a smallish starter home with our boys {at that time Collin was nearly 5 & Evan nearly 2} my sister made us aware of a old farm house that was coming up for auction in a few weeks.  Dan & I had dreamed for years of living in the country & renovating a house into our dream home.  We went to look at the house, but we weren't sure.  The house would take major work.  Paneling covered nearly every wall & door in the downstairs, the upstairs was in bad shape {putting it nicely} with plaster cracking & falling, bad carpet covering painted wood floors... I could go on for months.  Over the next few weeks we went back & forth thinking we loved the setting & the style of the house, but didn't know if we could handle the project with 2 young children.  We went to the auction that day with much excitement & anticipation, as we had decided to bid on the property, but trying not to get our hopes too high, knowing how auctions go. Once bidding began it went so fast & evidently deep down we really wanted this house to be ours!  

Over the next few months we stripped all that paneling off the walls to find more horrible plaster & started making a plan of what to do.  Thank goodness for my wonderful brother, who is an amazing contractor, helped up muddle through all the craziness & put in hours upon hours of work helping us.  We stripped every wall in the house down to the studs, my dad rewired the entire house, we drywalled, put in new wood floors, totally reconfigured the staircase, stripped & refinished existing wood floors, Dan & my brother made all of our trim from bare wood to look like it originally was here all along. All windows & doors were replaced.  My brother made cabinets for our kitchen just like I had been drooling over in a design magazine.  We spent a solid year working days, nights, weekends to get it to the point to move in {although there was still tons to finish}.

In that span of time I went from stay at home mom to working from home freelance designing for Reminisce & finally a full time design position.   We also welcomed a new member to our family in Lydia!  Lydia was born in March, I had gall bladder surgery in August, we moved in with my sister right after that & we jacked up our house to put a new basement under it!  It was such an amazing, stressful time!  I really thought I could kill Dan for wanting to do that at that time with a new baby, but I went with it. Now I'm so glad we have the basement! It's a great place for us all to go & hang out or where the kids can go & run around when the weather isn't good.

Two summers ago we tackled yet another huge project... new roof, new siding, addition to Lydia's room & my favorite... the huge wrap around porch!!! It is our favorite place to be in the warmer months. Truly wonderful...

It's so amazing to me that all the years we've dreamed of what we wanted in a home, that we're slowly, but steadily making it there... to our dream home. We love everything about being here & raising our kids here.  We enjoy finally having a home where we can have friends & family join us & enjoy it here as well. There is still so much to complete, to change, to fix, to paint, to build, to improve, but we're doing it together & we are thankful every day for what we've accomplished so far!

 

figuring out my home office...

so, last thursday, I was super excited to receive a new iMac... 27" of pure lovliness.  I have been working on a macBook pro for the last 3 years, but since we were updating all our software {cs4} for work I needed to update my system.  I love working on my macBook but thought maybe it was time to step it up a notch & I have been craving a permanent workspace where all my "stuff" is at the ready.  I'm hoping this will help me become more organized & efficient... & more clear headed.  Since I don't have a entire room I can dedicate fully to an office space, right now I'm sharing with the dining room. I go back & forth to how furniture should be arranged, whether I should just take over the entire room & make everyone eat in the kitchen, where to put the printer, where to put all my paper & supplies for scrapbooking, etc etc.  I'm sure I'm not the only one with this debacle & I've been drooling over office spaces on sites like houzz, but I guess I just need to get to work & continue to think of my options & what I really need to have in my space.  {you'd think I'd have this figured out by now since I've been working from home forever}... Here's what I'm working with right now:

 

a nice, sorta small wood desk that I picked up at Target a few years back & a cushy office chair that I had picked up the same time {oddly it almost exactly matches our walls that we just painted}.  I really don't mind the size of the desk, but I'd like to have something nearby for my oversized printer {right now it's under the desk on the floor}.  I'd also like to have some nice looking file cabinets, as paper is in every room of our house & not organized at all.  I like that it's next to the window, but there is also one opposite of it & so I either need to add curtains to the space for help with the reflection or move to another area.  

I love these...

http://www.houzz.com/photos/26461/Jen-s-Office-studio---

http://www.houzz.com/photos/42139/Home-Office-Inspiration-traditional-home-office-

http://www.houzz.com/photos/45244/Home-Office-Designs---Home-Office-Decor-----Ballard-Designs-modern-home-office-

http://www.houzz.com/photos/26574/sfgirlbybay-eclectic-home-office-

& those are just a few...  

dining room redo

So I've been wanting to redo our dining room for quite a while.  There was really nothing wrong with it before, but it had really not been finished either.  The paint was looking a little worse for the wear, so that was the first thing on the agenda.  After over a week of struggling with the choices, I settled on a cabin red & coffee colors for the walls.  Dan & my brother Rick made all the woodwork in the house & it's painted a craft white {sort of a creamy off white color}.  We painted 2 walls the red & 2 wall the coffee. I really love the way it turned out!  Definitely a big change from the pale green it was before.  I'm thinking I still am wanting a area rug for under our farmhouse table, but haven't found the right one just yet!  I thought I'd share some peeks around the room..

This is one of our antique chairs that surround our farmhouse table... we were lucky enough to have Dan's parents give us 4 or 5 of them & I've supplemented with some similar ones that I've found at antique stores.  I've got a thing for the bluish-green ball jars too, so I have a load of them.  Seven fit perfectly in the wire basket I've had for several years.  I put some candles in each jar & am using them for a centerpiece.  I think it looks sorta cool on the long table.

The 2 cabinets in the pictures above are ones that I found when we first bought the house when I was going a little antique furniture crazy.  The green one used to have doors on it, but they were difficult to open & close, so I just took them off & use it like a book shelf.  Since the dining room is also my office, this holds some of my work stuff.  The cream one has been in our bedroom for the last several years holding my clothes & tv, but now is holding my printer & lots of work & scrapbook stuff.  Plus I'm loving it because I can display cool stuff in the upper portion.  You see this wall when you walk into the house from our porch.

Above the dining room table I made this collage of yummy scrapbook paper goodness & one of my favorite sayings.  Since it's my office as well, I went a little more boldness.  I wanted it to be a little fun & there are a few little surprises in this one.  A little bit crazy, but I'm really liking it... sort of a mix of my love of vintage, modern, color & pattern all in one!  I'm anxiously awaiting a vintage letter M that I ordered off of Etsy that will go on this wall as well.

Next on the agenda... the living room!

can I share, please?

Is it just me, or does anyone else have sleep deprived nights that start with painting a room & quickly turn into thoughts of "oh, I could do this, or that"?  Well, our house is in constant renovation mode.  The interior was painted when we moved in {well, mostly}.  There were places where the trim wasn't quite done or we painted this & never touched up that {you know, life}.  Over the last few months I'd been thinking it would be nice to try to get the rooms in shape before Dan decides to start a garage project next spring.  We decided to start with the dining room & living room... I think!  Our rooms all our open to each other, so color is a little tricky.  Right now these rooms are a nice shade of pale green, which I like, but I'm thinking of changing it up a little... maybe some red or chocolate colors?

Another thing that is a constant struggle for me is that when we moved in, we had 2 growing boys & of course, since then, we had Lydia, which really shook stuff up!  Before she was born, I had a lovely studio room at the top of the stairs, which is now a super cute room for Lydia.  Since I work from home, that leaves the couch & the dining room table my work spaces & my scrapbook stuff & paperwork crammed here & there throughout the house.  Sooooo,  while obviously sleepless thinking about possibilities, I've come up with some solutions {that may or may not work}.   I'm just rambling here, so bear with me.

I'm thinking, leave the living room pretty much as is, but change the dining room into my full blown office, using our long, skinny farmhouse table as my desk.  Moving the big armoire from our bedroom, which is pretty much being used just for our TV {& junk) into the dining room {aka office} to store my large format printer, paper, scrapbook supplies, etc behind doors.  It's really an awesome piece & it would be visible & put to good use!  Thennnnn, instead of the island that only seats 2 people in the kitchen, move an antique kitchen table that is currently on our porch & use the antique chairs that we use now w/ the farmhouse table.  We have a large kitchen, so the eat in idea would totally work, just would take some adjustment.  

We have a multitude of things we want to accomplish around the inside of the house while the weather is not so nice outside.  On our list... finally finishing our bedroom {complete w/ furniture & finished closets would be nice!}, adding a few more cabinets to the kitchen, more touching up on painting, moving the laundry area to the basement so we can use the area it is in for a large {much needed} pantry & maybe, just maybe, we'll get some doorknobs on our bedroom doors!

ahhh, thank for letting me get that out of my head!