I feel it in my fingers...I feel it in my toes!

Christmas is all around us, it's everywhere I go!
So goes the words of the song in "Love Actually," so goes my life as of now.

IT'S CHRISTMAS SEASON!!!!

And, to celebrate the Christmas season, a post.  Which I write while sipping a Tom and Jerry.  Mmmmm.

Here is Casa pv a la Christmas.  I've finally kind of gotten things to a point where I sort of like them upstairs (hangups:  carpet, dining room set, trim, finish on the buffet, upholstery on the Daytons chairs, fix the crooked little chandalier in the dining room...), so I'm ready to showcase!

Let's start with a sweet B&W shot of my Christmas tree, shall we?

Next, let's get a look at some of the rest of the room...we're kind of going with a blue-white-silver-gray thing.  Forgoing the traditional red and white Christmas colors for a bit of cool flair.  I'm leaving a little bit of red (tray on the table, tree skirt, kitchen decorations) and orange (throw, pillow) in there for some variation and a little extra color (gray walls aren't exactly bright and cheerful all the time).  I kinda like what I'm seeing here.

Hmm...all kind of looks better in black and white.  Ha.  Note the Halloween mug on the left.  Full of the Christmas Tom and Jerry previously mentioned.  Also note the shabbily-covered aforementioned Dayton's chairs.  Upcoming (within the next week...) project.  Just you stay tuned!

Here's the dining room.  Note the fantastic Christmas jungle in the background.  I *might* have to find a place to put a couple of them, other than in a group...  Opposite side of the room - my Nana's old dresser (repurposed as a buffet), some shelves, and a whole lotta decorations.

DangE  There's that Christmas T&J mug again...admittedly not very Christmasy, but I didn't want to completely change the entire set up.  And, just because it's sexy and awesome, a shot in vintage B&W.

Just one more quik little item of interest...picked up this little baby in Rothenburg, GE on a recent trip with my favorite gals - Mom and Seester.  Just have to show it off.  It matches the one I got my best girl Cablanch.  Matchy Christmas gnomes!

How cute is that little bugger????  Nothing like a tiny little Christmas gnome to make you smile at the end of a post.  I know I'm smiling.  Probably a combination of the gnome and the ending of "Love Actually," but I'll take it either way.

(note:  yes, I DO realize how often I used the word "Christmas" in this post...on purpose, naturally.)

Ummm...

I don't want to say that I love Martha again, or AGAIN rave about her awesomeness, but I'm going to say this.  During the Kitchen Cure thing that I'm failing miserably at doing, they had an article about the uber-organized kitchen drawers of a certain woman whose monogrammed-on-everything initials are "MS."

My jealousy-meter is off the charts.  Not because she has, like, FIVE citrus reamers, but because there's a place (and ROOM!!!) for everything in her kitchen.  Some examples:

Hello, three sets of measuring cups and two sets of measuring spoons.  WANT.  And I love how the towels are all rolled up like that!  I've got mine folded and neatly stacked according to what kind (dishrag, flour sack, decorative, etc) of towel it is, but this is pretty genius.  Talk about easily-accessible!  I'm also at least mildly jealous of the sheer number of kitchen scissors (yes, I was going to put "sheers" but changed my mind...) the woman has.  Our one pair perennially seems to be either dirty or in the dishwasher, getting cleaned.  As for the second pic...well, I just really want one of those rolling pins.  I do also like how everything is stored in those smaller containers - either by item type or by similar uses.

Favorite thing about the pic on the far left?  FOURTEEN THOUSAND WOODEN PICKS!  Dang, lady.  I like the organization system of the right three pictures.  Especially the lightbulbs thing.  I need to have a place like that for my lightbulbs.  Currently, they're all floating around in their boxes in a giant Cub box that we moved with.  Not very convenient (I'm putting that down as the reason why we have FOUR burnt-out lights in our entryway chandelier...).  The one thing I don't like?  The cup full of unsecured pills.  Maybe it's just because my stupid dog ate a couple of Ibuprofen back in the day that weren't put away in a shelf and I've thus become paranoid.  Maybe it's because I wanna have kids someday, and the motherly instincts that are currently laying low know that's a bad idea.  Maybe it's just because I cringe at the thought of an unknown number of possibly-dirty fingers digging around in there - not to mention all the fuzz and other debris that could get stuck to the pills.  Gross.  Whatever the reason, bad Martha lady whose name starts with "M."  Put those away.

The takeaway to this article, of course, is that I'm going to start going on a thirft store hunt for little "stuff" holsters for my house. Maybe I'll take the plunge and consider splurging on something from The Container Store or whatever. For right now, though, it's back to the Kitchen Cure, and completing weeks 2 and 3. :)

I. Love. Martha!!!

In an effort to avoid doing anything more on the Kitchen Cure (side note:  The majority of the fridge has been cleaned out, and it looks lovely so far!  Pics tomorrow, once it's all done...), I've been looking at the latest Martha Stewart mag, which lead me to Martha's website.

It's official.  I love this woman.  Or, the people who come up with all the ideas - whichever.

I'm currently lusting over this puppy:

It's not necessarily the items in the display, or even the color of it - so much as the "duh" of using a series of slim-profile boxes to create a moveable and unique shelving system.  I've got an area upstairs that I have no idea what to do with.  It's at the top of the stairs, so we can't have anything too big or bulky.  Previously, we had a small table there, but that just wasn't working.  It wasn't what I was looking for.  Something like this could be awesome.  Filled with pet-friendly items (as it will be on the floor-level), I can see it as a great place to plop seasonal items, much like the original picture shows.

Imagine it here:

Note my amazing Paint skilz.

I'm thinking something like this on the one side, and then perhaps a similar design on the other side of the doorway?  Too much symmetry?  Maybe.  In case you didn't know, the two farthest left rectangles represent already-present art.  The one above the proposed shelves represents something - probably in the form of a long, thin mirror - to take up more of the space on that wall.  It's a tall wall with the vault, and definitely needs something higher up.

I'm also considering the option of taking this design idea to the proposed built-in bookshelves opposite the hall doorway.

Ooohhhhhh, the possibilities!  Thank you, Martha!

Cure this!

So, I've signed up for the Kitchen Cure from Apartment Therapy's The Kitchn.  Because it needs to happen.  I've been staring at the cabinets and fridge/freezer for at least a good six months (let's be honest, it's probably been a year and a half...), thinking "there's got to be a better way."  Truth is, we don't have a very functional kitchen.  I've whined 14,000 times about how the thing is so Builder's Special, but the fact of the matter is - it's true.  There's barely anything that makes it unique and uber-functional.  The desk is great, but honestly that's the only part that I find to be really useful.  The island isn't perfect; there's no concealed location for garbage except under the sink; the cabinets aren't functional.

The first part of The Cure is cleaning out the fridge, freezer, and pantry.  Rockin'.  The good news is that we kind of went through the fridge a couple of weeks ago (though you wouldn't know it, by looking at this pic:

Dios Mio.  Okay, so the crispers below aren't all that full.  That's one bonus.  BUT, we found SIX JARS OF PICKLES.  Who needs six jars of pickles?!  Yeah.  THe bad news is that they can't even all be combined, since they're not the same - some Milwaukee's Midgets, some Gedney spicy something, etc, etc.  Six.  Plus, all those containers of leftovers don't help the situation.  I'm actually kind of stoked to go through the fridge again.  And BEYOND pumped to go through the freezer.  That thing's been needing help for a while now.  I'm happy to be giving it.
It's the pantry I'm more concerned about.  *sigh*  This is so very, very humbling, but here are the two halves (upper and lower) of the pantry.  I couldn't even tell you honestly what's in there, or where it might be located.  So sad.

See what I mean about it needing help?  Eek.  Pretty excited to get going.  :)  I wonder what will be next?!  I'm betting spice cabinets...  CAN'T WAIT!

Helloooooo, neglected blog!

Um...it's been a while.

We've painted the basement, I've finished the side table (the coffee table is almost done!!), and I've gone on a two-week siesta in Europe!  So, I've been busy for the last month.  Poor little blog has been a smidge neglected as a result - sorry to my two loyal readers.  :)

SO.  To the painting.  Let's go with the basement.  Ease back into this slowly, you know.

Here is what the basement previously looked like (as a refresher, in case you forgot, like I have already!):

(Note:  this is the former owners' decorating while the house was being sold...)

And now, TA-DA!!!!!!
(Warning:  This shots are action shots - taken while we were still painting/waiting for the paint to dry.  Until the basement is lovely and styled and decorated, I'm so not putting those pics online)

Primed!  Who knew only one coat would cover all that red!!??

The smaller side of the room - plus cat.  We went with a darker shade for the smaller side of the room.  It's SW Grandview.  We ended up having to paint two coats - the one coat over the primer just didn't do it for us - not sure why, but this was the first time we've ever had to paint two coats - and only on this side of the room.  Weird.

AND

(Hello, brother!)  This is truly the only picture I have of this side of the room - weird.  It's SW Spearmint.  Love, love, LOVE this color.  It's fantastic, and I can't get enough of it.  We painted the majority of the room in this color.  Someday, when we have a bookshelf on the only wall in the family room big enough for it, I think we'll probably paint the back of the shelves in the Grandview to tie it all in together.

So, there you have it.  We scrapped the lighter up/darker down idea, and just decided to do each part of the room in a different color (good call, Donnie Vendetta!).  It kind of delineates the two parts of the room.  The lighter side is going to be the TV/book area, and the darker area is going to be a game room/bar kind of zone.  Just you wait and see what we have coming down the pipeline...

Finishing touches - painted walls!

While avoiding doing laundry, I've been looking through some of my favorite design blogs today.  I've found lots of inspirational pics.  Since we finished painting upstairs and in the family room, my mind has made the shift from "what color paint should we use" to "let's decorate these blank walls!"  I like this shift in mind-set.  :)  So, here are some things that I've found.

Things I love about this pic:  that big wall shelf system.  It's got a kind of mid-century mod thing happening - it looks like it could easily flow back in time to "Mad Men's" Pete Campbell's home.  We've got one big wall in the family room that needs something there, and a series of shelves like this could be it.  Or a combination of shelves and pictures, perhaps?

This dining room is just yummy.  Of course, it's probably because I'm a fan of all things clear acrylic and dark wood.  But I really like it for the airiness of the room.  It evokes a feeling of calm and openness.  This is a room that I can imagine having brunches with the family or reading a book over a cup of coffee - all in my sweats.  It's comfortable and friendly, yet with just the right amount of elegance to keep it from being totally casual.  I guess one could say that this is the feeling I'd love my whole house to look like.

This picture makes me appreciate the impact of a large piece of art in a large room.  While a really large piece of artwork isn't really what the basement space needs, we could easily work it into the decor of the living and dining room area.  We have a (roughly) 3'x4' canvas over the living room couch, but nothing for the large dining room wall.  I may have to look into the option of echoing that larger piece of art with another one on the opposite wall.  Stay tuned, I suppose!

Green Machine

Well, the family room has gone from red to green.  My sister in law said that we should have left one wall red for Christmas.  :)  I think I'll skip it this time around.

It's not exactly the tranquil light green that I was hoping for, but I still like it.  We decided to go with two shades of green, rather than just one for the whole space.  The family room is pretty large - there's easily enough space on the one side for another bedroom - so we were thinking that the entire thing painted one color could be overwhelming.  Plus, we really couldn't decide on just one color.  Thankfully, my genius big brother Donnie Vendetta suggested painting the two spaces a different color.  Brilliant.  TV room on one side, and, I don't know - game room or something else similar on the other side.  Maybe a bari-ish area?  I'm not certain what's going to go over there, but I know one thing - I heart the green!!

Before, lovely red:

We took this pic on the first trip through when we visited (and also knew that we were totally going to buy the thing!).

And after.  Unfinished, as you can see!:

That would be brother mine, paiting the lighter green side.

That would be PePe the cat in the window on the darker (potential bar/game room/something else) side.

Here's a combination of the two colors.  They're lovely.  Like I said, a little bit more intense (they both dried darker than they look here - naturally) than I was looking for, but I do like them mucho.  I just can't wait to do the decorating!  I see lots of black and white in my future...

OH, and one other little thing - this is my 50th blog (48th actual post, I believe?)!!!

Bedroom!

No, not ours.  I have a feeling that's going to be the last room "finished" in the house...first room painted, last room finished.  Naturally.

This is about the upstairs guest room.  When we bought Casa del pv, it looked like this:

Yeah.  My *personal* favorite feature was the wallpaper border.  Why?  Because A) it had FISH on it, and B) it was VINYL.  As in, the wallpaper border you put in your bathroom because it's water resistant.  Ever try to remove one of those borders?  It ain't pretty.  The vinyl top layer peels off pretty easily.  The bottom, sticky part does. not. budge.  I was pretty sure I could even hear it singing "We shall Overcome" with its little fibers all linked.  We ended up having to go to our trusty neighborhood Sherwin-Williams and get a wallpaper remover product (and then got asked by the nice fella behind the counter "How'd that Dif work for ya?" every time we came in over the next 8 months...).  The Dif worked a miracle, in case you were wondering.  Spray it on, wait some time, scrape it off.  It did leave a slight neon blue stain on the walls where it had been accidentally sprayed, which we just primed over once it was wiped and dry.  Wallpaper gone, it was time to paint.

We were looking to the future with this room.  We knew that we were going to plan to have kids probably at SOME point while in this house (settle down, sister...).  So, this room needed to look good as a guest room now, and make a successful transition to a nursery later.  Naturally, we went with deep chocolate brown.  That's a kid's color, right?  :)  We figured that we'd be able to add gender-specific details later that would look fantastic - a bold pink for a girl, a sharp turquoise for a boy.

But for now, it needed to function as a place where guests would feel comfortable.  So, it went from above (yikes) to below:

There are still things to do (art on the walls, for example...), but I think it's quite the improvement.  But then, I'm biased.  :)

Thanks, YHL!

So, while touring my favorite little blog, Young House Love, I found a neat little article about LA lady Nancy Meyers.  She's had her hands on some great rom-coms, ranging from "Father of the Bride" to the more recent "It's Complicated."  YHL was showcasing some of the great sets from her movies, and I had to stop at the first one!

I'm sure from past blogs, you've come to realize that I'm not much of a "shabby chic" or "country" or even "seaside cottage" kind of girl.  So, it's not necessarily the house that I'm interested in.

Look to the front left.  That's not a...is it?  YES, it IS a drum!!!  As a SIDE TABLE!  Yeah.  This is going in my house.  Once I get back from my much-anticipated European Domination Tour (round 1), this is going to be the first thing on my list.  I'm ideally looking for one that is older, used.  Something maybe with an old school or band logo on it?  Probably something in the red, orange, or even yellow color family.  Preferably with glitter.  So, keep your eyes peeled, world.

I feel now that I have to also note the awesome bench-turned-coffee table as well.  I love the color, and the fabric.  Sumptuous!  I could handle having that in my living room, or maybe even a screen porch (it would live in the downstairs entryway during the winter).  More and more, I'm coming to like the concept of something cushy as the coffee table, with a couple of trays as hard surfaces.  People are going to put their feet up on your coffee table anyway; you might as well make them comfortable doing it!  :)

One down, two to go...

That's painting projects.  Okay, wait.  Let me be more specific.  That's ROOM painting projects.  We got the dining/living/hall/entry done this weekend.  Thanks to my AWESOME in laws, it was a breeze.  A five-hour, hot-because-we-took-down-the-shades breeze.

So, without further ado, here's a before (as in, WAY before - when we first looked at the house before we bought it!) shot into the dining room, from the living room:

Sorry, it's a little dark.  But, it shows off the lovely monochromatic look of the joint quite perfectly.

NOW, here's the after, from a different angle into the dining room, with a snippet of the kitchen beyond:

You'll have to excuse both the mess and the blurriness of the pic.  Painting is messy business, and my cell was the only camera I had on me.  :)  You can see how the new walls go with the feature wall (blue) and the orange (hmmm...it looks kinda salmon-y in this shot...) of the kitchen.  I also like that you can't see any of the golden oak trim that I'm dying to get rid of.  It makes the room look even nicer.

Here's a close-up of the three colors together:

I love them together!  Just a little cleanup of the lines, and we'll be good to go!

Up next:

Painting my Nana's dresser a lacquered black and moving it to the dining room to act as a kind of buffet table.  It'll go under those floating shelves on the blue wall.  My "nice" china (read:  the stuff that NEVER gets used...), table linens, and candle paraphernalia will make their home there.

Currently in the works, I need to finish painting a side table (a groovy 70s number with a built-in magazine rack) and an old coffee table a shiny white.  Our small jungle of houseplants will be living on the coffee table, and I'm not exactly sure where the side table will go - probably between this great set of old chairs I bought from my friend Erin (one is in the pic above - under the floating shelves!), which will be migrating to the living room until I twist my husband's arm enough to buy a new couch.  :)

Up next in room painting:

Another bedroom and the family room.  How many coats of paint and primer do you think it'll take to cover up this red??

Especially if we go with a lighter color. We're currently thinking a lighter celery green up and a darker moss green down, using the ledge that runs around about half the room as a dividing point. All that wood will be going white. Or, in the case of the fireplace, stone.

Long post short - it was a good weekend.