Quick Backyard Update

Wow, Autumn has just flown by! I can't believe our twins will be ONE YEAR OLD in less than a week! There have been some pretty exciting things going on around here that I plan to share with you all over the next month or so. Hopefully I can play catch up and get everyone up to date with the changes that have been happening around our cottage.

Taken the day before all the beds were dug up.
Very pretty, but very high maintenance. 

This update is about our backyard. I don't think I've mentioned it much here, because, honestly, it wasn't anywhere near the top of my punchlist until mid September. One Friday I walked outside and was just completely overwhelmed with the state of the yard. I knew when we bought the house that I wanted to pull up the majority of the beds and lay some grass down. See, the former owners of this house were retired and GREAT gardeners (so it seems to me after seeing their work back there!). But I have neither the time nor the knowledge to keep up with everything they had done. Not to mention that our grass was literally a 4 foot by 2 foot patch. That, my friends, is not enough grass for two little girls to have picnics and play times!

another angle of  before

Back to September. With this overwhelmed feeling, I realized that next spring and summer, our girls will definitely be at an age where toddling around in the grass will be an amazing way to spend a morning. Honestly, I kind of panicked.  So I borrowed a page from the Young House Love book and made a post on craigslist-- You dig it up, you can HAVE it. I figured it was free labor for us in exchange for some plants that I had no intentions of transplanting somewhere else in the already full yard. We had a couple and then a young man, Kenny, come by. It took them two hours,but they removed about 40 hostas, countless ferns, bushes, grasses, stones and bricks. The next weekend, my parents visited and my dad helped us dig out a forsythia, 2 boxwoods, and what felt like miles of winter creeper vine. Our yard went from the overgrown mess that you saw above to this:

where the beds used to be!! This is after the initial craigslist posting

Big transformation, right? But there were still those huge evergreen bushes and a spindly pine tree that constantly made me nervous as it leaned against our power lines. So, we hired the aforementioned Kenny to come in and clean it up back there. He (and his dad, it turns out) came out last Sunday and chainsawed all the monster bushes down. They also added a little top soil, feathered it out and put down a ton of grass seed. Now our backyard looks like this:

no more monster evergreens or shaggy pine tree!

Yes, that fence is unsafe and pretty awful looking. We knew it would need to be replaced, but now that we've taken down the bushes hiding the worst of it, it's looking as though we will need to replace is next spring--before we have babies playing out there. Next spring we'll also add a butterfly garden alongside the garage, some honeysuckle, hydrangea, and other shade-loving flowering plants along the back fence, possibly a weeping tree of some variety, and, if I'm feeling REALLY brave, a tiny piece of a vegetable garden with a rosemary bush. We use a lot of rosemary around here; I think a bush is completely necessary.  And maybe I'll try to refinish some of our existing outdoor furniture to make a nice place for some barbequeing with friends next year!

So there you are. We've started a new project that only adds more bullets on our to do list! But I am so very excited to watch our little shoots of grass pop up and then to see our little girls playing in it next year!

How about you? Have you done any fall landscaping this month? What are your plans for the spring? Do you know of some pretty bushes that love shade and attract butterflies?

An Unexpected Project

In my last post, I mentioned two projects I was hoping to tackle in the coming months--a mini-redo of our upstairs full bath and getting started on the full redo of our sunroom. I was gathering images and sources for a variety of pieces in each of these rooms. In fact, I bought three fabrics to get started on cushion for the sunroom wicker furniture we picked up at the NNA Free-Cycle day.

Then Scott (and our entire family) was blessed with a new job. There are so many great benefits to the job, but one of the biggest benefits is that [when he's not travelling] Scott will be working from home! Since we've moved into the house, Scott's had some "man space" in our basement. He does his workouts and music down there. But since he'll be spending about 8 hours a day in his new office, he didn't want to stay down in the basement. So we're moving his home office to our 4th bedroom upstairs.

It just so happened that the day I started searching for inspiration for the office decorating, the Pottery Barn Home:Work catalog came! There were two images that were really inspiring to me, and this photo is one of them. I love the warmth and how it looks comfortable but organized for a good working environment.

The original listing of the house called this room an "upstairs porch." One wall is completely covered in windows and then there are two more large windows two other walls. This is one of the challenges of this space! So I'll be figuring out the best kind of window coverings for the space so Scott can best control the amount of light in the room. The next challenge for the room is the size. It is 11'5" by 7'7" which is pretty small for any sort of office space! It's basically a cubicle with lots of windows. Oh, and we keep a twin size guest bed in there, too!

Scott will be in Chicago tomorrow (Monday) through Friday, so I am hoping to get a bit of the work done this week while he's gone. Today I took a hour to myself to peruse the antiques stores downtown, and found a great antique kilim rug! This will definitely be the jumping off point for the entire room.









So what's left?

• window coverings (roller shades which will eventually be covered with some fabric for visual interest)
• sewing a duvet cover to put on the comforter currently on the twin bed.
• sew some large pillow shams to turn bed into more of a daybed/couch. 
• paint lamp base & recover lamp shade
• find very small bookcase/night stand. refinish as needed. 
• recover office chair in microsuede (?) and add nailhead trim. restain dated oak finish something darker.
• frame some calendar photos and hang with Scott's Ph.D. diploma. 
• desk accessories as needed. 

What ideas do you have? What do you consider an essential part of a home office?

General Maintenance

July has flown by with a lot of planning and really boring so-called projects. I'm just going to do a short list so you know I've not just been sitting on my laurels not writing blog posts. There just hasn't been anything really warranting it's own post and I keep thinking of projects to do and they get pushed to the way-side for general maintenance things like cleaning the kitchen and sorting through the next size of baby clothes to get them washed and ready for growing girls!

1. I trimmed the vines over and around our entry way. These vines were one of the first draws to this house. I mean, what says "charming cottage" better than some glorious late summer vine-age hanging over a lovely blue door? Nothing. But they are a BEAST in the maintenance department. About 2 months ago, I caught the vines attempting to break in our front door, so I trimmed those back a little. Then I realized that the vines were completely taking over the side of the vestibule and attempting to sneak in through the sunroom. But don't worry, I stopped them. For now.

what our reel mower
 looks like (photo from Lowe's.com).
Scott loves it!

2. Scott got a Weed-Eater and it's awesome. We were trying to purchase lawn care items that are more toward the manual end of the spectrum and less toward the gas-powered monsters end. Back in April we trotted over to Lowe's and picked up a Fiskar's Reel Mower. It's a great work out for Scott and just perfect for the size of our yard. I don't think a gas-powered monster would even work in our backyard! We did a long search for some sort of manual edger/weed-eater guy and came up with nothing. A few online antique stores had options that were pretty much rusted immobile. Luckily, Free-Cycle day came, and we got an electric version from our neighbors. It only cost us a 100ft $40 extension cord. And now our lawn looks MUCH better. Still needs some work, but I'm not worried our neighbors hate us anymore.

3. Also on Free-Cycle Day in our neighborhood (sponsored by the Northwest Neighborhood Association and Sustainable Delaware), we also picked up a set of wicker furniture. It's in great structural shape, but it needs some cosmetic help. The finding/making of cushions as well as repainting the set and deciding where it shall live is on the docket for a post, or posts, to come soon.

4. We took down all the old-fashioned valances, shower curtain and curtains (could they even be called curtains?) in the guest room. It feels so, so great! The dining room feels much lighter and more open now, the guest bedroom looks less like an experiment in color and pattern gone bad, and the bathroom has sparked some ideas.

5. I covered an old stationary box with some brown Kraft paper to make a jewelry box. It's much better than the previous look, but I do hope to embellish it a little more sometime.

5. I've been practicing my calligraphy a lot. I am really hoping to be open for business as Bespoke Letterings next spring in time for the summer wedding season. We shall see.

6. We're planning for a mini re-do in the upstairs bathroom. Since this bathroom--our only full bath that we share with guests and will someday share with our kids-- is at the bottom of the "let's completely gut this and start over" renovation list, we think we may do a few touch up projects to make it more enjoyable, and in some cases usable, for us over the next decade. My next post will be about the planning for this project. And then hopefully we'll actually get around to doing it and I'll share all the fun stories.

8. I had really hoped to participate in the Young House Love/Katie Bower/Emily Henderson and friend Pinterest Challenge this weekend (you can see their fun video invitation to join in here), and I even decided which project I would tackle. And then I never made it to the fabric store this week. But I still intend to complete my project and share it with the world. It just may be late. Can I get an extension, please, Sherry?

So, what have you all been up to? Any summer maintenance I should know about as a new home owner? Have you ever gotten some awesome furniture for free? What did you do with it? What projects from pinterest have you tackled? Do you like my current plan for a business name--Bespoke Letterings?

To Add Another Word

We're fixing to head to my home state of Alabama (like how I dropped in some sweet-home-slang?) for an extended Independence Day weekend, but I wanted to do a quick post with an addition to my previous post.

from Coastal Living

The past week or two, I've been really taken with a variety of images that could be described no other way but "coastal." I don't have the amazing ocean views that many of these rooms have, but I just can't get enough of the soothing color combinations with livable (meaning, heavy duty) fabrics and style.

from Sarah Richardson Design

There are hints of water-living, a sail boat on a mantle or some sea glass in a vase, but there isn't an early 90s nautical theme vibe to be found.  It may seem strange to have coastal as an inspiration when living in the Midwest in a state with no beaches (sorry, but the Great Lakes don't count as 'beaches' for a Southern gal!) but I do hope adding small elements of coastal living will add a feeling of relaxation and comfort into our daily hustle and bustle!

from Coastal Living

Therefore, consider this an amendment to the last post. Our home's style words are tailored, sophisticated, coastal cottage. How do you think those will work together? Any tips on how to blend these 4 styles?

I've got some post ideas for the week after our trip, so stayed tuned!

Defining Style and Getting Started

A few weeks ago, I was sharing some tentative plans for our dining room re-do that we may or may not be doing later this summer with my best friend and she pointed out that she had no idea what type of style I was shooting for overall in our house. I looked at my past blog posts and realized that I never wrote out a post planned early on about our overall style inspiration for this house! 


For Christmas 2010, I was gifted the Domino: The Book of Decorating. It is a wonderful--priceless, really- resource for a novice decorator. The first chapter is "Getting Started," and it gives a step by step process of decorating a room. Their method is intuitive and just plain makes sense, so that's really what I've been following.  


The process outlined in the book is how to go room-to-room in your decorating. But I really want our entire house to feel cohesive, so I decided to first complete the "getting started" process with ideas for the house as a whole, and then as time goes along I'll break it down room to room. Here's the process with my notes for our little cottage.


1. Find inspiration: cast a wide net, start a file, and look for themes. I've found tons of inspiration photos from various sites and magazines (House Beautiful is a favorite of mine) that are examples of how I'd like our house to feel. I've sprinkled some of my favorite inspiration shots throughout this post. 

Designer: Annie Selke in House Beautiful

This image from House Beautiful is one of my original inspirations for the house as a whole. I love that it feels comfortable and cozy while still being light and airy. It really looks as though a family with young children could live here (minus the ivory sofas). It feels young, yet sophisticated. It also is a great use of neutrals, and I think it could transition between seasons very easily by switching out the bright yellow with rust and orange for fall, and deep reds and greens for winter. 

 2. Determine your style. This is where you assess all the inspiration and ideas you've gathered so far and try to attach some descriptive words to them. According to Domino this can really help "you focus and filter out the things that don't fit, and pinpoint those that do. it makes it easier to answer the question 'Is this me?'"  I whole heartedly agree with that statement, and couldn't say it better myself. So I didn't. 


The words for our house, so far, stand at Tailored, Sophisticated, Cottage. So what do these words mean?

Leah at House Obsession's kitchen. 

Tailored-- Scott and I both appreciate the mid-century modern aesthetic, but these looks can very quickly become outdated when grouped together. Mid-Century Modern tends to use graphic and clean lines (not to mean always straight), and geometric prints in a variety of colors. I really want to take the spirit of this style and blend it with other ideas. This thread of design will come through in us looking for clean lines in our furniture choices, modern geometric prints and splashes of color.
Sophisticated-- This really speaks to my more traditional side. I love some turned legs on a table. And I also like curvy chandeliers and impressionist art. I think this term also speaks to having a more edited space; I'm going to try my absolute hardest to kill the clutter-lover within me and focus in on the few things that I truly find beautiful or useful and not to buy or show pieces that just take up space. 
Cottage-- This may seem to clash with the sophisticated side, but I want the entire house to feel comfortable and breezy. I want the [edited, limited number?] items that we do showcase to have real character and give our collections time to really be acquired and not all purchased at a big box store. We have some really great antique shops here in Delaware, and I fully intend to become well acquainted with them all! 


3. Consider how you'll use the room. I want our entire house to be USED. I don't want a room cordoned off because it's "too nice" for the kids to use. I want our family and our guests to feel welcome and comfortable going anywhere in our house. Our home should be a home and not a show piece, while still being beautiful. 


4. Assess your stuff. This will be an on going process. As I've said before, we have many pieces that I bought intending them to be 'forever' and I think they will be. A few of these are the dining room set, the piano, the guest room bed and a few lamps. We'll just have to wait and see what happens with everything else. 


5. Draw up a floor plan. We'll be doing this room by room, though I have started thinking about the overall floor plan of the house and thinking about whether or not we may want to make a few really big changes (knocking down walls, etc) in the future.

The fabric shades in this office from Lonny is the main
 inspiration for my own office plan.

6. Set a budget. Again, this will be happening in a room by room basis. 


7. Research, Research, Research. If you've seen my pinterest, you know I do this already! I'm always looking for new ideas, new products, and vendors for the products I've gotten into my head that I won't be compromising on (such as a navy blue linen-esque track arm sectional sofa with a sleeper and a left arm chaise...I.will.find.you.). 


8. Create a design scheme. This is a transition step where you consolidate all the information you've gathered--your floor plan, the items you need to purchase, pieces you're keeping, images of favorite items and fabrics and paints, etc. Then you assess how it all fits together, think on your priorities and make changes to your plans accordingly. I think making a rudimentary mood board would be a huge help in this step. 

Sarah Richard Designs shower stall
inspiration for the downstairs guest bath.

9. Make a decorating schedule. We're still working on this, too! I have a meeting in July to talk to a kitchens and bath contractor who can give me a better idea of the costs for renovating both the downstairs powder room and the kitchen. Then it's time to save, save, save!! We'll be paying for all of our renovations and redecorating with cash-- no credit! So we're in this for the long haul! I am hoping to get at least one room in the house decorated by the end of the year. It's likely to be the dining room since we have most of the furniture there already and it would be a cheaper room to finish. More on this later!


So there you are. The 9 step decorating process from Domino: The Book of Decorating and where we really are in the process. 


Now that you know my overall design scheme, do you have any suggestions for brands or designers I need to check out for inspiration? Any ideas on color schemes? Anybody want to give me about $25,000 so we can knock down a wall in the bathroom soon? 

Progress!

April was a very busy month for our little family. We had visitors two different weekends, then came Easter. Easter is probably my favorite holiday. In the past, I've invited friends who don't have family locally for a big Easter dinner. But this year we kept it low key and just took our little group of four to Cracker Barrel and relaxed. We gave the girls Easter baskets each with a book (from Nana & Papa), a white eyelet sunhat, and a flower headband. It was really a nice day. 

And now somehow May has slid right by us, too! It's amazing how time flies!

House progress is going quite slowly. I have lots of vision in my head, but, of course it takes time and money. My current focus has been the girls' room, and we've made a lot of progress since our upstairs tour. Everything has been reoriented and we now have two cribs! The girls seem to be handling the separation pretty well, thank goodness! 

Our bedding is called Sweet Stitches by Kenneth Brown. The colors I am pulling out to put in the room are hot pink, light pink, aqua and kelly green. I know that's 4 colors, PLUS the wall color which is a neutral yellow shade. But this is a kid's room and I think an injection of fun colors is important! Hopefully it will all pull together!

So let's get started with the Progress Tour. This is a WAY before shot, but it will give you a better idea of how far we have come! Notice the trim is painted tan, and there are dusty tan mini-blinds on the windows!

And here's how she looks from the door today! The wall colors actually ARE the same, it's just the lighting and trim colors that are different. 

We still have some work to do. On each of the following progress shots, I've typed in what's yet-to-be-done. 

When you walk in the door, the left wall has 12 built-in drawers. Well, 10 drawers, 1 laundry chute and a fake drawer.  Many of you may know that I am on the hunt for drawer pulls. I need 24 matching pulls. I made the mistake of finding 8 of a style I really liked and buying them on ebay, thinking that I could find the other 16 relatively easily. This is not true. I'm looking for porcelain back plated bail pulls. It sounds complicated, but it really isn't! They were pretty standard back in the 40s, and somehow the style has completely disappeared. I intend to paint/glaze the porcelain back plates a fun color. 

I made the roman shades using mini-blinds and some guidance from Jennifer at The Newlywed Diaries and a tutorial from Jenny at the Little Green Notebook. It was a great project, and if anyone is interested, I'd be glad to give you some tips that made it easier for me. However, since both of those gals wrote such great pieces on the project, I won't rehash it here on Cottage1910. 

Here's the wall you first saw when walking through the door. I would like to put up some large-scale art (I have an idea, and I've even bought a portion of the make-my-own art, but you'll have to wait for another post!) and then make some simple bookshelves to mount on the wall. This is another project I'm going to make you wait for, but trust me, it's going to be great! 

I will eventually make a lumbar pillow to go in the rocker. I would like to someday get a proper side table and lamp for reading bedtime stories, too. 

Here is the area above the cribs. We have a friend in Atlanta (Thanks, Micah!) who painted the custom canvases for us, and they match the bedding set really well. You can see in this picture how perfect the blue she chose goes with the blue on the bumpers!  I want to find a way to tie the entire area together. I'm not sure if this will be using some fun initials (as pictured) or another idea I've yet to find, or even a combo of those two. Can you spot the project from this post?

And yes, I know I may have to move the cribs away from the dresser when the girls are big enough to crawl out onto it. 

And here is our final wall, looking back at the doorway and down the stairs (baby gate coming soon!). Because the windows in this room don't reach anywhere near the ceiling, I'm thinking of adding an interesting border around the room. I'm not saying I'll be using a standard wallpaper border! I'm thinking of anything from pom-pom garland to starting a collection of the girls' artwork to scalloped wood molding. I'll be sure to keep you updated! 

I already have a photo of a beautiful flower by my friend Megan Floyd to be framed and hung on the wall with growth charts for the girls. 

So, in Young House Love style, here's a bulleted list of what is left to acquire and do:

• find, buy, paint and install handles on all 12 drawers (24 handles total)
• finish large art project for over rocking chair area
• make and install wall-mounted bookshelves
• side table and lamp for reading
• initials or other art project for over the dresser
• frame and hang flower photo
• hang growth charts
• buy and install a light fixture. I thought I had my mind made up with this birdy orb, but I'm wondering if the color is right. So my other option is this daisy chandelier.  
• Decide on a border (if any), make/buy/acquire it, and install. 

Considering that we started in a blank and empty room with tan trim, federal style drawer pulls and dusty mini-blinds, I'm actually feeling pretty good with how far we've come! 

 What do you think? Are five colors too many? Which light fixture do you like best? Any ideas for inexpensive garland or something other than wallpaper border to go along the top of the room? 

The Art of Filling Space

I've been working on a progress post for the girls' room for a week or two now. Unfortunately, nap time is when I typically take photos and write blog posts, and nap time is the one time of day I can't get in their room to take some shots! I'm hoping that on Saturday the girls can have some fun Daddy Time while I snap, load and edit some shots to share. Thanks for hanging in there!

I've been having a bit of a dilemma, and I'm hoping my wonderful readers (all 8 of you) could give me some tips.

I'm currently in the planning stages for our next room project, the dining room. I have a paint color in mind, as well as the look of drapes and a rug picked out, though I haven't found them yet. And I really think I've found the new light fixture (it's currently on sale. I'm really hoping it stays on sale for another week or two so I can buy it at 15% off!). I'm hoping to share some inspiration shots soon, and then a "mood board" of sorts before I really get started.

My problem is wall space, and what to do with it.  Our dining room has lots of empty wall space. Check out these two before shots.



 It's possible that many years in the future (8, probably) we may remove the wall from the door frame to the window wall to open up a bar area to the kitchen. Who knows. But for 2011-2019, that's a lot of blank wall space.  And that Paris poster you can barely see sitting on top of the piano? I've had it since college. It's time for it to find a new life. Maybe in the guest room, if I'm honest with myself, but maybe just out of this house.

Here's the other side of the room. Lovely French doors to add some interest, but you can still see three blanks walls (well, except for that old thermostat thingy-ma-jigger that we don't think works anymore but not sure if we should take it down).









I'm not one of those decorators who feels as though I need to fill all the space. I'm all for a clean and edited accessories scheme. But I'm really struggling with what to put up in some of these spaces. I've trolled the local antiques markets and as much etsy as I can, but nothing has really struck me. I love almost all types of art, but I don't want items that screaming "DINING ROOM!" like photos of vegetables.

Here's one last picture where you can see most of the dining room. You still can't see the archway wall, but it's mostly archway and will just be painted.

What about you? How do you select art and accessories for your space? Do you just grab what you like and figure out where to place it later? Do you get an idea and hunt doggedly for that one perfect item? Any good tips for me or an etsy shop you've seen lately and love?