M. Barnes and Co.

I was messing around on Houzz one day and came across a room by Marci Barnes.  I followed it to her site and her portfolio!  I love it!

A lot of her work seems like a VERY refined take on country and you can tell she is from Texas, they definitely love their shiplap.

All of the attention to detail is just so good!  I love all those rustic, wide plank wood floors, and the brick in the laundry, ummmm.  The dressmaker details on the slipcovers, and the kitchen backsplash, and the glossy, deep blue reading nook, oh my!

I think if I couldn't live in Georgia I might have to make the move to Texas, I seem to love their design style, between Ms. Barnes, and Holly Mathis, and Joanna Gaines.

Anyway, we finished painting the living room and got most of the furniture back in but then the kids came home and it was immediately all undone.  Hopefully I can get it together and get some pictures soon cause it makes us so much happier not being the dirty looking beige it was.

While the kids are away. . . . .

Our kids went to grandparent camp this week (!) so we decided to tackle painting our living room and central hallway.  We had initially hoped to have this done so we could work on installing some new floors while the kids were gone but I have realized that once you have kids everything takes longer (totally worth it though!)

We have lived with swatches painted on the walls for probably close to a year now because we have vaulted ceilings in the living room which are too high for all of our ladders.  Luckily for us my step-father has some scaffolding that he loaned us for this project.  It is too tall to easily move though so we won't be finishing this painting up until tonight but I wanted to share our progress.

The kids come home Saturday so we need to finish getting this painted and the scaffolding down and all of the furniture back in place and together but it will be so exciting to have walls that are a color that we enjoy and aren't patchworks of samples.  Thanks Oomah and Opa!

The One That Got Away

When we bought our first house I very assuredly knew that that home was my forever home.  I was NEVER moving again.  I loved the house, I hated moving, it was a no brainer.  The hubs was not as confident since he thought the house was on the smaller side at 1350 square feet.  I had grown up in a 1000 square foot house and lived in several very small apartments, one a 400 square foot converted garage, and really felt the size would not be an issue.  It helped that the bloggers I was reading lived in smaller homes as well and felt they would be there forever too.  I totally remember Sherry thinking their first house would be their forever house.  Then the market crashed and moving became a moot point, we had lost so much value that the idea of being able to sell the house and pay off the mortgage was laughable.

It didn't really matter anyway because the house was perfect for the two of us.  It got a little cramped when we had our first baby but it just meant staying on top of purging.  Then in early 2013 we had our second baby and the house drastically decreased in size.  Toys started taking over the house and neither my husband or I had anywhere to go to be alone.

The summer of 2013 is when we started seriously thinking about moving.  Several of the blogs I read had bought new homes and were doing big time renovations on them.  We had wrapped up our big renovations and knew there wasn't going to be a lot more we could do without really over improving for our neighborhood.  And then I started noticing that one of the neighborhoods we had liked but couldn't afford when we were looking for our first house had some options that would be within our reach.  A realtor that we know very graciously agreed to show us a few in there one Sunday afternoon even though we weren't sure our house was really ready to be sold and I fell in love with one of them.

It did turn out that it wasn't a good time to sell our house and the one I fell in love with wasn't really a great choice for that moment in our lives, it was going to need a ton of work, but that didn't stop me from dreaming about it and making plans for what I would do with it.  The plan that I came up with for the master bathroom there still has me thinking about it at times and I will probably recycle some elements from it when we redo our bath sometime in the future.

We loved the frameless glass shower enclosure in our first house so I planned on doing one like that, the bathroom was very small and narrow so there wasn't room for both bath and shower or even a combo.  White subway tiles on the walls would be accented with the glass mosaic and I wanted the penny tile for the floor of the shower with Merola's Sonaba Beige on the floor in the rest of the bath.  It has a very subtle, textural pattern with sparkly specks that matched the glam vibe I was going for.  The open vanity was to keep the space feeling as light and open as possible with the feminine scalloped sink and a bamboo style faucet.  A wood framed medicine cabinet to reference the vanity and help warm up the space with some shiny sconces finishing it off.

That would have been such a fun space to redo but maybe I will be able to recycle some of these ideas somewhere else someday.

Thrift Scores

Before we had kids I was an avid thrifter and would spend many a Saturday at the antique mall or junk shop.  Kids kind of changed the game plan though and when they were really small I had little to no time to go junkin'.  Most shopping was done online because that was fastest and easiest.  Lately though, as they have gotten older, I have manged to carve out more free time for myself.  I went to one of my favorite antique malls a couple of times on my lunch break recently, and last Saturday I made it to Goodwill during nap time!  Here's my score, 

This blue and white lamp was too cute and I couldn't pass it up, it is currently enlightening a dark corner on my kitchen counter.

This set of blue willow dishes,  there are 8 cups and saucers, and 8 dessert plates.  I love them and they will look great on our open shelves when we get our kitchen makeover done.  

I don't know where I am going to use this bamboo tray but I am sure I will find a use for it somewhere!  It would look great on a console or buffet styled up with our liquor and mixers but it will probably never get used in that way since we have a super nifty bar cabinet.

And those cookies, those are Deb's confetti cookies.  The kids and I made those and they are delicious!  Seriously listen to her though when she says to take them out when you think they are still underdone!  I left mine in an extra 3 minutes or so on the first batch and the bottoms were caramelized from the melted sprinkles.  They weren't bad but the second batch that we took our right at 10 minutes was definitely better!  

I doubt I will get much in this weekend but I sure am glad that I am finding time to do fun things like thrifting and cooking again!  I guess at some point the kids will be old enough to join in on all the fun!

Anne Hagerty Interiors

I have been spending some time mapping out our next few projects lately and as I was looking for inspiration I happened upon Anne Hagerty.  She does some beautiful work based out of Savannah, GA.  

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I love how her style reflects the coastal environment without screaming BEACH TOWN!  She also uses some lighter wood tone flooring options which I love after all the years of deep and/or grayed flooring.  As we progress with our home it is taking a kind of cottage/farmhouse lean but I grew up at the beach and really dig the airiness of the coastal look.  There is no way I could have a home that didn't reflect that a little.  I will definitely be keeping some of these spaces in mind as we move forward in our house!