Sunday, February 28, 2010

Weekend Randoms

  • This weekend included visits to World Market, the flea market, Fresh Market and the farmer's market. That's a lot of markets.
  • At the flea market I bought an antique frame for a project I want to try and some Girl Scout cookies (peanut butter patties of course). Not sure which purchase I was more excited about.
  • We met Lee's family for a yummy lunch at the farmer's market restaurant and then bought some fresh produce.
  • At Fresh Market, we bought fixins for a delicious Saturday night dinner -- chicken venice stuffed with herbs and goat cheese, pesto pasta salad, sundried tomato cheese bread and wine.
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  • On Sunday we worked off our dinner from the night before with a two hour hike with Sugar at Jordan Lake, complete with a picnic lunch.
  • I savored every last moment of Olympic competition as we watched the US/Canada hockey game. I've watched at least 3-4 hours of Olympic coverage every single day of the past two weeks. It's going to be a long two and a half years before London 2012.
  • We planted seeds this weekend for our vegetable garden. Well, Lee planted the seeds, and I made a pretty diagram of of what we planted.
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  • One week later, my wheatgrass is out of control.
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  • Be sure to tune in this week for my next room reveal.
  • This is my 100th post! I've certainly enjoyed my time with you so far, and I hope you have too.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Baby Shower

This weekend I helped throw a baby shower for my cousin Brittany.

I was in charge of decorations. Britt is having a little girl, and has decorated her nursery in lavender, pink and green, so that was the color scheme we used.

I especially love the way the beverage and dessert table turned out:

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I made lots of tissue paper flowers using these instructions from Martha and decorated the window with a clothesline of onesies. Pink lemonade with lime slices added to the color palette. And the cupcakes from The Cupcake Shoppe in Raleigh spelling out the baby's name -- Brevyn Joy Harrison -- were both beautiful and delicious.

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The food table was decorated with a few more pom-poms and a centerpiece of wheatgrass and gerber daisies in galvanized pails. If you know me, you know wheatgrass is my go-to party trick. It couldn't be easier to grow or prettier.

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I also made a banner for the mantle:

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Britt got lots of sweet gifts and we played some fun games involving toilet paper, baby food and dirty diapers.

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Mama doesn't look so sure about that one...

Finally, here's a pic of the hostesses and the mommy-to-be:
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And I'll leave you with this fabulous shot. Isn't she radiant??
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We love you Britt and can't wait to meet little Brevyn!

Thursday, February 18, 2010

We're Going Down Under

Do you remember back in June when I wrote this post about longing to take a big trip? Well, I’m crazy excited to report that we have officially booked a trip to AUSTRALIA!

We are over the moon about it and I didn’t even have to twist Lee’s arm too terribly much. The trip isn’t until the fall, but I have a feeling it will be here before we know it.

We’ll spend two and a half weeks on what will hopefully be the adventure of our lives: snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, camping in
Kakadu National Park, exploring the rain forest, and relaxing on the beautiful, secluded Heron Island.

And because I’m all about mantras this week, here’s the one that inspired us to take the plunge:



Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Dining Room

We've been in our house for a year and a half and we still haven't decorated. Not really decorated. When we moved in, I was determined to resist the urge to run out and buy a bunch of stuff to put on the walls and fill the space and to instead live by this mantra:

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
-- William Morris

That meant waiting to find the pieces I really LOVED. Which takes both time (to research what you want, find what you want and then convince yourself that what you've found is indeed actually what you want) and money (thus circling back to the time issue, to save the money to buy what you've now convinced yourself is exactly what you want).

Because of this, these are the rooms in our house that have remained "unfinished" for over a year: dining room, living room, master bedroom, master bath, guest bedroom, guest bath, Lee's office and my office/loft.

Now I know what you're thinking -- that's all of the rooms in your house. Well yes, it is. Almost. You see, I am comfortable enough to declare the powder room "finished." Oh, and the kitchen! There's nothing left to do in the kitchen (there was never anything to decorate in the kitchen in the first place)...although now that I think about it we could really use a nice stainless steel trash can in there. But I digress.

Because now, you see, three of these rooms are finished. Three! And over the next few weeks I'm going to show off these rooms and the others as I finish them because this is my blog and I'll do what I want. And if you're not into home decor you can just tune out those posts and tune back in for cute pictures of Sugar.

For each room I'll try to post: before pictures, after pictures, a list of resources and, inevitably, the things about the room that I'd still like to change. Because if I waited until every single detail in every room was perfect then I'd never post any of our home decor projects and you'd all be terribly disappointed.

Ok, so here goes. First up: the dining room!

And first problem: I have no before pictures. But it's ok, because the room was TOTALLY.BLANK. before we bought dining room furniture, so you're not really missing anything. Promise.

Here's the finished product:

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You see, it all started with this beauty, the china cabinet of my dreams:

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As soon as I saw this china cabinet at Haverty's, it was love at first sight. The problem? We hated the table and chairs that went with it. The chairs were too big and elaborate and the table had what Lee called a marshmallow top, because it dented and scratched if you even looked at it wrong.

So we started the search for a different dining room set. But I couldn't get the Haverty's china cabinet out of my head, so we changed our approach. Instead, we'd try to find a table and chairs that matched the Haverty's china cabinet.

We struck gold with Bassett's custom dining table options and after running all over town with a stain sample we were fairly confident that the finish on the cabinet would match the table. And it does, almost perfectly. In fact, the turned farmhouse table legs match the bottom supports of the china cabinet for even more cohesiveness that makes it almost impossible to tell that the they're from totally different stores.

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So, here's what went into the room:
- Dining table: Custom from Bassett
- Dining chairs: Harper side chairs from Bassett
- China cabinet: Copley Square by Haverty's
- Curtains: Argentina panels in Peacock from Bed Bath & Beyond
- Curtain hardware: Target

Now, what don't I like about the room? First, the chandelier. In fact, I hate it. It was here when we bought the house, and now it matches nothing in the room. Ideally, I'd buy this beauty:


Because ideally it would not cost $600. I haven't been able to find a suitable alternative, so I will bide my time until the right chrome/nickel chandy comes into my life.

The second missing element is a centerpiece. For now I'm throwing together seasonal centerpieces but eventually I'll need something permanent and non-seasonal.

But even with those two things, I'm declaring her DONE. I'll leave you with a few pics from our first dinner party at Christmas:

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Sunday, February 14, 2010

Happy Valentine's Day!

What a week it's been.

Things were absolutely crazy at work as we rushed to get this guy's website up and running before his first commercial aired during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. It was a roller coaster ride but as we celebrated Friday night and watched the spot air together as an agency it was a pretty great moment.

Then it decided to snow again. We woke up Saturday morning with about 3 inches. This time though it was beautiful, fluffy, fun snow that didn't stick to the roads. Lee built a humongous snowman but the sun quickly started to melt things away.

Because of late nights at work and the snow I totally spaced on Valentine's Day and didn't get any cards sent out. I barely managed to pick one up for Lee. We did get out Saturday afternoon though and I bought some flowers for our table. It's amazing how much joy those tulips have brought me this weekend.

We decided to celebrate V-day last night with dinner at Macaroni Grill. Beforehand we made a quick stop to pick up Lee's Valentine's gift -- a pressure washer from Sears. Romantic huh? But if you know Lee you know it was a perfect gift.

Lee got me a gift certificate for a massage, and after a busy two months at work that was a perfect gift too.

I hope your Valentine's weekend was awesome. Here are a few pics from ours:

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Posing with the snowman

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Our neighbor Levi checking out the snow

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Sugar isn't sure why it keeps snowing

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Pretty tulips

Monday, February 8, 2010

Random Thoughts on a Monday

There's nothing more healing than a weekend with my sister
I'm currently loving the new Lady Antebellum CD
The Olympics start in 4(!) days and I'm pretty excited about that
My favorite Super Bowl commercial? Google's "Parisian Love" - I'm such a girl
I've got an exciting furniture restoration project coming up. I hope it's not a flop.
It's probably too early to be looking forward to the weekend as much as I am

That is all for now.


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