{inspired} roomspiration

Have you been following along with the Roomspiration link-up series? It's pretty awesome friends.

There are only a couple more link parties left, but so far there has been a TON of beautiful rooms and great inspiration. Today is bedrooms, so I linked up our *master* bedroom (you can read about it here and here), but I wanted to encourage all of your to head over and check it out the whole link-up series. Below are some of my favorite rooms from over the last couple weeks.

my old country house

pawley island posh

abode love

baylor says

hi sugar plum

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend! I am have a super special week planned for next week here on the blog and I'm super excited to share that with you! :)

{inspired} striped walls

So, I have an idea. I've been rolling it around in my head for awhile (like, for the last year!), but I think I'm gonna go for it. I want to stripe my hallway. 

{Hallway currently}

Every October, Chris goes to California for a couple days. Which means, every October I take on a painting project that's a complete surprise to him. My boldest yet was painting our bedroom dark gray. Now, there is nothing wrong with our current hallway. I basically just have an itch to stripe something and I think it would look great in our hallway. Are there a million other projects I should be finishing first? Um, YES: I'm looking at you back porch and sewing room. But, really, I'm sure we can all agree that updating your home is nothing if not a little chaotic and non-linear.

Of course, I've been eyeing gorgeously striped rooms on Pinterest.

Picasaweb

I'm leaning towards subtle stripes. They're gorgeous.

 

landee see landee do

But, it's hard to deny that bold stripes are just completely amazing.

Apartment Therapy

Especially when I see this hallway.

Abode Love

Honey and Fitz

I found this great tutorial today over at Honey and Fitz. I don't plan on creating gradiated stripes (although hers are amazing), but I really like Dina's technique.

So, I think I'm all set. I just need to decide: to stripe BOLD or to strip SUBTLE. 

Any suggestions friends?

{inspired} wallpaper mood board

I am so, so, so excited to be participating in Pewter and Sage's Mood Board Monday. The premise is that Sarah chooses a topic to design a room around. This month's topic, chosen by Cathy at Room Rx, is wallpaper!

This was a HUGE challenge for me. I love wallpaper, but have never thought about designing a room around it. So, I chose Amy Butler's Lily Field to start. From there I decided that I wanted this wallpaper to go in a library. It's my dream (and probably a far-fetched one at that) to have a library one day, but not a traditional dark, stuffy library. I envision a completely girly place to spent an afternoon reading my favorite book. And with that in mind, the space below was born.

To the wall paper, I added a neutral, but graphic rug. From there I added a great daybed to lounge on, filled with great pillows for texture, color and comfort. A cozy, over-the-top-girly duvet cover completes the look. A great vintage closed-in bookcase would hold all my books, and a poster on the wall contains a quote from Pride and Prejudice. I like the addition of orange for two reasons: I LOVE orange. And, it keeps the look from being too girly. I tried to balance out the girly with graphics to make sure the look doesn't become too polarizing, but still stays comfy, cozy and a place you can curl up for an afternoon. This was a super huge challenge for me, but I like the result.

Sources:

1. Duvet cover
2. Daybed
3. Striped rug
4. Orange table
5. Pillows: Ampersand, grey flowers, orange and white flowers
6. Pride and Prejudice poster
7. Cabinet/bookshelves

Friends, head over to Pewter and Sage to check out the rest of the AMAZING mood boards. Thanks Sarah ... I can't wait for the next challenge!

{inspired} around the web

Happy friday friends!

In the interest of keeping it real .... this week has kicked my boot-y. Late nights and a huge work event have left me completely exhausted and really excited for a weekend of recharging my batteries.

Since I don't have anything creative of my own to share with you today, I'm going to share with you some of the creativity/projects that have caught my eye over the last week or so. Friends, there are some incredibly talented and awesome people out there. Make sure you head over to their sites to see the entire projects .... I promise you won't be disappointed.

Erin at house of earnest featured this super easy centerpiece idea. I LOVE it and am so excited to try it in my own home.

Kelly at View Along the Way featured a tutorial for those gorgeous striped curtains. Aren't they awesome?

Kirsten at Restored Style featured her newly completed numbered stairs. I adore this idea and she pulled it off flawlessly. By the way, if you pop over to Restored Style's post today, you'll see ME and our recent little meet up! :)
 

Meredith at Welcome to Heardmont recently taught herself how to make roman shades - I KNOW, impressive. They turned out lovely.

Katie at Newcomb Home spent a DAY cleaning up the side of her yard. People, go look at the before. It gives much such hope that I can tackle my back yard and that it won't take me months like I'm imagining. Katie, want to come help with that ?? :)

I hope you enjoy! And, I hope you all have a GREAT weekend! :)

{inspired} quilts

I quilt. Did I ever tell you guys that? While I say it in the present tense, it has, in fact, been a couple years since I made a quilt. House projects seem to be taking priority over hobbies at this point. Or maybe house projects have become a hobby? Whichever. 

The beginning of fall always puts my in the mood to quilt. And curl up in a quilt. So on that note, I thought I'd share some of my favorite quilts I've run across lately. They're both quilts I would love to own and inspiration for quilts I would love to make.

beeper bebe

Love the simplicity of this quilts design. And, wish I was a good enough quilter to get that kind of quilting detail. You need special machines for that friends!

little miss shabby

This quilt is so sweet. I love the different size squares and I could definitely curl up here for an afternoon.

babble

Love. This. Quilt. Everything about it .... the chevron pattern, the colors, the fabrics.

camillero skelly

Just beautiful. Really love this pattern. This is a quilt I would make in a heartbeat.

lolly quiltz

LOVE the colors of this quit. I especially love that they're all solids .... it's very modern and still so cozy.

Have you ever made a quilt? Which one of these beauties is your favorite??

Have a great Wednesday friends! 

{renovate} a view of the back

Happy Monday friends! Did you all have a good weekend? We had a lovely weekend that even buckets of rain couldn't dampen. 

Today I'm going to update you on the state of the back of our house. I know. Hold onto your seats, friends. Okay, so it might not be the most exciting subject, but I do have an AWESOME sneak peak at the end that you'll want to stick around for. 

Remember a couple weeks ago when I finally finished the garage (post here)? Well, I also finished painting the back of our house. It's a little more of an in depth story, and I couldn't photograph it until this weekend, so it's getting its own post.

A year ago, this was your view as you entered our back yard. This lovely, rusty, bent-up, jail-cell-reminiscent screen door leads to our screened in porch. Chris and I walk through this door multiple times every day.

Last fall, when Chris and his BFF (BFF pictured, not Chris) replaced the door to our back entry (the one that actually goes into the house from the screened porch), we also replaced the screen door. We wanted something more welcoming, less you're-going-to-prison-ish.

We completely scored and found this lovely, simple, solid-wood door at the Rebuilding Center for $25. Chris installed siding, recycled from our garage makeover, to match the rest of the house. Sidenote: The green is the original color of the house. I know there's a photo floating around of what the house looked like when Chris bought it, but we can't seem to find it. Once we unearth it, you'll be the first to see :). Also, if you look closely in the picture, you can see that the wall of the screened porch is not even close to straight. It's actually slanted way out. Such as it goes with an older home! :) Luckily, we're learning to work around it.

The other small detail to note here is the back windows.

Yep. One with trim finished, and one not. We had to replace a couple panes on those windows and had yet to finish the trim.

One quick afternoon of painting later and the screen door wall looks like this. So much better! The wall got a coat of yellow and the door was updated with a coat of creamy-white to match the trim. I was thinking about painting this door a fun color, but I think I actually like how fresh and clean the white looks. It'll stay that color. For now. :)

And, the rest of the back looks much more cohesive as well.

I just can't say enough about the powers of paint. Like I said, it's not the most exciting of all reveals, but it's something feels SO GOOD to check off our list.

And that sneak peak I promised you? You've been so patient as we've taken our sweet time working on the back porch, so I thought you'd like to see this:

Here's where are back porch is as of yesterday. It's SO CLOSE. Just a couple things to hang on the wall and I'll give you guys the grand tour.

I hope you're all having a super happy Monday!

{create} a gallery wall + sources

Thanks for the all the super sweet comments about our new gallery wall! Today I have sources for you and quick instructions for easily creating your own gallery wall.

Let's start with sources. As you remember, this is the gallery wall:

Because it's so big, I split up the wall into three parts, below. You'll see below that a lot of what we picked up was from antique stores, some we made, and others we'd had on hand. If these are still available for purchase, I've linked up, and I also linked to the projects we made. Hopefully you'll see that what makes this wall so personal, and so US, is that we collected objects and prints from a variety of places, and that we're both represented here. Because we have such an extreme variety of art, I used all black frames to tie it together.

Left Side:

Fabric ampersand;Vintage hand pump, from our garage; Food on Sticks, Vintage map of St. Johns (our hood)  from a garage sale; Graphic Portland map; Vintage Letters, from an antique fair; Vintage postcard, from a second hand store; Wooden-handle wrench, from our garage; Live what you love letterpress.

Middle:

Curly Girl postcard, which says "If i had known i would get to spend the rest of my life with you" he said "I would have started the rest of my life much sooner."; Vintage Timberline Lodge pennant, from an antique store; Portal mirror; Vintage car poster, from Chris' collection; Vintage london print, from an antique store; 1932 License plate, from Chris' collection.

Right Side:

Joy letterpress; Oregon forest art, nation wide one here; Fabric; Kite Hill; Vintage car grill, from Chris' collection; Button Art,which says "Kiss Me My Fool"; Three Potato Four; Made in Oregon print;  Pic of us on our honeymoon; Vintage Letters, same as left side.

Please let me know if you have any questions about sources! :)

Now, for how we created this. Usually I am pretty good about *eyeing* placement when I'm hanging frames. But, I was a little intimidated by how big the wall is, so I wanted to be more precise .... and keep the number of nail holes to a minimum.

First, I cleared the wall. Then I found frames for all the art. Which wasn't actually a problem since I found 45 frames in our basement in January. My advice on making this project incredibly budget-friendly is start collecting high quality frames from garage sales, Goodwill, etc. I don't recommend amassing a collection of 45 (clearly we have a problem), but frames are incredibly easy to spray paint and this technique will really keep costs down. Don't have a mat that works with your artwork? You can go to any frames store, with your dimensions, and they'll cut a mat for you. Bonus: cutting mats is actually incredibly inexpensive. For this wall, I only needed three mats cut, and the total came to less than $20. You guys, that's less than $20 for 19 frames and their mats.

Next, I grabbed my roll of parchment paper. I use parchment to wrap gifts, so I always have huge roll on hand. I laid out all the frames, traced them, labeled the tracing, and cut them out.

And, then I taped the cutouts on the wall. I've seen this method all over the internet and thought it seemed like SO. MUCH. WORK. But really? It was awesome! Over a few weeks, I moved the paper around more times than I can count .... with no holes in my wall! Love it.

The result? Hanging everything on the wall was super easy. And, we didn't have to move ANY nails. Which, no matter how good at *eyeing* things I think I am, was a first.

That's how we went about creating our wall. We stretched it out over a couple months, but this could easily be done in a weekend, once you have your artwork picked out.

I hope you're all having a super week! :)

{renovate} living room updates

Happy Monday! I have a fun update to share with you guys this morning.

Little by little, I've been working on creating our living room. First, we added colorful lamps earlier this spring, and then the huge ceiling drum shade. We're loving how this side of the room is looking.

But what about the other side? When I first started decorating our living room, I created a small gallery wall. At the time I knew I wanted to create a much bigger gallery, but I didn't actually have the artwork to accomplish it. So, for the last couple years I've been collecting art here and there and setting it aside. Earlier this summer I set about hanging all the art I've collected. As a reminder, up until July (seriously, some projects take us forever!), our gallery wall looked like this:

And as of this weekend, it looks like this:

I am so excited about our new wall! It's been a really long time coming, and I think it adds so much quirky, eclectic dimension to the room :). Plus, I think it really show off who we are, because we took so much time to collect things we love.

But that's not all! The other small update in the room is our fireplace area. Here was it looked like earlier this year:

I have been searching for a huge affordable mirror for months - less than $100. Of course, I'd be willing refinish it, etc. Do you guys know how expensive mirrors are?! After searching garage sales and vintages store all summer, I finally found the mirror I was looking for. Less than $100 and all I had to do was clean it.

                             

I found it a couple weeks ago at Noun, an adorable Portland store. We had already installed the mirror on the gallery wall, and together they bounce so much light around the room. I love having two mirrors in the room now.

And, it reflects the new wall really well :). It's the small things, right?

I'll be back Wednesday with more information about the art on the gallery wall + an easy how-to for creating your own gallery wall! :) (Update: you can find complete instructions for hanging your own gallery wall here.)

I'm also linking this up to Cottage and Vine's living room link-up and View Along the Ways Roomspiration link up. Please come over and check out all the awesome living rooms!

{inspired} weekend crafts

Happy Friday friends! Today has been quite a day. So, to send you off into the weekend on a good note, I thought show you some of the crafty/DIY projects that have caught my eye. Hopefully you'll have more time this weekend to be creative than I will! 

Mason Jar Lights from Wedding Gawker. If I hadn't JUST bought lights for the back porch, I would be making this for that space in a heartbeat.

Bunting from Vintage Pretty Pearl. I have to find a reason to make this. Wait. Do I need a reason? So cute!

Painted Flatware from Sania Pell, via Creatures of Comfort. I have no idea how practical this is, but I REALLY want to try it for our next dinner party.

Photoshop Bokeh from Alex Beadon Photography. I love learning new tricks in Photoshop, and this one is GORGEOUS! Especially until I actually figure out how to do bokeh on my camera.

Do you have anything crafty planned for the weekend? If you have time and are looking for some fun ideas, check out my *to makes* board on Pinterest, or my diy gallery. Both are filled with some awesome projects! We having a weekend full of wedding events for a dear friend that I've known since I was three. It should be a lot of fun.

Enjoy!