House Highlights

Inspired by a reader request, I felt compelled to tidy the front room of the house and show you some of my favorite things about it. Please don't ever think my house is this ship shape - we typically eat at the coffee table like most people our age (according to my unofficial poll...you do too, right?) and have the usual clutter of opened mail, pairs of shoes, and other things that don't make it past room one after work.

Welcome! This is where we spend most of our time - eating, relaxing, watching Game of Thrones. It has great light from the east facing windows in the morning and a cozy fireplace for chilly nights. 

The cats like to hang here as well. Boo (little pirate cat) practices parkour on the couch like a crazy person and Cat likes to curl up on a pillow.

I recently rediscovered a wool Pendleton blanket that made it with me from Portland. It's toasty on chilly nights and I'm a big fan of the white and navy design.

On the mantel I have some of my favorite pit fired pots. I love the orange and gray marks that came out of their firing in sawdust and salt. 

And this Voluspa candle is amazingggggg. I picked it up in Hawaii but you can find lots of heavenly scents  at Anthro. My other fave is Baltic Amber (thanks, Chic!).

Updates

1. I threw some sweet pots in ceramics tonight! I was going for something tall and skinny and ended up with this:

Lovely, but short and wide! When I smacked the next lump of clay down on the wheel, I waved my hands over it and gave it all of the positive energy I could. And it became this!

I was so stinkin' proud. :)

2. House. The inspection came back and there's a whole mess of structural (under the house), electrical (in the house), and grading (around the house) issues. Thankfully they're fixable issues, but we're just waiting to hear back if the seller is going to pay to remedy all of these things. We really hope they do because we're not ready to put up the money -- likely A LOT of money -- to get it done. Positive energy our way folks! And just in case this house isn't the one, we know there will be others (hopefully just as cute!).

Just Looking?

-Friday-

Pre-approval at the mortgage office. Celebrated with drinks!

-Saturday-

Met with our agent to take our first look at houses. The first one was adorable on the outside but aging poorly on the inside. Number two caught our eye as soon as we walked in. Sun room, updated kitchen, built-in bookshelves, and still all the charm of its original date of 1951. We LOVED it.

-Sunday-

Went to see a few more open houses but kept thinking about that house. In a bold and crazy move, we put a low offer on it. The sellers countered back a few hours later within our budget. And here we are, Monday evening, with a scheduled inspection for later this week and spring in our step. Eeeee!!!

And It Begins!

The great house hunt has begun! As soon as we got back to Richmond we starting asking friends for realtor recommendations. Since we found someone to work with, she's set us up with an online search site with our preferences already built in. Each day I get an email or two with new listings that fit our specifications. Addicting!

Over the weekend Chris and I started driving through some of the potential neighborhoods we're looking at, taking in the general feel and jotting down any other houses for sale that we spot. We've got some time (our lease is up in June) and if we don't find the right one we can always rent for another year. But I told Chris that this process is going to be like the Christmas I went to the cat shelter -- you can't go to a cat shelter and not come home with a cat (Cat!). I have a feeling that once we start seeing places we're going to come home one day with a house.

The illustrator who painted the house above was recently featured on Design*Sponge. I would love to have our (potential) new house done with Cat's little face in the window!

Fall-la-la-la-la

Fall in Richmond is glorious -- the days are pleasant and there's a morning bite in the air that makes a scarf a necessity.

This morning we made hot chocolate and sat outside to cheer on the Richmond marathon runners (the course passed right by our front door). "Good job, blue shirt! Keep it up, orange socks guy!" we shouted from the sidelines. "Moms everywhere are proud! You're going to remember this day forever! And hopefully in a good way!"

Saturdays...

are for sleeping in.

Kitchen Fail

Remember that *hopefully successful* endeavor I mentioned a few days ago? The bunny cake? Total fail.

When I was growing up my mom would bake a bunny cake for Easter or birthday parties to add a little pizazz to a traditional double layer round cake. The idea is that you bake two 9" rounds and use one as the face of the bunny. The other round is cut like a baseball (two arc-like cuts starting near the outer edge, cutting in close to the middle, then arcing out again) to create the ears, leaving the leftover middle part for your bunny's respectable bow tie. Frost, decorate with jelly beans and licorice for the whiskers, and you've got yourself a festive little treat.

Well. I bought a cake mix at Trader Joe's and a mix-it-yourself frosting (something I thought I'd try), donned my Anthropologie apron and gave this whole thing a whirl. I was afraid that Chris and I would probably be responsible for consuming the entire cake, so I made the I-should-have-known-it-would-be-fatal decision to go with cupcakes. Baby bunnies. I'd follow the same directions but craft these Easter cottontails into manageable, sharable cupcakes. I greased my pans with butter, lightly floured them per the advice of the directions, mixed the mix and popped them in the oven.

The aroma of chocolate permeated the house. I watched the cupcakes rise (and continue to rise....rise right into chubby bunnies) until the timer went off. Everything was going so well until those buggers refused to come out of the pan. I tried right away, I tried after letting them cool a bit. After many creative attempts I just had to scrape them out with a spoon, all crumbled and bottomless since half of the cake decided to stay put.

I managed to get a few out of their molds and to make the cuts for the ears and bowtie. Chris said my cake creation looked like Stitch. I didn't even bother mixing the frosting. Poor little chubby bunnies.

Official post-Easter decision: I'm making brownies next year.

Cut and Paste

[Image via Apartment Therapy]

The room I rearranged the other day? It's our dining room. And for just the two of us, it's HUGE. It currently houses the small table and chairs from my Beaverton apartment, the green bookcase/ hutch I painted over the summer, Chris' college futon, and a little corner devoted to paper and plastic recycling (told you I was an Oregonian at heart...). An eclectic mix for sure, but somehow it comes together and works. And the futon (while odd to have in there) has proved extremely useful for our three sets of out of state visitors.

So now that the room is laid out to my liking, the big white empty wall is staring back at me, daring me to do something with it. Pictures? It rejects nails. The white plaster is only a thin mask covering the un-nailable brick behind it. Paint? Possibly, but it seems like just the can of worms I prefer not to open right now. Hmm. Fleeting thought of removable wallpaper. Touted as a perfect solution for renters who want to see some of their security deposit eventually come back to them, it seems like a reasonable and increasingly attractive choice. The idea came from this Apartment Therapy article about reversible wall decor. Tempaper has a few fun designs.

Thoughts?

Plant Life

[Image via For Me, For You]

I love this idea of a corner dedicated to plants. I had a succulent (not unlike that flowery looking one second from the right) but I think I watered it too much and didn't put it in the sun. It died. 

I'm crossing my fingers that my black thumb died along with it because I'd love to fill parts of our apartment with potted greens. It definitely would give the month of January some extra 'ooomph.'

House Dreaming

[Image via Design*Sponge]

At this point in my life, I love renting. When something goes wrong with the fridge, all I have to do is make a quick phone call and one of the nice maintenance guys will be on it. Renting though, however lovely and easy, has its limits. We always take care of our place and try not to beat it up too much---mostly on the hope of getting that big chunk of change (the security deposit usually worth one month's rent) back at the end of our lease. 

So I don't paint. And I don't nail too many things into the wall. It would be so nice to have a house where I could destroy walls at my own discretion (nail fifty frames to the wall like the picture above), redo outdated and ugly cabinetry, and put in floor-to-ceiling bookcases (dream of dreams!). But then who would fix the fridge? Probably me. Trade-offs, trade-offs.

Why I Can Never Decorate Like This

Not because we don't have any extra money for decorating (we don't). And not because that rug looks a little too shaggy for my preference. The real reason? Because that cheerful little pillow just had to be made in green and yellow.

Tonight is the BCS championship game between the University of Oregon (read: the-school-that-must-not-be-named) and Auburn University. I asked Chris if I would still be his wife if I rooted for UofO, as a 'Hooray! A team from [the state of] Oregon made it this far!' sort of thing. I knew I was pushing buttons here. Deliberately. So for the sake of marital harmony and a somewhat pleasant end to the college football season, I'll be rooting for Auburn. But I draw the line at decorating in orange and black.

Bundle Up

Our apartment is cold. Single-paned window cold. We decided to get a space heater to tote around with us from room to room instead of paying to heat the entire apartment (and subsequently lose all that heat through the single-paned windows). The one we picked out has convenient roller wheels. I'm thinking of making a leash for it and have it follow me around like a puppy.

Don't those cable knit throws remind you of a cozy winter scarf? Perfect for curling up next to a fireplace with a good book.

Sigh of Relief

Finally done. This piece of furniture has given me a bit of trouble (I heard a huge THUMP outside yesterday and found that the wind had blown the hutch over, hence the large crack at the top), but I'm happy to have it put back together and filled with books! In person the color is an olive-y avocado and looks really nice with the other colors (not seen here) in the room. I even placed the cheerful little orange pumpkin on the shelf to ward off any UofO vibes this green hutch might give off (but truthfully it's more likely to encourage guacamole eating than visions of a rival football team).

Goodwill Hunting

Goodwill is like a very convenient, indoor yard sale with dependable business hours. You likely won't see some of the deals you would on someone's lawn during a holiday weekend (i.e., fifty cent books or a bin of $1 shirts) but I've managed to find some pretty fantastic things.

First find: 1970s small table that houses a sewing machine. Now front and center in the entryway. I picked this up while I was dropping off a lamp to donate---the donation manager basically traded me the lamp for the table. "After all, we are the Goodwill," he said as I thanked him for the (free!) addition to our apartment.

Secondly: The amazing teal wingback chair that lives in our office room (Cat has managed to take full ownership of the chair). I loved the style, and Chris loved the comfort. And at $19, I just couldn't resist.

Today: I can't get to the major Goodwill stores on my bike, but just under a mile away is one of those Goodwill boutiques---a small store next to other clothing shops on Cary Street. I walked in and found a massive Webster Dictionary that had some old world charm to it. From the inscription on the front flap, I discovered it was a gift to a woman from her parents in 1961 (must have been a bookish gal to get a dictionary as a gift....). It was printed in 1959 and is more of an encyclopedia with pictures and long descriptions. I plan to feature it on the end table with the Silly Syclopedia my pal Kelsey gave me last year. Three cheers for three vintage finds on a budget!

Design Sponge

If you haven't already, check out the Design*Sponge blog for amazing design ideas. They have fun DIY projects, great room set-ups, and multiple posts throughout the day. I saw this picture posted this morning and fell in love with the whimsical floor and mismatched chairs. Oh, the things I could do with a decorating budget....

Bits and Pieces

Acting like she's sleeping so she doesn't have to help...

My sweet vintage find...$19! We found the year 1928 on the tag.

The (still kind of bare) study room. Thankfully we won't do much studying in here, mostly just reading blogs or watching ESPN videos (hmm, I bet you can guess who does what).

View of the outside from the inside (too hot to be out there right now). We picked up some resin Adirondack chairs on sale at Lowe's and a steal of a table at World Market. 

Taking a chance with plants--the tag on these succulents said they were pretty resilient. I'm hoping they stick around for awhile.

The ULTIMATE find. We got this old table for free (!) and have put it in the entryway. It's hidden secret? The top opens to reveal a 1971 Singer sewing machine that pops up onto the work table. I still need to give the sewing machine a good scrub down, but I'm hoping that when I plug it in it might work. In one of the tiny side drawers I also found some zippers and buttons from decades ago. Vintage, I love you.