Archive for April, 2008
On The Road Again: Cottage Living
As we revealed on Saturday, we spent the last week soaking up the sun on a tiny island off the west coast of Florida called Madeira Beach. We’ve returned to Virginia with slightly darker skin, a boatload of shells and tons of fun stories to share… starting with the tour of the the totally sweet cottage we stayed in all week long.
From the start we knew we wanted a unique, tropical experience, so we avoided the ubiquitous beachfront hotel and sought out something more private (and dog friendly). That’s how we stumbled upon the Island Paradise Cottages of Madiera Beach – the affordable and stylish answer to our lodging needs just steps from the beach.
Island Paradise offers eight charming units of different sizes (ours was a one-bedroom called the Gulf Mist) each with its own private entrance and sun porch. The sunny yellow cottages open up to well-manicured communal areas such as a festive tiki-hut and a pool & hot tub that were landscaped to maximize that whole you’re-in-paradise feeling.
Inside the Gulf Mist, we had a spacious living room, a cute little corner kitchen, a restful bedroom, a super cute (and super clean) bathroom and even a huge walk-in closet (which we used to house both of our bikes). Definitely the makings of a comfortable home-away-from-home. The interior style was more beach-functional than beach-chic, but that didn’t stop us from relaxing 24/7. And we learned to love how easily sand could be brushed off those tropical couches.
We also found some familiar looking tile in the bathroom- although this basketweave is actually supposed to look yellow. We learned that the tile was original and the cottages were built in the 50′s- just like our house. Now wonder we felt so at home.
For more pics of our Island Paradise cottage and to see our other island-hopping adventures, be sure to check out our flickr album. And if you ever decide to make a trip there yourself, be sure to pass along a “hello” to our gracious hosts June and Bill.
Another Dirty Little Secret
We’ve been sneaky. No, not living-a-double-life sneaky… secret-vacation sneaky. That’s right. John and I quietly slipped away to a tiny series of islands off the west coast of Florida and have spent the past seven days swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, eating boatloads of seafood, blogging from the beach, and working on our tans (or in my case, sunburning my left ear).
We’ve had mucho fun celebrating what we affectionately refer to as “Honeymoon Part Two” (since our actual honeymoon nine months ago was spent in the far northwest: Alaska, we thought it was fitting to continue our celebration of newlywedism in the far southeast this time). And just like “Honeymoon Part One,” our little Hamburguesa came along for the ride. He had his fair share of beach adventures as well as some pretty hysterical lizard run-ins at the pool.
Stay tuned for pics of some gorge beach houses we discovered along with a few of our new favorite home decor havens (so you can vacation vicariously through us). In the meantime, you might wanna grab some sunscreen and a nice salt-rimmed margarita and get ready for beach week Young House Love-style.
Psst- Wanna know more about our secret vacay? Here’s the follow-up post full of details.
Our Dirty Little Secret
Ok, so between all the pics and video tours you may think you’ve seen every inch of our house. On the contrary our dear readers. We have an entire room that you’ve never been privy to.
Until now.
You see, under our sunroom is a private entry basement. This means that the only way to get there is to walk outside and down a few steps.
And since it’s not exactly easily accessible (or easily seen) we’ve been using it as more of a dumping ground than an extra room. We hesitate to show you the chaos that inhabits our little basement, but here it goes:
Now granted, this isn’t exactly a finished room, so I’m sure lots of people would use it for storage but it’s totally out of control. We can hardly walk halfway into the room anymore. But the reason we’ve stockpiled so many items in this tiny space is that we’ve been planning a garage sale for over a year now. And now that we’ve finally picked a date (Saturday, April 26th) we have to get our act together.
This is where you guys come in. Does anyone have any good garage sale tips? Everything from advertising to pricing would be helpful so please let us know what’s worked for you. In return, we’d be happy to show you some after pics once we get the room under control. Of course we have big plans for the bonus square footage- lots of paint, new lighting, a cozy rug, a screen to cover the ugly water heater, and some furniture. So be sure to stay tuned…
Bowl Me Over
Here’s a quick steal for those of you looking to spice things up in the kitchen without having to actually turn on the oven. Get your mitts on these festive scalloped bowls.
We recently picked ‘em up at Target for $3.99 each. Where else can you get something decorative, fun, and perfect for entertaining for around 16 bucks for a set of four? You can set ‘em out as candy dishes or use them to serve up ice cream sundaes…
… and they look just as good when they’re not in use. Check ‘em out on the second shelf of our glass front cabinet.
It’s always nice to know we’re in good company. Our friend Nicole from Making It Lovely mentioned that she recently picked up the exact same ones. I guess great minds love pretty china.
Bullet Dodged
At a recent open house, our suspicions that a last-minute countertop switch saved our kitchen were confirmed when we saw this kitchen with a granite countertop in Blanc Noir- the style that we almost chose:
In fact, we did choose Blanc Noir, but when we viewed the full slab (as opposed to a tiny sample that Home Depot provided) we pulled a last minute switcheroo from Blanc Noir to Pashmina. And this open house kitchen was all the proof that we needed to be sure that we absolutely without question made the right decision. Here’s our granite counter in Pashmina for comparison:
Our fears that the Blanc Noir granite would be more busy and patterned (at one point we started calling it dalmation-esque) were absolutely confirmed. We’re so glad we went with the more subtle and veiny (as opposed to spotty) Pashmina- and although it was slightly more expensive, the high end marble-look is worth every extra penny.
Let this be a lesson to all of you in the process of picking out a counter- be sure to check out the giant slab at the stoneyard! The mini samples of each of these styles looked extremely similar, but when we saw a big slab of each of them they couldn’t have been more different. Whew.
