Archive for September, 2009
Hotel Decor Inspiration (Part One)
You may have seen glimpses of our fun with the Bowers in our little road trip video from last week, but we’re back to share a collection of fun decorating ideas courtesy of our stay at the quirky and memorable Hotel Preston in Nashville. Katie and I had been brainstorming another video that we could throw together ever since we started planning our little reunion (you can see our first joint video adventure right here). And once we checked in at our hotel it was obvious that it was full of amazing inspiration that triggered some hotel-chic ideas that anyone can implement at home. So without further ado, here are half of our favorite hotel-inspired decorating ideas…
…to see the other half, just head on over to All Bower Power.
But then don’t forget to come back and tell us what hotel touches you’ve drawn inspiration from in the past. Was it a paint color? A good friend of mine painted her half bath a rich navy hue after she saw it at a posh hotel. Maybe it was an amazing featherbed or even a bathrobe that you just had to introduce to your own home after spotting it at a hotel? How do you keep your guest room feeling luxe and oh so inviting for your friends and family? Do tell.
Note: Hotel Preston didn’t comp us, pay us, or otherwise reward us for mentioning them in this post. We found them via Travelocity & TripAdviser and paid to stay there because it looked fun. And it was.
And Now For A Post About Salsa
We try to stick pretty closely to home improvement and decorating related content, but when we saw this little five dollar salsa kit at the farmer’s market we immediately loved the “homey” feeling it gave us. And it was a DIY project of sorts. We also thought it would make an adorable hostess or housewarming gift. Who knew tossing salsa ingredients into a decorative basket or bowl could be so darn cute?
After happily handing five dollars over in return for some locally grown salsa ingredients, John sweetly asked if it came with any directions. The response? Just chop everything up and let it stand for an hour. It doesn’t get much easier than that. So we stopped for some tortilla chips and got to work whipping up our homemade salsa as soon as we got home.
It took about fifteen minutes for us to chop up the varied collection of tomatoes along with the garlic and the onion (and we only used half of the jalapeño because we’re wusses). Before we knew it we had a multi-colored bowl of goodness staring us in the face.
And what’s that bowl in the background of the photo above? That’s what I like to call John’s Rachael Ray bowl. He likes to use a regular old cereal bowl to collect the skin and ends of all the stuff we chop to keep the counter and the cutting board nice and clean. Didn’t I hit the jackpot when I married my little chef? It’s also nice because it easily allows us to pick out the stuff we can compost and then dump the rest of it in the garbage in one fell swoop. Another bowl bonus? Using it to collect the waste while we cook keeps the base cabinet where we store our garbage pail and compost container much cleaner since we only open it once at the end of the project instead of constantly tossing things in the trash with dirty hands as we go.
But back to the salsa at hand. After our chop fest we just let it sit for an hour or so in the fridge and then it was fiesta time.
So what do you guys think? Wouldn’t a DIY salsa kit make a cute little gift for a friend? Or a sweet little date night activity? And while we’re on the subject of DIY meals, do you have any other favorite snacks or meals to whip up in a snap that still feel special and fun? Do tell. We also love making s’mores in our backyard firepit… and come to think of it a s’mores kit would also be a great gift. Gotta love DIY projects that result in a delicious treat.
Things Are Looking Up
Those of you who follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter may have tried to solve the mystery of why we slept in the guest bedroom for a few nights last weekend. Well… (drumroll? trumpets? cow bell?)… we painted the ceiling in the master bedroom. Yeeehaw!
One of our favorite things about blogging about our adventures in home improvement is that we’re still totally learning as we go. By no means have we cracked all the decorating codes, and we just love when we make some groundbreaking-to-us discovery along the way that we get to share with you guys. Well, this is one of those times.
After three years of loving Glidden’s Gentle Tide on the walls of our bedroom (it’s the only room we didn’t paint at least twice to get it right) we suddenly realized that our white crown molding paired with our white ceilings were sort of yawn. The entire room felt polished and luxe thanks to billowy floor to ceiling curtains, breezy blue tones, and crisp white trim… but the boring white ceiling made it feel like we had neglected the fifth wall in the space- and it certainly didn’t do anything to accent the crown molding that we introduced a while back for a bit more interest and architecture.
Nope, we were definitely not playing up all of our rooms positives, but that’s nothing that two $7 quarts of paint couldn’t solve. First we taped up some paint chips on the ceiling and studied them at all times of the day to figure out which one we liked best. Taping them to the ceiling is a super important step (as opposed to just holding the swatch up against the wall) because light hits that plane of the room in a totally different way (something that looks super light against the wall might look mega dark on the ceiling or vice versa). Once we had them all in place it was easy to see which swatches were too purple, too gray, too dark, too weird, and juuuust right.
We settled on the swatch at the end because it felt like a lighter version of the color on the wall with a bit of fresh celery worked in. We could have had the paint guys mix up a tint that was exactly the wall color with a bit more white in it (for an almost-guaranteed-victory) but we jumped at the chance to add a bit of soft interest by choosing a swatch with a bit more green in it to layer in more beachy blue-green without hitting anyone over the head. It just felt a bit fresher and subtly exciting (you can’t see much of the green in this shot but it’s more apparent in the next pic).
So fourteen dollars later we got to work with our two quarts of flat paint. What color was it? Glidden’s Cool Cucumber. A gorgeous super soft green just like the inside of a cucumber (the swatch actually doesn’t look blue at all, but taped up in our blue room it picked up some of those soft tones for a gorgeous effect). And why two quarts? We hate to pay $20 to store a huge gallon of paint when we only need about half of it, and it’s only around $14 for two quarts which we knew would cover well enough and leave us with some touch up paint that we could easily store (since it’s about a fourth of the size of a big gallon). Why flat paint? It hides more imperfections than eggshell or semi-gloss options, and for surfaces like a ceiling it’s nice to play those down with something that looks smooth and seamless. Here’s John getting his roll on (he’s the roller in the family while I’m the resident cutter-inner):
The moment we had even a smidge of paint on the ceiling we immediately knew we were doing the right thing. The crown molding went from “I’ll just sit here in the back of the class and act invisible” to “Oooh, I know the answer to that complicated math problem so I’ll shout ‘pick me pick me’ and flail my arm around.”
And these photos really don’t do the serene green color any justice whatsoever. It’s like the softest piece of sea glass that got battered by waves for years and only has a hint of celery green left to show for it. And it goes so perfectly with our greeny-gray-blue walls that we’re still congratulating ourselves for stepping a bit out of our comfort zone (instead of adding 50% more white to the Gentle Tide formula and calling it a day). It by no means shouts “green ceiling” but it adds to a layered look instead of something super matchy-matchy and we love that it’s not so super coordinated and it looks a bit more interesting and dimensional. Plus it really plays up the crown molding since we no longer have the white on white thing going on.
Most of all we love that we lost that blinding white ceiling but the room still feels airy and open. The ceilings actually feel higher since the super white paint made them more apparent (which made them feel closer) while the soft celery tone makes them feel a bit more like they recede into the sky.
And the way that the light of the capiz chandelier bounces around the ceiling really makes the room feel like it’s glowing- like the shiny part of a sea shell or the inside of a limesicle. It really is cool and refreshing yet warm and enveloping. And although this last picture doesn’t do a great job of demonstrating it, the crown molding really does rise to meet us every morning, noon and night (check out the picture above this one for a better demonstration).
So that’s what we did last weekend in under three hours with less than fifteen bucks. And the reason we slept in the guest bedroom? Even though Glidden is naturally pretty low in VOCs, we always try to limit our exposure to paint since we use it so often, so sleeping in the guest bedroom for a few nights while we kept the windows open and a fan going in the master bedroom allowed us to appreciate another bedroom in our house. And tempt us to paint that ceiling as well. In fact I’m now dying to paint the ceilings in both of our guest bedrooms along with our living room and sunroom so stay tuned to see which one we attack next- and what color we choose.
Oh and let us know if you’ve had any decorating-related lightbulb moments lately. We never would have thought to paint our ceilings anything other than crisp clean white a few months ago, and we’re itching to know what sort of fun discoveries you guys are making on the home front. Do tell.
