Archive for March, 2012
Fab Freebie: French Swimming
***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!***
Well now that we’re more than ready to find a pool to dive into, random.org has picked a winner of this week’s giveaway. The lucky lady is… Cher (who swims about 20 laps each day in the summer). Congrats!
One element in our new kitchen that always makes us smile is the etsy print that we purchased by Samantha French. Remember, the cheery orange and blue painting of the lady swimming (that Clara also sweetly though included some “fishies”)? Well now Samantha is giving you guys a chance to win your very own colorful work of art with a $200 gift certificate to her Etsy shop. So grab your swim cap and bathing suit because that’s enough to snag any of the 16 x 20″ archival prints featuring Samantha’s signature subject matter.
- PRIZE: A $200 gift card to Samantha French’s Etsy shop
- TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “LET’S GO SWIMMING!” and tell us…
- BONUS QUESTION: …are you a swimmer? Do you love going to the pool to do a few laps? Or maybe just to splash around (or lounge around)? Or are you and water not friends?
- GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, March 28th at 8pm EST or at 10,000 entries (whichever comes first)
- NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
- PRIZE SHIPS: Worldwide!
- USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday as an update to this post. That’s right, come right back here on Thursday for the announcement of our winner. Good luck…
Note: We aren’t paid or perked for hosting these giveaways, we just do ‘em to thank you awesome folks for stopping in. See our Giveaway FAQ page for more info. Pics courtesy of Samantha French.
The Long Ignored Master Bathroom…
Well, I guess we did rehang the shower curtain at ceiling height right after we moved in – but other than that we haven’t really touched this room. In fact, pretty much all three of our bathrooms are uncharted territory for us when it comes to updates. But you’ve gotta start somewhere, so we decided to start in the one we use the most – and probably find the quirkiest. See, it doesn’t have a sink (that’s in our bedroom, actually) so it’s a really small room. We’re talking around 5′ x 6′ total (including a regular sized tub). So yes, the door practically hits the toilet (it just barely misses it). And John can stand in the center of the room and touch all four walls (my husband has quite the wingspan, but this room really is tiny).
The room’s a total beige box. Beige tile with gray veining on the floor, the same tile in the shower and even on the walls around the toilet and door, an accent row of tiles with gray trees on them, beige paint on the walls, off-white-trim, even a beige futuristic toilet (check out the curve in this video).
Oh yes, and there’s a glass shelf and towel bar right next to the toilet – neither of which we’ve ever really used for anything functional. Why? Well, hanging a towel that would literally brush against us on the way to the toilet felt weird so we use the towel hooks on the back of the door instead. And we just plopped some wood printing blocks on the glass shelf (intending to hang art to fill in that wall) but it always felt like the shelf – and towel bar for that matter – invaded our personal space in such a small room.
We jokingly call our bathroom The Travertine Palace although it’s not actual travertine tile and it’s anything but palatial when it comes to size. The funny thing is that a few folks have come over and said “wow, you don’t have to do anything to this room!” which never fails to make us laugh because it probably feels the most not-like-us of all of the rooms in our house. We’re just suckers for crisp white trim, a white toilet, a not-beige color on the walls, and not all the same tile on the walls and the floor and the shower. But we can completely appreciate that some folks would love this room as is. I think the main thing we’re craving is some contrast. It feels like such a monochromatic box to us. And when we added the crisp white shower curtain way back when, it just planted the seed that the room might feel more crisp and less all-beige if we did things like:
- paint the cream trim white
- paint the walls so they have some contrast
- craigslist the toilet and replace it with a classic white one
- replace the boob light (seen here)
- hang some bathroom-friendly art
- do something to add privacy to the window
- replace the border tile around the room (maybe in phase 2?)
- replace the floor tile down the road (just to break things up since there’s so much of it)
- I’m sure I’m forgetting something – let’s just say the room has room for improvement
So that’s the plan. I even whipped up this mood board to help us envision things. Of course we’re sure the plan will change ten times since we just figure things out as we go, but so far here’s what’s on our mind:
1. When it comes to the color scheme, since we’re working with beige tile with gray veining, we want to bring in some richer gray tones (to keep everything from looking so monochromatic and add some contrast). We’d also love to introduce some pretty blue tones (to tie into the blue wall color in our adjoining bedroom).
2. We have been in love with this light fixture for a while now, and we’re hoping it pops up at our favorite local lighting outlet (The Decorating Outlet) since it would be a pretty amazing upgrade from the boob light situation that we have going on. We’re not sure if the placement will look weird though (centered in front of the window would be so much cuter) so we’ll have to see where we end up. You know we’ll keep you posted!
3. This tile. Ahhhh, this tile. We want it. Hex tile has always allured us (sort of like penny tile, except it’s even more bee-ish, and you know we love bees). So we can totally picture it in our master bedroom someday. But it’s definitely going to be down the road (we want to work with the existing tile, but do dream about replacing the floor tiles to break things up since there’s so much of that tile all over the small room).
4. I painted this little ditty a while back, and have always thought it would look really cool in the bathroom (oversized art in a small room with a dramatic high-hung shower curtain could be fun, right?). Of course we have to see if it really works in there, but especially with the blue glass pendant we think it could be nice.
5. We’re loving the muted moody look of frosted glass subway tile, so we’d love to use a light gray glass tile as an accent around the room (something like this, but not exactly) to replace the tree tiles. Although we’re not sure if it’s a phase two project (depending how hard it is to track down and how challenging it is to extract the tree tiles without hurting the tile around ‘em).
6. A good old fashioned white toilet! We can’t wait to replace the beige futuristic one that we have in there (we’ll craigslist it and then grab an American Standard from Home Depot, which we got for our first house for under $100 and loved more than the fancy Kohler one we inherited).
7. This represents our existing extra-long white waffle shower curtain, which will stay to add some crisp-yet-soft texture to the tile-riddled space (we got ours from amazon.com by searching 95″ shower curtain, but this image is from Target).
8. This represents our existing tile, which is beige with gray veins running through it.
9. This frosted window (found here) is one of the ways we’ve been debating adding some privacy to the room without blocking the light. You know we love frosting film (more on that here and here).
But enough planning. How about some action? Well, we’ve removed that oddly placed shelf and towel bar, spackled and sanded the holes they left, and applied one coat out of two on the walls in a rich putty color. In a bathroom (where you’re dealing with semi-gloss paint) the first coat always looks especially horrifying so we can’t wait to get the smoother second coat up there.
Oh and this picture is a really bad sell on this color (since it’s spotty and half-done and just shows a corner of the room) but you can check it out in the kitchen here. It looks great with our tiles (ties into the gray veining), will really make white items like the shower curtain and the future glossy white trim pop, adds contrast, and obviously will look a lot better once a second coat is on there and it’s dry. And you can see that we’re painting the ceiling too (which we also did in our first house’s bathrooms since we find it makes small rooms actually look less chopped-up and busy).
Of course we’ll be back with tons of finished photos for you. We just have to tackle coat number two, wait impatiently for it to dry, and then hang the shower curtain back up to snap after pics. So those will be up tomorrow! In the meantime, did you guys tackle any bathroom upgrades over the weekend? Do you have nearly done living spaces but completely untouched bathrooms? What is it about these tiny rooms that’s so intimidating?
The Big 3-0
A bunch of you have been asking how turning thirty was for me, so I’ll take a break from painting something (yes, there is paint going on a formerly untouched bathroom wall! wahoo!) to admit that Monday was a really nice day. So far thirty is all good. And I don’t feel a day over 29. Hah. My theory is that every birthday sort of feels like not much has changed since I wake up feeling the same way I did the morning before. By comparison, I always feel older when life events happen (graduating college, getting married, having a baby) but for some reason a birthday to me is just a fun day when I get to eat too much dessert. Which I most certainly did this time. So here’s the play by play.
I woke up to a kitchen that looked like a big ol’ present.
John had strung ribbons around it like the prettiest spider web I ever did see:
Is he a man or what? I love a guy who isn’t afraid to get his ribbon on in the name of birthday madness.
John also secretly picked up my favorite lunch ever: pastina (although it never says that on the box, so maybe that’s just what my Italian mom calls it). It’s basically tiny little pasta stars that you make and then add butter, milk, and salt. I used to eat it after school growing up and it always feels like a treat when John remembers that I love it and surprises me with some.
It was the first time Clara ever had it, and she LOVED it. That’s my girl.
We worked a normal day, except that we decided to unplug a few hours early (at 5:30!) and head over to Stonypoint, which is an outdoor walking mall here in Richmond. John said since we’re always too full to make it to dessert that he thought we should get dessert before dinner, to ensure that we had room. It was really cute and he told me to pick any restaurant I wanted and it actually became this tour of reading every dessert menu and picking the one that sounded the most amazing…
… which ended up being this trio of strawberry cheesecake, brownie, and gooey cookie topped with caramel from Champs. And yes, at the same moment John and I busted out laughing because we realized that the bowls looked like the chairs from The Voice. Yes, I might have even turned one around while singing “this is the voice.” And the waiter might have seen me. So you’ll be pleased to know that I’m not any more mature or less embarrassing in this new decade that I’ve entered.
Of course we ducked into Anthropologie, which I love to peruse just for all the creative ideas that they have going on with displays (check out the awesome burlap upholstery webbing that they used to create a woven wall behind Clara in the picture below).
But enough talk about the background. How cute is my kid in the foreground? Love that girl. She actually sang happy birthday to me about seventeen times, so it was extra sweet. I even got some encore presentations on Tuesday and Wednesday, which never failed to make me grin like a fool.
Along with a card full of sweet nothings from the hubby and cute scribbles from the bean, John got me this book called The Happiness Project that I’m already loving. The first chapter is all about paring down and I swear it made me want to drop the book and go all organization-crazy in my house. So beware, there might be some cleaning/organizing/basket-related madness going on along with the landscaping, bathroom, and deck-building plans that we have on the list.
He also got me this sweet ceramic elephant box (you know I can’t resist a sale, so I actually sent the link to John with a wink and a mumble about someone’s birthday…). John also surprised me with a gift card for a massage at my favorite place (he gets me one every Mother’s Day, and I must have raved about that annual tradition so much that it might have become a semi-annual thing – wahoo!). Momma’s still got some knots from laying a bunch of cork flooring, so it’ll definitely come in handy.
Then after we tucked Clara into bed, instead of DIYing something or flopping on the couch to size photos and write posts, John made me my favorite dinner: a chicken and leek stroganoff recipe from Jamie Oliver (I know it sounds gross but it’s the most delicious thing ever). We ate it outside on the patio with candles to the sound of the rustling wind and the baby monitor that we brought out there with us. Haha. It was great.
Over dinner, we got to talking about how much we love this house, and if we think we love it as much as our first house (our first love! our first baby! that house was our everything for a very long time). The verdict: yup…. but it’s a tie. We will always have a place in our heart for that first home of ours, where we got married in the backyard and brought Clara home. But I think it surprised us to realize how much our hearts swell when we think about this house too. Especially because it didn’t feel nearly as warm or cozy as our first house at first, but it definitely does now. It was a fun chat because the conversation also turned to us brainstorming things we can’t wait to do (as it tends to do at least once a week, haha). I guess we get love by giving love, so talking about all the ways that we want to show our house some love fills us with excitement and makes us love it even more.
All in all it was an amazing thirtieth birthday and I have so much to be thankful for. I love my hubs, my bean, and my pooch for making me feel so special along with all of you who sent such sweet birthday wishes my way. I know I get mushy on you guys a lot, but you really are the best. I’m so happy to share my house, my thirtieth birthday, and my random little DIY life with you.
Psst- You can check out John’s big 3-0 here, Clara’s first birthday here, my last birthday here, and Clara singing her unique rendition of happy birthday here.
