Fall Flowers & Decor

Happy Fall Y'all! Friday was the first official day of fall so this weekend, I started adding some fall decor around the house.  I haven't decorated much for the fall in the past, but with all of the inspiration floating around the internet and Pinterest, I thought it'd be a great time to do so.

First, I got a wreath for our front door. It's orange-y, reddish, brown with fall leaves. I added the ribbon bow and covered a wreath hanger with ribbon to make it look like it's hanging from the door with ribbon.  I like how it turned out. It adds color to our black door against the white siding of the house.

 Darcy watched me from upstairs then entire time, so I had to
take a picture of him ;)

I also got some burgundy mums from Home Depot for the front steps. HD had a big selection and the best part of all is that they were $4 each! Some of them were normal sized, but I managed to find a couple giant ones that were still $4!  I got a couple of another variety that were a little bigger to plant in the yard.

While we were planting the mums, we went ahead and planted tulip bulbs for the spring. If you plant now, they'll root before the winter and flower in the spring. We got 90 tulips to plant in the front, they're going to be red, white and red/white mix. But wow, planting bulbs is tiring! Kevin and I took turns with the bulb planter, but it wears you out digging 90 small 4" deep holes, lol. I can't wait to see what they look like when they come up in the spring!

         

I went to Fresh Market over the weekend and bought some fresh flowers in bright fall colors. They have the best selection of flowers. I love going in there to see what they have available. Here's the arrangement that I made, sitting on our dining room table.

I've added a couple more fall-ish things around the house, but I'm still working on beefing up the decor.  I can't wait to get pumpkins and I'm thinking about getting a bunch of the little ones to decorate the mantle or something else.
 

Dining Room Updates!

Our furniture for the dining room was delivered yesterday. I'm so excited to see this room start to come together. I had a hard time trying to narrow down the vision for this room, and I think it will be great when we finish.  Instead of choosing furniture that was overly formal, we're going for a French country elegance feel for the room. I think this fits our lifestyle and will mesh well with the rest of the house.

So, here are some pictures of our new furniture in the room. The curtains, wall color, wainscoting and wall decor will all be changed in the near future. ;) What's there now is what I put up after we moved in so it wouldn't feel so empty! Plus, these pictures were taken when it was dark, so the lighting is a little bit off.

These pictures were of the table without the leaf in it. With the leaf in, we can easily seat 8, which will be great! We got 6 side chairs for the table so that we can get two upholstered chairs for the ends. I'm currently searching to find the best chair for the job. Here are some of my favorites:

Ballard Designs, Gentry Chair:
 Natural Linen w/Black Finish

Ballard Designs, Gramercy Chair:
Microfiber Natural w/ Black Finish

Home Decorators, Tufted-Back
Dining Chair in Protege Haze

Home Decorators, Becca Nailhead
Chair in Tufted Natural Linen

Restoration Hardware: Martine Arm Chair

Before we paint the walls and pick out the specific greige we want, I want to have our curtains picked out. I think a patterned fabric would be pretty. Here are some of the fabrics that I'm liking right now. I'm ordering some swatches so I can see what I like the best. I want this room to be mostly neutral (so we can decorate according to the season) but also subtly bring in some of the colors from elsewhere downstairs.  

             

        

        

So, we'll see what happens. I need to go look at fabric in person and hopefully I'll have an easier time finding what I want.  

That's what's been happening in our dining room over the last couple of days. I can't wait for it to be done (hopefully in time for the holidays!) so we can enjoy it! 

Swimming in Paint Chips

I picked up a bunch of paint chips for ideas for our dining room today. We've finally started to make some real progress in this room and I'm really excited.  I'm thinking of doing a gray or beige color on the walls in this room. I think this will help to keep the room mostly neutral and then we'll use accents of different colors as the seasons change and holidays come and go.  We're also hoping to do wainscoting in this room, which I think will have a big impact on the look.  I'm sure my opinions of these colors will change as the lighting changes in the room, so we're going to keep the chips up for a while to decide what we like best.

Paint chips from Behr and Sherwin Williams

My favorites right now: Mindful Gray (SW),
Collonade Gray (SW), & Graceful Gray (Behr)

Wainscoting via Centsational Girl 

We also bought a rug for this room a couple of weeks ago. I found one that I really liked at HomeGoods and I couldn't pass it up.  I really like how it's black, with silver, taupe and brown. It's also very dynamic and the colors change depending on which way you look at it. I think it will work nicely with everything else we're planning to do in the room.  

This weekend, we also ordered our table and chairs.  Now, I just have to decide on which upholstered chairs to order for the end of the table. I think this will be a good way to make it look pretty and more custom without having to order 8 of the expensive upholstered chairs! I'm thinking of something like this chair below, but I'm not sure what fabric yet. I've thought about a lot of options, simple linen or a seafoam color, or maybe a fun pattern.

Ballard Designs Gentry Chair

I'm excited to see how this room turns out. Stick around for updates in the next couple of weeks as we start to tackle it all and hopefully make some more progress!  

Our Trip to Boston

I hope everyone's having a good Labor Day. Unfortunately I have work and school today, boo! But, I hope you're having fun for me ;)

I posted a picture a couple of days ago from the conference I went to last week. Kevin tagged along with me and we spent the weekend sightseeing after the conference ended. Here are some pictures from our trip:

In our hotel room, with a great view of the
river from the 35th floor!

Street in Boston outside our hotel

Us at the waterfront in the North End

Old North Church, where the lanterns
signaled for Paul Revere in 1775

Italian neighborhood of the North End

Boston Downtown at Dusk

Whale watching!

3 humpback whales

Lobster dinner for Kevin on our last night

We had a great time and really enjoyed the city of Boston. I loved the old European charm that the city had. It has just the right amount urban-ness, without being too crazy and stressful all of the time. I hope you get a chance to visit, it was really fun.

But of course, we were happy to get home... I was really excited to see Darcy. We missed him a lot while we were gone!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Hi everyone, I've been majorly MIA in the last couple weeks as work and school have really geared up. I've been so busy and haven't had a chance to blog much.  We're in Boston this week at a conference in my field, Biomedical Engineering. So, I thought I'd share a picture of me with my poster that I presented. I'll be back next week to talk about our trip and get settled back into things.

Hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend!