Weekend Recap

Hi everyone, I hope you had a great weekend. We had a really busy but fun weekend!

On Friday, we had the wine lattice installed above our fridge in the kitchen. We had planned to do this ourselves, but we soon realized that we didn't have the proper tools or saws to cut the lattice. So, we left it up to the professionals. I'm so glad it's up now. I need to add a piece of trim to the frame and sand and repaint, but the hard part is over, it's up!

Wine lattice! Excuse the blurry iPhone pic

On Saturday, we got up early to go to the UNC football game vs. Miami. We tailgated beforehand and had a ton of food. I made a couple of recipes from Pinterest... I can't wait to share them with you this week. They were so good! We had lots of fun tailgating and at the game with a big group of our family and friends.  It was a really pretty day.

Kevin and his brother and sister before the game

On Sunday, we went to the Wake County Parade of Homes after church. I have always loved going to the Parade of Homes since I was young, but I found that it's even better after you own a house. There's always so much home and decorating inspiration to take in. I definitely recommend checking it out if you can!  I took a ton of pictures at the houses that we visited, I can't wait to share them!

Touring an amazing home in the Parade of Homes

On Sunday evening, I painted below the chair rail in the dining room. It was a lot of work and I'm not quite done, but it's getting there. I'm happy with the progress.  I realized that painting with white is much harder than some other colors. You really need at least 2-3 even coats to make it look good.

Hope you have a great week!

Weekend Recap

The weekend's over... back to work everyone. We had a good weekend, I hope everyone else did too.  On Friday, I took Darcy to get his hair cut. He needed it desperately, he was so shaggy before.

On Saturday morning, I took Darcy over to my parents house to play with their dog Toby. He loves it there and they always have a lot of fun together. The both got groomed this week, so I took some pictures of them together. :) 

On Saturday afternoon, we went to the NCSU football game. We tailgated beforehand and had lots of good food and fun with friends!

Then, Scotty McCreery sang the national anthem!! NCSU and Raleigh love Scotty, plus it was his birthday this weekend, so there was lots of celebrating all around.  It was cool to hear him sing in person.

On Sunday, we went to church and then lunch with my family. Afterwards, we did some shopping then picked up the paint for the dining room. Sherwin Williams has a 30% off sale going on through today, so that encouraged us to go ahead and get the paint.  Although I hadn't planned on painting, when we got home, I got    really motivated to start painting, lol. So, I moved all of the furniture and rug out of the room and painted the gray above the chair rail yesterday.  I really like the color, Mindful Gray. It's a warm gray and I think it ties in nicely with the other colors in the house.  I still need to paint below the chair rail and decide on our wainscoting, but that will come soon. I'm thinking about just painting white below and repainting the trim for now, then adding more ornate wainscoting in the future. We have a lot of other projects and things we want to do in the house and I'm okay if the dining room is more simple for now.  Here are the pictures of the room right now.

Mindful Gray above the chair rail, old room color below.

My favorite curtain options. Leaning toward the bottom one by Duralee.

I need to touch up the gray paint in some places and do the trim and white below the chair rail, but so far I'm really liking it. I can't wait to post pictures when it's done.

Pumpkins!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Since it's now October, it's time to start thinking about pumpkins!! We passed a farm on the way to church on Sunday that had huge pumpkins on display. So, after church, we stopped by to pick some out.  We got two big pumpkins to put on the front steps. I loved the really, really big ones, but they were a little much, lol. So, we got two of the smaller giant ones.  They had a lot of regular small pumpkins, but I wanted big ones ;).

We put them on our steps at home, with the mums. We don't plan on carving these because the guy said they are nearly solid inside. So, we'll probably get a smaller pumpkin or two to carve when it gets closer to Halloween!

While I had my camera out, I also took some shots of the purple mums we have in our yard.  I'm really enjoying trying to improve my photography and editing skills.

Have a great week. 

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!