my outdoor room with a view

I LovE outdoor spaces and have always wanted a covered porch. Our roof line doesn't lend to adding on a real roof for that, so we decided on an adjustable pergola. It's solar powered and with the push of the remote, it opens and closes rain tight. 
The guys finished it after the rains on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then I got to work on leveling the once shrub and pinestraw area up against the house. I put down landscaping cloth and covered it in bluestone. 15 bags of 40 lb rock carried one bag at a time from the front yard to the back. I say I earned my workout that day! 

We're on a little lake so the view is quite pretty.

 The rugs I had from last year, and the patio dining set is ~20 years old. It's cast aluminium and will last foreva'! I just updated it with some new PB striped cushions. 

 The all-weather wicker is new from Sears. It's sooo comfy to sit and relax on.

 I continued the PB stripe on the sofa with a throw pillow and also added a coral pillow that they have this season. The colors are perfect with the orangey-red covers.

The lanterns were a find from Home Goods, can't beat their prices!

All ready for entertaining.... planning my first garden party, who wants to come?

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affordable drama... a wall of white plates

Two weekends ago, my daughter and I painted her dining room walls "Amazing Gray" by Sherwin Williams. To add some pizzazz to the long undecorated wall we hung plain white plates that we'd been collecting for a couple months. Most of them came from HG, my fave store of course, and were so inexpensive, like $3.99 on average. I picked up several sizes of plate hangers at JoAnn's, white so they wouldn't show up too much. It makes such a clean and dramatic display for such a low cost. We both love the way it turned out... we even left it a bit uneven so we could add more!

so simple and so chic!

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all decked out!

I wanted a change this year for my mantle... I found the 2 shabby chic iron trees and stands at Home Goods early in the season, and that became my inspiration. I found the "Believe" blocks at Target and the green and red ribbon at Hobby Lobby. It all came together and I love it!

It's good to believe!

Here's my new ribbon on a boxwood wreath on the upper railing.

Moving outside to my Flexible Flyer from when I was a young girl and used to sleigh ride, an antique for sure! It's part of our front porch decoration.

The porch at night

the front lights

the keeping room banister strung with snowflake lights

This year we added a new stocking to our family collection... one for little Nathan Morgan. A light blue snowman stocking, perfect for my sweet grandson!

 His parents both have snowman stockings too!

 My talented Mother-in-law started the girls off with these handmade needle-worked stockings when they were each born.

 Kelly and Kristin's are embroidered crewel and Alex's is counted cross stitch.

 We added needlepoint to the mix when the guys joined the family.

My Beyer Caroler collection

Our white porcelain Nativity that my Mother gave us when we were first married.

My hand painted ceramic tree that my college roommate made for me, thanks Pat! We still put it out every year!

so... the house is all decked out! Complete with skinny tree and 9 stockings!

to see the skinny tree tweaked with a few more hydrangeas look here 

I Admit It... I Tweak!

oh, and our special handmade Santa Claus's

  The house is festive and ready for company. Merry Christmas to all! It's been a busy weekend and now it's time to say good night...

Linking to The Inspired Room Christmas Home Tours

the decorating has begun!

My, my our family is growing, we almost take up the entire mantle! 
We added Nathan's stocking this year. 
I bought him a needlepoint snowman themed stocking to keep in the tradition of his Mom and Dad's stockings... a whole family of snowmen!

Here's our "skinny tree" again. We've decided to decorate it with unbreakable items this year since Carter is 21 months old and loves to throw balls, glass ornaments count as balls, so we're taking precautions and leaving those off.

The rest of the house is in complete disarray at the moment. I'm hoping to finish up tomorrow and get some semblance of normalcy back around here!

golfgal

a new design plan

 If it all gets approved and comes together, GradGirl will be moving to a new place. 

Here's the living room space...

We'll have some painting to do, a few minor fix-ups, and a few new light fixtures to install, but we love a good project! The fun part will be changing up her living room. She's buying a new sofa, instead of using our 33 year old sofa from our first home back in the day. It's this one below, from Macy's, but in a darker shade of gray. Very chic don't you think?!

 And to add to the grouping... she'll have 2 of these chairs but with a slightly different arm and a pillow back 

 A wall unit like this would be great to display her aqua glass collection! 

We were thinking it would all look great with an exposed brick wall on one side...

The brick wall is hopeful, maybe later as a future project. 

We're waiting for final condo approval from the bank and for the repair items on the inspection list to be completed. But... the fun part is to plan the decorating! 

We love that part.

got all the red out just in time for the holidays! How's that for timing?!

Sometimes projects get put on the "back burner". I know you all know what I mean! We finished renovating our kitchen last March, and in doing so changed the colors in the keeping room. My sofa went from red to green, the corner chair and ottoman went from red to blue. I've had fabric all this time to redo the chairs in the breakfast nook and my desk chair. So... six months or so later I finally got around to doing them! 

Here's the keeping room decked out for fall

I got to play with a gun for this project. 

An ordinary electric staple gun is no match for an air compressor!

Using it was just like on the DIY shows... all that power and simplicity!

I decided not to go with the Ralph Lauren floral fabric I had purchased for the dining chairs, but had enough Annie Selke in two different patterns to do 2 chairs in each. 
I'm really not a "floral" kind of gal.

Makes it more fun and modern don't you think?!

Here they are all together, with our Scrabble game on the table of course!

I did the desk chair in a blue and green bee pattern that ties in great with all the fabrics.

So, just in time for the winter holidays when we typically decorate in reds and greens, 
this part of my house is all blues and green. 
I'll just have to change my holiday decor up a bit too!