Thomas Home (Video!) Tour: Fall 2014

In the spirit of catching the blog up to the happenings of the house (as per our discussion here), welcome to your FIRST EVER exclusive full tour of our home… In a VIDEO! You’ve already seen most of these rooms, but sometimes it can be difficult to picture the layout of a house just by photos. So, welcome to our home… video style! Ok, lights, camera, action:

A few things about the movie:

1. It took me four or five takes to get my act together and stop bursting out laughing in the middle of everything.
2. But this was not all my fault because what you don’t see is Mitch sitting on the steps making weird faces the whole time (he got out of the way in time for the upstairs part).
3. Feel free to interpret all of those “and behind this door is just a boring closet/laundry room that no one wants to see” statements as: All of the junk that was on the floors of the other rooms are behind those doors, so we’ll just keep them closed for now…

Hopefully you now have a better idea of how the rooms in our house relate to one another and how everything is laid out. Don’t worry- sometimes even we get lost. 🙂

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week!

 

We Put Baby in a Corner

This baby, that is:Ok, hold the phone while I back up a bit… This particular corner of the house is what we lovingly call the “foyer”, even though it’s a tiny triangular sliver of linoleum as you come through the front door. For some time it was completely open and empty, but I had dreams of adding some sort of storage/ bench contraption that was triangularly shaped so it could be tucked into that corner. Maybe something like this, but corner-y (photo taken from Grace Lee Cottage)…

I liked the idea of having storage, a place to sit to put on shoes, maybe a few hooks, etc. Whatever we ended up with had to fit into that corner though, so the door could open all the way. Let me fast forward and just tell you that we immediately nixed the “we’ll build something custom-made ourselves” plan when I found a gem at the Restore. We’re frequent fliers there and every so often we strike gold…At first glance, it looked like a neat piece- half closed storage, half open display space. But WAIT, there’s more… check out the profile:Perfectly shaped to fit right into a corner! We weren’t really diggin’ the honey wood tones, so it got a crisp coat of white paint to match the door and balusters. Much better.Oh, and some new hardware- courtesy of Home Depot.As for the inside, the bottom is convenient for storing shoes that we kick off as we come in the door. Every so often, we clean it out and start a fresh “collection”. The top is a melting pot of form and function. The bottom shelf holds a bowl for keys (this has really helped the WHERE-ARE-MY-KEYS-??? issues that come up as we’re racing out the door) and other odds and ends- pool passes, the key to the mailbox, etc. The second and third shelves are just for show- I switch things up in there every so often.Truth be told, I’d like to do a better job with this. This is prime display real estate that gets a little boring because not much attention has been paid to it. However, now that it’s public knowledge on the blog, I’ll probably feel more accountable to keep it decent looking and up to date with the seasons.

And those lights? They  are battery operated puck lights from Lowes. They stick right to the bottom of each shelf and really help to illuminate what’s going on in there at night… otherwise it can get kind of shadowy. I’ve been meaning to paint the sides white so that they don’t look so intrusive when you’re looking into the cabinet straight on. Someday…

So, there’s the story of the corner shelf. Yet another spot in our house that had never gotten any air time on the blog until now… hooray! Have a great day, everyone.

-Leslie

 

 

 

Mantel of the Month: Summer Edition

I am super excited about this mantel get-up because: 1. It feels kind of beachy and 2. All it took was making a few tweaks from last month’s mantel to get the new look. Score a point for being lazy. Speaking of which, let’s take a stroll down memory lane to our spring mantel, so you can see what I mean.And here is our new and improved summer-scape:   I’ll let you play “spot the differences” on your own, but essentially, all I did was swap out the pink for woven and added a few hits of beachy blue and a few other beachy accents. Here’s a closer shot of the left side: The woven placemats ($3 at Ikea if you’re hunting) are such a simple addition (just throw ’em down!), but bring a lot of “summer” to the set up. The blue vase, dipped in differing blues and whites reminds me a lot of the ocean, so that made the cut too. These beachy touches are mirrored (but not exactly symmetrical) on the other side.   Same woven place mat. Same hint of blue, but in more of a glassy piece this time. At first the blue vase was empty, but I thought it needed something so I grabbed a pair of clippers and marched straight out the front door to snip a branch off of our leafy tree. Add some water to the vase to keep him fresh and you’ve got yourself some non-floral greenery! The woven pot (also from Ikea and you can find more info on it here) keeps with the natural vibe and of course, the seashell seals (say that three times fast!) the beachy theme for the entire mantel.    Ok, go with me on this: place mat and woven pot= sand, seashell= seashell, blue vases= water, plants= sea weed. In the spirit of going overboard, we’ll even say that metal pot= metal detector treasures. Bam, we’ve got a beach in our house. And the good news is, you can have one too! All it takes is going on a treasure hunt through your house and yard for some natural, beachy elements and figuring out a combination that works for you! Happy Summer, y’all!-Leslie