Closer to the Heart

Gracie the Goof.

2010-03-01T21:38:00.012-05:00

Gracie has now taken over the loveseat. We love her, but she is a shedding machine. She's dirty and wet a lot too, so we had to bust out the throw blanket. The other day I came downstairs and she was just hanging out, in this position. This isn't the first time I've "caught" her doing this either.....

(Please ignore the messy sheet and doggy bowl) I don't get it, but she obviously likes to be upside down. She has no modesty, either. I published the most decent of the pictures I had! I wonder, in doggy-world, what is the appeal? Does anyone else's dog do this?

I Love Lucite

2010-02-24T16:45:00.019-05:00

I love Lucite furniture. I love Lucite accessories. It's featured in magazines, catalogs, and decorating blogs everywhere. I would love to buy 4 of these chairs at IKEA for my kitchen table.

I also love these other Lucite lovelies....

Back in August, in my pre-blogging days, I was at a nearby consignment store where I sell stuff I don't need anymore (and look for more cool stuff) and I saw this really cool acrylic/lucite stool. It had a really ugly white vinyl cover on it. I had just inherited a staple gun (ok, about a year and a half before this post, but whatever, I hadn't used it yet) and I thought this would be the perfect time to try re-upholstery. I have about a million discontinued fabric swatches I kept from my old job that I needed a use for, so I ran home and started going through them. I finally chose a cheetah print fabric (I love animal prints in small doses) that I also have pillows made out of somewhere else in my house. I knew it was going to look awesome with the color scheme in the guest room and pretty much anywhere else I wanted to put it. Like I said, this was in my pre-blogging days, and I wasn't smart enough to take any before pictures. DUH. Turns out, it WAS easy enough, but the corners were really hard to figure out. I had to look up a tutorial on You Tube to figure out a way to make the corners look good. Anyways, here is the end result. I have to say I think it came out looking great, if I do say so myself....

Mirror Mirror on the Wall....

2010-02-16T20:23:00.034-05:00

So I was thinking about blog topics the other day and I decided to do a post about mirrors. I was just reading about the effect of mirrors on one of my favorite blogs, Centsational Gir l. You can read about it here.
If you look around my house, you will see that I own a lot of mirrors. I have a total of 9 of them. Two bathroom mirrors, one in the bedroom, one in the guest bedroom, three hallway mirrors, one in the family room, and one that I am not using because I can't find a good place for it. You might think that I am vain and I love to look at myself. Those closest to me know I am the exact opposite. When I look in the mirror I am always hopeful that I will see a thinner version of me with gorgeous hair, perfect skin, and dazzling white teeth. Of course I just see my normal reflection and move along. Sometimes I make faces at myself. Anyways, the reason I have so many mirrors is because I love decorating with them. Aside from being functional, they reflect light into a space, they can make a small room look bigger, or they can simply dress up a boring or empty wall. They come in so many shapes and sizes, and they are all unique and different. I love small mirrors, big mirrors, and everything in between. Some of my favorites that give me inspiration:

Pottery Barn

West Elm

Ballard Designs

West Elm

Horchow

Here are the mirrors in my house- OK, not all of them. The bathroom mirrors are old and outdated, and someday if I ever redo the bathrooms I will hopefully have gorgeous mirrors. So those don't count. Also I couldn't post the one in the guest room because the reflection would have shown you there was a huge pile of laundry on the bed that still needs to be folded. And some other stuff. Also missing is the one I don't really know what to do with. It's just leaning up against a random wall in the other bedroom we call the "man cave". Maybe one day soon I will finally find a place to put it.....

Which one is YOUR favorite? I love them all.....

Awww....

2010-02-12T00:05:00.002-05:00

There's my two feline girls, Monie on the right, Raven on the left. Monie (pronounced moh-nee) is short for Simone, but we never call her that. This picture is noteworthy because they hardly ever cuddle. They used to when they were just wee kittens, but now that they are (gasp!) five, they get along but pretty much do their own thing. Please ignore the magazine basket in the background that is clearly overflowing. Looks like I have some recycling to do!

Adventures in Spray Paint: Bookends Redo

2010-02-07T20:23:00.015-05:00

Sometime ago, I was watching HGTV and saw some silver bookends with the lowercase letters a and z. I thought they were really cute. I wanted some. I researched some online, and the closest I came up with were these, from Barnes & Noble Home Collection. (Did you know there was a Barnes & Noble Home Collection? Neither did I. But now you do.)

They were nice. A little pricey, I thought. So I looked on ebay (I love ebay) and found these....which I recognized, because they came from a place I used to work! I knew they were cute, and also knew they were a good deal. I also knew I had some silver spray paint. So I bought them! Here they are before:

Cute, but I didn't want them to be hot pink. I found the spray paint. I used Krylon's Short Cuts, in Chrome #32.

As a side note, I had two cans. But they were both kind of old. And they didn't have as much in them as I thought. Also the nozzles kept clogging, which made it extremely difficult to apply the paint correctly. I wondered if I needed to sand, prime, and then paint these. Maybe a few coats of poly after to protect the finish? After considering this I decided that I would just try to paint right over the existing finish and see what happened. I already had the paint. So I got about two thirds of the way done....

and I ran out of paint. Of course! So then I had to run out and hope they still had the same color. (They did.) Whew! The brand new can had a brand new nozzle which worked MUCH better. So much so that I made a nice big SPLOTCH on the front of the "z" because I got too close to it while I was spraying. So for anyone who tries this, make sure you FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS and back up at least 12 inches! I tried to remedy this by blotting it on the newspaper and then re-spraying, but alas, you can still see it. Yes, I like to DIY, I didn't say I was GOOD at it. At least not all the time! Anyways, here is the end result (taken from far away enough that you can't see the splotch...I think)!

Yes, I know these are bookends. I like them displayed this way, without any books. More like decorative objects. Kind of like this:

Hey, I think those are the same bookends I saw at Barnes and Noble, now that I think about it!

The Doggone (Pun Intended) Bed is Mine.

2010-02-05T23:34:00.014-05:00

Several months ago, I bought a pet bed, which I thought, at the time, the cats would enjoy. It just so happened to be the PERFECT fabric to match the living room and was too small (or so I thought) for the dog, who weighs almost 90 lbs. If you have cats and a dog, and they get along, you are lucky. Our dog chases the cats, and they hiss and spit at her and swat her on the nose if she gets too close. Mostly they just don't like her. We don't know if Gracie thinks the cats are something to eat, or something to play with. Either way, they are hardly ever in the same room.
I think it is hilarious, however, that they SHARE the bed.....

This is Raven. By the way, I just wanted to point out that I find it really difficult to successfully photograph a black cat. All you can see is eyes.

Here's Monie....she was rolling around and doing all this cute stuff before this but of course this is all I could get for the photo.

And then, there's Gracie on (falling off) the bed.

See, too small for her! But she can fit on it if she wants to....barely.

Closet, Before and After

2010-02-03T10:49:00.017-05:00

For those of you who don't know me, I have teeny, tiny closets in my house. It was built in the 50's, so that is pretty typical. When we were looking at the house , I didn't really (I know, what was I thinking?) look at the closets CLOSELY. I didn't see that the master bedroom closet was painted a combination of peachy-pink and lavender. Or that it had contact paper that was supposed to look like wood randomly splattered all over the place. I am not kidding, it was a DISASTER. So I put "redo the closet" on my mental to-do list and then did nothing about it. For a year and a half. It was messy, disorganized, and I couldn't find anything. It really bugged me but I didn't have a lot of time to devote to the project. Until....last spring when I got laid off. (Yeah, that was fun) . So now I had A LOT of time, and I just couldn't take it anymore. I spent several hours just peeling off that stupid contact paper and cleaned off the walls and the closet looked like this:

Pretty, isn't it? So then I bought a can of OOPS paint for $1.00 and some other paint supplies and got busy. (Ok, so I will admit that when I bought the paint I thought it was white. But it is really a light gray-ish blue. Yes, I am an interior designer, I should know better. Did I mention that the paint was $1.00??) I WAS just going to paint the walls, and leave the trim as it was. Then I decided that painting the trim white with leftover paint I already had would look WAY better. Once I took down the existing hooks I decided I need to get brand new ones in a brushed nickel. Not to mention the attic door needed a new handle and a heavy duty magnetic catch instead of the klugey thing that was on there. I also had an AHA! moment and at the same time went "DUH" when I looked at the bottom of the closet. There were sort of built in racks for shoes that I wasn't using because I really didn't know what they were. Probably because they were made for someone who wears a size 6 shoe and I have an 8 1/2. (Ok, yes, this closet is ONLY for my stuff, it is just not big enough to share. My husband has his own closet in one of the extra bedrooms. And it's bigger.) So I revamped the shoe shelves, and was able to stack my shoes (in these) very nicely at the bottom of the closet! All in all, it took me about 4 days to completely finish the closet redo. No, it's not perfect, but it looks 100% better than where it started. Here are the after pics:

I decided that this would be the fall/winter closet and the closet in the guest bedroom will be the spring/summer closet. You might be wondering if it still looks like this, now that it is winter and I have been using it. For the most part, it does. The shoes get a bit disorganized, but the boxes stay nice and neat and there are no clothes lying on the floor. It feels SO much better every time I open the door. I can actually find stuff and I think it looks and feels bigger. I think it's PRETTY, too. What do YOU think?

Gracie.

2010-02-02T22:57:00.002-05:00

Gracie decided at 20 months old that yes she COULD get up on the furniture. Look how comfortable she is. Now, where did I put that lint brush?