Feeling at home in an "unfinished" space

Since we bought a house ONE YEAR ago (!) and shared a generous photo of the front door, our friends, family, acquaintances and fellow bloggers have asked to see pictures of the space and I've categorically avoided it. When people come over to our house, I'm often apologizing for the lack of furniture, excusing our hand-me-down couch, and generally making people feel uncomfortable with how much I appear to hate how things are set up and plan to change everything when we have the time/money/ability.

Recently, I started to hear these excuses come out of my mouth as my guests did. And I looked around and started, just a little, to see our house not just as potential, but as our haven, here and now.

I even cleaned off my church pew bench for the picture!

Unintentionally-styled mantle featuring our name in wooden letter blacked out, pine cones
leftover from Christmas and commentaries, of course! and no furniture :'D

 I don't want to make excuses and spend time wishing it looked prettier and better and that I had better and more consistent taste. (On different occasions my style can be described as eclectic, vintage, industrial, rustic, craftsman, mid-century, blah, blah, blah. Don't fit me into a box! and all that).

 

And I don't want to spend any more time wishing we had the money for stuff to hang on my wall and white ceramic animals (kidding!) and giant potted plants and to remodel the bathrooms and landscape the back yard and make a dreamy outdoor dining space with market lights, and, and, and...I hope someday we do have money and time and that I can make a decision on some of those items. But I also want to enjoy our house NOW.

I embrace that we have ratty, hand-me-down furniture, because we have a baby who is messy and climbing and slobbering and will eventually be jumping and catapulting and spilling and generally destroying all the nice things I have and would like to have. and we'll probably have another one or two of those destructive, imaginative fun-making creatures and they'll ruin even more of my prized belongings.

Speaking of my baby, his room is my favorite.

My baby model slacking on the job.

I hope E and any future babies will be able to have fun piling cushions on the ground and jumping off of them, and making forts with my throw pillows and hand-knit afghans and that they won't remember their mama yelling at them to "don't touch that" and "be careful with that" and "If you do that again, you'll..."

And for that, I will sacrifice having instagram-worthy photos of my home. At least for 20 years or so.

This post might make my husband crazy, because he has been telling me all of the above, in not so many words, for the past 10 months, but hey - that would have been too easy, right?

a pastor works here. and a kid makes huge messes here.

(this is the ikea bekvam kitchen cart that I stained and painted)

That oven is original to the house and it works! My favorite thing in the kitchen.

please note my prize, giant zucchini on the counter.

The butler's pantry is awesome for storage but separates the kitchen from the rest of the house.

Master bedroom

How do you make your space a home, even if it's not magazine worthy?

(Also, serious question, how do you decide what to put on your walls? I am seriously gun-shy about committing to decor.)

Design*Sponge in San Diego!

(video by the talented Ryan of Pacing the Panic Room)

The weekend before last, on the way from picking up my parents from the airport, I arranged to make a quick pit stop at West Elm in Mission Valley so I could get an autograph on my copy of Grace Bonney's gorgeous new tome. I'm sure none of you need an introduction to Design*Sponge, but it's easily the most inspiring site on simple, doable DIY, beautiful decor and classy living spaces (I especially love tvheir "Living in ..." features - style inspiration from great movies)

Even though I was only there for a few minutes towards the end of the event, it was still lovely to meet Grace and thank her for all her inspiration. She's lovely and gracious. I'm so glad the book tour stopped in San Diego!

(wasn't the photo booth background so cute! Courtesy of Amorology)

I snapped a few photos of my outfit after I got home.

top: Thrifted and remade
blazer: Kenneth Cole, thrifted
jeans: Express
pumps Target

Home Project: envelope pillow covers

When we moved into the house we're renting, it was partly furnished. And on our very meager one-income-in-southern-california budget, we have had to make use of all of the free stuff we can get.

But finally, I got really sick of the ugly pillows that came on our couch, so last week I used my lunch break to pick up some on-sale fabric (In reality, I was there to buy an emergency sewing kit to fix a giant hole in my shirt before a meeting that afternoon, and got distracted by the pretty colors)

(but let's pretend I wasn't)

I took the fabric home and with my fingers crossed began haphazardly cutting it with my kitchen scissors and a 12 inch ruler .

I don't need to tell you it was a bit of a disaster.

So I searched online for a tutorial and found this

brilliant. A cover that can be made without ruining current ugly pillows (just in case our landlord ever wants them back), and doesn't involve hand-stitching or stuffing--

I was sold.

Here is one of the old ugly pillows

I began by ironing the fabric heavily because it was so thick, tried to measure carefully on my kitchen table using the leaf indents as measurements (the closes I had to straight lines) and hemmed the edges.

the pillows I was covering was 18 inches, so my 3 pieces of fabric were

19x19

19x 11.5

19x11.5

Then I pinned the three pieces together (one front, two back pieces)

Then stitched the edges, all the way around, at a half inch and snipped the corners.

Flipped it inside out and pushed out the corners

When it was completely right-sided, it looked like this

I was SO thrilled.

I stuffed the ugly pillow inside and breathed a sigh of relief

this project is relatively simple and easy, but it took me a total of probably 4 hours for 4 pillows, including ironing sewing and stuffing.

I haven't used a machine in probably 5+ years and don't own any of the equipment I should have. (I would love some sewing equipment like this!)

I do own a pair of sewing scissors, three colors of thread, and I borrowed a 30-year-old sewing machine from my mother-in-law.

But if you have the right supplies, this is a simple enough project, so I hope you try it too!

(unfortunately there's very little that can be done for our well-worn couch.)

I need a new cheap home project to work on next--any suggestions?

Office Decor

There is a serious lack of design information in the blogosphere on office decor.

Sure, with the new trend of working from home, there is a plethora of design inspiration for home offices, but I need cheap, conservative decor ideas for my windowless, work office.

I think I am experiencing some sort of depression in my corner closet/office and I know I can do something to help it with decorations, pictures, and lighting.

This is what it looks like today. (it looks much brighter than normal because I forgot to turn off my camera flash)

I bought a $30 Ikea standing lamp (which is too dim to avoid using the overhead fluorescents....ugh)

I can't change the colors or furniture, but the walls and desk/organization are really where I could use some help!

I noticed mpix.com's 25% off sale on metallic prints, and thought I might try posting something conservative, yet colorful on the wall where the door is.

After a quick browse of the keywords Italy, Venice, Canal, from the Creative Commons section on Flickr, I came up with a few favorite pictures I'd like to possibly print in a 16x20 size. Ideally, I'd like to pick out some other decor that matches the colors of my current furntiure, and the print.

Venice #1

Venice #2

Venice #3

Venice #4

Venice #5

#6

Another picture entirely?

Can you guys please help a design-illiterate, depressed, closet-office worker?

Vote for your favorite print (remember I have to order them soon to get the deal!) and please offer any other suggestions for cute organizers, wall calendars, bulletin boards.

Sincerely,

Need Some Color In My Life