Let's try this again....

So..... imagine being on a small steep hill in the dirt and building a retaining wall while standing on the face of the sun.  Doesn't sound like much fun but this is how we decided to spend our July 4th Holiday Weekend.  The weekend started out not much different than any other weekend, we went to an Antique thing (which I have to tell you about) and then Home Depot.  Home Depot had a sale on Landscape Timbers for almost 50% off.  This gave us the bright idea to build a retaining wall behind our home and we must buy 30 of these timbers immediately.  After working two days in the hot hot sun and sitting in the dirt, the bachelor says "it's a shame you don't have a blog to write about this...." 

I guess that's the little push I needed to try this whole blog thing again.....  

The Power of Flowers

I love flowers. Looking at them, smelling them just makes me happy. It Also makes any room look good. Currently our house is filled with flowers. Somehow I have managed to convince the bachelor that they make the house look nice. Now when he goes to the grocery store, he always picks up a bunch. For Valentines Day he got me a mix of roses and carnations, they were gorgeous. The roses have since died but carnations last forever. I have cut the carnations down for their own display on our coffee table.




This is so girly... I love it. Here are some pictures of the other flowers we have.










I am so lucky, we have been dating FOREVER and he still buys me flowers.

Now if I can only get this little guy to start blooming.

More Bathroom Storage

I don't know about you but every time I see a bathroom makeover, they end up with these giant bathrooms. I would like to know who are these lucky people that have so much space. I have never had a place so fortunate. My biggest problem is having enough storage, a place to store that extra roll of toilet paper. To be honest, we don't even have enough space for a nice cabinet. My only option is to go up. So I had the bachelor build us a shelf above the door. I put them in both of our full baths. I used cute containers to organize all of our stuff.




This is from our bathroom. I know the lighting is bad, I am still working on the bachelor for the project.





This is from our guest bath. I unwrapped a bunch of soap, this keeps an extra fresh smell in the bathrooms.

I bought a standard shelf and wood brackets from home depot, cut them to size, and them painted them to match our trim.

The downside is only the bachelor can reach the shelf...

FINALLY....

On our way to Key West!




Happy New Years Eve!

Happy New Year's Eve!

I love New Years and this year is no different.  For the last few years the bachelor and I have been going to Key West with a couple of our good friends BUT if I wasn't going to Key West, I would love to host a party at our house.  If you cannot tell already, I am all for decorating the home for any holiday.  Maybe hang a cool banner like this one.

Or jazz up the table a bit.  This would be cute, you could use some of your Christmas decoations.

Or what about this table, love the clocks so you always have a count down to midnight.

What about doing some party favors.  I know you haven't had these since elementary school, but I think they can be for adults too!

So all of these pictures came from people at Pinterest and obviously, they are way more creative than me.    

New Cigar Table

So... You know how much I LOVE One Kings Lane. Well I just got a new cigar table from them and I love it. It was exactly what I had been looking for. I think when you have people over, every person should have a place to put their drink. You can pick it up and move around anywhere you want. It is goldleaf with an antiqued mirrored top.











Love it! And it goes great with our coffee table.

Chalkboard Paint

You know recently I have been getting into Chalkboard paint.  Of course, I realize that I may be slightly behind the bandwagon on this but I don't care.  The most recent project that we did, I had stolen from the handmade home.  If you have never checked her out, you should.  I originally saw her on Nate Berkus, that's how good she is.

So, we had this totally blah area in front of our kitchen and I remember seeing what she did in her kitchen.

I taped out the area that I wanted to use as the chalkboard with Frog Tape.  (FYI this stuff is the best!)  As you can tell, we have a lovely receptacle right in the middle of our chalkboard.  We changed this to black and I spray painted the cover plate with chalkboard.  For the wall, I brushed on the chalkboard paint.

I tend to be overly excited about completing the project at hand that I typically forget some very important steps.  i.e. protect your boyfriends floor.  Of course, I didn't do this and I had splattered paint all of over the floor.  Luckily he was busy doing something else and never even noticed.

We added trim around the chalkboard to make a frame.  I didn't bother to take off the tape, just put the frame right over it.  I painted the trim prior to installing.  The boyfriend even used his new favorite tool, the Dremel, and carved an area on top for the chalk to rest.

I think it looks nice especially with our new / old stools, which is a whole other story.  Oh and please just ignore the countertops, I do.

-Brie