Welcome ~ Definitely!

Hello!!

How is spring treating you?

I confess, I am guilty, I got hit by the spring fever, I have neglected the blog and the inside of the house, I have been up to gardening, OH the outdoors. I love flowers, I love gardening and I was so excited to get going and making the outside pretty that back in February I started some seedlings indoors, I took one of the bedrooms and made it a "green house"; Back in the fall, even before we closed on the house, I got risky and planted hundreds of perennial bulbs and a few baby trees, if anything would have gone wrong with the closing my plan was to go back one night and dig everything up, steal my own bulbs and trees :-)

With the spring fever I am suffering and with my working hours/commute, I was left with the weekends and week nights, after 7pm, to beautify the outside which means, no time for the inside, hey, have to carve some sleep time out of my day.

Some pepper, tomato, lavender, cilantro, basil and sage seedlings, the picture is from April

 

Thank goodness for fall planting, I got rewarded with the most beautiful spring flowers which have been coming up since the first week of April 

Now that the outside of the house is looking better, everything is flourishing and after I was given an ultimatum  agreeing with DBF, it was time to come back inside and finish our entryway, I had left everything the way it was in the last post, no, it was worst. I had started painting the doors, the doors were primed with two coats of Kilz Premium and 2 coats of Valspar paint and primer ultra white semi gloss, but oh those doors were such a pain to paint, that I just couldn't stop tending to my plants and bring myself back to apply another coat of paint, the scene was depressing: Closet doors against the walls waiting to be painted and hung back, newspaper pages under the doors, lights hanging from the ceiling, a real mess, talk about unwelcoming entryways.

This weekend we finally resolved to install the new lights and I finally decided to finish painting the door and finish making our entryway pretty.

Remember the wall that almost drove me nuts? here it is now:

 

And the ugly unpainted doors?


                       

2 Coats of primer and 3 coats of paint, I won.

Aren't things looking pretty? Tino agrees!


I love the beautiful chandelier. Well, another confession I have to make today, not that I have not say it before (here), I have a fascination with glitz, always have, if it was up to me, I would be living in a crystal bubble filled with sparkle, like the holiday ornaments, but since I can't, then I am just "blinging up" everything I can, I think the most beautiful way to bring glitz into the space is with crystal lights. I ordered this girl last year, as I have said before, I dedicated my longs months waiting on the closing to gather things as they came.

 
She came in a box, in pieces, like a puzzle, it was
so much fun to put all the crystals together, yes I am sure it's a she, no male item is glittery and shiny.

I love the ambiance it ads to the space, surreal!

There is another one, different but in the same style, for the little hallway going to the living room, but unfortunately we didn't have the time to get it up this weekend, perhaps now that DBF is on vacation for over two weeks, a lot of things in the house will be magically done while I am at work ;-)

The little console table is one of my thrifty finds, the vintage iron and glass table has been with me for over 5 years now, purchased at that sale at that place that rents props for TV and movie productions I have mentioned here.

The lamp is a "Nate Berkus for Target" find, it was on clearance and the other accessories are either Pier1 or HomeGoods (my happy place). I don't know if anyone have noticed, but I have a problem with finding pictures to add to my frames, almost all the picture frames through the house are "artfully" decorated either with one of those pictures of people you don't know which come with the frame or with the pertinent store logo.

Who came up with the wonderful idea of making wood knobs for wood doors - So stylish!

Thankfully that was easily resolved, we found the mercury glass ones, I love the vintage look on them. I also added a second one to the door to make things even.

In another subject, don't you freak out when you do an internet search and suddenly every page you go to you get bombarded by little pop up ads with exactly the same item you were looking at, or some suggestions that you might be interested in? It totally freaks me out, but in this occasion it was all for the good of design that it happened. I was looking for area rugs, did not find what I was looking for then moved on, then by the side of my eye, right there on the screen, I saw the word "Flor" with a picture of a rug, it then hit me that I have seen it in another blog, "Inspired by Charm" (you guys should go and visit, you will fall in love with it and with Michael). The little area rug, is not a rug, it's Floor tiles from the Floor store, what an awesome concept, it allows you to design your area rug or to carpet your entire floor in any way or color you want, the possibilities are unlimited and they are very easy and fun to put together.

Please, feel free to ignore the hanging accessory on the ceiling, its our alarm waiting for the screws to go back in, or maybe a new alarm.

I used 8 tiles and played around until I decided that the mismatched checker pattern was better than all the lines going in the same direction, so to add some contrast to the stripes on the wall. 

The owls are HG finds, back in the fall. The shoe tray is from Ballard Designs  and the little ottoman is another thrifty find, it was about $15 at the thrift shop.

The kitchen in the background, THE KITCHEN, it is our most  daunting project to tackle, hopefully it will get done some time this spring/summer, and all the boxes are part of the putting the chandelier together mess.

Now, lets take a closer look at the chandelier, shall we? Ahhh, I love it.

And a before and after look of the entryway.

Oh so "fancy"

Yes, come in! 

Another project we have is the stairs, I can't wait to rip the dirty carpet off, and refinish the wood, but that is on for the second face of the fixings, the upstairs.

Hope you like the progress, until next time,

Sobe