Shopping

Yesterday my girlfriend and I spent the day shopping at two Home Goods / TJ Maxx stores. I found some great decor items and good prices. Happy Dance.

In a few days my entryway will be done, I can't wait to see how it turns out and share the details. I also found more items for our dining room!

Upon Entry

A few days ago I revealed our living room ReDo. We still have a ways to go be I feel the room is more finished: more artwork, accessories, rug etc. One area of our living room that's really boring me is our entryway. Our home has an 'Open Concept' entryway my fancy way of saying you walk straight into our living room. There's no cute hallway or amazing staircase to look at when you first enter....just our living room and a short wall that leads to our dining room / kitchen. Our entry wall is BLAH there's no artwork hanging, no cute bench to sit on, no cute table to place our keys at...just BLAH. Well I plan to change all that and make it charming and chic. The entryways below inspire me for several reasons:

I like the funky rug on the hardwood floors and the bench that serves many purposes, the tree rack is also fun. This entryway has personality.

This entry is amazing! I like how the space was used, its also very similar to how you enter our home (minus the chandelier, perfect wood floors, lots and lots of light - now I sound depressing). I like how the sofa is positioned looking into the living room. I'm going to have to move our furniture around and see what happens.

This is simple and crisp, again like how you enter our home, you can even see into the living room. I like that there's just simple LARGE artwork on wall.

My girlfriend and I are doing a 'girls shopping' day on Satuarday -so this will be a perfect weekend to look for items to enhace our entryway. What have you done to enhance your entryway or is it still WIP - work in progress....?

{ pictures: Martha Stuwart.com & Country Living }

Quick Change

Sometimes you buy a piece of furniture and it needs a major overhaul: sanding, primer, coats of paint and patience. Other times you buy a new piece of furniture that just needs a small tweak. After months of searching we finally found the right TV stand for our living room. I knew the TV stand had to be a certain size (for a future upgrade flat screen) and style to get our living room closer to our after.



I was so excited when the box arrived and convinced MR. CHL that putting the TV stand together at 9:30 at night would be quick and fun. Nope, not quick and not fun. In a rush to be helpful I put the TV stand together wrong, my loving husband kindly took over and put us back on track. After our TV stand was put together, I instantly knew the cheap plastic handles had to go.

New Sleek Hardware

A better view, I was to lazy too pick the mess for a quick picture

Pulling it Together

A few days ago I shared my ideas of how I want to transform our dining room. I found this great oval mirror on clearance for $10.00 at Ross. The mirror was pretty banged up appearance wise. I didn’t matter to me, because I knew I was going to paint the mirror white. I like the beaded trim around the mirror.

The saw horses were a big help while I spray painted the mirror white

I stopped in Kohl’s on Saturday night and came across some the prefect gallery metal frames for 55% off. I bought a few for $11.99 each. The ones I originally loved are from Pottery Barn and they start at $34.99 for a 4x6 - OUCH!

Pefect, large matte and 5x7 opening - LOVE IT

Over the weekend I was also in search of the perfect dark wood stain. Three trips to later (back in forth between Lowes & Home Depot) I found the almost perfect color. I say almost because the color I really wanted was Jocobean by Minwax but the color was no longer available at Home Depot and Lowes had no dark wood stains without red undertones. I ended up choosing Dark Walnut by Minwx which is very similar to Jocobean.

Can you tell why I liked Jocobean? Yup the color is just a little darker and richer...oh well.

Dark Walnut

Jocobean