WOW wednesday: For the Love of Pets

My husband emailed me this article a couple days ago and I just had to share. It's all about having pet built-ins in your home. I'm just going to share the pictures, but if you want the details you can check out the article here. 

All I can say is "Wow, they love their pets!"

I love my furbabies dearly, but how far would I go to make them comfortable in my home? Would you take your pets into consideration while building your house or making renovations? 

Until next time...

Monday Night: Master Bedroom Progress

The hubby and I both have August birthdays, (my brother-in-law does too, but who really cares) so we went to hangout with my family in Memphis this weekend to celebrate before my little sister heads back to school in Knoxville. We had a lot of fun and came back with another couple items for our house!

Our amazing, (and now blue) father-built bedside table now has a friend! My parents got me two swing-arm wall sconces for our master bedroom. They will work perfectly for night time reading (Who wants to walk across the room to turn off the light when you're all comfy, cozy in bed? Not this lazy girl.) and they really dress up our lovely paneled walls. 

Take a peek:

We have one on each side of the bed, but due to a lack of light bulbs, I couldn't photograph both at the same time. You'll just have to trust me that they look great together. 

The lamps and the bedside table are a great start to our bedroom change up. It is very neutral at the moment, which works fine, but isn't too exciting. We are wanting to amp up the color and add in some texture to wake this room up a bit. I can't wait to show you some pictures as we make the changes, but for now here is a view of the comforter we are switching to from West Elm. Luckily, we snagged it on sale a couple weekends ago. We just need to switch out some pillows before putting it to use.

I know what you're thinking...pink in the bedroom? But it's really "poppy" red, not pink. So yeah, my husband is cool with pink.

Until next time...

Paint Chips: Who Knew?

There are an absurd amount of creative uses for paint chips. You know, those little things you can pick up at Lowe's and Home Depot. Seriously, who the heck knew? Check out all these fabulous DIY paint chip projects. They'll have you wanting to rob Lowe's off all their paint chips ASAP. 

Party Escort Cards

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Paint Chip Wall Art

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Paint Chip Orbs

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Paint Chip Gift Tags

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Paint Chip Bookmarks

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Paint Chip Garland

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Paint Chip Banner

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Paint Chip Wall Art

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Get to craftin'.

Until next time...

My Weekend: There's Always Something to Paint

Our bookcase went blue this weekend!

I've been dying to paint the back wall of our built-in and we finally knocked it out. It's the first thing you see when you walk into our house (via the back door) and I really wanted it to bring your eye past that giant t.v. and welcome you into the room. We decided on a dark blue which was pulled out of our old Pottery Barn accent pillow in the room and it worked perfectly. It's the perfect balance of a bold color without being overwhelming or too dark. 

After painting, I rearranged all the items on the shelves and changed up some of the existing elements. Although I would like purchase some new items to display, I used what I had in new ways to make it work for now. Here are a couple simple ways I changed the look of my bookcase:

• I took book covers off the hardback books to display the monochromatic binding and grouped the like colors together.
• I wrapped the softback books in butcher paper to neutralize all the different patterns and to build a common thread throughout the shelves.
• A few of the books I even wrapped together with a piece of twine I had sitting around the house.

We also painted the bedside table my dad built me, but that's waiting on a nice coat of poly so I'll wait and post it once it's fully ready. 

Did you do any house projects this weekend?

Until next time...

WOW wednesday: Pinterest

Pinterest is my wow this week for two reasons.

1. It is inspiration heaven.
2. I've managed to resist joining until tonight.

For those of you who don't know about Pinterest, it is basically a  website that allows you to create "pinboards" full of inspirational images. The best thing is that you can follow other people's "pinboards" and "re-pin" anything you like, love or adore. It is the perfect thing for any creative or crafty individual.

Now, since I've just signed up tonight, (I just pinned my first item!) I really don't know the ends and outs of how to use the program, but it seems super user-friendly so far. I finally caved and signed up (I really didn't need another obsession) when I saw the unofficial Pinterest challenge posted on Young House Love.

Basically, the lovely ladies (shown below) created a fun challenge for anybody to partake in. You just had to select an inspiration from Pinterest and do your best to recreate it. The results have been pretty spectacular. (So spectacular that it motivated me to finally get going on my own account.) Visit Young House Love to see all the amazingly talented people that participated.

I missed the deadline for this "challenge", but it's definitely motivated me to do some major crafting. Friday, maybe? 

Here's an example of one of the items that made me melt...

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If you're on Pinterest, you can follow me at http://pinterest.com/keecreative/!

Until next time...

Wine, Oh!

I like wine, but that's not really the point of this post.

There is a store here in Nashville called Nadeau - "Furniture with a Soul" and if you live in the area you should really check it out. They specialize in handcrafted, unique pieces of furniture at super affordable prices. Since the items are never mass-produced, you can be confident that your piece won't be spotted in every other home in the city. That's something I love. 

Well, the hubbs and I went browsing the other day and although it was definitely not something were looking for in particular, once we spotted this item we knew we had to have it. For only $200, it has brought some serious flavor to our dining room. Check, check, check it out...

Just in case you didn't notice on your own, here are all the reasons this piece of furniture rocks my world:

• It holds wine!
• It gives us some dining room extra storage.
• It breaks up the giant blank wall and gives us some killer display space...did you notice my sweet orange, thrift-store elephants?
• It's a unique piece not found everywhere.
• It has a bottle opener built in...oh, yeah!

Obviously the negative is that it may make us look like winos.

Until next time...

No More Peeping

We finally have window shades! 

Purchasing some sort of bamboo shades for our windows has been on my to-do list since the day we bought the house and I'm glad to finally have them in place. I found an awesome website which sells all sorts of shades and wallpaper at wholesale prices. We were able to get six window shades in custom sizes for $250 with shipping. Pretty dang awesome. If you're interested, the website is www.stevesblindsandwallpaper.com.

We've taken care of the dining room, living room, laundry room and den and hope to order shades for the guest room and master bedroom soon. Here's a picture of the bamboo shades in the living room and dining room. They really turned out great. They block tons of light which makes it perfect for movie watching and most importantly, they give us much need privacy. What do you think?

Our main living room window went from this...

to this...

The best thing about these shades are the fact that they are SUPER easy to put up. Brent was able to put them up basically all on his own in no time at all. All you have to do is screw the metal bracket into your window frame and slide on the shade. We are officially HUGE fans of this company...good quality, fast shipping, great price, and easy installation. I'm ready to order more.

Until next time...