Made (half of) It Monday

It's Made (half of) it Monday!

I could use a little Florida river/spring in my life right now.

It has been a rough few weeks in this household....this winter with its snowstorm after snowstorm really makes sickness, pain, injury, etc. more difficult to deal with.  The bummer is that my entire temperament and mood have been affected.  Being negative is such an uncomfortable state for me.  I want desperately to snap out of it.  I hoped this weekend would set us all straight but Sean and Brady both got sick and then...more snow.  I want to scream.  Even writing in my blog has brought me down...mostly because every post starts with a complaint!  I have deleted or heavily edited every post in the past week.  Ah.  Maybe if I just leave this it will be therapeutic and I can move on and just write...

Let's hope.  Rant over.

The upside to being trapped inside this weekend is that I got three projects half done!  I wish I had some pictures of completed projects to share but...soon.  For now, partially finished projects.

I am trying to figure out what to do to the panels...

-I am working on a table skirt for my living room sofa table in order to mix in something other than brown leather or brown wood!

-I made some pillows for my bedroom that were a fail on two levels.  (Not a complaint but a fact!)  First, I learned something about scale with that project.  They were too tiny for my bed.  I don't mind, though, because I really didn't like the fabric.  I just wanted to practice making envelope pillows.   I bought some dinosaur fabric and started pillows for B instead.  He has a tiny pillow from a gift and he constantly tries to lay down on it....figuring out how to land with his head on the pillow.  It's cute to watch but a small part of me is worried that laying down on a pillow shouldn't be so hard...?!  These two pillows I am making will be bigger so hopefully a bigger target will be better for practicing laying down.  Second, the overlapping fabric didn't meet in the back.....so I have to make the back panels longer...the pillow size is 12x16 and I cut the back panels to be 6x16 and 9x16.  For my next attempt I will cut both panels to be 9x16.

-I am almost done with another pelmet box.  I will post about it when it is done....not to bore you with another pelmet box...but to let you know some important lessons I learned.  Things that might save you some of the frustration I went through if you ever decided to give it a go.  It is very different from my first box.

Don't forget to comment on my giveaway post in order to score four tickets to SeaWorld Orlando.

Giveaway Update

After realizing the bad timing of the posting/end of the giveaway I am extending the entry deadline.  You can enter through Wednesday.  Winner chosen Thursday!

First Giveaway: Four tickets to SeaWorld Orlando

A few weeks ago Brady and I attended an event put on by Mom Central and SeaWorld.  The kids got to see and learn about a variety of animals and then we were offered a delicious lunch.  It was such a pleasure to see all the kids' eyes widen as they got up close and personal with some unusual creatures.  

SeaWorld has given me the opportunity to give you and three others that experience but on a much larger scale!  To enter to win a pack of four tickets to SeaWorld Orlando good through the end of this year do the following by the end of Wednesday (3/2):

-Follow my blog and leave a comment.  Leave your name and email in the comment so I can get in touch with you if you win.

-For an additional entry tweet or post on Facebook about the giveaway and then leave a comment letting me know you did.

The winner will be selected at random Monday.

Good luck!

Rug Wars

via ciao interiors blog

Living room painted? Check.  Now most accessories don't match and so I have started brainstorming what to do first.  I talked to Sean about what kind of rug he would want....all the rugs we have are low pile...Kilims and other flat woven rugs.  I love them.  Sean surprised me and said he wants a plush rug with padding underneath that will cover most of the floor.  He wants it to be comfortable to play with Brady and future McKenna on the floor.  I immediately told him "No."  The first image that came to mind was some dated ugly green rug that makes you sneeze.  I don't know why...or when/where I had that experience but....yuck.

via apartment therapy

I am trying to really listen to Sean because he always says, "Why does it matter what I think?  You are just going to do what you want anyway."  I feel horrible that he feels that way.  So I felt horrible that I reacted so harshly to his suggestion and tried to think of a way that we can both get what we want somehow.  While thinking about it I got a mental flash of a picture I had come across at some point where the rugs were layered.

Robert Stillin via Elle Decor

Rug Layering: Yay or nay?

I have done a quick google search and there are a lot of pictures rug layering...and opinions I can read.  But what do you think?  Have you done it in your home?

via Emily A Clark

The more images I look at the more excited I get.  I think it looks really decadent.  I wonder what the rules will be on the thickness of the rugs you should layer....Most of the images I have seen are seagrass or some natural fiber on the bottom and then a low pile rug on top.  To meet Sean half way I might have to go with something thicker on the bottom....or top...we will see what you have to offer/my research turns up.

via Plaza Rugs

I love how playful it is to have them going in all different directions.

via Elle Decor

Check back tomorrow for my first giveaway.....tickets to Seaworld Olrando!

Green Living Room

Ok.  This weekend we...mostly Sean...painted the living room.  Here it is before:

Like I said yesterday a few things pushed me to green.  

1.  Sean went directly to green when he started looking at colors.

2.  Colour Me Happy blog.

3.  This Elle Decor feature.  Specifically, this picture:

I love the shelf and floor color.

 As I thought about it this week I decided I liked the Blue Mosque color because it was a mixture of blue and green.  Green is my favorite color.  It makes me so happy.  I love to have green plants around.  It is relaxing.  It is soothing.  I decided to look for greens with blue in them.  I found 4 possibilities....Thankfully, out of each of our two favorite colors one overlapped.  How disappointing it would have been to have opposite favorites.  After some discussion and looking at the colors in different lights we decided on Sean's pick that was not originally in my top two.  It had a little more green than the one green we agreed on...and in different lights just seemed more livable.

We chose Sherwin Williams Rally Green.

Here it is on our walls.  Looks different, huh?  

 Sean finished the second coat last night while I was asleep.  Good man.  I have enjoyed watching the color change throughout the day.  Right now, I love it.  It is really different and a bit of a shock.  In the morning light I almost felt like I was walking into a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream.  Friendly's mint chocolate chip ice cream...really fake mint color....(The paint isn't mint colored, though!!)  I love ice cream.  Anyway.  Without the morning sunlight hitting it directly it is a little deeper and I am PSYCHED to decorate a room this color.  I am sad to have to live without window treatments while I figure out what to do they really make it feel like home.  I HAD to get RID of that red color!  I couldn't bear it anymore.

I haven't finished moving everything back in yet!

Living in b.....

GREEN!

Here's what happened.  I pushed us to blue because I had a blue green in mind.  I found the exact color I had in mind.  Blue Mosque.  Loved it.  Love it.  Will continue to love it....but not on a wall.  Thankfully, we lived with the blue samples on the wall for a entire week.  An older, not so far gone, me wouldn't have been able to wait and would have made a huge mistake.  The more we had the blues up the more I disliked them.  I even tried making multiple lighter shades of the blue mosque which are nice...maybe nicer...but still not right for our living room.

A few things happened this week to redirect us to green.

1.  Thanks to my friend Karen, I checked out Colour Me Happy and Maria, the author, really made me think about why you choose a color and how to think about color in new, more scientific ways...which makes me much more comfortable than relying on my judgement alone.  Her blog is so informative and easy to read.

2.  I got my Elle Decor and saw the Moroccan house.  Inspiration.

3.  I kept thinking about how Sean went right to greens in the fan deck when I asked him to start thinking about colors for the living room.

So....my wonderful husband is prepping the wall as I type.  Can't wait to see how it turns out.  And I can't wait to share the results with you.

This weeks Made It Monday will be postponed until later today (hopefully) or tomorrow due to my being out of commission last week (pregnancy pains kept me in bed) and our travelling over the holiday weekend.

Elle Does Morocco

I am seriously considering shaking up my magazine subscriptions.  The last few Elle Decors and Architectural Digests have really made me sad.  Sad because they bored me.  Sad.  The current issue of Elle Decor arrived recently and, thanks to one feature, I have decided to put off canceling my subscription.  Look at this color explosion!  It's a house in Morocco...of course.  

I love the orange table in the pink room.  Love love love.

Red cabinet and orange table...love it some more.

I really like that the architectural details are painted white here.  I would expect dark wood or gold in morocco..but the use of white is so modern feeling...and not in the way where you feel like they were just trying to accessorize the room in Moroccan style.  That drives me nuts.  It's probably all I would be capable of doing/affording to do...but still drives me nuts.  

And just when you are holding your breath feeling like the color might be too much......white....with punches of color.  Brilliant punches of color.  Breathe.

Would you just look at those doors!  

I love the flower pots. 

I was feeling a little overwhelmed with all the pink...I like pink but I am far from loving it.  so I was psyched to see the greens and blues in the above and following pictures.  

I would like to paint my life the color of the shelves/floor.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  I would never go inside if I owned this space.  

And finally..finish it off with a beautiful mirror.

My heart is pounding.  I want to see the place in person.  I wonder what it would feel like to be in that pink room.  The colors excite me but that is a lot of color.  I get a little overwhelmed looking at it.  I wonder what it would be like to live in it.  I like the balance with the predominately white which punches of the same-ish pink.  Wow.  

Living in blue.

I finally got Sean to participate in home decorating more than hanging, cleaning paint rollers, hammering, pushing, pulling, etc.  When we moved in we switched the living room and dining room of the previous owners because there is a small office/room off of what is now the living room.  We use that small room as a playroom for B.  I put the paint color of the living room low on the priority list because it matched the drapes from our old place that my Mom quickly cut up to make window treatments...matched perfectly.  I took it as a sign that it should be ok for a while.  That while has ended. I can no longer live in this color.  

The problem is not just the color itself but how what I have chosen to put in the room affects the paint color.  I got the sofa table and a glass doored bookcase since we moved in.  I didn't realize the wood color would be the tipping point of making this room just plain BROWN.  Brown everywhere.  Brown sofa's, brown side table, brown wood, brown trim, brown mirror.  All the brown in the paint color has come out to play it no longer lets the red play.  

An "accidental" booty shot of Sean...to detract from the chandelier we have yet to replace.

Choosing paint color overwhelms me.  It should be fun, right?  After one day of living in the first room I ever chose the color for we had to make a trip to the paint to store to get a new color because it was unbearable.  It's kind of like never wanting to get your hair cut again after you go through the trauma of a bad haircut.   

After only a little hand holding Sean got into looking through my fan decks.  He only had to take one break after feeling overwhelmed!  Picking a color is so much better with a friend.  We decided on blue.  (I think he secretly wants a grass green.)  Then we picked 5 Sherwin Williams colors to get samples of and hang in our living room.  (Those are the blue papers you see hanging in the living room pictures.)

Here are the five we chose:

Danube

Sean's favorite color.  ^

Jamaica Bay

Not bad but a little on the gray side for me.^

Capri

 My second favorite color. ^  It's a toned down Blue Mosque but a tad too much on the very trendy turquoise color train.

Blue Mosque

I am obsessed with this color. ^  Absolutely obsessed. I'm just not sure how it will be to live in it.  As I am writing this post at 10:30 at night it is extremely blue.  Slap-you-in-the-face blue.  But I loved it until about 10 pm.  

Flyway

 A Sean pick.  ^  Not bad but tooooo close to our bedroom colors.

We plan to live with these blue papers on the wall this week to see them in different lighting.  Hopefully the next time you see a picture of my living room it will be blue.

As I reread this before posting I wonder what is a normal number of samples for people to need before deciding on a color.....?

Love in a box.

Happy (day after) Valentine's Day

Sean and I don't really do Valentine's Day...not more than a card usually.  But with nearly every blog posting Valentine's ideas for weeks I was bound to find inspiration in something.  In some post I glanced at a card that said "Everyday I Choose You".   I didn't think much of it at the time (which is why I can't tell you where I saw it...I wish I could) but the quote kept coming back to me.  I really love how it sounds.  So I stepped it up this year and I painted this little box for Sean and baked him some heart shaped, gluten free, chocolate chip cookies.  I also threw a gift card to his favorite lunch spot (Chipotle) in the card.


I thought the expression was pretty perfect.  Sean (jokingly) said something along the lines of, "So every day you doubt having chosen me and have to make sure ?"  My romantic.

Made by Me Monday

This New Years I committed to being a committed blogger.  So far so good.  I am loving equally the inspiration I have found in all the blogs I have discovered and the motivation writing has given me to do more creative things.  Riding that inspiration and motivation I have decided to step it up a notch and commit to a weekly installment....I made it Monday....or Made by Me Monday....or something else.  Which do you think?  Made by Em Monday.  Hmm.  This week it is "I made it Monday" and I will commit to a name by next Monday.  My goal is to have a new project to post every Monday...big or small.

This weekend I made my first bolster pillow.  I saw this tutorial on Prudent Baby.  Her tutorial made it so easy and gave me confidence as I went along.  Bet you can't guess what was playing on Pandora while I made this.  Jay Z, Lupe Fiasco and Pharrell.  I think that it's reflected in the color choice.....  Ok. So I saw the tutorial and gave myself the same encouraging pep talk that I gave before taking on the pelmet box.  Basically: Cheap.  Do it cheap.  Just in case.  

Notes:  

-The three fabrics were three dishtowels I got on clearance at Target.  $5.  Sweet deal.  I didn't even have to worry about matching colors...which I am working tirelessly on building up my confidence in....because they came as a set.  

-The tutorial called for two bags of Polyfil.  I was highly skeptical. The entire two bags fit in that thing.  I was stunned.  

-It is 23x9 incase you are wondering.  

-I skipped doing the cording because I discovered I don't have a zipper foot.  Must get one.  

-Also, I didn't do the decorative stitching.  I don't have that focus.  

Does anyone know if there are ways to reduce the lumpiness of the polyfil?  I worked on it before I closed it up but I think it could use some more de-lumping.  

I have my eye out for some low cost white pillow shams.  If anyone has suggestions about places to look...let me know!  

Pelmet Box DIY

We just finished our first pelmet box.  I make.  Sean hangs.  It was my first try at any window anything without my Mom.  The most I have ever done before this, if I am really honest, is say "yeah....I think so." to some fabric my Mom picked out.

I have always wanted to be able to draw....but what I see in my head...never ever comes close to what happens on the paper.  Same with singing.  I hear it in my head but I absolutely cannot reproduce it with my vocal chords.  I don't like discovering that I can't do something.  I was really scared that this would be the same thing...but I had to be brave and find out if I want to be able to decorate my house the 50 weeks out of the year my Mom isn't here.

Here is my pep talk to myself...Self.  Figure out a way to do it cheap...first try.  If it's bad it will hurt less because you didn't waste money.  Also, do it in your room so no one has to look at it...but I am sure it will be great!

Not the most encouraging pep talk...but it helped me get going.

-I found a great tutorial on Little Green Notebook  to make a pelmet box out of foam core which I already own a bunch of.
-My Ikea curtains are white....and I could do the pelmet box in white.....enter old sheet that feels awful to sleep on but I don't throw out...just incase all of our other sets are dirty and we have absolutely no other options.
-Inspired by a...crap I don't remember all the terms for different types of curtains...inspired by something my Mom did for my dorm room in college....I decided on a gathered look.  Super easy and it didn't require any upholstering.  I just cut and sewed a strip of sheet that was 4 times the length of the window and twice as high.  I sewed the bottom and top together to make a long skinny tube.  I slid it onto the box and adjusted it to scrunch evenly.  Isn't the most technical description you have ever read?

Here are some quick photos of what I ended up with.  The window goes almost to the ceiling and the picture made me realize that I need a little bench under the window for balance.  Other than that I am much happier than I thought I would be.  Not perfect but not bad for my first time!

Need something under the window!

Architectural Inspiration

I recently watched Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.  I can't tell you if the movie was good or not b/c I wasn't paying attention to the storyline...I couldn't stop looking at all the architecture.  (You thought I was going to say Jake Gyllenhaal...didn't you?) Architecture from that part of the world always stops me in my tracks.  Granted most of that movie was probably CGI but it's based on something real.  I tried to find info on the set design for the movie but ended up just looking at pictures of Persian/Iranian architecture just to have a look and I feel compelled to share a few of my favorites.  It is so inspiring.  I love America but when I see this and then visit my local strip mall I feel a little sad about American architecture.  

I always justify modern architecture by saying, "But it's so intelligent..the beauty is in the technology and intelligence."  But this architecture just proves you can have both.  It's also for geeks and nerds because of the geometry and mathematics that drive it.  Yay!!  

Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque.  

via essential-architecture.com

This took over 15 years to build.  15 years.  This is just a close up of a large building...but 15 years... in the 1600s.  That is some hard work.    Look at the detail!

The Jorjir Portal.  

via cartage.org

The Taj Mahal.  

via astheticsense.com

21 years to build.  This is one of my favorite buildings in the world.  Not only is it beautiful but it has a great story.  Although it is in India, it has a lot of Islamic and Persian influences in its design.   The shape of the dome is my favorite shape.

A bridge.

via essential-architecture.com

I love me a beautiful arcade but this bridge should put all arcades to shame.  Something about the pointed arch is both graceful and strong.

"Some days just have to have their own rhythm."

That needs to be my mantra!  Yesterday was a rough day with my little guy.  I started a blog for today about 4 times but just didn't have the energy to finish any thoughts I started.  So, this blog post is unrelated to anything creative and just a celebration of a much better day!  Also, I am working on a window treatment project that I hope (fingers crossed) to finish tonight and have pics of in the next few days!!

Brady and I were invited to an event put on by Mom Central and Seaworld.  It was a luncheon held at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge.  Brady got to see penguins, a spoon billed bird and an alligator up close and personal.  He loved the animals almost as much as he loved checking out everyone's digital cameras and phones.  Then we got a great lunch and a giant cookie....bigger than Brady's face.  His eyes got as big as the cookie when he saw it.

I need to get better at this Mom thing...I forgot my camera.  These pictures are me trying to get Brady to wear the Shamu tail hat he got.  He was more interested in taking pictures than being in them.

"Happy face, Brady!"

He wouldn't wear it so I tried...but he blocked it out of the photo.

My day only got better.  I have been missing my family so badly.  Using skymiles we paid $20 for two tickets to Florida!!!  I am going to get to spend two weeks with them!!  I am so excited.