Blog Redesign

Notice anything different about my little blog???

I totally had another post planned for today, but last night, I had the urge to completely re-design my blog logo.  Our house is a complete mess right now, so I should have been cleaning things up, but I had an itch... and I just had to scratch it!!

In case you've already forgotten, here was the old logo:

Nothing WRONG with it... but it had been the same for almost two years, and while I still like the color palate, it had been bugging me for a while...

So to the drawing board I went...

I wanted to create something slimmer, so the content wasn't pushed SO far down the page, and it just seemed so impersonal.  I love a good trellis pattern - you KNOW I do - but it was time for a change.

This was the first concept I came up with...

I like how it's cleaner, and more simple, and that not only does it feature two of the projects that I've done that I'm MOST proud of, but it also shows one of the most gorgeous photo's I've ever snapped on my iPhone... kind of impressive, no??

Take II - my second attempt to tweak the logo:

I love me some black and white stripes - remember my failed attempt at a black and white stiped entry way??  Hey, a girl's gotta keep an open mind!

Anyways, I do like how the stripes add a little graphic punch, but I wanted to try it out without the framed border...

Cup Half Full Logo take III:

Clean... I liked it... but with the stripe centered like that, the logo felt unbalanced...

Take IV:

Narrowing the stripes to underscore the title and sub-text felt better to me - still fun and graphic, but a little more clean and balanced...

But some of my favorite blogs have very minimal headers... I tried to simplify:

Take V:

No stripes - just the script and my photos...

... But was this TOO plain??

Perhaps it needs texture??  Also, is it odd to just have photos grouped on the right hand side??

Take VI:

I liked the texture of the linen background, and I went back to the stripe again because I felt it did a good job of dividing the logo from the rest of the blog... but was it getting too busy?

The final version was a cleaner background, and a different font (yep, throwing yet another element in to change...)

Oye!

At this point, I decided to call it a night.  I was (and still am) very confused, and it was getting late, so I kept the final version and decided to sleep on it...  I'm still not sure what I think.  Do I love it?  Do I hate it?

Clearly, I need other opinions... which one is the right one??  Favorites???  Do you hate them all?  BE HONEST!!  Should I go back to the drawing board??

Help!!

Updated Living Room Photos

I always share updates about our house little by little - like last week I posted photos of our side tables with the orchid terrarium, or a few weeks ago there were some photos of our living room when I posted the x-bench makeover - but I rarely ever post lots of photos at once... call me lazy, but I realized this when hunting down pictures of our un-styled wine hutch, and couldn't find a single one!

I feel like this is a good time to document and share pictures of where our living room is now... before it changes again with a new, beautiful sofa...

Let's start out with the desk area... not much has changed here since any prior updates.  The sea fan shadow boxes are still alive and well, and I still love them as much now as when I first hung them!!

The tripod lamp is also still one of my favorite things... I got a new lampshade that has a rougher woven texture that I'm planning on swapping in, but nothing earth shattering.

Standing at the desk and turning around to face the rest of the living room, there is lots of color going on for summer and I love it.  As the weather cools down (or should I say, as it warms up with fall since there has not been one day over 60 degrees in the last several weeks)... whatever... as the seasons change, and we move into fall, I want to swap the art out for something a little more moody, and the pillows will be a bit more subdued as well.

For now, the bright blues and yellows remind me that it's summer (somewhere outside SF), and of course these just make me happy... even in the fog.

My little terrarium is still plugging away... nothing has died yet!

And now, looking to the left, I just posted about our new little vignette on the wine rack... well I felt that I owed it a few nicer photos, since I relocated the memory card for our DSLR camera.

The mirror will eventually be swapped out for something round or more ornate (like I'd posted about here) but since propping up the gold picture frame on the right, I kind of hate the mirror less... either way it will have to do for now.

Besides, the orchids are so arrestingly beautiful, I hardly notice the generic mirror lurking in the background....

Yep, these plants are loving life - bright, indirect light... all. day. long.

I'd mentioned that I'd gathered the plants together on a small tray... here is said tray.  A little feather shape that I picked up from target on sale a few months back.

Ok, last picture of the wine hutch for now... I swear...

Now we are standing in the archway between the unfinished dining room and living room.  Looking back at the wall of windows, and our sofas.

When we first moved in, I absolutely despised Kris' modern, black couch... but in the last year or so, I've either a) gotten used to it, b) piled enough pillows and throw blankets on it to distract the eye, c) balanced out it's darkness with other dark colors in the living room, or d) all of the above... I kind of don't hate it anymore.

Don't get me wrong, that thing is going on Craigslist as soon as humanly possible, but I don't think it's the eyesore I used to...

Here I am, scootching back into the dining room to get a little bit more of the room in to the frame...

... and scootching back a little bit more to get the cowhide rug that I simply adore... I think having different textures in adjacent spaces has also really helped balance the room and make it feel less "big box store" than it really is.

Let's be honest, everything we have in our living room is either from Ikea (frames, curtain rods, sofas), Target (wine hutch, fabric for throw pillows, baskets under the coffee table, lamps, trays), Bed Bath & Beyond (curtain panels), Craigslist (coffee table with matching side tables, console table), Homegoods (basically every accessory from the glass vases to the candle holders to the faux fruit).

Right?!  The natural fiber gives a healthy dose of "organic" to an otherwise, completely in-organic feeling space... just what it needed if you asked me!

And this coffee table... so bad, but I just had to show you all how badly we need a coffee table with storage when we do replace this thing (which I pray to god is very soon!)

I mean, these three baskets in the forefront are stuffed to the gills with wires, cords, TV remotes, video game controllers (because my boyfriend is secretly a 13 year old boy at heart).  On the other side of the table - closest to the couch - the baskets are filled with blankets for cozying up on the couch, and the surplus of wine that won't fit in that mini wine hutch!

My point??  Storage is important.

Ok, moving onto the other side of the room... let's first get distracted by the gorgeous flowers I picked up at the grocery store.  They smell as good as they look, and since I'm not one to hide a good deal, they were only $3 for the bunch!!

I kind of hope they die soon so I can get more while the deal is still going... but they are onto their second full week and going strong!

So here we are, sitting on Kris' couch and looking across to the other side of the room... ignore the painting propped on the ground by the front door.  That came out of the dining room, and needs to find a new home somewhere else...

The white console table moved our of our hallway a few months back, and I has been hanging out on the far wall ever since.  I've had a really hard time trying to think of what should go here.  I'm thinking we may ultimately end up selling this console table (despite it's fabulous new paint job), and maybe the fiddle leaf fig (FLF) can go there with another slightly smaller potted plant next to it?

Or maybe a white or light grey garden stool with a small plant on top of it, to go next to the FLF?

To be honest, the only reason the FLF is out here in the middle of the living room is because I nearly killed it in the dining room next to the heater.  It's lost 5 leaves so far after moving it away from the heater, and it's been a few days since the last leaf dropped... I've Googled the topic to death, and while I'm not 100% sure, I think we're in the clear, and I'm going to work on nursing it back to health.  The bald spot on the plant is facing the wall, but you can see where it's a little bare near the bottom left...

Anyways, I'm sure you're all completely bored to tears after that story about my houseplant... long story short, unless I want to sign this plant's death certificate right now, I need to find a home for it in here, and so it might just be at the sacrifice of the console table...

And that's it!

More updates to come soon with the new sofa, a new coffee table (possibly?) and new or revamped side tables!!

Can you believe this room started out looking like this??

ME EITHER!!!

Restoration Hardware Iron and Rope Mirror... the DIY version...

Meet my new little friend...

The large round Iron and Rope from Restoration Hardware...

He's rustic and cool and old timey, but welcoming him into your home won't make you seem like a suspender wearing, fake-old-timey poser... but just a cool collector of rad things...

The problem??

$650 for a mirror???

I think not!

But how easy could this possibly be to replicate??  Sure, those knots are the complicated knots of a skilled sailor, but heck, I'm sure it's nothing a quick Google search (or help from my father... who is a skilled sailor) can't fix!

Let's find some eligible mirrors, eh?

Here are a few contenders... I'm liking both the size and thin rim around the Ikea version - and that could EASILY be painted black.

This is how I see it all coming together...

I'd mount the mirror on the wall (as opposed to appending the rope and using that to hold the mirror's weight.

Then I'd find some good rustic rope (I'm sure any hardware store supplies it), and tie some ornate knots at each end.

Glue to the sides of the mirror.

Get a largish door knob, and spray paint it black.

Mount the doorknob on the wall where the rope can loop over it... to give the illusion that it's hanging

And voila!  For a lot less than $650 (and dare I say it... probably quite a bit less than $100) you have a very close substitute for the Restoration Hardware Iron and Rope mirror...

A new little vignette...

Since doing a mini makeover on the wine rack we have in our living room a few months back, I hadn't put much thought into styling the top of it, and it looked pretty much like this for the last few months:

I realize this is a terrible picture, but it's the only one I could find... and probably for good reason.  All we had on there was a mercury glass vase (which I do love) filled with fake flowers.  UGH.

SO. OVER. FAKE. FLOWERS.

I've made myself a promise - no more fake flowers in our house ever again.  Ever.

Live plants just look so much prettier.  Period.

Anyways, last weekend I went to the grocery store and stocked up on pretty orchid plants - you saw the orchid terrarium that has a home on our side table now, but on top of our wine hutch are a few new plants... real plants!

Yes, I realize these are not the best photos - I snapped them with my iPhone because I was fairly certain that I lost our memory card for the DSLR camera.  I'd hunted all over, but could not find them...

**Note: we ended up locating the memory card, so all is well.

Actually, since taking these photos, I've grouped the smaller orchid and small green plant onto a elongated tray - it just corrals everything, and defines the group of plans.

I also was playing around with the "Panorama" app on my phone the other night, and took this panorama of our living room...

It's totally warped, and things are not all where they belong, but I kind of love it.

You can see the towel rack by the front door, waiting to get sold on Craigslist... any takers?? :-)  Ha!  If it doesn't sell by the end of the week, that baby is going on the street corner!

Being a Grown-up and Buying a Grown-up Sofa

Nothing makes me feel like more of a grown up than making big purchases like buying a sofa.  NOTHING!  Holy heck - I'm turning 30 this year and buying a sofa and living with a boy!

Big things are happening left and right, and this sofa decision is weighing heavily on my mind.  We have spent several weekends sitting on hundreds of sofas - some comfy but ugly, some pretty but uncomfortable, some big, some small... we are the Goldilocks of couch-hunting.  It's too soft, it's not soft enough - you should hear us bicker!

I went into this whole process wanting a standard sofa... and have come away agreeing to a sectional.  Things are a-changin my friends!  I am putting comfort before aesthetics (to a point of course)!  In just a few weekends, I've gone from loathing the idea of a sectional, to welcoming it with open arms!  They are soooo comfortable, and shockingly enough, they make some pretty good looking ones now!

One of our finalists is actually from Pottery Barn - which I'd sworn off the last time we were couch hunting, but we are back...

The Carlisle is pretty, AND comfy... it turns out, and once we sit on it again, we might even seal the deal!

Of course, I can't fully commit until I have a very clear image in my head of how this will look with the rest of our stuff, so of course I mocked it up... (are you surprised?)

Ok, let's be honest, that's just for fun!  I love this sofa regardless of my little mock-up :-)

What is painful to admit is that by the time this lovely sofa is ordered and in our house, my little fiddle leaf fig will probably be a twig.  I am pretty sure I've killed it!

It's already lost 4 of its big gorgeous leaves!  Damn steam heater... it was living next to it in our dining room, and started looking a bit yellow and sad... turns out extreme heat or cold, or changes in temperature can cause it to go into dormancy, and drop it's leaves.  I caught it after just 2 leaves, but I think once it's on this "dormancy road" it's too late.

Sad!