Design Board....


I got this email from World Market about all the cool new things they had in stock now.  I was really impressed and thought I was going to do a board with JUST World Market merchandise.....but I got carried away....and threw in the Pigeon Basket coffee table so there goes that plan.

I am kind of over that coffee table....but then in another way I love it.  It is so easy to move out of the way [with those big wheels] .  My sofa is a sleeper and when my brother comes into town with his 3 kids...well....we have to use it.

And don't think I don't know that maybe wheels have peaked [I read design magazines also] but I have to say they are functional sometimes.  So back to the design board, World market and what I came up with.

I actually started with the rug.  That is usually where I do start first because a rug is a great inspiration point.  It kind of defines the style of the room.  From there I picked the wall color [BM] Metropolitan.  It was on their website as one of their 5 favorite grays.  I could not look at the color as I lent out my paint decks for the weekend.  Looks good though!

From there I just started building a room like I am doing an installation.  Big furniture first...sofa, chairs and case-goods.  After that we go to pictures or anything hanging on a wall.  Establish where you might need height in the room.  Lighting, pillows....THEN the accessories.  Those are always last.  That is when you start building your vignettes.  You will have a much better understanding of where you need to layer warmth and color...all those things that make the room appealing.

Think about the simple black dress.....you don't put the pearls on before the dress.

My biggest punch of color came in the window treatments.  Hopefully my imaginary room does not have a jillion windows because I might have to rethink that plan.  Also the rug is only a 6 by 9 but it could be layered over a larger sisal.

Anyway...this is just for grins and how I would style the room.  Remember...design is like art...very subjective.

I will let you know if I found anything while I was thrifting this weekend later......
* can not figure out how to make this picture bigger so get out your magnifying glass.





Berkley Floor Lamp - Ballard Designs
$239 - ballarddesigns.com


Silver Garden Stool
$195 - instyle-decor.com

Medium Moss Olive Jar
$159 - crateandbarrel.com

Classic Natural Steel End Tables
$160 - roomandboard.com


DwellStudio Modern Pillows Chinoiserie Vellum
$112 - pillowsandthrows.com







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Kravet - Print
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The Winner

Lets get right down to it.  I wanted to be like Oprah and say [like she does on the "favorite Things" show] "You are all getting one"!!!   But I only have one so that would not work.  So here is the winner: Rachel Gill.  She has just started a blog called Gilly Grey literally 3 days ago!  She is going to think winning is easy :)

My husband is out of town for the weekend so I think I will go to some flea markets and thrift stores.  Here are a few pictures I found the other day at Antiques and Beyond on Cheshire Bridge Rd here in ATL.


Pink is all the rage......more


This chandelier with the pink crystals....


This plexiglass rolling cart....wanted.

Cool chest covered in raffia.  Really wanted.  I could do this but I am too lazy.

Old lantern.  I want to change out my DR chandelier....it would be my 3rd change in 18 years.  Why can't I just be happy.  I am happy.  Why can't I be satisfied with what I have.  I am....just bored.
I do want a new coffee table in my LR.  Something a little retro, maybe brass.  I am full of wants aren't I.  But I can change it because it is 15 years old.  It is only my second one.....
You know, we don't always get what we want...like I say to my husband when he says "I want you to do your taxes this weekend"  I say...well I want an IPad and I'm not getting what I want ?????


Another little beauty.  Just waiting for a new home.

Is this not the cutest face????
This is what she got her paw caught in a few months back.  Yep...uh huh.  I coyote trap that somebody set on the nature trail in my neighborhood.  Is your mouth still open?

If you don't think this is a story......let me just say "drama"!  There is a small hill on the trail and I was at the top with my other dog and I heard this really loud wail.  I thought it was a cat.  I kept hearing it all the while I was whistling for patches to come.  Then I went stomping back down the hill to see where she was and I saw her laying down.  I realized then that it was HER making that noise.

As I got closer I thought..."dang it's a snake"  But when I walked up I just looked at it like WTF is this????  I tried to open it...are you kidding me...at that moment I started to panic.  I am looking around, thinking what the heck am I going to do while she is wailing in my face.  SO...literally I just braced myself and it was like I was the "green hornet" for a minute.  It opened a little and she whipped her paw out and went running.  She was fine...me on the other hand, I was still sweating.

I just stood there in shock.  Then I started following it to where the base was and pulled it out of the ground.  I was so confused, thinking it was from the civil war or something like that.  I mean I walk this trail EVERY day.  

As I finished my walk through the trail and around the block, I got home and called my friend Jan.  Now SHE is the ultimate animal lover.  Remember...I really did not know what it was or why it was there.  She came flying over and flipped out.  It looked rusted and had leaves and pine straw all over it.  It looked MEAN.

As it turned out there was a neighborhood meeting that very night.  She jumped on her scooter with the trap and headed there.  Oh yea...all fired up.  Ready to whoop some ass.  Long story short....after she explained the event with as much drama as she could...I was getting phone calls all week asking if Patches was OK....AND...all traps were removed due to the fact that they had NOT gotten a permit!

Here is my thought...say you catch a coyote.  AND....he has been trapped and he is HUNGRY and PISSED off that he is stuck.  Then what will you do.  Some people do not think things through.....

So...we have a winner...some pretty flea market finds and a story.  
Now if you see this riding around this weekend....then you know I had a successful time hunting for treasures.  Wave and say HI.....

Hope you have an awesome weekend.





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My weekend and a reminder....

We had the best Sunday Supper ever...and I wanted to share with you what a fun thing we did.  I think I have mentioned before that we like to party on Sunday night instead of Saturday night.  We make it very casual and since it is a school night nobody stays too late :)  I guess that means we are old but I can hardly stay away past 10:00 pm these days.

The theme was make your own pizza.  We got the bags of pre made dough from Trader Joe's.  I think they are a $1.00.  That surprises me that I know the price because I can not even tell you what a gallon on milk cost.  I am the WORST grocery shopper.  Hate it.  I am all over the place in there...one side of the store to the other.  Just picture this....say I am looking for peanut butter....I stand there for 10 minutes...frozen because I have no idea which brand is the best.  I try to remember commercials but usually I just grab what I see someone else take.  It is truly pathetic.  

Here are a few pictures of Pizza night
Since it was a buffet I just made the table pretty.  It had been such a beautiful day in Atlanta and we were feeling all "springy"


Here is a picture of all the toppings for the pizza...
The fresh veggies

Meats and fish.

Everyone had so much fun inventing their pizza.  There were definitely some favorites like the cream freshe [by the way...what is that stuff anyway?] with fresh salmon, capers, onions......to die.

Some people got creative!  
We even did a desert pizza with cinnamon, sugar, melted chocolate chips and drizzled caramel sauce.  Then topped with ice cream.  Gawd.....I ate so much I felt like a big fat tick.

The trick is to roll out the dough...cook it for a few minutes and then put all the goodies on it.  Then put it back in the oven and WATCH it!  Yeah...we did burn one.

You should try this because we all agreed it was a blast!

While I was there a friend/client asked me to come by on Monday to talk about a few things she wanted to do.  We have been working on her place for about 9 months now and we are starting to work on the DR.  She said that she wanted a new lamp for this chest.

I said [not to be mean or anything...] we need more than that babe.  So here is PROOF that most people already have what they need to create a vignette. 
After turning the chest to the other wall...here is what I came up.


She even had the green apples!  And that awesome brass lamp!
Then I found these in the hallway.
So we are going to find one more and make a small gallery on the wall to the right of the chest.

Use what you have.  Seriously... start shopping your own house.  Don't go to Homegoods.  I mean it.

Don't forget about the giveaway...picking a winner tomorrow!



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Montana

 In 2006 we were hired to do a NHL  players home out in Montana.  Better get a cup of tea or coffee because this one could take a while.  Uwe had bought the home when he was into dog sledding...you know like the Iditarod.  It is 90 miles outside of Missoula, in Seeley Lake and had never been furnished except for a few beds and a couple of couches.  It was 7800 square feet and it was a log cabin.  There was also NO  central heat and air.  Yes.... you read that right.  It had heated floors but people it gets 40 below out in those parts.  For real.

He wanted to furnish it to sell so we flew out for the preview and see what we were up against.  Missoula.  Far far away.  I have never been to Montana.  Let me tell you something about those parts.  They wear sensible clothes.  No Jimmy Choos.  If they are wearing a scarf it is to keep them warm...not to make your outfit look cute.  In fact, I bet NO ONE uses the word cute out there.

I don't have a ton of pictures because my laptop crashed a few years ago and I lost dang everything.  I now have Time Machine.  You only make that mistake once.

It had 5 bedrooms.  There was a young couple who lived there to take care of the property.  [90 acres] We did have use of a truck.  Lets just start with the driveway.  4 miles long.....not paved.....no lights.  Do you know how dark it is out in the middle of no where?  Really dark.  Pitch black.  More on that later.

Lets start with a picture of this log cabin.

This is a view of the back...it is all I have.  If there are some readers from Missoula, then I apologize if it appears that I didn't like it there.....I mean towards the end of the job I was calling it "Miseryoola".  Cause they DO NOT have very good shopping.  It might be better now but this was 5 years ago.  I had to buy most of the stuff in Atlanta and have it moved out there.  Especially accessories.  I secured a storage unit and went to Scott's and shopped like a maniac! We started it in about June and finished in October with just three trips out there.

Here is a picture of the master bedroom.  A lot of yellow wood.  Everywhere...log cabin remember.  We had to get that bed out of there.  Can you even see the bed????




We actually found the bedroom set  in a furniture store out there.  All rugs were bought in Atlanta and shipped.  We had to get this done pretty fast so they could put it in the market,  we did not have a lot of time to waste.  Literally when we would get there we would work from the minute we got up to bedtime.  No TV.  There wasn't one.  It was hot as the dickens in the summer so we had to sleep with the windows open.  Can I tell you how scared I was when I heard wolfs howling???  There were mountain lions up there so they had to keep the dogs close to the house. You could not go out at night and  one evening a dog [there were 2 house dogs]  brought a deer leg to the front door [that a mountain lion had killed].  How sweet...a present.  You try to sleep.......


Here is the sitting area in the bedroom.



This is a picture of the family room before.  We managed to use the 2 leather sofas elsewhere in a bedroom and one downstairs.  We did not find a place for the chair.  Too bad huh?

Here is after.  Remember Storehouse?  There was an outlet store right down from my house.  Lord I miss that place.  I got all the furniture there.  Had the chair and couch recovered.  The coffee table, red chest lamps and accessories were from Scott's.
We also had to find someone to do all the window treatments, in a town of 1500 people.  That was hard. Let's put it in perspective here....Atlanta..... population 2 million.  Missoula...population 57,000.  That was the hardest part of the job, finding painters, electricians and plumbers.
I wish I had more pictures.  We had to do 5 bedrooms, a theatre room, gym, outdoor furniture, kitchen, and foyer.  It was pretty overwhelming at times.  Yes...we did have TV's put in.  But they were not working while we were there.
Another angle of the den.


There was a whole suite downstairs, another bedroom, gym, laundry room, and theatre room.  We also had to get a small kitchen put in.
This was one of the bedrooms downstairs.
Here is the after.
This was a hallway.  We took those benches from somewhere else, painted them and put them together.  I still can't believe they fit.



Here is the kitchen.  I don't have a before but this is the original table which we sanded and re-stained.  Ourselves.  New chairs...new lighting.
This was the den downstairs off that bedroom and the hallway.  Don't you like how I am all over the place with the order of the pictures?  That is how my life is also.....
Here is one of the leather sofas we reused.

I will never forget the few days before we scheduled the moving van to come to the storage unit.  Getting last minute things and it was July in ATL.  HOT as HELL....I was sweating like a Miami hooker.  The thing is you could not count on finding anything in Miseryoola.  No Homegoods....no Bed bath and Beyond...nothing.  JC Penney and maybe a Sears I think.

Sometimes we would leave the ranch and head into town [90 miles]  drive around and shop all day and then head home.  We really did not want to be driving up that dirt 4 mile driveway after dark.  I am telling you it was scary.  This is where there are bears, lions, and all kinds of animals that I have only seen in ZOO's.  I think the first night we did it....we were halfway up just shaking with fright and I slammed on the breaks and screamed....just to scare Denise.  I think she messed herself :).  You had to go like 0 miles an hour because it was so bumpy and there were also some turns in the road marked only by a broken branch or something.   After the first wrong turn I can tell you that we started paying VERY good attention.   There were NO neighbors.

As hard as it was there were some fun times out there.  When it was cold we had to wear gloves inside the house to work.  And we were only there in October...I can not imagine winter.  Only radiant heating...remember?

So don't forget about the swell giveaway.


I am going to pick a winner on Thursday.

Have a great week.

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