Dark, Moody Accent Walls with Photo Galleries

I've always wanted a dark, moody accent wall in my home, but it never quite seemed to fit anywhere in our last house. The space that we have in our main living area NOW, is much brighter and open, so I felt like it was time to take the plunge and get paintin'!

I'm OBSESSED with the results!!!

When we were initially looking for paint, we felt like a few of the straight "blacks" had a hue of purple or blue to them, so we decided to go with a really dark gray instead. 

We ended up used Wrought Iron from Benjamin Moore.

We bought a mid-grade paint and did two good coats after taping off the ceiling, walls and baseboard.

Our New Homes Paint, Flooring & Carpet Colors

I've had a bunch of people on Instagram ask about the exact paint and flooring colors in our new house, so I thought I'd create a post with all the resources for you!

None of this paint or flooring was picked out by us personally, it was all set to be installed about the week we first looked at the house. That being said, I don't think I would have picked colors that were that much different. They're all really neutral, and go with warm OR cool tones. MAJOR plus!

Gold Sconces - Joss & Main

Rug - Rugs USA, Table - The Black Goose (you can also find it sometimes on Joss & Main for less!)

Christmas Gold + Home for the Holidays

Slowly but surely Christmas decorating is coming along over in our neck of the woods. I've decided this year that I'm not going to spend weeks and weeks decorating, just to feel like I'm having to turn around and take everything back down to pack it up in bins and boxes again.

polka dot decals // vase from Joss & Main

This time I'm enjoying the process, and making small, yet significant changes to our space. Mostly, just by swapping everyday items out with more Christmasy ones instead.

I Dream of Entryways + Elements that can Help your Entryway Rock

My eBay Collections were curated as part of a sponsored collaboration with eBay

Can I just say how much I love a great entryway in a home?

It's actually one of those super-important things on my list that will HAVE to be considered if we ever move into another house. No entryway - NO WAY!

Don't get me wrong, I'm still in love with our entryway makeover, and adore our little nook and all the new design elements and character this space has now...

...but ideally, I'd like to have a mudroom, in an actual MUDROOM someday, and my entryway to just have it's own identity. ha! That being said, when you live in a smaller space, but you still want the luxuries that a bigger, roomier house has to offer, then you make compromises. Between a makeshift mudroom in our entryway, or no mudroom at all?.. I choose the first option; occasional coats and backpacks on the ground and all :)

In my wildest (yet still sorta realistic dreams) I'd LOVE an entryway similar to this one below. Breathtaking large front door with plenty of windows for light to pour through, overly wide in size, spacious, airy, encased in white chunky molding, a statement light that knocks your socks off, a fab entryway table, and even a small spot to sit more than one person, so that you can invite people inside... without having to always "invite them ALL the way inside." If you know what I mean.

 AKA: Welcome to my messy living room, dirty kitchen and unmade beds down the hallway. bleeeh.

Now if we're goin' full dreamer here, my all-time, would-die-to-have home entryway, would look JUST like this...

Elegant and Timeless Girly Bedroom Makover

I've got a horrible habit of showing small projects and corners of spaces, but not entire rooms once they're finished, so I'm trying to get better at that :)

Well, Aubrielle's elegant, girly bedroom is totally complete, and I'm so thrilled to finally share it in it's entirety!

Rug - DownEast Home, from Pottery Barn

Aubrielle loves all things pink and princess-like, so I wanted to make sure that the colors were light, airy and happy in her space, without going full-on character princess... if that makes sense. I love decor and design that can last and grow WITH us, so finding ways to incorporate the things my kids love, but in a timeless, classy way is always the challenge for me.

Dresser - thrifted for $120 and refinished

We painted this room with bright white on the bottom, where the trim was, and Glidden's Autumn Haze on the top. This is also the same color we have the most of our home. It's a fantastic, creamy neutral :)
A while ago I picked out this dresser from my friend Sausha, who worked her magic and helped me take it from outdated, to shabby chic, with light, powder-blue paint, a little distressing and crystal knobs.

Tall Arrows - Fletcher and Fox

Renting Realities & Solutions when it comes to Decorating

In the past couple of years as we've been blogging about all of the projects that we do around here, I've been quite surprised to actually learn how MANY of our readers RENT, versus own, when it comes to their current homes.

We have readers that we hear from who are constantly moving (and renting homes/apartments), due to having military lifestyles, a spouse with a job that requires them to be in different states or countries for various amounts of time, or even just because they have chosen to rent their home in a perfect location/neighborhood, instead of buy or own at the moment.

In fact recently, Homes.com launched their first rental app, optimized for mobile renters so that they can find listings a lot easier. 

If you're interested in checking it out you can download it in the app store.

There are lots of different reasons people want to, or must rent their homes, but I feel like there's ALWAYS been a common denominator between all of them. Typically, from time to time, most renters get frustrated that they can't make any big, significant improvements to their spaces; such as painting walls, changing floors, switching out lighting fixtures, revamping a space, etc...

While right now I don't have to deal with those limitations, there HAVE been times. I remember this feeling all too well when I was trying to establish a "cute home" for me and my little family, when we lived in ridiculously-hot Arizona for a few months while Cason was working.

Our apartment was teeny-tiny, and we had LOTS of limitations; down to what size the holes could be in our walls... so believe me, I know ALL about feeling frustrated when it comes to not being able to decorate how you really want to. BUT, I did my best, made due with what I had, bought a few different things that worked better in this smaller space, and despite the 118 degree weather everyday (I kid you not), I was pretty happy with what I finally came up with!

And yes, this is all of our stuff, PRE style-shift. ha! It's sort of fun to look back on it all :) We've come quite a long way!

That being said, I also know a LOT more now, than I did back then about adding color, storage and personality to a space, without actually having to add paint to a room or knock down a wall.

I really liked this breakdown from Homes.com that shows homeowners and renters alike how a room typically goes together.

So as a renter, how can you go about implementing these rules into YOUR space? Well, I have some ideas :) But don't worry, these apply to EVERYONE!

Entryway Table Decor

Just like I promise, I'm back with some entryway decor I wanted to show you, that we added to our little $12 table redo. Most of it was just gathered from other areas of the house, or past projects we worked on, but a few things are new too.

First up, a couple of questions answered:

For those of you who have asked, our silvery-gold sunburst mirror was one that we picked up from a Joss & Main sale a few months back. If I remember right it ran us about $140 or so I think. I'd seen mirrors like these a lot pricier, so I was thrilled when I spotted this price tag, but then realized when it came in the mail that the reason it was a bit less, was because it's not metal, it's actually made out of a lighter, plasticy type material that's just painted to look like it has a metallic finish. To be honest it hasn't bothered me one bit, and I sort of liked that it didn't weigh a million pounds when we went to hang it up.

The next question that we keep getting is about our outlet covers. Man, if I had a choice we just wouldn't have outlets in the middle of walls at all, but if we must, we must. It seems like a frivolous thing, but really, changing out your outlet covers to new, brighter, more stylized ones will really kick your space up a notch for a small price. (ignore the bright blue theme park stamp on Cason's hand. ha!)

We first stumbled upon these classy, Allen and Roth wood wall plates when we were redoing our kitchen and adding the wood planked wall in. Once our cabinets and wall were painted bright white, we realized how yellow our original outlet covers had become, so we needed new ones. Cason found these and we've been slowly replacing our old fixtures with them ever since.

The stack of old, colorful books were bought at a flea market this past year for a few dollars each and the large "S" was found at HomeGoods and then spray painted white.

DIY Orb Chandelier Tutorial - Zgallerie Eclipse Knockoff

Jen from Tatertots & Jello and I have been friends for about as long as we've both been blogging. I remember the first time we met... and ironically, it was over a lighting fixture exchange!

Who knew that over 3 years later we'd become the best of blogging buddies and life-long friends (???) It's so crazy how life works, isn't it?

From painted chevron rugs to Valentines day subway art and even a little help with a bedroom makeover (soon to be revealed on Jen's blog), I've had a BLAST working with this super-talented-creative-mega-mind friend of mine, and hope we NEVER stop collaborating on awesome projects together.

All that being said, about 2 months ago Jen and I were laying around in a hotel room, during a blogging event, talking about things we wanted to still get done in our homes, and we both mentioned how MUCH we really wanted one of those cool orb chandelier lights that we kept seeing around in all the high-end stores. If we saved, we knew we could probably afford one, but neither one of us felt like spending over $500, or DOUBLE THAT on a single light fixture was really the best place to put all of our hard earned cash. 

So what do you do when you can't find something that you WANT, at the price you NEED it to be at? You MAKE IT of course!

I definitely have to give Jen all the credit when it comes to material choices and basic construction of this awesome DIY orb chandelier.

PS: This is my "things are gettin' serious here" face.  ack!

Jen and her smarty-pants hubby Jeff figured out how to get the orb shape we needed, and then once we had the basic idea down, Cason and I were off to figure out how to construct our own... in a smaller version than Jen's with a little bit of a different twist.

Here's how we did it:

We bought our chandelier base from Home Depot. It's called the Charleston 6 light chandelier and it was $95.00. (Jen's was a bit larger and ran about $120.00)

2013 Salt Lake City Parade of Homes = A Happy House Peeper

This past weekend Cason and I embarked on one of our all-time favorite events ... The Parade of Homes in Salt Lake City. We went last year together for the first time, after helping plan and decorate the 2012 blogger house, and we knew immediately that this was going to be an annual tradition for us.

If you've never been to a parade of homes in your area, then I hate to say it, but you're probably missing out BIG time. Basically, it's like a get-in-free-card (okay, usually it costs about $6-$10 per ticket) to take a peek into a TON of amazingly designed and decorated houses, usually in neighborhoods right around where you already live!

Not sure if you remember my "house peeper" confession last year, but just know, walking into someone else's home to get a good look around, WITHOUT looking like a total creeper? yeah, it's pretty much like the best day ever... well, at least for me

:)

Okay, so let's get real... most of these photos are from my iPhone, but I'm dying to show you some details that I absolutely loved from a few homes this year, great picture quality or not. There are quite a few things to cover, so here we go:

My Favorite Exterior:

While so many of the 35 featured homes had beautiful exteriors, I'd have to say that #33 was probably my favorite. I was absolutely head over heels for the finishes and paint colors chosen for this beautiful home. It's basically the epitome of what my dream homes exterior would look like, if I could have anything I wanted.

***swoon*** 

Although the actual layout of this house was't really my cup o' tea, it DID have a KILLER kitchen with the most amazing hardwood floors and cabinet design you ever did see.

Oh! and you can't forget the extra hidden storage in the basement!

WHAT!? seriously awesome, right?

2013 Home Trends We Love - Accenting with Animals

Ready for another one of our favorite 2013 home decor trends that we love?

Good, let's do this people!

In our last post we covered those 'Out of Bounds Blues' that we were crushing on, and in the post before that; Gorgeous Gold. So don't forget to check those out too.

  

I'm super excited about today's trend, because I think it will definitely "ruffle some feathers".

:)

ACCENTING with ANIMALS!

(know that I use the word 'animal' loosely. I'm talkin' any sort of living creature that isn't human)

Guys, what do you think? Can you dig it?

Well, WE love it!

Truthfully, I think I like it more than Cason, but he definitely doesn't mind it, so I keep bringing in these interesting creatures whenever I find one that catches my eye.

I've found some fun ones at places like Target, HomeGoods, Down to Earth and Joss & Main. I've noticed that I tend to stick to animal figurines that are all one color, and cute (of course). Oh, and you'll also see me doing a happy dance when I find one of these little guys that serve more than just their sole purpose of hanging around and looking cute. Like for example, if it's a vase, watering pitcher, candlestick holder, etc...

So, without further ado, here are some different ways that we've chosen to display our newest animal accents around our home. For those of you who think this is silly (which is the best part about it for me) maybe it will lighten your feelings towards the trend and help you embrace the animalistic decorator inside of you (rawrr)... and for the others, who already love it and just need ideas on how to incorporate this fun new trend into your space, enjoy!

Light It Up, Up, Up! - One Ceiling Fans Story

Over the past 4 years as our little family has gone through this somewhat dramatic "style-shift" in our home, from deep tan and brown glazed walls, red accents and a sort of Tuscan decorating vibe, to a brighter, airier more personalized/stylized, yet functional look with whites, grays, blues and even golds (!), I can't help but get really excited when I look around and realize that more of my house is actually now how I want it, than how I don't. (eeeek!)

Now that our home sees less and less construction projects, and more and more finishing touches, it makes the butterflies soar in my belly. Will we ever be D.O.N.E, done?... nah. I'm too fickle and indecisive to ever say that I'm going to be "done" with any home I live in. Design is always and forever changing, so in some ways our home(s) probably always will be too.

Today though, I couldn't help but share the story of our living room ceiling fan, one of the very last "old fixtures" in our home left.

Yes... you read that right, I said ceiling fan. And yes, it has a story.

When we first moved into our home our living room was equipt with the standard, builder-grade "boob-light" fixture in our open living room/kitchen area. (we had quite the collection of those babies if you remember) We knew the first few days after living here that we needed a fan in the space to help circulate air, so with very little thought, we picked up this dark brown fan on sale at our local home improvement store. Being absolute DIY newbies we grabbed our ladder, struggled for about 2+ hours trying to get it installed and then once it was up, flipped the switch and realized that while we had a working fan, we did NOT have any working lights.

(insert frustrated look and eye roll here)

Cason was so incredibly annoyed with the whole process, that he threw his hands up and told me that we'd just get back to it again another day.

...

3 kids, a blog, 2 jobs, 1 dog and 6 years later, I'm happy to report that we've FINALLY decided to tackle this ceiling fan project again!

(stop judging us).

As I'm sure you can guess, even in those darker decorating days, that big ol' brown, monstrous fan on my ceiling was never really my favorite. It was way too much of a contrast against my nice white ceiling and almost demanded the attention of anyone's gaze when they walked into the room, so I knew that it had to go.  That being said, this entire year I've been keeping my eye out for the PERFECT fan for this space, to replace the one we had, but it wasn't until about a month or so ago while scanning a Joss & Main sale, did I find it.

I've bought a lot of furniture and decor from Joss & Main, but never a lighting fixture. I was a bit nervous, but took the plunge anyway. This particular fan/light combo ran me about $250 (free shipping). Cason and I were both really impressed with the quality of the fan and loved it immediately! The only downside, was that we were missing a few screws that were suppose to be included to attached the fan blades to the body of the fixture. After a quick call to Joss & Main, they were reordered and sent to our house in about 7 days (free of charge of course).

image posted on our Instagram feed the day of install

Once we had everything we needed, the install started. Bad memories of hours on a high ladder, holding heavy fan motors and tiny electrical parts flooded Cason's head, so I just stayed quiet and as helpful as possible... while snapping a couple of pictures of course.

If you want to read more about how Cason learned the best way to change out all of our old lights to new ones on his own, you can read our tutorial on DIY lighting install.

Unfortunately about halfway through the install I had to jet off to a meeting, but got a text from Cason not too long after that, with a picture similar to this one attached.

2013 Home Trends We Love - Gorgeous Gold

This past month I've been thinking a lot about a few of the 2013 trends that we have embraced and used in our home this year. From gold accents and unique shades of blues, to bold wallpaper and funky little ceramic animals. Most things that sound a bit odd at first, but in the right settings and amounts can look really awesome with lots of different styles and in almost any space.

We already wrote about and shared a couple of trends that we love in our latest Homes.com article and it was so fun, that I thought I'd share a few more item suggestions for each of our additional favorite 2013 trends, and also examples of how we've implemented them in our own home!

 Today, we're starting with Gorgeous Gold.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5

If you haven't noticed (how could you not) I'm a bit obsessed with all things gold right now. There's just something about throwing a flash of warm metallic in a room that makes it seem classy and interesting. Isn't it funny how gold has come back around?

The fun and different thing about 2013's gold trend, is that it can vary quite a lot. You can find decor accents that are more of a brighter yellow gold... or those that are a deeper, brassier color. What this means, is that depending on your existing decor, you can definitely discover a fun table, vase, or decorative accent that works best for you.

Not all gold accents are created equal, in shade, quality or finish - so, to each their own!

4th of July Red, White & Blue Shelf Decor

Can't believe I forgot to share my 4th of July shelf decor before I left out of town this past weekend for the Krylon ColorMaster Challenge in Ohio! It's been ready for a while, but I've been running around like a crazy person, trying to keep up on all of our Summer plans and other things going on around here!

Better late than never though, right!?

:)

Silver Mason Jar, Blue Stand, Pennant Banner - Pottery Barn 

Coffee filter wreaths have been done a billion different ways, and they're all over blogland and Pinterest, so I thought I'd try my hand out at one and put my own little spin on it for the 4th!

Project Basement Makeover - Decor Plan & Stepping out of my Comfort Zone

You know when you get going on a project, get REALLY excited, make huge strides and then... quit? Yeah, well, that's sort of what happened to our basement makeover these past couple of months.

We have a bunch of ideas that we want to implement down in this space, but feel like we don't want to commit to anything quite yet, until we have our furniture in place.

Aubrielle: "Hey friends, wanna come watch a movie at MY house? You can sit on a broken camping chair, a bouncy ball or even an old storage container!"

:(

Sadly, this scene above has been the norm for the past couple of months while we've been deciding on furniture styles and colors for this space. Typically, when it comes to big purchases we take a LOT of time deciding, finding exactly what we need/love, saving our money... and only THEN do we jump in with both feet.

As I mentioned before, Cason has been really opinionated (in a good way), with this basement makeover and he's challenged me to step outside of my comfort zone and try something new.

Typically I would go for lighter, airier colors, (whites, light blues and yellows) like in our living room upstairs, but we both thought that it would be fun to dip our toe into a completely different color scheme that we think could be really fun, for this movie watchin', game playin' space! I mean, it's just color, right!? And as long as our couch stays neutral, changing up everything else is a cinch and a lot less expensive.

Since we wanted our textiles to be really unique and custom, we chose to work with The Black Goose Design again. We loved working with them for our kitchen redesign, so it was a no-brainer when we were deciding where to purchase the bigger pieces for our basement.

The good (and sometimes bad) thing about an actual design shop, like The Black Goose, is that they have EVERY fabric, rug and furniture style under the sun! Good, because you don't have to run around town (or the internet) looking for each individual piece of your design plan, but bad, because if you DON'T have some sort of plan in mind, you can get overwhelmed with choices really fast.

...eehhhmm...

This may or may not have happened to me.

***blush***

Luckily, between Cason and Brooke (who is the manager and one of many design consultants at the store), we were able to reign in my indecisive decorating ways pretty quickly. Once we decided on a definite color scheme, things moved really fast! I'll admit that I was hesitant and unsure about our choices as we flipped through the bold, rich, fabrics one by one; but once everything was laid out on the table, I started to get really excited!!! 

The thing I love about a really good design shop/consultant, is that they're not there to tell you how you should decorate, or exactly what they think you should choose; they're just onlookers with lots of resources who standby and help make suggestions that you may not have considered, once they see what direction you start gravitating towards in your design decisions.

Project Basement Makeover - THE TV + Metal Sideboard

There's really no good way to start a post out for me, when this is the first picture.

Just in case you're wondering, that look on my husbands face is:

"Oh my GOSH, she let me do it, I'm seriously rollin' out of this Costco with 65 inches of high definition, smart TV goodness! How did I win this one?... okay, if I don't smile or make eye contact with her then she won't change her mind... just get to the checkout stand as fast as possible, go, go, GO!"

I don't wanna talk about it.

What's done is done.

Yeah, so this basement makeover is turning into a bit of a tug-o-war with Cason and I. Normally we don't have many issues deciding on what goes where, how a wall should be finished or where our budget should be spent... but this time, it's different. I'm not sure if it's because the basement is the closest thing that Cason will probably get to a "Man Cave", or if he just feels like being extra opinionated about everything... nonetheless, a lot of choices in this basement makeover have been his.

While at times I've rolled my eyes or raised an eyebrow at a few of our his "final decisions"... I have to say that it's sort of fun to have a little more opposition this go-around. Sounds weird, I know, but typically Cason is SO easygoing and agreeable, that it's fun to watch him get all worked up about very specific things in this space; like a SIXTY FIVE INCH TV or even Faux animal print ottomans from The Black Goose Design that he just KNOWS will totally "make the space." haha! I love this guy.

PS: Don't get the wrong idea, I'm definitely in love with these funky ottomans too.

:)

Once we had that ridiculous monstrosity TV up on the wall downstairs, I realized that I'd have to find the Mother-of-all sideboards to go under it. We searched for about 3 weeks looking for the perfect piece, when we finally saw this one at a big furniture store nearby. 

At first I was hesitant, because it looked sort of Medieval to me with all the metal and exposed studs, but then the more I looked at it... it grew on me. We don't have ANYTHING like this in the rest of our home, so I thought it would be fun to try something new and different for a change. Cason of course loved it right off the bat.