Minted Modern Art Over the Mantel!

Taking down holiday decorations is my favorite.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE all of the festivities that the holidays bring, but holy crap, there is a LOT of stuff that accumulates during those few months that I'm MORE than happy to put back in storage, donate or toss. 

Getting a house put back together with all of it's everyday items just feels so good - don't you think!?

That being said, a few months ago I ordered some amazing framed art from Minted, and I've been itching to hang it somewhere awesome - so, after all of the holiday decor was down off of our mantel, I thought I'd give this little spot in our home a shot!

Aaaaand, I love it!

I've been a bit obsessed with bright, contrasting hues lately, so when I initially spotted this colorful little hummingbird, I KNEW which direction I was going to go with the other prints I ordered to compliment it.

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.

A Pop of Color in the Living Room!

So I have been DYING to change up this living room space of ours for months... but can't afford the deep navy blue couch I want at the moment.

I'm eying this Pottery Barn one.

Isn't she a beaut!? Ooooo, Ahhhh :) 

In the meantime, while wandering through Ikea, I found a bunch of new pillows for basically NOTHIN'!

Like $7 - $14 people! That's insane. 

So I picked up a few, along with inserts, and scurried home to set them up!

Two large blue 24 inch pillows - Ikea - $10 each
Magenta velvet pillow - Ikea - $8
Textured yellow pillow - Ikea - $7
Black and white pillow (includes insert) - $14
White pouf - Joss & Main
Rug - RugsUSA
Couch - Pottery Barn
Gray Chair - Black Goose Design
Acrylic coffee table - Joss & Main
Gold Lamp - Joss & Main
Ebony Schumacher pillow cover - Pop O' Color on Etsy

I am in LOVE with the pop of color this room has now, and obsessed with the rich, beautiful hues. It adds so much character to the space.

If you haven't had a chance to snag a few pillows at Ikea lately... you're missin' out. They're FAB!

xo

Planked it!

Done, da, da, da, da DOOOONE!

Yes, the VERY FIRST wall has been planked, and that officially means, the Smiths have made their mark!

I've been super excited about finally having a fireplace in our new house, but the lack of shelving, built-in storage or really... ANYTHING around our little fireplace, has underwhelmed me since we moved in.

Oh, and yeah, that's Cason's ginormous TV on a iiiiitty-bitty folding table. There are plans for all of that corded mess and humungo screen to go down in the basement once it's finished. We're getting close (more on that later) - but for now, it's the only TV in the house that the kids can watch, so this is how we live for now.

Super "industrial" right!? #trendsetters! 

Since I was so in love with our planked wall in the last house, I knew I had to recreate it somewhere here, and this wall seemed like the perfect place.

For a FULL tutorial on how to do this sort of wall treatment, you can look at our DIY wood planked wall how-to here.

No messing around this time, I was determined to get the planking done in ONE day, if it killed me. Cason's dad came to the rescue and acted as the official "measure-er dude" and the twins even did the majority of the sanding once we brought the 6 inch boards home. They were life savers! 

Modern, Whimsical, Gold Christmas Decor - Our Holiday Home Tour

We're finally sharing our little 2013 Christmas decor home tour today!

This year we decided to go with LOTS of gold and neutral accents, vintage/whimsical touches here and there, and of course some modern flair thrown in too.

If you've missed our Christmas decor or projects in the past, you can see those in full detail by clicking on the icons below.

  

  

  

I have to say that this years theme, has definitely been one of my all-time favorites :)

I know that a lot of you will have questions about where things are from or how they were made, so I've included a quick reference list at the end of this post for that.

Enjoy!

A Gold Polka Dot Accent Wall!

If you follow us on Instagram, you might have seen a little somthin' happening around these parts, that we all get pretty excited about...

wallpaper post // basement post

Yup, it's about to get Christmasy up in here! :)
The kids got to decorating their tree with Cason in the basement on Sunday, and have been talking Christmas ever since; I love it!

I know that there are two types of people who are going to see this.
Type #1 - "YAY! Christmas decorations, music and cheer! I'm so happy it's almost here!"
Type #2 - "Seriously? Why don't these crazies wait till at least after Thanksgiving... I mean, that's a holiday too, jeesh!"

Ha! I've already seen the backlash from other bloggers' posts about trees and Christmas decor, so I guess it's just inevitable... right? Some people do Christmas really early, while others have traditions of decorating trees the day after Thanksgiving.
For us... we just start pulling out Christmas whenever we feel like it. There's never a specific date or time, but I DO tend to do things earlier than most, so I can share all (or as much as I can) of my ideas with our readers before THEY start really decorating... does this make sense? I guess it just comes with the "job", and to be honest, I actually love Christmas decor up during Thanksgiving. It always makes it feel more cozy, and just means that in the end, I get to relax and enjoy all my hard work and pretty stuff for that much longer!

This year, one of my first projects for Christmas decorating upstairs, has been to tackle something that I've been wanting to do for a while now. It's sort of crazy, super fun and totally me...
A GOLD POLKA DOT accent wall! whoohoo!

Our beadboard wall in the living room served as the perfect "grid" for free handing these polka dots. I had no patience for making perfectly straight lines or digging through tools out in the garage to find a laser level (or to discover after looking for 30 minutes that we don't even own one... because honestly at this very moment, I have no idea if we actually do or not), so I just eyeballed the polka dots placement.

Obviously I chose gold for this project, but you can go with any color you want, we've made every shade available for purchase, so go nuts! These 3 inch polka dot decals come in a 40 count set over in our House of Smiths Design Shop.

Painting: Questions Answered + Saving Time & Frustration

Since our last post; Tips for Picking out your Next Paint Color, we've had a couple of questions come in that I wanted to address, PLUS a few painting tips we want to share.

First, yes, Autumn Haze by Glidden IS what we have in our living room and like I mentioned before, most of our house, upstairs and down.

Because our basement is so dark and there's only one large window in the family room space, the Autumn Haze DOES tend to look a tad bit creamier/darker down there, than up stairs where there's LOTS of natural light all the time. This doesn't bother me at all, but just a heads up for those of you painting rooms without great natural lighting.

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.

Our Perfectly Imperfect Home Thoughts + My Piano Man

This post has been a long time coming.  It was MONTHS ago (around January) when I Instagrammed us making plans for something exciting... which I'm sure you all guessed form this (slightly awkward) photo, resembling something close to the death scene of a semi-grand, that we were adding a new piano to our space!

Well, after a LOT of planning, furniture moving and MONEY to get Cason's childhood piano from his parents home to ours... it's finally here!!!

I'll have to admit, I was a bit lot hesitant on bringing in such a LARGE black, showy piece of decor into our bright, airy, casual, small-ish space. One, because I knew it would definitely become the rooms main focal point, and second, I was worried about it fitting in with my living rooms existing elements.

After playing with a few different patterns, we finally chose a set of new, colorful, designer, living room pillows from The Black Goose Design, that helped us to tie in that big, beautiful, sleek piano with what is STILL one of our most favorite and busiest rooms in the house.

Designer Pillows - The Black Goose

I've said it a million times... I'm not a decorator, but I LOVE to decorate.

It's amazing to me what a stunning new rug, a set of luxurious, custom throw pillows or a  new sitting chair in a bold fabric can do for a space.

Our Home Tour - Kitchen and Living Room

For the next part of our home tour I wanted to share our main living areas, the living room and kitchen. This is the area in our home that gets the most traffic by far, and they are both very closely connected, because of our homes completely open floor plan.

If you've been following along on our home tour this month then you know that our house was previously styled in a much darker, Tuscan-type look. 

    

By simply changing (mostly) paint and adding new decor, we've transitioned into a considerably lighter, happier, airier feel. Listed below are all the ways that we accomplished this look in our main space.