I didn’t plan on decorating the inside of our house for any holidays other than Christmas (see our outside fall decor here), but when I spotted these pumpkins at Crate and Barrel I had to have them.

I bought one of the medium sized ones and two of the mini sized ones.  I planned to use them make a whole centerpiece arrangement on our table for our first Thanksgiving.  Then we decided to do an impromptu Halloween gathering Saturday with both of our families, so I figured I’d put them out early.  Problem was, I didn’t have the rest of my table scape ready!  I ran to Target to find the runner I wanted but they were out, so I decided to just stick the pumpkins on our Ikea Stornas buffet for the day.

Then I remembered that we had some tiny pumpkins from the farm I could mix in…

If I only had this blog to document the Ikea dining room furniture fiasco back in April.  Someday I will have to go back and cover the dining room stuff we already have!

At like 11pm on Friday night I decided to make chocolate covered pretzels.  Mike thought I was crazy, but I love decorating…and decorating things I can eat?? even better! So I set out to do the pretzels on my own, but Mike ended up enjoying the process and helped out.  Maybe even dominated the pretzel game…

We started getting creative along the way and decided to smash up some of the halloween candy we bought…

So now we still have more than two full bags of halloween candy, leftover pumpkin pie, chocolate cake, pumpkin roll, pumpkin cake, chocolate covered animal crackers that my mom bought and some chocolate covered pretzels left.  The next kid to ring the doorbell gets a piece of cake….

Happy Halloween everyone!

Thursdays and Friday, mostly Fridays, are my hardest days to post.  Not for lack of ideas, but lack of time.  Mike tells me it’s okay to take more than a day off, but I just can’t!  I have far too much to say.

Case in point… today after work I had to grab some things from Target, which happens to be near West Elm.  I knew I was tight on time but I had to run in.  It was full of adorable things today, including this guy…

I know that owls have been done, then done, and done again…. especially for kid’s rooms.  But I just love them.  I think it goes with my love of all things rustic, woodsy, dark tones, plus they add that little bit of whimsy.  He was only $9, which was cheap compared to the other things I was eyeing up, so I decided to get him to feed the hunger.

He’s pretty lonely up there right now…

Okay by pretty, I mean very lonely…

I figured the fact that he was white would help balance all of the black in the room.  Once the place is painted, he will look so nice and clean up there.  Plus we found another white element to add to the room, but I’ll fill you in on that if it all works out 🙂

(Good news! I just went to link from the website and there are TWO sizes of owls! And they have free shipping! Guess who will be getting a buddy….)

Some other things I was eyeing up at West Elm today…

Paper Mache Bird, $10… I liked that this one was made of paper with writing on it.  Very office appropriate.  But I thought two different kinds of birds might not get along..

Kraft & Silver Flower Stems, $14 for a set of 3… They had a cute little wooden vase that went with them, but I have a bunch of vases I could have used.  Though I love flower alternatives, I thought they were a little pricey for paper.  Maybe I could try to make them myself? Sara?? 🙂

Twig Tree, $69 for a large one… they had the smaller one in the store, but I wish there was a medium sized one.  $69 is a lot, though I loved how the trees were made of these sort of interlocking twigs.  Plus they’d go with my pre-existing, non-traditional, woodsy christmas decor.

And finally…

2×2 Console Desk, $299… mmm future art room…but I’m pretty sure Ikea has a less expensive version.

See ya soon (probably very soon…) West Elm!

Little Expedit bookcase is up and running!

The printer has found a new, much safer home.  Though we may move the bookcase to the other side, by my desk so that you don’t see the printer as much from the doorway.  We have yet to decide 🙂

Yesterday, Sara from House Bella posted this entry about making pom flowers. What’s a pom flower you ask?  Well I asked the same thing and luckily Sara included a picture and some links…

I watched the YouTube video and saw how easy it was to make these adorable and stylish pom flowers.  I think I am going to have to make some because…

a) my cats eat flowers

b) Mike is allergic to many flowers

c) I kill all plants/flowers

Prior to Sara’s post, my solution was to buy some fake hydrangeas.  I don’t like fake flowers, but I love hydrangeas and though we planted some, I will have to wait until the spring for them to bloom. I figured fake hydrangeas don’t look all that fake, so I’d give it a shot.  I stuck two on our mantle in vases to test them out…

That vase is the Mira vase from Crate and Barrel, which they currently only have in purple. Which means I may have to buy another one in purple…

A close up of the fake flowers.  See, they’re not so bad afterall…

Some of my failed missions in flower owning include: (pictures via iPhone)

The time I bought these flowers, which you may recognize as the blue version of the flowers I used for my sister in law’s baby shower…

Macky chewed them so they were photographed in the bathroom, where they were safe.  Until they caused Mike to have a sneezing attack so bad that we had to leave the house.  The flowers walked out with us and went into the trash.  I tried. The vase is from Ikea a few years back.

So then I got a few Ikea plants, which we had in the condo and I always called Miss Leafy.  We bought 3 when we moved here to line up on our mantle. As of 2 weeks ago, this is what was left of them…

The fake hydrangeas are my mantle substitute… for now.  I think I’m moving them… I have house A.D.H.D.

So special thanks to Sara for the suggestion and accompanying links!  Families like us need some stylish fake flowers. Especially since I once killed this Ikea cactus…

Really guys, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

I finally have some real progress to report…yesterday our new floors were finished up!

As a recap, before…

And after!

Top of stairs before…

And after!

We obviously still have some finish work to do. That wood piece up there needs to be stained, the riser needs to be touched up with some paint, all of these nail holes need to be caulked and the new molding painted…

We are going to be very busy the next couple of weeks since we hope do this all on our own!

View from master before…

And after!!

Notice a theme here? My cats (especially Macky) are total photo bombers.  I think we’ve trained them to pose for the camera so that the minute I pull one out, they are all over me.  Many times during this whole photo session I suddenly saw Macky’s snout in my view finder…

And now for the elephant in the room, our new wall! It’s not done being spackled, nor is it painted, but it’s there!

Empty bedroom before…

And after!

Our room is still plenty large.  Our friend Chris did a great job making the wall look like it’s always been a part of the room.

Here’s the in-progress iPhone shot of the wall again…

So we still have two windows in the sitting room and plenty of space. Unfortunately, we have no light fixtures in the sitting room and I rarely get home before it’s dark, so the pictures of that part of the room are crappy. Oh and that part of the room is also dirty, since the drywall isn’t done and there are still some materials in there.  Hopefully I can snap some better pictures this weekend…

You can still see a little bit of the structure from the inside of the sitting room, but I’m sure we can come up with something to do with it!

Hey and there’s a glimpse of Darwin and our awful paper blinds!

Cue a panicked blurry Macky since he was closed out of a room for about 2 seconds.  If you’ve seen his carpet shredding skills, you know he does not like being left out…

So now we have to caulk and paint the hallway molding, touch up some scuffs, then do the same in the bedroom, paint the new french doors, paint aaaall of the walls, get some window treatments (finally) and figure out what the heck we’re doing with this space! But more on that later… 🙂