Two days ago we ordered a cord of firewood.

I came home from work to see this giant pile at the end of our driveway.  We have a wood burning (obviously) fireplace that we are very excited to use for the season.  We had one in our condo and since it was a third floor unit, we usually didn’t put the heat on until December.  So we knew we definitely wanted one again, but when we got our house option sheet, it wasn’t offered!  Apparently people don’t really want them and prefer gas? Insanity! Luckily, our special request was granted and we got our wood burning fireplace.  The smell is so wonderful and cozy, plus the kittens love it.

We ordered the wood locally (from a place around the corner) and we were excited to hear that all of that wood came from our very own development when they chopped down trees to build houses.

You see, I really try to be as environmentally conscious as possible, I was raised that way.  So I never thought I’d buy a new house and once shook my head at the thought.  But the ignorance won and it was just better financially.  So I still feel very incredibly guilty every time I think of all of the animals I left homeless.  It felt a little better to know that we will be using the wood for an alternative heat source (that maybe creates smokey pollution) but at least it didn’t travel far and is being used practically.  It helps me sleep better at night okay?!

So what are we doing to do with all that wood? We ordered some outdoor wood holder thingys off amazon and for the inside, we bought a little basket from Target.

Since we love our recycling baskets, we thought we’d get a bigger one for the wood.  It has nothing in it and still has the tag on it actually…

All this time I thought that said “arabica”, like the coffee beans.  Whoops!

Our fireplace is one of our many works in progress.  Right now it has an awkward, I-wasn’t-thinking-creatively, candle holder in it, which I do like.  But I’ll probably step up my game in the off season 🙂

And since my friend Laura told me today that she enjoyed my background/foreground pictures, I figured I’d give her another one…

The fireplace itself is currently half tiled with some of the tiles we used for our kitchen backsplash.  I wanted to include them in the family room because of our open floorplan.

It still has to be grouted and we have to figure out what to do with the rest of the fireplace.  I found some high heat paint for the black metal parts and I plan on changing out the gold hardware.

But the dilemma is what to do with the black slate bottom piece (that is ugly and cloudy in this pic)..

I wanted to paint it a shade of brown, so I don’t waste a good piece of slate, but I’m worried about the VOCs in many of those concrete type paints that the guy at Lowe’s told us to use.  It’s our family room and we and the kittens are always in there (here, I’m here now…)  Does anyone have any experience with painting interior slate?

Anywho, we’re definitely looking forward to the holiday season where the 5 of us are cuddled up the fire.  If only we could have gotten a fireplace in our bedroom too!

A while back, I posted this picture of a failed adventure in natural woven shades with separate you-attach-it-privacy liner.  The good news is, I figured out how to properly attach that thing.  The bad news is, I hated it once it was up.

I wish I could say this was the first time this had happened.  But it was the second.  Then there was a third. And a fourth.  Add in a bunch of ideas that were canned before we actually purchased them and we’ve gone through about 10 ideas for what the hell to do with the family room windows.  Someday, when we find a solution, I will go through all of the ideas and why they didn’t work for me.  I won’t do that now just incase I have to backtrack and choose one of the treatments I didn’t like… then eat my words that I described how cheap it looked on my blog.

For now, cue our most recent attempt…meet the Allen + Roth roman shade from Lowe’s in snow white.

The woven shade previously linked it also from the Allen + Roth line.  I absolutely love their stuff… our walk in closet and other roman shades were made by them.  Plus they carry 72 inch long shades in stock, for around $30 each.  I decided to give the white a try (I’ll explain my logic once I figure it out…)

The problem was, the white is too white.

(Tangent: ignore the random mish mash going on with the  fireplace.  The frames are going to be hung, the vase is experimental, and the fireplace is not yet finished.  Work in progress!)

Until we hung this, I had no clue that our trim work wasn’t bright white.  The mantel, baseboards and window sill looked dirty compared to the shade.  Which I’m actually happy about in the long run, since the creamier tones blend better with most colors.

There are a total of 5 windows in the room, so I’m limited price wise.  I’m desperately trying to avoid anything that falls into the ‘custom’ category! Suggestions welcome 🙂