Today is a milestone for my little bloggy, this is my 100th post! Cue the balloon drop! Okay I don’t have a balloon drop, but I do have this video I found of the parade through the Magic Kingdom in Disney…

This song has been in our heads for a week. Though I didn’t know the words were “Celebrate a dream come true” and I normally just run around singing “Celebrate da datty doooo”. I also perform the arm waving dance, which I did once while entering the Magic Kingdom and my beloved iPhone took a flying leap out of my pocket and onto the concrete. Mike told me this was a sign from God to never do that dance in public again. Luckily I can still bust it out in the house!

It took me about 4 months (of actual “serious” blogging) to get to this point. So I figured I’d set out some goals to accomplish by my next milestones. A list, shall we?

By my 200th post:

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I would like to have painted another room in this house. Whether it’s the office, powder room or master, within another 4 months I hope to have told you about some new color on our walls!

By my 300th post:

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We have been wanting to add some lighting to our landscaping since our yard is ridiculously dark at night. I would also like to change out some of our builder given landscaping with maybe some more hydrangeas. That is, if the two I planted last summer come back to life!

By my 400th post:

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I would love to have our master bedroom completely (or almost completely) finished and made-over. I don’t necessarily want it to look like this one, I just picked a dreamy looking one 🙂

By my 500th post:

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A nice finished basement with a pimped out theater area. Mike can go crazy with all of his speakers and wires and whatnot, and I can get a couch with cup holders in it without feeling like I’m breaking a design rule…

By my 1,000th post:

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We’ve been dreaming up a nice backyard area for ages and well, this one wouldn’t be so shabby! We’re not sure if we want to do a deck, patio or combination type thing, so this project isn’t a big priority. Once we feel like we need an outdoor entertaining space we’ll look into it a little bit more!

By my 1,500th post:

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If you’ve done the math at this point, you’d know this one is very far down the line, but I hope to be able to add a nursery to my resume in a few years. I love browsing nurseries, they are just so fun and imaginative. This one is one of Young House Love’s great nursery crashes on Baby Center. Oh and with a nursery of course comes a spin-off blog 🙂 You think that I’d dedicate a blog to my cats and house but not dedicate one to my future kids?

Hopefully I’ll keep up with some of these goals, at least the ones within the next year or so. It will be interesting to see how many posts it takes me to actually finish and post about each thing! Now I’m off to celebrate a dream come true by watching a new episode of Jersey Shore!!

When we bought our house, included were these columns in between our dining and formal living rooms.

I stole that picture from Mike’s speaker files, since he still hasn’t posted about it and they’re nice daylight pictures. So please ignore the sloppy curtains and the speaker template taped to the column. I once asked him to take some daytime pictures of our bedroom and he took a picture that included his dirty clothes on the floor, so let’s consider this an improvement 😉

Anyway, here are a few more shots of the columns, which were technically part of the upgraded trim package we were given as a result of a crappy real estate market.

I know some of you will cringe at this statement, but we’re not crazy about them. They’re nice, but they’re just not our style. We were considering asking for a credit rather than having them put in, but we did want the extra wall piece between the rooms, so we decided to keep them around. Before we even closed on the house, we were scheming up things to do with the space. Here’s a vintage lil house pic from shortly after the columns were installed, nearly a year ago…

What a crazy difference from the first picture in this post, huh??

My first idea was to do some sort of a stone column, maybe a brick type or dry stack to compensate for the fact that new homes have no exposed brick. So long before we moved in, Mike photoshopped some stone columns into this picture.

He even stuck some wainscoting in there, which we had installed the day after closing 🙂 Nice to see one idea come to life! We thought we could maybe even stick some sconces on those stone columns and make them feel all warm and fuzzy.

Then just Sunday, I sat on our JetBlue flight home from Disney watching HGTV. Isn’t JetBlue lovely?? You can just sit there and watch tv! Anyway, I did fall asleep due to exhaustion and woke up to a reveal of a room on Designed to Sell. I tapped Mike and pointed to my screen (he had headphones on too) and he nodded back in approval. Lucky for you guys, I found an image of what I saw on HGTV.com…

It’s small and hard to see, but they built bookcases in the space between the rooms. Genius!! I am currently loving built-in bookcases after seeing Sara’s bookcases over at Russet Street Reno and Young House Love’s bold painted bookcases. Though I’m still thinking of places in our house where I can replicate Sara’s project, I’m thinking some bookcases in between our living and dining rooms could be an inexpensive, happy compromise to both issues… my bookcase envy and my column hatred.

I finally got a hold of an internet connection here in Disney. This is what it looks like…

Seriously Disney?? It’s 2010 2011. My laptop doesn’t even know what that wire is. Oh and the lighting in this room is awful and we only brought our point and shoot, so please excuse the bad pictures.

Our room is much nicer than I expected and has some things I really like in it, so I figured I’d share. Like these awesome doors separating the bathroom/vanity area from the rest of the room…

Close up…

The pretty woodwork is also on the headboard, though it has some awful florescent light fixture above it…

That light is the only light in the room, besides a small fixture by the door that gives absolutely no light. And it’s blinding when you’re sitting in the bed.

Here are some cute little brown leather ottomans with some colorful striped curtains behind them…

The bathroom mirror has some nice woodwork on it too…

With a nice little added feature in each corner…

But don’t worry, we’ve been out and about too. Here’s me with Mickey at breakfast this morning…

And Mike and I with Minnie…

That’s all for now, we’re pretty bad with taking pictures of ourselves on vacation, but I’m determined to get a picture in front of Cinderella’s castle at some point! Now back to my vacation 🙂

West Elm is quickly becoming my favorite store, which is a huge statement considering how I feel about Crate and Barrel. Just lately, I love everything in West Elm. So when I received an
email and a catalog telling me about their new arrivals, I drooled. Twice. Once while at my computer and once while standing at my counter. I’m all about technology and everything and would be the first to tell you that I’d rather look at something online than buy a magazine (ie- all things wedding related) but boy, that catalog was dreamy. So I obviously felt compelled to give you a list of my favorites!

1. Slipcovered Slipper Chair, $349 for chair, $69 for slipcover

I’m generally not one for skirted slipcovers, but for some reason I love this one. It’s a nice mix of traditional and modern. Plus I love that print. A cheaper option would be to buy a much more affordable slipper chair at Target or HomeGoods and just use the West Elm slipcover (if it fits, I have done zero research).

2. Pebble Side Table, $149

I am just intrigued by this thing, part of me likes that it’s asymmetrical and if it wasn’t, I probably would have browsed right past it. It says its for indoor/outdoor use and I do like it, but I’d probably love it outside.

3. Stripe Duvet Cover, $59 for queen

Thick stripes? Check. Gray/white color scheme? Check. This thing is right up my alley.

4. Spring Floral Duvet, $59 for queen

While we’re on the topic of bedding, which just so happens to be one of my favorite topics, I love this set as well. I love a white themed bed and this has just the right amount of color to add interest. Never mind that awesome floral graphic.

5. Metal Squirrel, $29

Because he’s cute, and I love a woodland animal. But at $29?? I’ll wait for him to go on sale…

6. Textured Pure Vases, $29-$39

I’d like to add some more white accessories to the office to keep my little owl company and I love the texture in these.

7.Porcelain Tumblers, $8

I love a nice little find for under $10. The bold patterns on these make them a nice little accent piece for pencils and pens, toothbrushes or as a little vase.

8. Modern Weave Headboard, $379 for queen

This is something that caught my eye in the catalog and if I had $400 hanging around, I’d totally buy it to compliment my future, stenciled, bedroom. Hm this list was too long for a top 5, but too short for a top 10. So I leave you with my top 8! 🙂

I know mood boards are the popular form of getting room ideas out there, but I’ve never made one and I’m not sure if they are totally me.  I normally don’t find stuff then decide to put it in a room, but rather I think of things then go out and find them… or make them, if possible.  I notoriously drew our condo living room with colored pencils while I was still in college, before we even owned a piece of furniture.  David Bromstad would be so proud.

I looked into getting some sort of software that I could use to get my room’s actual dimensions, where I could try paint on certain walls, a piece of furniture over here, see how the wall color looks with this or that in front of it.  But from the little research I did, they are rather expensive.  My latest method of planning things out/making things visual so Mike stops looking at me like I’m looney? Paint. As in, Microsoft Paint.

It started with some frame arrangements for over our mantle… (note: these are not drawn perfectly as they were made in like 2 seconds..)

We decided to go with neither of these.  Then I whipped up a similar type deal for one of the walls in the office…

The idea of green office walls has since gone out the window.

Then there was the idea for our Expedit bookcase…

This one is very rough but I wasn’t planning on sharing with everyone.  It was again a way to show Mike what I was picturing in my head.  The green cubes are storage bins, the gray ones are left open, the white are Ikea inserts, 2 cabinet doors and 4 drawers.  But I’m not planning on keeping the white totally white.  I just didn’t have time to sketch that in 🙂

So I figured I’d share, since I like using this method to see what options are most visually appealing.  Plus it takes about 5 seconds to make these things… no new software or techniques to learn!  Of course, Photoshop is an option as well, but everyone has Paint!

How does everyone else normally get ideas out of their heads? Mood boards? Sketches?