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’ll just cut to the chase here and give you the bad news… we didn’t organize the office this weekend.  But at least the kids enjoyed the mess…

In the middle of Darwin’s “I’m being adorable” photoshoot, we heard a bang…

“What was that???”

“Um… WHOOPS!”

Yes, balancing your Ikea desktop thingy on top of a box, and then stacking things on top of that is not a good idea when your cat is Macky. He used it as a diving board. Anything to be the center of attention!

Anyway, we got caught up with some family stuff over the weekend and since we’re weekend warriors, losing a good portion of our weekend leads to zero progress.  But before we knew we wouldn’t be able to work on the office, we were out running some errands on Saturday and decided to run to Office Max to check out an office chair I was thinking about.

Our current office chair situation is quite pretty, though not meant for office use…

We actually ordered these chairs from Target.com for our dining room, but we received two and then they were discontinued.  They had already been assembled, so we kept them.  Plus they’re good to have as extra dining room chairs.  Mike has sat on this chair since we moved in and for a while he didn’t mind it.  This made me super excited because I wanted a classy chair to balance all of the modern Ikea furniture in the office.  I was going to reupholster them and keep them in the room.  But for the past few weeks, the chairs have been uncomfortable for Mike. (Sidenote: For our new friends, Mike spends much more time in the office than I do, since he’s busy running his own lil website that could)  So we began looking for actual office chairs, though I was extremely hestitant and well, nervous.  Then I found this nice little ditty…

DiVoga Managers Chair, Office Max, $139.99

I liked that this chair was white, sleek looking and had chrome feet to go with our Ikea desks.  We wanted to sit in it before we decided and figured we’d check to see if our local Office Max carried it.

Before we hit up Office Max on Saturday, we were near a Staples and figured we’d check it out.  I didn’t expect to find anything but we spotted this..

Once again I love the sleek, modern lines, the white color and the chrome feet, but I especially love the squared back of this one. I am very happy that I snapped a few pictures of it because apparently, it is not available online.

So it was on sale, but we hadn’t yet seen the Office Max chair.  I couldn’t remember exactly what the Office Max chair looked like that the time, so we held off on the Staples one and headed to Office Max.  One look at the first chair and it didn’t hold a candle to the Staples chair.  Pretty good for just walking into Staples without doing my usual internet research!  We were busy, so we didn’t head back to Staples right away, assuming it would be on sale throughout the week.

We went back to Staples tonight and it is back to full price! $179.99! Hopefully it will a) go back on sale soon or b) we will get a coupon or something!

I mentioned in my last post that I had a new Sunny inspiration…

Since our bedroom is all fancy looking with it’s new floors, I’ve started to think about what I want to do with the room.  Okay, I’ve been thinking about it for months and changing my mind over, and over, and over again.

Originally, we registered for king sized bedding from Macy’s…

We only had a queen sized bed, but we weren’t sure if we’d be able to afford nice, new king sized bedding when we moved into the new house.  So when we spotted this, we both loved it and wanted it.  Problem was, it was discontinued.  Since we are picky, my mom ran out the next day and hunted down all of the pieces, had them mailed to her and gave it to me at my bridal shower.

I still love the refreshing teal tones in this bedding, as well as the crisp white, but I have a habit of decorating with blue.  Our family room/kitchen is blue, the dining room and living room have shades of blue.  I didn’t want to get trapped into the blues/browns again.  I love white crisp bedding and against our new dark floors I knew white would look great.  But with pets, white is very hard to maintain, as is anything too dark.  So I knew I wanted something primarily white, but I was leaning towards a neutral toned bedroom.

I first wanted this Marimekko Poloneese bedding from Crate and Barrel…

Then I saw it was similar to the bedding in the boys’ room on this season of Jersey Shore…

I was nervous about what was going to go down in those beds this season, so I decided to shop around.

(Btw, I loved the living room area on this season of Jersey Shore with the graphic red/white curtains…)

So some other neutral, patterned bedding I was considering was…

This West Elm bedding which was similar to the above Crate and Barrel bedding.  It’s apparently not available anymore.

I also like the organic factor of this Imperial duvet cover, also from West Elm…

So I was obviously favoring West Elm.  One day a week or two ago, I went to the West Elm website to see if they added any new bedding when I discovered this…

It’s the Octagon jacquard duvet cover… it’s orange and reverses to a side with more white than orange. Given my new love for orange and after spotting this, I decided that I wanted some white and orange bedding.  But this bedding wasn’t exactly doing it for me, so I set out to look around.

Crate and Barrel has an orange and white set, the Marimekko Madison Persimmon duvet…

But it was too orange and not enough white for me.  So I checked my usual places, Target, Pier 1, Ikea, Google, but I couldn’t find anything I loved.  Then in a last ditch effort, I went to Walmart.com…..

Exactly what I had in mind! It’s the Divatex Diamond Duvet Mini Set in Spice, and it also comes in black and white.  The great part is, it was on sale when I ordered it so I paid $35 for a king duvet and shams, plus like $2 to ship it.  The whole ‘mini-set’ aspect (just the duvet & shams) was appealing because I could still use my nice Hotel Collection white sheets and bedskirt that my mom gave us as a wedding gift.   A little mix of high end, a little mix of low end.  Throw some accent pillows on this bad boy and we’re set!

I plan on putting the teal bedding in the guest room, since I still love it and can’t bear to part with it.  And I figure since I plan on using white sheets, I may want to change around the bedding from time to time.  That is, if it goes with my fancy plans for the rest of the room 🙂

After watching this series of videos on the Pacific Garbage Patch, I am feeling guilty for being a selfish human being more than ever.  I had already planned on reducing the massive amount of water bottles we drink from by investing in a fridge with a water dispenser, but part of me still feels horrible for buying a new home and displacing my backyard neighbor that I met today…

So after we saw 3 of these guys hanging out in our yard, we headed to Lowe’s.  As we were strolling the kitchen setups to price out above mentioned fridge, a countertop caught my eye.  Since we had just decided earlier in the day that we were impressed with our builder grade master bath countertop, I wasn’t even paying attention to any countertops.  I love finding things this way, just buying things I absolutely love.  I never buy something just because I need it.  We once ate off a folding table for 2 years because we couldn’t find a table we loved…

Anyway, I assumed this countertop with a slight sparkle to it was granite.  I was extremely impressed to see that it was made of 75% recycled content.  It was a part of the Eco by Cosentino line, which is made of recycled porcelain, mirror, glass and stone scraps.  It is bounded by a corn based resin.

The husband and I were just talking today about the allure of granite.  Our kitchen came standard with Corian countertops, and I think they look great, though at one time I assumed we’d eventually switch to granite.  We also had an upgraded cultured marble vanity top in our condo which our realtor mistakenly thought was granite.  If the functionality is the same and it looks just as good, why are so many people stuck on the word granite?  I would much rather help the environment and have something unique.  Here’s hoping this sample will go with our master tile!