These past few days have been absolutely insane. I finished up a final paper and presentation last night, while Mike was in San Francisco attending the SF MusicTech Summit for his gig with SongMeanings. My semester from hell is over and I picked him up from the airport tonight, so we can finally resume our normal lives 🙂

The patio was poured last week in the midst of all of this chaos. While we were super excited about it, we could hardly focus on it. So it was good that we weren’t doing the work 🙂 At last update, the patio was anxiously awaiting a sealer. Mike got a call this morning (while in Cali) informing him that the concrete company was stopping by today to put the sealer on. In between work and picking up Mike from the airport, I managed to squeeze some time in for photos.

We were anxious to get the sealer on because we knew it would change the color of the concrete, but in these pictures, it was still wet.

Oh! Last week they also came to put the cuts in the concrete where they expected it to crack naturally. So in the picture above you can see one along the curve. It’s probably the most obvious one, thankfully. Because of the wood plank pattern we chose, the cuts mostly follow the lines like this one below.

Some areas were still very obviously wet, like the area where our future outdoor kitchen will be.

We’re thinking of maybe adding a step in the center of the patio, leading onto the grass. The far side of the patio is 8 inches above ground, so it will be a nice entrance to the open space.

We plan on filling each curved side up with mulch and some landscaping for now, so we’ll see how that looks before deciding on the step(s).

We also plan on staining the unfinished stairs a nice and dark color.

So if I’m being completely honest here, I’ll tell you that I was a little disappointed that the concrete wasn’t as dark as I imagined (it’s actually a little lighter than shown in these pictures).  But I thought it would be okay with our dark stairs and future dark furniture. The patio has a weathered look to it that I like, but remember our inspiration photo?

We knew it wouldn’t be THIS dark, since we were warned about burning feet and fading, but the color we chose was called “walnut”. I also know that the sealer wasn’t dry when I saw it and it did look darker than it did yesterday.

When I picked up Mike from his 6 hour flight, he told me that the concrete company called and they want to come back and do another round of stain/sealer tomorrow. Yay! I thought I was going crazy about the color, but just a tad darker would be wonderful 🙂  I thought I was looking at the (not yet dry) finished product, but now I have to wait until tomorrow!

ps- I finally decided to order the Belmont patio collection from Target so that we’ll have somewhere to sit on the patio when the sealer is all done, but it’s sold out!! I emailed Target (since I checked everyday, for 8 straight days) and they have no clue when it will be back in. Cross your fingers it’s soon! I need this prettiness on my already pretty patio.

A couple of weeks ago, Mike and I headed to Ikea to check out the Arholma outdoor collection we were thinking of as an inexpensive alternative to my beloved Crate & Barrel set. Sadly, I wasn’t feeling it.

That’s my sad face. Not to be confused with my some dude is circling this couch as I’m trying to pose for a picture for my blog and I feel totally weird about it, face. It’s just very low, the cushions are meh and I just wasn’t feeling the material. I wanted to like because it was affordable, but I don’t even think adding throw pillows would make me like it. I think it would be good for a small patio/city balcony area, but I think the scale would have been off for us.

After this, I figured we’d have to suck it up and go with the West Elm set.

We stopped in there this past weekend to see if they had their outdoor furniture displayed yet. They didn’t, but said they would have it in a few weeks. They asked me what I was looking for and when I said the Wood Slat collection, they told me they had a lounger in the corner I could look at to get an idea. I excitedly ran over only to realize I had walked by it minutes before, but I didn’t notice that it was what I was looking for because it looked black. I really want a nice wood tone to go with our upcoming stamped concrete patio. Whaaaamp whaaaamp #2.

So I was back to the drawing board. Then our friend Robin informed me that Pier 1 had a set similar to the Crate & Barrel/Ikea one.

We also went to look it and though it was still low, it was a step up in quality from the Ikea set and could work. But the table only sat 4 people so we’d still have to find one of those.

I’m feeling a little defeated at this point and I think I’ve lost track a little bit of what we want. Though I love the Crate & Barrel Ventura set, I think I need to stop trying to replicate it and just find something else that I like. So I revisited some sites with zero expectations, as if I was starting from the beginning. I was strangely attracted to the Target Belmont Collection, even though I have seen it and even posted this picture before.

I’m still not in love with this conversation set, but I think it may just be how the picture is staged. I looked at some of the other pieces and I really like them.

I think I wasn’t sold on this furniture the first time around because of a) the conversation set looks a little awkward to me in that first picture and b) the color of the cushions. But before I wanted a West Elm white and navy look, I wanted a bright color. I figure I can still do white and navy throw pillows since the striped pillows pictured here are not included. All of the items in this collection ship for free, except for the armless chair. Just an added bonus to think about…

As I told Mike yesterday, the last thing I want to be picky about is the color of cushions. An affordable price and a good shape/base are much more important to me. I think getting a bold color could be a fun challenge to work with. Margarita green anyone? 🙂

This weekend, we ran into Target to pick up a card. We have a running joke that every time we set foot in Target, it will cost us $40. As usual, we didn’t get just a card.

We were zooming past the furniture section when Mike suddenly came to a screeching halt and headed down an aisle. He spotted a small desk, just 34 inches wide. We’ve been searching for an entryway table for ages, but our entryway wall is only 36 inches wide and most consoles are 48 inches. We figured we’d build our own since our chair rail adventures have made us more confident in our cutting abilities. But this desk? It was just too perfect to let it slide by. It was the right size, had a single drawer (which I ideally wanted but probably wouldn’t build into a homemade one), it was dark wood, simple and classy. I always envisioned a parsons style desk there, though I toyed with the idea of going more rustic to contrast with the molding boxes we will be adding. For $99, we decided to snatch it up and end our search.

We started putting it together the minute we got home.

It was simple and would have taken 15 minutes or so, but we’re constantly battling a small pack of lions whenever we attempt to be productive.

Seriously, whenever we try to do anything new we get a series of looks that say “what’s that!”, “mine??”, “I want!”, “for me??” I’m surprised Macky doesn’t know how to use tools by now.

But finally, it was together, complete with an accessory that complements the dark wood and the light molding.

We debated changing out the hardware on the drawer, but I actually like the handle that came with it!

Oh and while we were leaving Target, I mentioned how I’d like a not-so-simple lamp to put on it, since the desk was fairly basic. Mike recommended we go to HomeGoods since we were right near it, so we made a stop there before we came home and picked up this lamp.

(The cord has since been hidden so it’s not visible from the door :))

I just fell in love with the intricate design of it and how it has an artistic, vase-like quality all on its own.

I also love the large scale of this lamp. At first I was afraid it would be too large, but the table is small and understated, so I felt like we needed a LAMP, not just a lamp. The metal aspect of it was appealing since it is inevitable that this lamp will be knocked over by a cat during some portion of it’s life with us. Therefore, glass lamp bases are unrealistic and downright dangerous in this casa.  The shade is currently a dark gray, but we want to change it to a white one. Though the gray doesn’t look awful, I think a white one would really look great against the darker walls

Now I will be in search of a round mirror to put on this wall and maybe some storage ottoman(s) to put underneath the desk. Oh, we also primed the lower half of the walls this weekend and finished up our caulking, so we are all ready to semi-gloss the lower half of the walls soon! 🙂

This weekend was a little crazy for us. We ran around doing taxes, visiting family and… doing homework for 7 hours on Sunday. Needless to say, we didn’t make any office progress. But we did squeeze in a spontaneous Sunday morning Crate and Barrel visit! Of course C&B never disappoints me and since we haven’t been there in a few months, it was an extra special treat.

Yes we are that boring. I think I just lost a few readers.

Anyway, we went there not really looking for anything other than a dough separator for our pizza making adventures. We’ve had patio fever and I was hoping the outdoor stuff would be displayed since I have been in love with the Ventura furniture collection since I first laid eyes on it. It was even one of my first blog posts!

This is last year’s C&B image, I loved the orange the purple combo.

As we got upstairs to the furniture section on Sunday, all of a sudden Mike stopped and started drooling over something. I look over and of course it’s my beloved outdoor furniture collection. I was a little scared because normally one of us is the voice of reason, but when the 2 of us love something? It’s dangerous for the credit card. I decided in this moment that I had to pull my ish together and be the mean wife.

Mike: Thiis is awesome!

Me: That is expensive.

Mike: Well maybe it’s worth it if we’re going to use it and it’s a good quality.

Me: You might want to look at the tag…

So we looked. The table alone, without a glass top, is $900. The glass top is $200. Each chair? $300. Each cushion for each chair? $40. We ran away screaming without looking any further.

So I set out to research my plan since last year, which was to find a knock-off at Target or something. But first, I had to see just how much this lovely Crate & Barrel combination would be. We want a table, 6 chairs and a conversation set. Here’s this year’s picture from the C&B website…

Here’s what this would run us…

Um yeah. I’m not sure all of the furniture in my house combined costs that. My dining room table was $200. So on to the options!

First I checked Walmart…

Walmart has a looot of options that look similar. Apparently they sell things via CSN, so many of these were still around $2000 a set (we want a convo set and a dining set). So I moved onward to Target, which only has a few of their pieces out in stores right now. There’s the ever popular Rolston Collection, which I’m not too crazy about because of the legs.

Then I found the Belmont Collection…

Still just okay. Then I found the Lexus Collection…

So far this is my favorite! Even the dining set meets my criteria…

I was looking forward to putting some bright pillows on whatever we get to mimic my favorite purple/orange color scheme of last year’s Crate and Barrel collection, but these Target chairs come with those cute little pillows! I like the idea of the lumbar support in the dining chairs.

As of today, I’m starting to think of sectional more than conversation set type thing because it just looks so cozy!

Okay who am I kidding, I love the sectional because I want to take a nap on it like this dog…

Sticking with the conversation set for now since we’re just in the research phase, I added the Lexus conversation set, the table and six chairs to my Target cart to see the price difference…

Still a large expense, but that’s nearly a $5,000 difference! I think I would like it more if Target offered free shipping on all of the items rather than just one or I had some sort of coupon. I bought our dining room chairs from Target and a set of 2 of those were cheaper than the sets of outdoor chairs! Oh patio, you are so pricey.

Hardwood stamped Patio Guy is coming next Saturday, cross your fingers our patio dreams (whatever they may be) come true! 🙂

This is part of our house that you’ve never seen, that I’ve been wanting to share since I started this blog. Just finding the precious daylight time to photograph it was hard, but I have short work days at work this week and no school, so I finally got a chance to spend some time in there!

Our walk-in closet was the very first project we tackled here since I knew the 10 feet of wire rack the builder provided wasn’t going to cut it for me.  I needed some sense of organization in the house in order to be able to live with the constant chaos in other areas.

I like to be able to get fully dressed in the closet and not have to run and get things from dressers and whatnot, so I knew I needed at least 3 drawers for socks, underwear and tank tops, an area for folded tees, an area for hoodies/sweats, an area for jeans, some long hanging space for dresses, etc and an easily accessible area for my perfume, deodorant headbands and other accessories. Oh and some hanging space for my extensive scarf collection 🙂

Mike was okay with just buying some wire racks for his side and that is what we did in our condo. My side had some cheap Closet Maid stuff that eventually fell apart and he dealt with the wire shelving. So I was insistent on doing it right this time, and doing it right away. I didn’t want to start with a messy closet and have it be something I’d have to tear apart to organize months down the line.

I knew California Closets was very expensive, so we went to Lowe’s and really got lucky. We were able to get this Allen + Roth closet organizer, which had everything I needed.

Once we saw this, Mike was convinced that a closet makeover was a good idea. It is solid wood, the same length as our closet, a nice dark stain and had the perfect combination of hanging/open/closed storage. So we picked up two of these back in the spring. We had a rent a truck, pull some muscles, borrow Mike’s brother to get them off the truck, then open the boxes in the garage and take the pieces upstairs one by one because holy hell, solid wood is heavy.

Mike started with my side and I used one of the spare bedrooms as a closet while he worked on it. Please excuse the in-progress iPhone pictures, I wasn’t really updating this website at the time, nor had I really told anyone about it yet (okay I still haven’t really told anyone about this, I just wait for people to find it :))

Turns out our floor plan wasn’t exactly accurate and our closet was a little shorter than 10 feet long. No problem though, since the organizer was solid wood and we were able to cut it down. But we had literally just moved in, never even used a saw before and had zero confidence. Mike managed to cut down the wood pieces, using our circular saw on the garage floor since we had no work table to put it on, but we didn’t have anything to cut the pipe piece. So the closet project went on hold for a week or so while we borrowed the right tools. Finally we were able to assemble my side.

After a little experience/confidence, Mike’s side seriously took him like an hour.

We had both sides up and were really impressed with how it looked. But we realized it would have looked REALLY great had we painted. So we looked at each other, it was about 7pm on a Saturday, and we ran to Lowe’s for a gallon of paint. It was so spur of the moment that I don’t even remember the color. We fully painted it that night, kicking ourselves that we didn’t paint BEFORE we put it up and instead had to navigate in between all of the openings.

So without further adieu, here’s our DIY walk-in closet 🙂

View from the door, still need a window treatment!

My side, obviously Macky isn’t normally allowed in here since he looks like he’s never seen it before…

Mike’s side, he has less shoes so his side gets the laundry basket and the garbage can.

The best part of Mike’s side, his impressive collection of pants that look like a display at Banana Republic (and I know, because I used to work there :))

Macky modeling our Target storage ottoman that is home to my flip flops in the summer and serves as a place to sit and put on my boots in the winter.

Closer view of my side, we keep a Shark stick vac in the closet and I forgot to move it out of the way. So please ignore the funny purple handle that photo bombed this.

My little accessories area which is currently home to my Target jewelry tree full of my chunky bracelets that don’t fit in my jewelry box, headbands, wristlets, sunglasses, lint roller (essential for a pet owner!), perfume, deodorant and sunblock (essential for the palest person in America). I am planning on revamping this area soon with some hooks and lighting so it’s a little more organized.

The naked window, which has such a pretty view of the backyard. Thankfully the window is small, high and faces the woods!

The side of my closet that is home to my scarves, cardigans/other button ups on top and shirts on the bottom.

We stuck a cheap mirror on the back of the door, which was an absolute necessity!

Here’s the view of our bedroom from the closet. The funniest part of showing people our bedroom is that our walk-in closet is painted, but our actual bedroom isn’t. Baby steps!

We’re very happy with how our closet turned out. I am almost disappointed that it doesn’t look as good in pictures as it does in person! It appears cluttered in these pictures when in reality, there’s so much space and I still have my summer clothes in there!