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 🙂

A discussion came up on Twitter a few days ago about whether it’s better to schedule blog posts in advance or post spontaneously.  I always have a idea of what I want to talk about and I’m constantly jotting things down, but I prefer the spontaneous route. Things change by the day and sometimes a great idea comes out of the blue.  This is one of those spontaneous posts.

I logged into my Twitter feed, where I receive updates from HouseBlogs.net, which gives new posts from their group of house bloggers.  This post from The Box House popped up and I had to immediately read it.  I know I’ve mentioned losing our part Maine Coon kitty Sunny here and there, like my new appreciation for the color orange, our wedding favors or how we ended up with the cat who ruined our carpets. For the most part, I’ve tried to keep this blog house related though it’s hard not to mention something that has impacted your life as much as Sunny did.

When I started this, many of my friends reminded me that this was not indeed my first foray into blogging… my cats once had a blog, macandsunny.com.  We stopped posting after Sunny died because it just didn’t feel right.  But since I know so many people enjoyed reading it and I am thankful that it is saved forever on the internet, I figured I’d share it with my new friends.  Gives you a glimpse into us crazy people a little more 🙂

So tomorrow, I will give you my newest Sunny-inspired house addition.  For now, hug your pets, make your pets hug each other and if you have some loving words for The Box House, please head on over. I’ll leave you with this picture of Sunny’s beloved brother Macky…

Yes, he is in my wood basket and no, he does not belong there. Someone is going to end up with a splinter in their you-know-what….

They grow up so fast :::sigh:::

The Oreos obviously bit the dust.  Besides Oreos, I also have an unhealthy love for Stauffer’s animal crackers. When I was in college, I used to buy the giant bear shaped tub.  I have since learned to stick to the mini sized bag often available in the dollar bins at Target.

No I didn’t trace that horse, though I tried.  That right there is pure artistic talent. And yes, I did smear the writing 🙁  One of the downfalls of working with chalk.

After we made our chocolate covered pretzels, my mom (knowing my love for animal crackers) brought over chocolate covered animal crackers.  How come I didn’t think of that! I suppose it was our rookie attempt at chocolate covered pretzels and we didn’t think outside the box of what we could possibly dip in that chocolate.  Next time I’m dipping whatever is in the fridge…..

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!