Housekeeping note: I’ve been trying to publish this post for the past 2 nights but the blog has been down. I had no clue until I tried to get on myself, so I’m sorry if anyone has had trouble visiting here this week.

Ladies and gentlemen (or man, since I apparently have a single male reader), Mike and I did something on a whim on Saturday. Are you ready for this?

We took down the paper blinds in our bedroom. I repeat, we took down the paper blinds in our bedroom!

Yes, we moved in nearly 3 years ago and had not touched these crinkly jerks until Saturday. We’ve actually been on project overdrive, gearing up for Christmas and finishing Easton’s room finally. Oh and the playroom. I have a lot to blog about, but I’ve been too busy checking things off our nagging list to stop and write.

Right, back to the blinds. We’re DIYing some Christmas cards and we were having a photoshoot for Easton in our bedroom. The walls are white and there are windows on more than one wall, so it was perfect. When we went to “raise” the paper shades to let the natural light flow in, we decided to just rip those suckers off finally. Bold move, considering there are 4 windows in the main part of our bedroom and it was already around 2pm.

We ordered roman shades from JC Penney about a year ago. We got 6 for our room (4 in main room, 2 in sitting room) but we used one in Easton’s room since they were just sitting around. How funny is this Photoshopped picture of Easton’s navy chevron curtains?

Once our photo shoot was done (we will share details once the cards are designed). Mike started drilling brackets. During Easton’s late nap, I helped him hang a few. The last 2 or so had to wait until Easton was in bed. And those last ones of course were stubborn and wouldn’t screw in.

But they’re done and it feels like a luxury resort to us.

I’m not a huge fan of these particular blinds since they don’t lay flat no matter what I do, as I mentioned in the post about the one we hung in Easton’s room. But they were inexpensive and they work. I plan to add some curtains to them anyway.

(Yes, I’m sure our neighbors are thankful to no longer have a view of crinkly blinds.)

(And that is an awful iPhone picture taken into a bright window surrounded by bright white walls…)

The bedroom is now blindingly white. White walls, white blinds, white bed (which I didn’t care to make for these pictures I snapped with my iPhone). Though it needs some loving, all of that white is strangely clean and refreshing feeling. For now. Someone get me a roller in a few weeks…

For now, I must get back to gallery walling, Christmas decorating/crafting and rolling around the playroom with Easton. I’ve forgotten how good it feels to be inspired, now if only my blog server will continue to cooperate…

At this point in my short blogging life, I have uploaded over 1,400 pictures to this thing. With nearly 200 posts, I’m beginning to forget what I’ve written about, what I’ve photographed and what pictures never actually made it to the computer. Yes, my memory cards are currently housing something like 8,000 pictures. I’ve heard many people who maintain blogs say this and I shall repeat, the picture part is the most time consuming. For every one picture you need to post, you take like 10-15 and choose the best one.

Since I am a weekend warrior, sometimes I am so inspired on Saturdays that I take a million pictures and think of a million blog topics. Then Monday hits, as well as “real life” and sometimes I just don’t have the energy and can’t even remember what I was planning to say. The short summary to all of this rambling? Sometimes my projects fall through the cracks.

Back in March/April when we were working on the office full steam, I took on a little project that I forgot to tell you about. It involves this guy.

Yes there are two different sizes of gumballs in there. When we replenished the stash we bought the wrong size. Whoops. But anyway, we received this amazing gift from Mike’s brother and his wife about 5 years ago. We love the the novelty and unexpectedness of it. I have always adored gumball machines, especially the giant one from Family Double Dare in the early 90s. Remember? No? It’s okay I found a picture!

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Everytime I see Mark Somers on the Food Network it just feels wrong. Also in the 90s, way back when I was in elementary school, I remember seeing a girl who was dressed as a gumball machine for Halloween. I was so jealous because it was obviously the coolest costume out there. It looked like this, but with balloons for gumballs…

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Some girls aspire to wear lingerie and animal ears, I aim for a garbage bag and a sheet. I think that explains a lot…

While we loved our gumball machine, we thought that it was time to give him a makeover. So I (very nervously) disassembled him.

Taped off his important parts…

Then I sprayed him. I sprayed him bright green…

I understand that he is likely not food safe at this point. We never really ate the gumballs from him anyway. I imagined a green machine with bright white gumballs. He took a while to dry and when I removed the tape, I discovered a little mishap.

My taping missed a few spots around the metal (the red on the plastic piece where the gum comes out is actually printed there). I planned to touch this up with some acrylic paint in the closest match possible. I knew I could never spray it any closer than I did!

It seemed genius, perfect. And then I put it in the office.

Not so bad, but then I stepped away.

And away some more.

Then Mike and I declared this project a flop. Maybe not a full and complete flop, but we don’t like it. The green is too John Deere, which is funny because they sell John Deere spray paint and I purposely avoided it. With the addition of our white chairs, we decided another pop of white in this little corner would be perfect. Actually I think I sprayed this the same day we bought our chairs, so yes, it took me nearly 4 months to post my failure. Not because I was keeping it secret, but because I wanted to report on a final product before posting.

I bought some high gloss white spray paint soon after this mishap, but then life got crazy and the last few months have been a blur of coffee, textbooks and Pinterest. The office still looks exactly as it did in the pictures above, but maybe I need to conquer a small project to satisfy my painting itch. Can of white spray paint? I’m coming for you.

That is of course, after I pull the 4 foot weed in my front yard. Yes neighbors, we still live here….

…Wait do my neighbors read this? Hello, is that you guys? Yes, this IS why I stand in the yard with a camera and run away when you spot me!

Mike and I are currently in the midst of a slew of unfinished projects.

1. I have to order fabric for the office, but I’m waiting for the price to go down since I swear I once saw it for half the price!

2. We have to finish our chair rail/fake wainscoting project we started this weekend. I LOVE this project. I loved using the saw. I can’t wait to see the finished product. I can go on and on and on. I am just counting down the minutes until Saturday morning when we can chair rail the downstairs!

3. Patio, patio, patio. Contract is on it’s way 🙂 Though we’re not doing the actual work on this…

These are all being sandwiched in between my graduate course load, full time jobs and a bunch of parties and other plans that the spring always seems to bring. Slow and steady wins the race though, right?

Today I received an email from West Elm about their new outdoor collections, so my focus was thrown back towards the patio for the day. After our friend Jon commented about how awesome the Crate & Barrel outdoor furniture is, I had to look around a little more. There has to be some sort of solution out there and thank you to all of you who have sent recommendations my way 🙂

So, the results of my (minimal) research today.

West Elm Wood Slat collection:

Considering the price of the Crate & Barrel Ventura collection, I was expecting this set to be astronomical in price, but it is strangely reasonable. Not as cheap as Target, but the table is $399 which is half of the price of the Crate & Barrel one. Each chair is $149 compared to Crate & Barrel’s $300, plus the chairs are stackable for storage! So really, who on earth is Crate & Barrel trying to sell their stuff to? Though their set is still my favorite, I’ve given up hope 🙁

I like the West Elm set, but the couch isn’t very cushy and inviting looking. One thing I love that I hadn’t thought of? White cushions. The white cushions with the dark frame look so nice. I love the idea of white and navy pillows, so very Grecian paradise!

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I also remembered that Ikea had a Crate & Barrel knockoff last year, so I figured I’d check their website to see if it was listed yet. Sure enough, I found the Arholma collection…

This little sectional is just $650, now that’s a better price! I have heard that the cushions look cheap, so I googled for some better images. I found this one from a previous Ikea catalog…

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The good? The cushions appear to be white to go with my new inspiration, it’s affordable and I like the color of the rattan. The bad? The cushions maaay be cheap and the table that goes with the set is missing an umbrella hole! Being the pale person that I am, this is a deal breaker.

But! I am not giving up hope on the lounge furniture. The pieces are all sold as separates, unlike the Target furniture, so I would be able to pick and choose the pieces and sizes I want. Plus I am thinking that if the white cushions look cheap, I can fancy them up with some white and navy outdoor pillows along the back of the seat. I even found some options that I like from fabric.com…

Waverly Sun N Shade Parterre Indigo

Swavelle/Mill Creek Finnegan Indigo

Swavelle/Mill Creek Faylinn Atlantic

One of the 5 Ikeas in our area has the Arholma collection on display so we’re going to go check it out in person. If we like it? Maybe we’ll go with the West Elm table or something similar. I think that a wood table and chairs would add more interest to the rattan furniture vs. trying to match it. As of today, I like this mismatched, white and navy lil Grecian paradise plan. It feels nice to have a plan, since just a few weeks ago I couldn’t pin down a plan for any sort of outdoor space. Thankfully it came to me, literally, in the form of a West Elm email today.

I”ll just cut to the chase here, WE FINALLY HAVE OFFICE CHAIRS! Wooo!

Incase you’re new around here, we spotted these white Belisse chairs at Staples back in November (they’re not available online). We fell in love with the idea of white chairs after spotting some at Crate and Barrel. However, they were $999. No, Macky didn’t step on the ‘9’ key there…

We’ve had parson style chairs that were rejects from our dining room in the office up until this point. I thought maybe I’d reupholster them, until we got backaches and had no where to rest our arms. We realized that we needed chairs meant for an office, as badly as I wanted some chic stylish ones. After a little searching for affordable white chairs, we ended up paying just $99 each for these beauties!

I love them. I love that they are a nice bright white, I love that all of the “hard” parts are a nice shiny chrome, I love the modern lines, I love the comfort. And mostly, I love that when you peek into the office from our french doors, you see something less expected. They’re still traditional enough in that they are office chairs, but they add that ounce of modern that makes it look like 20 somethings work in here. They have wheels and armrests, but they’re not the standard CEO-style chair.

I’m a little concerned about them getting dirty, but we’re usually in socks and pajama pants within 5 minutes of getting home, so I imagine some leather wipes will keep them tidy. Though they’re not real leather, so no cows were injured in the designing of this office 🙂

My second fabric sample should be arriving tomorrow. Once that decision is made, I can order fabric for curtains to bring some more white into the room. But for now, our white bookends have some crisp friends to keep them company.

Waaaay back in January, we visited the Crate & Barrel outlet and finally purchased something(s) I’ve wanted for about a year. We scored these bookends for 30% off the original price.

I have always loved the wooden chunkiness of these guys. I love the ampersand and I actually handwrite it often. The “@” symbol has become a little part of me since I started this blog. I comment on other blogs and use it as part of my name multiple times per day. Throw in the discounted price and I felt like we could finally take the plunge…the only problem was where to put them.

I’ve shared our original office plans before, which included built-in cabinets in a dark stain. We have since obviously decided to go with a black/gray/white/green color scheme that the bookends did not fit in with. I thought maybe we could put these in our bedroom or on our dark wood entertainment center in the family room, but at the end of the day they felt much more office appropriate.

The solution? Spray paint them white.

I know, it hurts. I love the wood grain in these possibly more than anyone. My rustic loving self is still shaking this one off. But at the end of the day, the symbols were the right fit for the office. I’d rather have white symbols than no symbols. So yesterday, despite 20 mph winds, I managed to get outside to do some spray painting. Scratch that, I decided to spray paint in the garage. No worries, I left the doors open of course, I just needed some barrier from the wind.

I used the same box that I used to spray paint my Pier 1 star basket at Christmastime, how is that for thrifty? 🙂

After a quick coat, I was feeling much better about my decision.

It was a little tricky to get in all of the nooks and cranies of these things, but all it took was one coat and a round of touch ups and we were good to go!

They are definitely different than they were before, but I love the crisp modern vibe that the white gives off.

I love the contrast between the shelves and the symbols and how they add that pop of white we’ve wanted to have in this room. Once we add the other white items we have planned, as well as some actual books to the shelves, I know they are going to look great!

ps- I did use my green spray paint this weekend, but the verdict of that project is still pending…