Inspiration struck last week when I was cleaning up the yard. It always looks so plain. I would add a window in that big space except that’s the pantry. Instead, I made it starry. $45 on eBay custom made in the white I wanted. Nice!
I love it. It’s got the nice colonial feel appropriate to my area, and stars are kind of a thing for me. Plus, it matches the little ones in the kitchen.
Last year, my mom bought me 2 sets of 1,000 thread count sheets from Smart Bargains. I love these sheets so much. So cool and soft and thick and smooth and wonderful. I’ve looked since then, but haven’t found any more for a good price. Today, though, they were having a 25% off sale!
I picked up a set of 1,500 thread count (!) blue sheets:
Some 1,000 tc red sheets:
And a matching red duvet cover. All three items shipped to me for under $250. I’m very excited about this! Two sets of sheets is not enough. I’ve had a few evenings where one set is dirtied by a dog’s muddy paws and the other set is wet in the wash or sitting in the laundry basket. Now, I will have four luxurious options and two duvet covers in case the same problem happens with paws on the top layer.
If you want to take advantage of this goodness, go through this link - you can get free shipping and an extra 15% off (I don’t get anything for this - I’m just sharing the love).
Many of my walls are still bare in the house. It’s not that I’m lazy ( I may be, but that is not the reason here ) but rather that I’ve been waiting to find things I really love.
World Market sends me email every week or two. One of those messages contained a couple pictures that I liked, and I kept thinking about them. I stopped by World Market today to check them out in person and I really liked them. Extra bonus - they were on sale! For now, I have them in the living room. I like them here, but my initial reservation was that they were not as “structured” as the rest of the room; they are more organic. I’m going to keep them here for a while but if I find something better, these will work great in the dining room.
I’ve ordered a bunch of rugs and they all showed up at once. Three are from Orvis. I got one for the front door, one for the back, and one for outside the back door. They are these great water trapper mats that look great. Plus, you clean them by just hosing them down. I already have a personalized one of these that goes under the girls dishes and the new ones for the door will be a big help. There are muddy paw prints all over this house.
In the basement, I got a stripey cotton rug for by the washer and dryer.
I still need good lighting for down there, but I like how it looks with the rug. It’s starting to look acceptable.
I tackled my decorating this weekend. The inside turned out pretty well. I was at a complete loss about what to do on my mantle. I went to Pier 1 this morning hoping for a solution. I expected a mob, but there were like 2 people there (including me). Anyway, after a lot of browsing and about $100, I came home with lots of stuff for the mantle plus a few new ornaments. The mantle has turned out to be my favorite thing.
And then there is the tree, of course. We only do real trees here in the Dogs and Jen house. This came from the nursery where I bought my live trees. They also had some ridiculous promotion going on that gave you 25% off if you bought a tree, a wreath, and a poinsettia, plus triple the usual 10% member discount. It was so cheap that the person checking me out had to confirm on the receipt that it was right. I almost felt bad for getting it at that price.
So we’re all decked out inside for the holidays. All that’s left is to put up the stockings and clean up the aftermath. Pictures of the outside will come tomorrow. In the meantime, I think I’m going to go make some cookies.
p.s. The dog painting from over the mantle is living temporarily in the dining room, and I must say it looks really good in there. Holiday time reminds me of how bare most of my walls still are. I think this means I may need one more Daniel Kessler giclee, called “Tres Amigos”, to round out my collection of red dogs. I’d love this one in a big 30″ X 24″ version, but we’ll see if I’m motivated to buy it come January when all these decorations come down and I see the full scope of my gift purchases
(Yes, housebloggers, it’s yet-another-last-minute-blog-post on this topic. Sorry!)
If you thought Halloween was elaborate, wait until Christmas at our house. Christmas decorating is extremely important, so much so that one year where Thanksgiving came especially early, I drove around for literally for 5 or 6 hours the Friday after looking for a place that had Christmas trees available (we do not, in any way, allow fake trees near this house - live only). I did eventually find them at the place that is now my normal nursery. I’m always there before lunch on the day after Thanksgiving, while a lot of the trees are still being unbundled and everyone else is in bed or fighting at the mall.
This year is going to be extra great for Christmas decorating. Now that I finally have my own house, I’m going all out. We do not do inflatables or other tacky / excessive decorations here, though. Just lots of white lights outside. I already have been unable to resist picking up a few 1,000 light boxes when I walk past them at CVS. As I drift off to sleep at night, I plan how to rig up a pole that will let me get the lights all the way to the top of that tree in my front yard.
Since I don’t have any past photos of this house to share, let me at least give you this preview of the joy I expect to see on my girls faces when they open presents
This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by SC Johnson’s Right@Home.
The World Market rug arrived yesterday, and I think it looks great in the dining room. It makes it actually feel like a room instead of a big empty space.
Today, I think, is the last summery day I will experience until spring unless we’re fortunate enough to have a day like Thanksgiving like last year (78 degrees and sunny).
It was 80 today, and it’s still in the mid-70s tonight. Alas, tomorrow it drops into the 60s and I will become a sadder version of myself. I took advantage of today; I mowed my much-neglected lawn and did a little decorating.
If you’ve browsed the other sections of my blog, you know that halloween decorating is an important part of Dogs and Jen’s lives. This year includes a new addition - lights. I wonder if my neighbors think I’m crazy or fear what I will do come xmas time.
My poor house. I keep saying I’m going to get back to working on it, and it hasn’t happened. Now that the marathon is over (I finished, btw), I hope I’ll start directing some of my attentions back to it.
Projects at the top of my list include fixing the caulk on the granite in the kitchen and redoing the trim on the entry way in the basement that Mom and I did way back in the early summer. And, you know, if Cabinet Guy ever gets my doors in, I’ll do more on the kitchen.
Today, though, I at least used a little of the house fund to buy a new rug. I need a rug for the dining room. That could be this new rug, or it could be the brown rug currently in my living room. Then the new rug would go in the living room.
The new rug is a 6′ X 9′ from World Market. They’re doing a rug sale with free shipping now. I liked this one because it’s basically neutral and red, so it will fit in any of the rooms in my house. It is a bit bigger than the 5X8 in the living room, and that would be nice. However, I worry that the pattern will be to much for the simple space I have in there now. The dining room is essentially empty and could use the life.
I’ve held off on buying furniture for most of the house because I wanted to get good stuff which means expensive stuff. However, I really liked this Hemnes collection from IKEA. I’ve had the dresser for a while and finally I broke down and bought the bed and end tables. I really like them, and it looks great now that I’ve put up curtains, the new Dog picture and some candle holders. The only thing left is to get a red chair for the corner with the floor lamp, and maybe a few more things for that wall.
IKEA furniture is much easier to put together with power tools. I put one of the wrenches in my vice and broke it off to use in my drill (since my allen wrench bits were in the office). What a relief to do that instead of spending all afternoon screwing things in by hand.
