Veggie Tales

This past week between the unpacking and lamp hanging I decided to try and find out if I have a green thumb or not.


Our landlord left behind some large plant containers and said we could use them as we pleased. I've always wanted to try and grow a vegetable garden and thought this was the perfect opportunity. I did some research and found that tomatoes, spinach, zucchini, basil and other herbs grow well in containers.


So while browsing Walmart the other day (one of the few things to do around here) and I saw these poor little cherry tomato plants struggling to survive in the extreme heat we've been having. Most people have already bought their plants for the season and these guys were the few that were left.

I know it's a little late to be planting but I felt bad for them, what if they would never fulfill their tomato destiny? I bought them, roma tomatoes, basil, pepper plant, and spinach. Walmart had zucchini but they were already brown and burnt to a crisp. Poor guys...

I planted them all in their planters, not without help of course!

And after a little watering and new soil the plants seems to perk up right away.

Since they're in containers my plan is to keep them shaded when it's hot and I'll be able to take them inside when it gets to cold.

So grow grow grow little plants! Be the Little Garden That Could!

Updating a Light Fixture...

Quickly and Easily without upsetting your landlord (hopefully!) 


Hello All! It's been a steamy 105+ the past few weeks here in lovely Altus, OK but that didn't make staying inside and unpacking any more enjoyable. Everything is pretty much finished and I'm ready to tackle some projects I have in mind.


First up: the Breakfast Nook in our kitchen. It currently has this light fixture:

Which is actually quite nice especially compared to what we had in our old house. I felt that it didn't flow well with my dining set and overall feel I wanted for the room. Plus I had this lamp shade I had scored from West Elm for $20 when it was going out of business a few months ago:

I wanted to hang it but wasn't sure how our landlord would feel about me completely switching out and rewiring the lighting in our home. So I thought it might be easy to just change out the glass bowl of the chandelier and simply replace it with the shade! Easy right? Just unscrewing a few things and screwing them back together. 

Wrong.

The holes of the two fixtures are not the same size, so I couldn't reuse the parts from the chandelier to hold the shade in place. This required me to use my brain and think of a way to rig the two together.

After much pondering and a few missteps this is what I came up with:

Basically I screwed all the pieces together to make something of a thread, nut, washer, sandwich. These supplies are cheap (less than $5 for all) and readily available at Home Depot or Lowes. Just don't look in the lamp department for 20 minutes like I did, I found everything in the hardware section.

I used my Dremel Tool with the cutting wheel bit to cut the treaded rod down to a smaller size then pieced everything together. I reused the rod from the original chandelier to help keep my new thinner and longer rod from tilting from one side or another.

Without Shade

With Shade

Success!

I think it turned out pretty good. I had to turn the shade upside down to hide the bulbs, so it still tilts a little to the side because it's top heavy. I like the way it looks though and it was an expensive, easy way to change the look of the room. 

What do you think? I feel like the room could still use some warming up, any suggestions?

What tips and tricks do you have for switching things up in a rental home? I could sure use them!

New House Tour

Mountains of boxes, drowning in packing paper, stuff stuff and more stuff! Augh! How have 3 people accumulated so many stuff? (I swear having a baby doubled the amount of things we own.) I went through a lot of our things and gave them away before we moved but there still seems to be so much.

You never know how much stuff you have until you have to unpack it all and place it into a new home. 

With that said I do have a few rooms to share with you in our new house. And just a disclaimer: theses rooms aren't "finished" but I think are presentable to show you all.

First off, our living room! Bigger than our last one, bright and airy, high ceilings, gas fireplace- wow!

We're renting the home so there's only so much we can do. Our landlord recently replaced the carpet, I'd like to find a large rug to help anchor the space. I also need to hang our curtains, I'm using our old green ones for now, I might look for something more neutral, I haven't decided yet.

A big project is going to be reupholstering my orange chairs. 

The Hubs has warmed up to them, he even admits that they are comfortable and he likes them. But they do need new fabric. The orange is a little out there and is dirty and worn in some places. Still mentally preparing myself for this challenge. (Though I did see an auto upholstery place here in Altus, so worst case scenario I can see how much they charge...)

Another project for this room is the TV console. It used to be Con-Man's dresser in his old room. He now has a large closet with lots of shelves, so I decided to repurpose his dresser for our TV stand.

In our old house we had the TV hung above the fireplace. This time around I didn't want to drill huge holes in the walls since we're renting and the fireplace is taller in this house than in our last one. 

I'm hoping to sand some off the white paint and expose some of the natural wood to make the console look a little more sophisticated. That and some new hardware will finish off this project!

Next up is the breakfast nook. We have a breakfast nook! How cute is that?

Not a lot to do in here, it's pretty basic. I was thinking about changing up the light fixture. There's nothing wrong with it, its nice and recently updated. I'm feeling that something more contemporary would look better with the furniture though. I can't do anything to drastic since I don't actually own the home. We'll see what I come up with.

I used our same dining table, but while visiting my fam. in Houston I swung by Ikea and picked up some new dining chairs.

I really like them, it's the Jules Guest Chair. They're actually an office chair but they work perfectly as dining chairs. (And cheaper than most of the actual dining chairs Ikea sells!) They are easy to clean and really sturdy. 

If your wondering what happened to my other dining chairs they are chilling in our "Formal Living Room" along with a mountain on empty boxes waiting for me to find a dining table for them. Another project to think about.

Also in the breakfast nook are these architectual wall hangings. 

I found them in New Orleans a long time ago and have been carting them around just waiting for an opportunity to display them. They are mismatched but I love the crusty rusty look of them. They are the backs of old aluminum gliders and they were the last 2 the guy had- he sold them to me for $10 each. Not to shabby.

Other than that the room is finished besides maybe some sheers. And the room feels a bit empty, so maybe a buffet or console would be nice to finish it off.

So- onward with the tour! We now have a formal living room! I honestly don't know what we'll do with all this extra space but I'm trying to make the most of it. 

I used the couch that we had in our old sunroom and the rug from our old living room. the coffee tables I made are in here along with another old architectual piece I had. This one I found back in Houston while still in high school. It's one of my favorite finds ever! This room is finished for now, it's basic but I think it looks nice.

Our bedroom is semi presentable so I thought I'd show it to you.

The shelving is old Ikea shelving I've had since college. It's two pieces, one piece use to be in our office but we have the space now to keep them together again. It's needs some styling and pizazz, and some way to control those cable wires but it's good for now.

My favorite comfy loung-y chair is in here! Yay! And of course our bed~ and I am the first to admit that I am not good at making beds and I am ok with that. So don't expect perfection here:

Oh- but some exciting news! While getting our bed all set up the Hubs actually mentioned he would like some new bedding. OMG! I thought I had imagined it but it's true. He, like myself, is tired of our old bedspread and mismatching sheets. So stay tuned for a change with that.

Something I wanted to try in here is a wall stencil. I won one in a contest from Made By Girl and haven't used it yet. 

I thought it would make a good accent wall for behind the bed. Can't wait to try it out.

On top of all these projects I wanted to give Con-Man's room a more "Big Boy" feel since he's two now, a guest room and an office to deal with, and I'm starting a little veggie garden. So much to do I'm not sure where to start. 

Hope you enjoyed the tour for now, sorry for the long post. How have you dealt with unpacking and rearranging in a new home? How do you organize all the projects you want to accomplish?

String Chair Style

While we were on our vacation in Acapulco we had time to tour different parts of the city and see some local culture. The food was great! The drinks were awesome! And they had the coolest chairs!


Seriously- everywhere we drove we saw people taking siesta in these cool string chairs. I happened to snap a picture of one with the strings on and one with the frame only.

I'm the first to admit that I have a chair obsession. I don't know what it is about the chairs that I love so much- maybe the simplicity of them, or that everyone had a different color, or the fact that they string the chairs themselves. I was asking the taxi driver about them and he said that everyone in Acapulco has a chair like that. He sa

I was trying to figure out how to stuff one in my suitcase and bring it home but wasn't able to. I could just picture a few of these on our patio, me lounging the afternoon away- but alas it shall remain a dream.

What made me bring this up is that ever since I saw those chairs in Mexico it seems like they've been popping up here and there. 

I saw this article on 2modern about a The Dock Kitchen, a resturaunt in the UK. Look at the chairs they have on the patio!

The string chairs!! They look all fancy and cool out on the patio. And look at everyone just lounging and relaxing in them. I'm so jealous! 

Where can I get some of these chairs!

I briefly considered trying to make some, but scrapped that idea since I don't know how to bend metal, and you know, a whole list of other issues. But I did see this alternative on the Readymade website.

Hmmm, Stringy? Check! Loung-y? Check! Easy to follow instructions? Check!!

Filing this one away in my future projects folder!

In other news we are still unpacking boxes and getting the house set up. I'm hoping to have some mostly done rooms to share this weekend.

Hope everyone is staying cool in the summer heat!

Organized Chaos?

Let the fun begin! We've arrived in Altus and have begun unpacking. I didn't realize how much stuff we had crammed into our little house until I saw them unloading all these boxes.

Wish us luck! I'm hoping to have some semblace of a home by the weekend.

My Little Apprentice

With our move to Oklahoma, change seems inevitable. We'll be in a new house, new neighborhood, whole new city and state! One thing I am not planning on changing is my "projects" as my husband calls them. I'm hoping to have more time to do more of them! And it also got me reflecting on past projects and the help I've received with them.

I try to do most of my projects at night after Con-Man goes to bed. This way I have more time to focus on him and plus it's hard to get stuff done sometimes with a 2 year old hanging off you. But sometimes I needed to get started on things while he was still awake, and I'm beginning to worry- 

What am I teaching my son?

That it's ok to tear apart furniture? He was all about "helping" me pull out the staples when I recovered our dining chairs.

That it's always helpful to make sure your cars will still roll well on the newly slipcovered chair. He kept a careful eye out making sure I was fitting the fabric correctly.

Of course it is nice to have a helping hand when painting a room. (Not really! He was dying to copy me so I gave him a brush and an empty cup.)

Blurry picture but in my defense I took this with my IPhone while holding a paint brush, and Con-Man never sits still.

Of course like most young'ins sometimes he'd rather just sit back and relax and watch Mom do all the work; like when I was prepping my coffee table frames.

I love it when the Con-Man takes interest in what I'm doing. Hopefully he'll learn a lot about doing things on your own, be independent and will be handy around the house. What woman wouldn't love that?!

Do you encourage your children to participate in your projects? Do they enjoy seeing you work?

Stump Style

We're on the road traveling between Texas, Louisiana, and finally Oklahoma; saying our goodbyes to family and friends. While I'm out traveling across the country here's some design inspiration for your reading pleasure.


I've been seeing stumps everywhere lately- a trend that seems to be really catching on. Personally I like the idea of having nature as decor, I've been searching for the perfect stump to bring home and try out. In the meantime here's some stump- inspired ideas for your viewing pleasure.


Stumps as lamps:

Source

The style I've seen most often is stumps used as side tables:

Source

Source

Why not use stumps as seating?!

Source

Does the possibility of bugs and critters lurking inside give you the heebie jeebies? How about a fake one instead? This rug is pretty sweet.

Source

What do you think of the new trend of using tree stumps to bring the outdoors in (literally?)

Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone is having a fun and safe 4th of July Weekend! 

Image from Pinterest

Our New House!

We're leaving San Antonio today. The moving van has come and gone and we are headed south to visit family in Houston and Baton Rouge before heading up to our new house Oklahoma.

Con- Man was a big help with all the packing

With all the excitement of moving, building a coffee table, fixing up the bathroom, ect. I realized that I have never showed pictures of the house we found in Altus, OK! We never actually made a trip up there to house hunt; we decided it would be best just to rent since we may only be there for 2 years.

I told the Hubs that if the Air Force is forcing us to live out in the boonies with not much to do we need a nice house to live in. Turns out housing in Altus is really inexpensive (Score 1 for living in the middle of no where!) So one morning I happened to hop online and find this beauty up for rent:

It has 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, a formal living and dining room and family room. I was sold and emailed and called the owner right away. Lucky I did because later on the owner would tell me that 10 other people called her later that day asking about the home (we noticed while we were house hunting that there is not a lot of housing available in Altus; so I was super excited to get this one.)

I'm picturing our giant LSU flag right here. (Gotta let people know where you're from right?)

Nice patio in the backyard. I'm trying to come up with a temporary solution to make some shade back here. I hear it gets into the 100's pretty regularly in Altus and I dont think there are any trees in the yard.

And the kitchen! Bigger than what we have now, I'm excited to have a bar counter. I'm envisioning many meals being cooked in here. Yum!!

There were a few other pictures in the ad but I wasn't sure how the current owner would feel about me posting her furniture all over the internet. So I'll give a full tour later on.

I'm excited to start decorating it and have some ideas already in mind. Since we're renting there won't be any huge renovations like the kitchen or bathroom we did in our old house, but I'm already thinking of how to use the stencil I won from Made By Girl, how to rearrange our furntiture, mentally preparing myself to reupholster those orange chairs, and wondering if I should give Con-Man's room a more big boy feel since he'll be 2 soon.

Hopefully all the uppacking will go smoothly and we'll be all settled in in no time!