Refocusing

You'll have to excuse me this week- as the first week back in full-on flip mode, my smashy smashy work/life/diy balance is a bit thrown off.  When my mind gets a bit overwhelmed, I always find that taking a few calm moments to peruse Pinterest or a magazine helps to get me refocused, so that's exactly what I'm sharing with you today. Let's all get zen and refocus.

I found this on Pinterest yesterday and was instantly in love.

This is the dining room of The Glamorous Housewife as featured in Country Living Mag.

I don't think I've ever seen a rustic table and fiberglass chairs ever look so sophisticated!  If I was in the market for a new house, I'd probably buy this one JUST for that built-in!  Hubba hubba is she a looker!  Oh dear, that's 3 sentences with exclamation points in a row- dial down the excitement, Karen.

Aaanyway....  aside from the built-in that I'd give my first born for, my favorite element in the space is the wallpapered ceiling.  Whimsical meets sophisticated in just the right balance.  I think that's actually the theme of this room.  It's playful, rustic, and ridiculously chic all at the same time.

Well done!

Are we all feeling calmer now?  Hopefully we're all in a good place now to take on Monday.  Have a great week!

Manic Monday

I only have a week and a half before we close on Frankie the Fliphouse, and I have a lot of ducks to get in order and a lot of projects I want to conclude before this happens.  Which means I have about four thousand things going on simultaneously.  No big.  I worked on a lot of projects this weekend, but have no finished projects to show yet. Instead of rambling about the DIYs that I have yet to complete, I thought it might be fun to share a few of my favorite pins as of late.

I've titled this 'the cat and mouse door' and I think it's superbly adorable.

Although this pin is from Victoria Elizabeth Barnes, a friend of mine actually has a similar (but slightly larger) 'mouse hole' cut next to her basement door.  This is 100% getting recreated in our next house.

I'm jealous of this basement office from Design Your Dwelling.  With a 100 year old basement and plumbing (and clutter....) everywhere, this could never be my reality, but I love how clean and crisp it looks!

Normally Country Living Mag isn't really my thing, but if this dining room is any indication of what's in the pages lately, maybe I need to change my mind.

Yup, I apparently have basements and dining rooms on the mind lately.

And even though I'm not generally one to decorate for any holiday other than Christmas, I may buy these just to start depositing them on friend's lawns.  Seriously how can skeleton flamingos not make you smile?!

And that concludes my randomness for today.

Off to attempt to make a dent on my to do list.  I wish you a productive Monday!

Paper Perfection

Once upon a time, over 4 years ago, I made 200+ paper flowers to use as my wedding centerpieces.  Back then I was unaware of the blogging world- all I knew of was Style Me Pretty.  After scouring the internet, amazon, and the library for non-cheesy paper flower tutorials, books and how-tos, I found lots of kids projects and cheap-looking crafty flowers (and there is a VERY fine line between design and crafty).  I ended up starting with Martha's pom DIY then scaling them down significantly to match my vision (and to keep them from visually competing with the massive Chihuly sculpture on the ceiling)

Flashing forward to today, amazing non-cheesy paper flower tutorials are everywhere and my wedding is uber jealous.  It was ahead of it's time.

How unbelievable is it that those amazing flowers are all constructed out of paper?  The tutorials and DIYs are everywhere in blogland now and I'm in love.

Methinks I need to host a paper-flower party and adorn my house with them.  Who's in?

Wedding photo credit to our photog Erica Lyn/go buy this book on amazon and check out their blog

Amazing paper flower images sources 1/2/3/4/5/6