I know that my blog posts have slowed to a crawl, but you guys are still on my mind constantly.  Today, I thought I’d share a few photos from what I’ve been up to these last few weeks.  I’ll be off the radar for another week or so.  This week is the last week of school and I’ll be spending most of my time at my girls’ school and working on my existing and new client projects.  I have so much to share with you all, but my girls come first right now.  They are so excited about the last few days of school.  It feels like there are parties every day!  I know that many of you are doing the same thing this week, so enjoy and I’ll see you back here in a few!

Thought I’d share this with you first.  This is what my desk looks like right now.  Think I need to spend a little time here?  But instead, I’ve been…

…here, doing a lot of…

…this, for…

…this sweet girl and…

…her phenomenal soccer team.  We had the most amazing weekend ever and I can’t tell you how proud I am of these girls.  They are warriors!

They may not have ended up with the final win, but they fought hard until the end and were great sports through it all.

We spent the weekend before here in Fountain Hills, AZ.  We all went out to celebrate my fabulous mom in law’s birthday.

It was a great trip.  We took a boat ride and watched bald eagles nesting.  Charlotte thought that was pretty cool.

I’ve been incredibly blessed with several new design projects these past few weeks as well.  I’m looking forward to sharing my new projects and the final pics of some projects that have been in the works for some time now.  Here’s a sneak peek.

So, that’s what’s going on for me right now.  How about you?  Are you crazy with work, kids and life?  You’ve gotta love it!  I truly appreciate your patience.  I’ll see you back here soon!

When I speak with a client about wallpaper, I often get a “No, I would never use it,  it’s so old fashioned”.  Once they say that I will usually nod and move on.  If it’s a space where I can really see using a beautiful paper, I’ll bring the swatches to the presentation and lay them out with the fabric, floor plan and inspiration photos and wait for the reaction.  It’s almost always the same.  ”Wow, I can’t believe that that is wallpaper!”  Some client’s confuse it with the fabric swatches that I’m proposing for their window treatments or pillows.  Today, I’m going to share a few of my favorites by Phillip Jeffries.

This could warm up any office space.

I think these are the examples that most people think of when they think of wallpaper.  Neutral grasscloths, but there are also these…

…bright colors and patterns.

And papers that look like stone.

These, however, are my current favorites.  I want to use this pattern in a bathroom project that I hope to be working on soon.  It’s a great space, but it needs a little something and this beautiful patterned paper will be perfect.  It will add a softness and texture that will lighten up the dark surfaces.  Add a little sparkle and it will be the perfect guest bath.

Take a look at wallpaper next time you get a chance.  You might be surprised by what you find.

Aren’t these gorgeous?  I can imagine using them in so many places.

This booth had some very pretty things, not sure about the duck standing on the back of the swan, but the coral paintings were beautiful.

Close up of the coral.

Another option from the same painter.  The images are painted on canvases and then hung onto a piece of wood.

This was an amazing coffee table made by my friend, Lisa’s, dad.  The wood came from a submerged tree trunk.

Here’s a close up of the top.  See all of the rings.  This tree was seriously old!  I so wish I had a place for this table.  It was exquisite.

Love these pillows in Kenya’s booth.  She and Lisa are both new to Scott’s, so if you’re there, be sure to stop by and say hello.

A few more pieces of art.  The colors in all of these pieces were very soothing.  They would work in almost any space.

Wouldn’t this be great as a kitchen island or maybe a bathroom vanity with vessel sinks?  You could paint numbers on the wooden baskets for each family member.

I hate that this image is blurry, but this set would look great on a porch.  The chairs were comfy too.

And finally, I always seem to see someone I know at Scott’s, but this time, I got to meet a blogger friend in person.  Mandi from Interior Design Musings was visiting from Birmingham with a busload (yes, you read that right, a busload) of her friends.  You can read more about their trip here on Mandi’s fabulous blog.  It was great to meet her and I hope to make it over to Birmingham some time soon to check out the shopping scene and meet up with Mandi again.

Okay, that’s it for today, friends.  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  Happy Mother’s day to all of you mom’s out there.  Enjoy your day!  You deserve it!

I also want to thank each and everyone of you for taking time out of your day to read my ramblings.  I love this blog and even though I don’t get to post as much as I used to, you all mean the world to me!

Thank you!

Hi everyone, I’m over at Jen’s blog, At Home in the Northwest today sharing my 5 top ways to accessorize your home.

Come on over and check out my top 5, including the one above.  Can you guess what it is?  Click here to find out.

Hi Everyone!

I’m Jen from At Home in the Northwest and I’m honored to be here at Lori May Interiors!! Lori invited me to write about one of my projects. So keep reading for a step by step tutorial on creating a fun piece of personalized wall decor for your home.

When decorating my daughter’s bedroom, I wanted her monogram on the wall. I like to be able to move furniture and wall decor around, so painting a monogram directly on a wall was a bit too permanent for me. If I got the itch to move her bed, I didn’t want to have to repaint the walls. So I created a piece of wall decor that LOOKS like it’s pained directly on the wall….

but it’s really a framed piece of art…

Here is a quick tutorial on this optical illusion. You can create a framed monogram that looks like it’s part of your wall in just a few easy steps.

1. Select a frame.

My frame was a champagne color, which wasn’t the color I wanted for her room. I spray painted the frame a chocolate color and used steel wool to lightly distress the frame, letting the gold undertones come through.

2. Cut plywood to fit in frame.

Measure the opening of your frame from the back. Cut a piece of plywood (or have Lowe’s cut it for you) that fits inside the frame, without the glass. Make sure that both the plywood AND the back of the frame fit in the opening. This may require a thinner piece of plywood than expected.

3. Spray the plywood with wall texture.

After reading the label on the can, spray your plywood with the suggested amount of texture. If you mess up, remember there is always the back side of the plywood! But honestly, I don’t think you can mess this step up.

4. Paint plywood.

After the wall texture dries, paint your plywood the same color as your wall.

5. Print out letters for monogram.

You can use vinyl letters for this step, or you can print them using your computer. I don’t have Photoshop so I did mine the old school way….cut and paste! Using a photo copier, I enlarged the letters to fit onto the wood. Then I cut and taped them together, making sure it was spaced an appropriate amount.

6. Trace letters onto plywood.

Place a piece of carbon paper behind your letters and begin tracing. The carbon paper will leave an outline of the letters on the plywood.

7. Paint letters.

Using an acrylic craft paint in a dark chocolate color, I painted the monogram. This may take about 20 or 30 minutes, depending on how much of a perfectionist you are. You may want to grab a diet coke and turn on some music or the tv while you work.

8. Put plywood back into frame.

Put the plywood in your frame and secure the back of the frame in place. Then hang it up on your wall, sit back and enjoy!!

Thanks again for me inviting me over today, Lori!

Jen

So, are you tired of this project yet?  If so, you’ll be happy to know the blog will be back to normal next week.  If not, here’s one more post on my behind the scenes experiences with Design Wars.  But, before we get to that, I wanted to answer a couple of reader emails.  A couple of you had asked about the other rooms that I designed for the show.  Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of the kitchen/dining area or the foyer (the space they didn’t show on the episode).  The way the show worked, each designer had a certain amount of time to do each space and once we were done filming, the crew sometimes began to break down our spaces before we could get photos.   Another reader asked to see the before photo of the family room.  I had to do a little searching, but I found one.  The photo quality is really bad, but here it is.

What do you think?  Pretty drastic change, isn’t it?  It’s amazing the changes that can be made in just 1 week.

I promised you a look on the other side of the room.  Here you go.  Yes, I was putting the final touches on the space in a dress and heels the day of the reveal.  The room was pretty much finished the morning of the reveal, but the director made me take out almost all of the accessories, so that they could make it appear that I was still working.  While I was doing that, the crew was putting up the lighting both inside and outside.

Here are all of my accessories.  The only thing missing here are the 30 members of the crew.  Not sure where they were at this point.

There’s me walking back and forth with pillows as they film.  The night before was a different story, just me and my amazing friends and family.  I recruited anyone and everyone I could get to get this done in time!  The stone fireplace took 4 days to install, so we did not start with everything else until the night before the reveal.  It was crazy, but we did it.

Here’s Heidi.  This project would have been completely impossible without her.

Eric and Heidi working on the gallery wall.  Eric took the photos of the family that we used on the wall.  They were beautiful and I’m not the least bit biased.

My girls.  They watched way to many movies and ate way too much junk food that night!

By midnight, they were sleeping through everything.

By the next morning, we were tired, but so happy with the space.  I hope you’ve enjoyed the behind the scenes posts.  Thanks again for your amazing support.  This experience has been phenomenal and I’ve loved every minute of it.

We’re off to Arizona this weekend to celebrate my mother in law’s 70th birthday.  I’m so looking forward to some pool time and birthday cake.  My friend Jen from At Home in the Northwest will be here on Friday with a fabulous tutorial, so be sure to stop back by.

Take care!

Today, I’m going to give you the behind the scenes scoop on the family room from my Design Wars episode.  As a reminder, the family room was the space that I was able to design once the family chose me as the winning designer on the show.  It was a great feeling to win and know that I was going to be able to give the family a space that they could all enjoy.

Here is the finished space.  Originally the walls were dark green and the mantle was standard builder grade white.  The change in paint color and the addition of the stone fireplace made a huge difference in the space.

A closeup of the rustic redwood mantle and stone fireplace.

Jim Greenwood’s original art from dk Gallery.

Love the lanterns on the hearth.  A quick reminder, don’t leave your candles burning in your lantern for very long.  Battery powered candles would be best for indoor lanterns.

Once the custom window treatments were hung, the new space was softened and felt updated.  Kathy from Drapes and Sew Much More made all the window treatments and pillows.  She was amazing.  She literally finished everything in a week!  She also made almost all the linens in the guest room.

I took some of the family’s antique books and antlers and used them for accents around the room.

Here’s a look at the other side of the space.  The dad and son in the family collect Civil War memorabilia and I used many of these pieces on the gallery wall.  New and old photos of the family were used to add even more personalization to the space.

More Civil War memorabilia.  Quick tip, take small collectibles and place them in a glass display box to make them feel special.

Here’s another look at the finished space.  I love how it turned out.

Join me back here on Wednesday for the 3rd and final behind the scenes post.  I’ll show you what the other side of this room looked like with all of the crew, cameras, lights and supplies.  It was definitely what I would call organized chaos!

Have a great day!

Today, I thought I’d share with you some of the behind the scenes pictures and details from my episode of Design Wars.  If you didn’t see the episode on Friday, I’m working to get it downloaded to my website.  Here’s the rundown of how it worked.  I competed against two other Atlanta designers to win the opportunity to design the homeowner’s family room.  We designed 3 different rooms in their home and then the homeowner chose their favorite designer.  They only showed 2 rooms on the show, the kitchen dining area and the guest room.  After seeing all the spaces, the homeowners chose me to makeover their family room.  It felt fabulous to win after all the hard work that went into the preparation and filming.

Here are few pictures from the guest room that I designed.

We had approximately 3 hours and $2500 to decorate this space.  The dollar amount was not actually given to me.  It was just a guideline given to us by HGTV.  I had to go to my resources and borrow, rent or buy and return the items I needed.  From the beginning, my focus was on my local resources.  The items in this space were provided to me by the White Rabbit Cottage, Ballard Designs, Woodstock Furniture and Nadeau.  A big thanks to all of them!  And a huge thanks to my wonderful friend, Heidi, she gave up the majority of her summer (We filmed the show last July.) to help me put this whole thing together.  If you wonder how all that furniture got moved, window treatments hung, pillows fluffed, Heidi and I did it all.  There was a crew to help us out with some of the heavy lifting and painting, but the majority of the work was done each day by Heidi and myself!  More on that Monday when I show you the family room reveal.

The artwork in this photo was provided by dk Gallery.  Bonnie Fuchs is the fabulous artist.

My husband took this photo in my mom’s garden a few years ago.  I had to be very creative with artwork.  HGTV requires artist permission for each piece used, so I couldn’t just go out and buy just anything.  I had to be able to contact and get written consent from the artist.  Each of my spaces contain original artwork and photos taken by Eric.  Such a blessing to have a talented photographer husband!

This side of the guest room was my favorite.  I have a wonderful fabricator who made the window treatment, cushion and pillows.  Thanks Kathy!  The beautiful abstract art is an encaustic piece by Jenny King another local artist.

Here’s a shot from the other side of the room.  Holly had asked if the homeowners kept everything.  They actually only got to keep the things in their family room.  (I’ll show you that space on Monday.)  It had to be so hard for them to see their plain jane guest room transformed 3 different times and not be able to keep it, but that’s how it worked.

Many of you have asked what I won.  HGTV has put several images from my portfolio on their website.  Check out the Designer’s Portfolio here!

I hope you’ve enjoyed part 1 of my behind the scenes.  Stay tuned for the family room reveal on Monday!

Have a great weekend!

Donna of dk Gallery, me and Heidi

I gave play by play of my episode and everyone had an opportunity to ask questions.

Giving the behind the scenes details of the show.  That’s Jim Greenwood in the hat.  His artwork was featured in the show.

The ladies of dk Gallery

Mary from dk and me.

Me with Vicki Bolick of the Ace of Space blog

Heidi, Jim Greenwood and me

My biggest fan of all, my sweet husband, Eric.

I’m putting together a post for Wednesday with behind the scenes photos of the show.   For those of you, who have commented on the blog, Facebook and twitter, I am trying so hard to respond to all of you.  If I miss one of you, please know that I have read each and every one and they mean the world to me.  You are the best and like I said on Saturday night, if this ended for me today, I would feel completely blessed and happy.

Thank you.

Me and my girls during filming

Well, it’s finally here.  My HGTV Design Wars show premieres today.  Today I’ll watch the show with my family and then again with all my girlfriends tonight.

Sneak peek of one of my rooms

I’m feeling both excited and nervous at the same time.  You’re overwhelming support and kind words have meant the world to me.  I feel like you will all be sitting here watching with me.  I hope you enjoy it, thanks again for your amazing support and I’ll be back on Monday with pics from the party on Saturday night and more details from the show.

Set your DVR for 1pm eastern/noon central!