at home with H

Getting Married!

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 13:11:00 +0000

We are getting married in Petoskey, MI on Saturday – we chose the city since it is nearly the middle from my mom and T’s family. The venue is gorgeous and everything I ever imagined for my big day so without further ado here it is! As you walk out of the hotel, you are greeted by the fountain and some plants lining a paver walkway that leads you to the veranda.

The veranda is straight ahead. It has clear, plastic sides that come down if it is cold or rainy and heaters line the ceiling. We hope not to use them but it looks like a possibility since the weather is cooling off next week.

This is where dinner will be held. The plastic tables and chairs that are set up for everyday use will be removed for their nice dining chairs/tables. We’ll have guys circling with appetizers, while hot appetizers and the cupcake tower will be in the nook to the left of our private bar below.

Again, these tables will be removed and a tent will be where I stood to take this picture. The tent will serve as the dance area.

Chairs will be set up here for our guests for the ceremony.

And we’ll be standing here for the ceremony. We don’t need to add any decorations since Lake Michigan will be our backdrop and the garden should have some late summer/early fall flowers.

Looking back at the hotel and venue.

Our room is the lower left corner room here, so I’ll be able to walk out from my room and down the walkway to the ceremony.

We’re pretty laid back about the whole thing so some key items to note include:

- No wedding party.

- We’re getting flowers for the tables on Friday or early Saturday morning. The only flowers we ordered are white hydrangeas for my bouquet, which my mom will make for me.

- Our friend is officiating the ceremony (he was ordained online by the state of MI).

- Décor is simple since Lake Michigan and the garden are our decorations. It was important to marry along Lake Michigan (its where we got engaged) so we don’t want to take away from that.

- Everything was planned in a month! We found the venue online (well, there’s a story since we changed the venue and date after we saw the first venue), we found a local photographer to take pictures for three hours (that’s all I wanted), a quick search found a local woman to make cupcakes, and our family and friends are helping decorate (plus we are DIYing flowers, décor, etc.).

- We wanted to keep things small so we have 26 guests coming – our immediate families and our closest friends. We are serving surf and turf (filet and lobster tail) and have the top of the line bar setup so while it is small it is costly – in fact, we are spending as much on our small wedding as Todd’s sister did for her 200+ guest wedding. Insane.

- We’re heading to Maui for a week to relax and celebrate. Can’t wait!

I’ll try to post after pictures and some inspiration pics at another time. Five days to go!!!!!

Goodbye, Home!

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 12:47:00 +0000

On August 10 I sold my perfect, little home. Why? Because this happened…

…and then Sami and I moved into my fiancé's rental house until we can buy a new home together. It made sense to put my house on the market since the area was selling really well (sold in 26 hours from listing – we had four offers to choose from on day one!) and my house doesn’t have a large enough driveway for our three vehicles, the camper and the utility trailer. I’m not going to lie – I miss my house…a lot.

I thought I’d do a final tour of my house as it was when it was listed (lots of color/décor changes from my last posts). Here goes!

To sell, I swapped out the lights in the guest room and office to more basic lights to appeal to the buyers (two for $20 at Home Depot) and we cleaned the house from top to bottom. That’s it. I didn’t repaint anything just to sell the house and we didn’t remove any of my things other than family photos. Next on the agenda – our wedding in 8 days!!!!! (Yes, we became engaged on June 5 and are marrying three months later. Why wait?!)

Summer Home

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 11:39:00 +0000

This summer has been incredibly busy around here – if I’m at home we have parties and events to go to so I don’t have much time to DIY, but many weekends have been spent in my summer home:

We have a 1979 Play-Mor camper (or travel trailer as some call it). This old guy is only 13’ long with the tongue I believe so space is a little cramped but we love it. T actually bought it a few years ago before we met but it is now as much mine as his as I’m putting my stamp on it.

Mostly we camp in the woods but we have done two campgrounds this year and we even stayed in a rustic cabin in the UP for two nights.

T is away this weekend for a guy’s camping weekend so I’ll have some time to myself to watch girly movies, shop and get things done around the house. In addition to camping we have started spending every other weekend at his place so my house is feeling neglected. I have many house pics to share so maybe I’ll spend a good chunk of time this weekend writing posts and editing pictures.

Still Alive

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:11:00 +0000

I have failed at updating the blog this year. I have a ton of pictures to upload but just haven’t found the time to do so. Here are some of the things I’ve been doing (via Instagram):

Celebrated my birthday in March

Celebrated Easter with T and his family

Went to a Drive-through African Safari in OH

Attended my Grandmother’s funeral in WV and visited the old house (from the outside anyway)

Got my hair straightened (should last six months)

Went camping (first time with T and first time in a camper)

The weather in MI hasn’t been that great this spring so no outside projects yet though I do have to figure out a time to mow this week since my grass is ridiculously long due to all the rain. Happy spring! Hopefully summer (and warmer weather) is just around the corner!

Home Entry Revamp–Part2

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:32:00 +0000

Yesterday I showed you the new shoe cubbies my T and his friend built for me. Today I’m back with pictures of the finished space. Let’s look at the before again, shall we? I wanted to swap out the light, remove the pot lids, paint the walls, remove anything that didn’t need to be there and replace the dinky hooks….so I did. You may be wondering why I left the skillets – I like having them hanging since storage space in my kitchen is limited and hanging them keeps them in better shape than stacking them so for now, they stay where they are. They are in easy reach to the kitchen and get used daily.

First up – the paint. I chose a gorgeous gray by Valspar that we had color matched at Sherwin Williams in their matte paint. My T is a professional painter and he swears by SW so I figured I’d stray from my usual Glidden. Since there wasn’t much wall space that wasn’t the faux brick and the ceiling angles were weird, I requested that they paint the walls and ceiling gray and the shoe cubbies and faux brick glossy white.

Look – even my tall winter boots fit in the cubbies with room to spare! Did I mention how in love with the cubbies I am?!? A few times? Well, I’ll say it again! Did you notice anything in that ceiling picture? I bought a new glass pendant from Shades of Light to replace the ugly old fixture – it is the Young House Love Bubble Glass Pendant. I love the light (less than $50!) but I wasn’t thrilled with the glue traces that were on the inside of the glass when it arrived. It took quite a lot of time to get that removed but for the cost and the look of the light, I decided it was worth the extra cleaning effort. I forgot to remove the sticker on the base when I took the pictures, but here she is cut to size to fit my space.

The hanging rack full of pot lids was replaced with a $10 mirror from Target (on sale) and some cup hooks to hang my keys/sunglasses since every girl needs a mirror by the door for last minute hair/makeup spot checks and a place to hang her keys.

I love that you see the reflection of the plants in the kitchen in the mirror and the touch of blue adds some nice color to the space. I chose this mirror for its size (the space is narrow but tall), the cost was perfect, the touch of blue had me at hello and the wood ties into the wood floors in the adjoining kitchen. I chose to use simple white cup hooks for keys since I didn’t want them to stand out or compete with my gorgeous new coat hooks.

What coat hooks? These brass beauties! I bought five of these hooks from Anthropologie for $8 each (originally $20 but on clearance). In fact, I cleaned out both Anthro stores here in Michigan to get them all.

Finally, I swapped out my old door deadbolt with an electronic one for easier access (for me anyway) to the home. Since the exterior of this entrance is not covered, I didn’t want to have to mess with keys while trying to enter the house in the snow or rain. Perhaps some updates will be made to the entrance in the summer – we’ll see!

That’s it! Here’s a last picture of the entire entrance, which is incredibly hard to capture on film since the space is so small. Small – but now, extremely functional!

The hallway isn’t the only space to get a new coat of paint – I’ll be back with pictures of other revamped spaces!

Home Entry Revamp

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:47:00 +0000

I’m not doing so well with keeping up on the blog but I have had a lot going on inside the house lately that I am finally getting around to sharing! As I mentioned before the entry to my home is a mess. Exhibit A:

The shoe tray I made was helping a bit with the winter shoes but I still hated the mess in the tiny dining room. I’ve mentioned before that this house has three entrances. I’ve never used the side one since it is just a small landing with stairs that go down to the basement or up to the kitchen:

My T. had a great idea – start using the side entrance but make built-in cubbies for my shoes on the stairwell! Genius! So we mapped out the size of the cubby we wanted and then invited his friend over to help with the construction. I wanted the cubby to be where I could just kick my shoes into it from the landing without having to do down too many stairs and we wanted one on each side.

Adam (said friend) came over and cut out the two holes of equal size. Since there is a steel beam on the right side holding up my floor, we had to move that down down a bit. I originally wanted them symmetrical but I love the staggered look of the holes now. To refresh your memory of my basement, the hole on the right (as you look up the stairs) is in the laundry room and the hole on the left is in the storage area.

They then measured everything and constructed two boxes made out of higher-grade plywood. This stuff was more expensive but it looks nicer, which was a selling point to me (especially since this was all done for me with no labor costs!).

The boxes were screwed into place…

…and trim was attached to cover the edges.

I’m sure you’re wondering what the other sides of the walls look like – in the laundry room, the box is actually almost exactly the same depth as the wall shelves so it isn’t in the way at all. The electrical just had to be reattached to the wall (done after this pic) . In the other room, there is about 1.5” of box that sticks out from the wall thanks to a weird double-wall I had in there. So it isn’t interfering with my wall of sports equipment at all.

The next step was to caulk around the seams and where the boxes met the walls, fill in any nail/screw holes, prime and then paint.

How do you like the new shoe storage? I’m in love. I’ll be back with pictures of the finished space since the walls were painted, a new light fixture hung and things moved around. The space is now easily one of my favorite spaces in the house and the built-in shoe storage is a huge selling point whenever I sell this place!

Small Kitchen Updates

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 13:59:00 +0000

This year I’m focusing some time/effort/attention to the kitchen. My kitchen is a tiny galley kitchen that needs to pack a lot of function and storage – both of which are lacking right now. One thing I’ve wanted to add to my kitchen for a year or so is a flip out tray under the sink to the faux front.

Before we move on do you notice my new cutting board? It was a Christmas gift – you’re looking at a bamboo cutting board of Michigan, well, lower Michigan. Here’s the UP with a heart over my hometown:

Okay back to the cabinets. I bought a kit at Lowe’s for under $20, some new cabinet pulls ($4 each for four pulls from Lowe’s since I had to replace the existing ones in order for the new one to match) and spent about 40 minutes installing two trays and the new pulls. These trays hold my sponges, disposal cleaner, scrub pads and sink stoppers.

That was the first easy upgrade. The second involved some $1 blue bins from Target, a drawer divider from TJMaxx and the long silverware drawer in the kitchen (to the right of the sink in the first picture above). I was sick of my utensils getting mixed up with the smaller chip clips and measuring spoons so I used a drawer divider to break up the right side of the drawer and the small bins to corral smaller items. The bins were a great find in the Dollar Spot at Target (2 for $1).

Finally I made some new kitchen art. I bought some (non-matching, small) antique silver utensils from my favorite antique store for $1 each with the idea of framing them in the kitchen. They were a tarnished mess:

To clean them, I placed aluminum foil in the bottom of a large pot, placed the silver on top of the foil and then covered the silver with 1/4c baking soda, 2 teaspoons of salt and then poured a quart of boiling water over it all. You cover the pot and let the baking soda do its thing (while trying not to gag at the horrible smell). I repeated this a couple of times until the silver was sparkly and clean:

I then used hot glue to attach the silver to a piece of framing material and popped it all into a shadowbox frame that I had lying around (from IKEA). It is fitting for a kitchen and has been hanging out on the counter for a week or so but it may find a home somewhere else. I’m just not sure what I want to do with the kitchen right now but this was a fun and easy project to add a little whimsy for a while.

The other project that is taking up my time is the shoe issue I previously alluded to. Stay tuned for my solution!

Quick Tray Makeover

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 15:39:00 +0000

My mom bought me a tray oh at least a year ago from my favorite antique store in the U.P. I finally got around to doing something with it. The brown frame and brown decorative paper inside of it just weren’t doing it for me.

To get started, I had to remove the handles and the back, which was held into place with small nails.

Then I simply washed everything (frame, handles, mirror), painted the frame a very light pink (I’m trying to get out of my comfort zone of WHITE!), cut a piece of marbled paper found at The Paper Source into the correct shape and put it all back together.

The tray is currently residing in the china hutch in the guest bedroom next to an old bourbon glass filled with pennies (my grandfather’s) and a keepsake glass from a winery in northern Michigan (notice the Mighty Mac on the glass).

I’m obsessed with marble paper right now and am considering buying a huge sheet to hang somewhere in my house.

Shoe Conundrum

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:30:00 +0000

I mentioned before that I use the backdoor to my home as my main entrance/exit since it leads out to the garage. Something I never thought about when looking at houses was whether the home had a mudroom – let me just say that it is now a requirement. Since my house doesn’t have one, I’ve set up a makeshift mudroom corner near the door in the dining room. Lately that corner has been taken over by shoes. Oh, who am I kidding, that section is taken over by shoes year-round since I love me some shoes.

For the winter months, since I live in MI and it is generally wet or snowy outside, I decided to put together a boot tray. It all started when I saw this pretty tray at IKEA:

I simply bought five bags of river rocks at the dollar store….

…filled the tray with rocks and then slid the tray underneath the table next to the back door.

Any rain or snow from the boots will drip off the boots and onto the rocks. The rocks keep the boots from staying wet since the water eventually makes its way down to the tray underneath. Easy fix! I wish that was the last of the fixes for this area but sadly it has a long way to go. All of the coats/gloves/purses/whatever else is driving me crazy in this corner so I’ll be back (hopefully soon) with a fix! Here’s a hint of where I’m heading:

New Year, New Start

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:04:00 +0000

Sorry for the silence on the blog but well, life happened. I met an amazing man in mid-October and have been seeing him nearly every day since then. Trying to find balance between work, home, the boyfriend, friends and the gym is frustrating. If you have a secret to finding more hours in the day, please let me know! This post is going to be a bit rambling so bear with me!

Gym/Health

I joined a gym last October just prior to meeting T. and was really good about going four or five days a week until December. Mondays and Thursdays are easy since I go right after work (4:00) to beat the rush and I used to go Tuesdays and Wednesdays after 7:00 but that isn’t working out so well with seeing T and wanting to eat dinner before 8:30 at night. So I’m trying to find a good schedule that will work for me… for us. I’m also planning on going on day hikes on weekends again this year. I didn’t make it to a park every weekend last year but I did do a fair amount of hiking and hope to only increase it this year.

Guy

If you want more on T (aka my guy), check back later this week and I’ll post some scoop. I can’t have my first post be about my love life, now can I?!? I will say now that I’m excited for the adventure that lies ahead!

House

I’ve done a few projects and taken pictures in the past couple of months, but I never edited the pictures or wrote up posts since that just takes time I didn’t have. I need to figure out a way to focus energy and time back on the blog since I do love home projects and sharing what I do. This year will be a busy one for me around the house since I have a handful of small projects to tackle as well as some larger ones that I’ll hire out.

New roof – when I was cleaning my gutters this fall I realized that my shingles don’t have much life left in them. They were more than ten years old when I bought the house and I’ve been here for nearly eight years. They are slowly falling apart so it is time to shell out big bucks for the shingles. This will be hired out – likely to T’s friend who owns a roofing company (wahoo!).

New fence – yes, this is *still* on my list of things to address. I’m finally going to shell out the cash to get a new fence installed. I just need to finally pick a fence style, buy it and sweet talk T into helping me install it.

Kitchen updates – I’d love to make a few minor updates to the kitchen. Sorry, no details since I’m still thinking it all through.

Dining room – I still want a new light in here but I’m not stressing out about it. If/when I find the right one, you can be sure I’ll get it hung. The biggest issue is the coat/shoe/purse situation near the back door. I use this entrance exclusively to get into my house and the room has become a mess because of it.

Office – repaint and organize!!!!!

Bathroom – the only project I have on the agenda thus far is to reglaze the tub - this will likely be hired out since I heard the DIY kits are horrible.

Basement – organize, organize, organize. This has become a dump and it needs to be addressed.

Garage – organize, organize, organize. See a trend?

Goals

My goals for the year are to find balance, stop dumping everything on the dining room kitchen when I walk into the house, take care of paperwork/bills as soon as they enter my house, read before bed, try to post more projects here and just ‘be’ with friends and T – away from the internet and my phone.

Here’s to a great 2013! Thanks for reading!

photo credits: Jesse Snyder, Stewart Curran, Chris Stetson and Chris McAuley

Holiday Dining 2012

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:54:00 +0000

In addition to the living room, the dining room got a little holiday sparkle again this year. I swapped out some plates on my plate wall again…

…added some faux trees and bulbs to the shelves…

…and decorated the dining room table. I’m in love with this metal angel (I paid 79 cents for her at the end of last season!) and the silver candles.

I don’t think I’ll put up any lights outside this year since I don’t feel like dealing with it, but at least the inside of the house is festive!

Joy to the World

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 12:41:00 +0000

I thought I’d pop in with a simple holiday DIY I completed back in October. Yes, October…for Christmas. I was bored – there’s really nothing more to say. This project took less than ten minutes and was free since I had all of the supplies on hand. I made another sign back in 2011 with thumbtacks so I figured I’d make a holiday sign or two this year using them as well since you can pick up a big box of thumbtacks at the dollar store, making this project inexpensive.

Step 1. Print out the word (or image) you want to create and position it on your painted canvas.

Step 2. Place thumbtacks over the letters.

Step 3. Realize that you can’t pull the paper off without the tacks popping back up so remove the tacks, remove the paper and then push the tacks back into their pre-made holes. Yes, annoying but it worked well enough for me.

This sat in my basement until last weekend when I decorated the house for the holidays, along with a holly canvas that I did by free-hand. Here’s the living room all decked out.

I love the glass lamp bases since they are open on the bottom, allowing me to stuff them with glass bulbs.

I hung a couple of pieces of twine on the wall again this year to display the holiday cards I receive from friends and family but this year they are vertical strands rather than two long horizontal ones.

My tree is filled with homemade ornaments (here are the yarn wrapped bulbs I made last year), topped with a homemade felt poinsettia from Grandma and the tree skirt is another handmade item from Grandma.

Here are some links to DIY projects from last year:

Yarn wrapped bulbs

Paper ornaments

More paper ornaments

Merry & Bright paper banner

Anthropologie knock-off Snow Globes

Watch Out Below!

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:14:00 +0000

This past weekend a high school friend of mine came over to trim my neighbor’s tree. Originally we were just going to remove the branches that hung over my property line but I asked my neighbor if we could just cut it all the way back to the trunk on her side and she happily agreed. This tree has been a pain in my behind since I moved into this house. The tree is basically dead (naturally with 95% of the dead branches hanging over my yard) and I’m constantly picking up dead branches and bark from my yard. Here are some before shots – it may be hard to tell but if you look straight up from the chain fence, all of the branches that jut out towards my garage are dead.

Another reason I wanted this trimmed before winter is to prevent another occurrence of one of its branches falling onto my garage like it did in 2005 after living here for one whole month. I don’t think I ever posted about that debacle so here are some pictures:

Most of the damage was on the back side of the garage roof since that’s where a huge branch fell. It ripped up shingles and broke through in one spot. My cousin reroofed my garage a couple of years ago so I’ve been nervous about this tree falling on my garage again since so many dead branches hang over my property. Enter Justin.

He cuts down trees in his spare time, of which he doesn’t have much so it took a couple of months for me to get on the schedule, with the help of his roommate. They scoped out the tree to make a game plan and then Justin started climbing…

He climbed all the way out to the big branch that hangs over my property and then started cutting off sections of that branch. There were technically two large branches that had to come down so he started with the one that was higher up the tree. After he cut the section, his helper would guide it to the ground with the rope that Justin tied around it. It was pretty cool to watch – here are a series of pictures I took (I took 70 pictures but will only show a few).

When they were done after a couple of hours, I had this in my yard…

…and then this stacked up for a friend to use for firewood.

Check out this after picture! NOTHING hangs over my property anymore and my garage is safe! Hallelujah!

I am thrilled with the results and how well they cleaned up my yard afterwards (all sawdust and little branches were raked up, big branches were cut into manageable sizes and put on my curb for my city’s weekly branch pick-up and the large pieces were cut and stacked next to the garage for my friend to pick up).

Fall DIY in Less Than 5 Minutes

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:41:00 +0000

I’ve got three DIY projects for you today that were shown in my fall living room décor Friday. Each one took less than five minutes to make and are budget friendly.

#1 DIY Billy Buttons

Billy Buttons (aka Craspedia, a genus of daisies) are bright yellow balls of fun in my opinion. I’ve loved them since I first noticed them in some décor blogs and magazines a few years ago. I finally decided I had to have some in my own home so I figured I’d just make my own when I stumbled on this yellow vase filler at Jo Ann’s. It was as simple as buying the vase filler for $2 and green cloth 18 gauge stem wire for $2...

… cutting the stems in half and then sticking the stems into the filler.

#2 Wooden Fall Leaves

The second project involved just placing some green texture scrapbook paper and two cherry wood leaves into a frame. Done. I bought mine from Paper Source (8 in a pack for $8.50). You could easily buy thin sheets of wood paper or laminate and cut out your own – I chose to do things the easy way.

#3 Wooden Thanks Sign

I was trying to figure out what I could do with some paper tape (aka washi tape) I bought from Target when I stumbled on these bamboo trays I had lying around. Armed with the tape and some glitter scrapbook paper I was able to make a fun sign for the holidays.

I simply flipped the tray over to use the flat side and placed two strips of the washi tape on the board. I cut out the letters by hand and then glued them between the tape. Of course it would be better if there wasn’t a hole there (that’s for slipping your wine glass through) but since it is on the shelf in the living room, the hole isn’t as noticeable (don’t get me wrong – you can still see it but it doesn’t bug me as much and I was using what I had).

That’s it!

Hello Fall

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:58:00 +0000

Anyone still out there? I took a much-needed blog break but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing things around the house! I just wasn’t feeling up to taking pictures, editing and then writing about them. One of the things I did, oh a month ago, was to decorate the house for the fall. I love autumn – the colors, smells, coolness in the air…they all make up my favorite season. My décor was light this year – a few plants/leaves, some DIY projects and a little more red, yellow and brown than I usually have in the house.

The books that usually sit on the ottoman next to my chair were swapped out with those with more fall-appropriate spines (red, brown and a MI biking book) and a white leaf dish was filled with wooden beads for added interest.

Some pictures on my picture ledge were replaced with a wooden ‘Thanks’ sign and some cut sedum from my yard in a metallic trophy.

My brass apple was brought into the room along with some billy buttons in a simple white vase.

My dad’s beer stein was placed on the TV console with some cut leaves from my yard (also shown are the sedum and billy buttons). Speaking of billy buttons – notice anything about these?

You’re looking at some DIY billy buttons! I’ll post details on those later.

The dining room table saw some love in the form of a burlap runner over a thinner white runner, some wooden and glitter leaves and a mix of fake pumpkins.

I’ve also been cleaning my gutters, raking the leaves and all the other horrid fall yard clean-up that has to be done before it starts to snow around here. The last of the fall projects is taking place this weekend. My friend is coming over to trim my neighbor’s tree that hangs over my property! I’m so excited and will take lots of pics of him up in the tree.

Light Hunt

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:44:00 +0000

I’m still on a hunt for a dining room light fixture. I made a quick visit to the Pottery Barn outlet a little while ago and took some pictures of fun lighting ideas, but sadly left empty handed. (all iPhone pics – sorry!)

First up – this ruler shade was fun but really not my style. However, it would look fun in a kid’s room, a craft room or an office.

I loved this woven drum shade ($70) but I’m still really drawn to white drums.

Speaking of white….here was a huge one for $70 that I contemplated but being frugal I didn’t want to shell out that much just for the shade.

They did have a fixture for $50 that I loved the finish on but it didn’t fit with the white drum shade so I left it behind.

I’m not in the market for a kitchen light but if you are, they had these beautiful, large glass pendants for $30.

I also checked out a local HomeGoods to see if they had anything but all of their lights are floor or table lamps. I did love these industrial lamps but I have no place to put them in my home.

The hunt continues.

Cane Backing

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 12:06:00 +0000

Oh, about a month ago I was killing time in HomeGoods when I noticed a beautiful chair. Strike that – I walked into the front door, spied the chair all the way at the back of the store and made a beeline for it.

It was exactly what I was looking for except one thing – I wanted something with a blue fabric. BUT! This chair was big without feeling overwhelming, had padded armrests for me to throw my legs over when I sit sideways in the chair (such poor posture I have!), had the caning that I love (on both the back and seat bottom) and had removable cushion covers (both the seat and back). It was way more $ than I wanted to spend (by about $100) but I just loved it so much that after walking around the store for a bit I knew I had to have it. Did I mention that the cushions are filled with down so they are comfy and cushy.

I love the airy legs and sides – the shape and details of the chair really make it fit into the small room without feeling so solid and heavy like my old chair did.

The best part is that Sami cannot ruin the bottom of this one like she did the last one since there’s no fabric around the legs for her to scratch. So – I’m on the hunt for someone who can make slipcovers for the cushions since I’m not in love with the fabric (it is a bit more ‘formal’ than I want and as I mentioned I want something blue). If you know anyone in SE Michigan – let me know! Please!

For fun, here are a couple more pictures:

On an un-related note, I bought that wavy blue mirror from HomeGoods as well. I love that it reflects the light from the window across the room and I love the shape but I feel like it should be bigger…or something. I don’t know – it just doesn’t feel right but for now it works well enough.

New to Me Curio

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:38:00 +0000

When we cleaned my grandmother’s house we only kept a few pieces of furniture – sewing cabinets, a chair or two and an antique curio cabinet. Since my mom’s apartment is pretty stuffed, I got the curio cabinet. I wasn’t sure where to put it since my dining room is small and there isn’t room in there, so I decided to put it in the office.

However, between that, the desk and the bookshelves the room was too full of dark furniture. I also didn’t like how close it was to the door and how enclosed the closet door felt (on left). So, I moved it into the guest room at the food of the bed (allowing me to hang my new gallery wall here). It *just* fit along this wall without having to go in front of the vent.

I love that not only the front but also the sides are glass since it doesn’t seem so obtrusive when you enter the room.

I played around with stuff inside and on top but haven’t come to the final layout yet. I am thinking of putting all family-related stuff in here, though (the rest of grandma’s buttons, my papa’s pennies, my father’s stein, my great aunt’s framed quilt piece, etc.).

The cabinet needs some love since I believe it used to be a lighter brown color as seen on the shelves and now the outside is almost black and the finish is rough, almost like a weird build-up on the wood. But look at how gorgeous the details are:

Some day I’ll get around to refinishing it but for now it resides in the guest room as-is. Don’t worry – it won’t be painted a bright color or even white, it will be restored to its natural wood color.

Button Up

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 12:52:00 +0000

When I saw this heirloom button art at Little Green Notebook months ago I decided that I had to do it with my grandmother’s old buttons. Growing up when we’d visit my grandparents I’d play with my grandma’s buttons and my papa’s jars of pennies. I liked to sort and organize things even back then apparently.

Source: littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com via Heather from on Pinterest

I bought a 16x20 frame from HomeGoods since nothing I had was big enough and I had a LOT of buttons to play with for this project. I loved the faux wood frame since it played nicely with the colorful buttons.

I started by cutting a piece of white duck cloth to use as my background and then laying buttons out to get an idea of how many I could put in the frame and to see how many lines I may have. This took quite a while, not because it was difficult but because I found myself playing with the buttons and remembering certain ones from my childhood. I also didn’t want to use two of the same button so it took some time to find all unique buttons in each color.

Once I had an idea of what I wanted and the order I measured out equally spaced lines. Some buttons were flat while others had a shank on the back (see the purple button below) that I removed using the button shank cutter I had on hand (previously bought from my mom’s scrapbook store).

I then just used hot glue to apply each button to the fabric and then slipped the fabric into my frame.

I decided to hang this in the office on the wall that used to contain just my message board and some old framed linens. Since I removed the gallery wall in my bedroom I really wanted to turn this wall into a gallery wall with my button art in the center of it all. So I turned this…

…into this.

I poured all of the left over buttons into this fun glass bowl from HomeGoods.

I’m selling the old chair on Craigslist (once I get it posted) and I moved my cedar chest from the guest bedroom into here since I needed the space in the guest room (more on that later). As for the old memo board, well it was moved next to the bookshelves so that I can still use it in the office.

I’m in love with the button art since I now find myself looking at it every time I’m in the office and it is a nice way to honor my grandmother’s buttons.

Makeover Your Bathroom in 6 Easy Steps

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:34:00 +0000

That’s right…my beautiful new light kicked off a mini bathroom makeover. Warning: This is a picture-heavy post! Let’s look at my gorgeous new light again, shall we?

Okay, now let’s take a step back and check out the bathroom before. (You can see where I beefed up the medicine cabinet with some trim here.)

The biggest pet peeves in my bathroom were the towel bar and the circus light, both of which I inherited when I bought the house and have lived with for seven years. I’ve been talking my mom’s ear off for months about the towel bar and I finally tackled this incredibly easy project. As you can see in the picture above – I had a towel bar in the bathroom. In fact I have two – this one and the one inside the shower.

The problem was that folding towels doesn’t allow them to dry very quickly and also, I’m lazy so sometimes my towel looked like this:

That’s right – I’m too lazy to fold the towel so it would hang over the toilet paper roll – not ideal. This towel bar is also where the hand towel hung so I had to address that as well with my new layout. I decided I wanted to make a DIY towel bar that could hold at least five towels (for when I have company) and wouldn’t require any folding. The first step was to remove the old towel bar and toilet paper holder. If you’ve never removed these – it is incredibly easy since each are attached to the wall with a hanger that the rod is attached to with tiny screws on the underside. So, unscrew the tiny screws and then the larger ones attaching the hanger to the wall.

I then filled in any holes with spackle, sanded it when it was dry and repainted the wall. Anyone else have a hard time touching up Satin paint? You could see where I did touch-up so I ended up painting the entire wall – not ideal but still easy. While the wall was drying I got to work on the new towel bar. To make it I bought a 11/16” x 3.5” x 10’ piece of primed MDF from HomeDepot for $7.62 (which I had them cut in half in the store so I could fit it into my car) and five double robe hooks for $2.98 each.

I then cut one edge of the MDF board at 30 degrees so that it would slope towards the shower tiles and cut the other edge so that the bar would extend the entire length of this wall (which was just shy of 55”). I used my trusty stud finder to locate the studs on my wall and then made those same measurements on my new board so that I knew where to drill pilot holes for the nails that would hang the board on the wall. I recommend always trying to hang things into the studs – especially something heavy that may pull from the wall over time.

Before hanging the board, I also figured out where to place the hooks on the board and pre-drilled the holes for the screws that would attach each hook to the board to make my life easier. Finally, I was able to hang the board on the wall, making it nearly even with the hook in the shower for consistency. Why did I use nails? So that I could use the nail setter to sink the nail heads into the board and putty the holes so you wouldn’t even see the nail heads.

Once the board was up, I filled in the nail holes, sanded them, caulked where the board met the wall and tiles, and painted the board with two coats of the same semi-gloss white paint that I use on the trim in the house. I waited for that to dry for a couple of hours before the last step - attaching the robe hooks. There are a lot of hook styles you can go with but I love these since I find that the towels hang better on them than coat hooks or the single robe hooks (I’ve had the same double hook on the back of my door for the past seven years and guests always hung their towels there without any issue).

The next thing I tackled in the bathroom was the vanity. I have a standard white vanity in my bathroom that works for my needs. I decided to upgrade it a bit by installing new rod pulls ($7 for a pack of two from Meijer). Naturally I forgot to take close-ups of the old ones but they were curvy, cheap, chrome handles that came with the unit. These instantly updated the look of the vanity.

I then had to figure out what to do with the hand towel. I didn’t want to hang it over the toilet since that creeps me out and I couldn’t hang it next to the toilet on the side of the vanity since I moved the toilet paper rod there (which naturally I forgot to take a picture of but you can see it below in the ‘after’ pictures). You can buy ring towel holders that I contemplated for a less than a minute since the only place to hang it would be next to the sink and I felt that it would protrude too much there and made the tight space feel tighter. Then I noticed that expanse of white nothingness on the vanity above the doors. I wondered if a simple door pull that matched the ones I just hung would work. Enter Lowes. I bought a satin nickel door pull from them for $10.77 online and had it shipped to the store the next day.

When I got it home I held it up in place since to determine the best location – I decided to hang it a little closer to the top (not centered vertically). The bar was just deep enough that I could easily hang the towel over the bar but not so deep that it got in the way while washing your hands.

I love that I can slide it from side to side to get into the doors below, it would hold two towels when I have a party and the simple rods look great. Now that the towels were all figured out I focused my attention on the light. As I mentioned, I bought a clearance light from HomeGoods for $39 that I painted with some Rustoleum Universal Satin Nickel Metallic spray paint. Six coats later and the gold was replaced with a gorgeous metallic satin.

Before I could hang it I had to remove the old light…

…by cutting through the caulk the old owners had applied around the stupid thing. Once I was able to remove the light I had to patch the wall and repaint before hanging the new light. When it came time to hang the new one, I simply connected white wire to white wire, black wire to black wire and the yellow wire was attached to the grounding screw. Easy enough – the tricky part was not banging up my new light fixture since I was balancing it on the medicine cabinet door while I attached the wires (tip: if you have another person around – get their help but you can certainly hang lights by yourself. I’ve done it in the kitchen, office and now bathroom without issue). Before hanging it all up, I tested the light to ensure it worked and was thrilled when it did!

The fixture was then attached to the mounting bar with four screws and the white shades were put back in place.

The final thing to address was art. Since I took down my frame gallery to hang up the towel bar, I wanted something in the bathroom. I remembered a free print from Two Twenty One that I thought was fun and colorful so I printed it out on regular paper (she suggests using cardstock but I used what was already in the printer). I placed it in a white frame from Michaels ($4) with a navy mat (also from Michaels for $2). I liked it placed on the toilet tank but I decided to try hanging it for now next to the sink.

I also relined the inside of the medicine cabinet with left over liner paper I had from upgrading the dining room cabinet and added a fun new tea light that I got from Target this weekend. (You can find my chalkboard project here.)

In the post title I mentioned six easy steps – they are:

Making a DIY towel bar ($22.52 – not including paint/nails/wood filler)
Moving the toilet paper to the side of the vanity ($0 – I reused the old one)
Swapping out cabinet pulls ($7)
Installing a cabinet pull as a towel rod ($10.77)
Hanging a new light fixture ($46.28 =$39 for fixture and $7.28 for spray paint)
Making and hanging bathroom art ($6)

Let’s tour the updated bathroom (man is it hard to take pictures of a tiny bathroom!):

I like the mix of chrome with satin nickel so for now the sink faucet stays as do the knobs on the shelf above the toilet but maybe someday I’ll tackle those as well.

Going for the Gold

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:25:00 +0000

When at HomeGoods a couple of weeks ago I came across this gorgeous light fixture on clearance for $39. It had some scuffs on the shades that I figured would come off with a light scrubbing so I quickly grabbed it and headed toward the register.

I’ve been looking for something for my bathroom since I hate the circus lights that are in there but anything even remotely nice has been over $100 and I wanted to keep the fixture below $50. Let me just stop for a second to say how hard it is to find a good bathroom light that isn’t crazy huge or ugly…okay, back to my find.

The fixture had a tag indicating that it is a Robert Abbey light – I googled it when I got home and imagine my surprise when I found this here:

Even if I paid the original HomeGoods price of $59 this was still a great deal! I also found it on Lightopia for $170 and a single one for $117 at LampsPlus. Crazy, right?!?

This beaut is gold…my bathroom is not so I broke out the spray paint to give it a little makeover.

So, so in love. I’ll post the rest of the bathroom make-over this afternoon.

Dining Room Colors and Patterns

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:51:00 +0000

I made a couple of small updates to the dining room….oh, over a month ago. I’m so behind in posting things around the house between being super busy with work, going away for Labor Day and being sick for a week. I thought I’d give a quick update on the dining room changes since the pictures are already on my computer --- I’m too lazy to upload any new ones right now.

I’ve updated the look of an old Pier One cabinet a few times over the years by swapping out the paper I attached on the back of the shelves. Here’s what it looked like until a month or so ago:

I got sick of the silver and decided to replace it with some sticky shelf liner I recently found at TJMaxx. The Macbeth paper was $6 for 30 sq. ft. so I had more than enough to cover not only the back of the shelves but also cover the door fronts, which I liked in 2009 but have hated since 2010.

In all actuality I really don’t like this cabinet anymore but it is the perfect size for the corner and it holds a lot of stuff so for now it stays. The white/gold liner dresses it up a bit and lightens it a lot since the all-black shelf can be overwhelming in a small room, despite its small size.

Moving on – the other project I recently completed was to repaint the back wall of the built-in shelves in the dining room. Originally the back was white, then I painted it a gray/blue in 2010. I liked the subtle color and that the white dishes didn’t blend in anymore but I recently decided to try something crazy (crazy for me anyway).

Since I had nearly an entire tester pot of the deep blue I used on the inside of my new television stand left over (Deep Sea Diving), I decided to paint the wall a deep, moody blue and I *love* it (if you follow me on Instagram you may have seen this a while ago!). Let me pause here to say I’ve been looking for the perfect fabric to starch on the wall here but after a year of looking, I haven’t found it yet and I was ready for a change.

The color changes depending on the time of the day to a deep blue or a brighter, closer to royal blue.

The white dishes certainly pop now and a friend who has been over many times just noticed the white dishes for the first time thanks to that moody blue background. I added the items on the bottom row to my collection – they are a hobnob pitcher and matching glasses from my grandmother’s house. The glasses I used to have hanging (you can see where they were from the silver hangers I didn’t have removed yet at the time of the pictures) have been banished to the shelves in the kitchen.

That’s it for the small dining room updates. I’m still on the hunt for a new light and I dream of a new table and chairs since I’m over the black I’ve had since I bought the house seven years ago. I have some more updates to post – it is just a matter of finding the time to do so.

Chair Lust

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 17:04:00 +0000

I was in HomeGoods last night to check out their chairs and I fell in love with a few that they had in stock. First up – this graphic, blue slipper chair would be so fun in the living room but I think I may tire of the bold pattern. It was around $200.

I die for these chairs (Zentique Seneca Café Chair). They were $80 each and if there were four I would have grabbed them regardless of the cost. I love them so much. I found them on Amazon for $194 each so the HomeGoods price is a steal.

One Kings Lane is currently selling the barstool version for $239 each. Seriously, seeing this in my inbox today made me regret not buying those chairs last night.

This one would be perfect if it was a tad taller and maybe a smidge thinner. It was $250 at HomeGoods but you can find it for $328 on Overstock if you don’t have a HG near you. Same.Exact.Chair. God I love that tufting and gorgeous nail head trim.

I don’t have a bar so I have no need for barstools but these caught my eye. A nice mix of metal and leather for $130 each.

That’s it in terms of chairs. I did make one purchase but I’ll save that for another post.

Blog Break

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 00:28:00 +0000

I've been spending my days (minus the weekends) doing this:

That’s right - I’m stuck in SharePoint hell. My company is utilizing SharePoint as our new intranet so I’ve been tasked with figuring it out and moving our site over to the new platform. Since it is sucking up all of my brain cells and the last thing I want to do when I get home is get on the computer, I may not post for a bit. I am, however, posting pictures on Instagram (athomewithh) of random tidbits from my day.

What a Grand Phone

noreply@blogger.com (heather s.) — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:58:00 +0000

I haven’t had a land line since I moved into my house over seven years ago. I use my cell phone for everything – work calls, personal calls, whatever. However, earlier this summer when I upgraded to a DVR through my cable company, they threw in a land line with the bundle (did I mention my bundle is cheaper than what I used to pay for my cable/internet?). I figured this was a good idea for emergency calls and it was free so why not. I haven’t hooked a phone up to the line since I got it, since I got rid of all of my old phones so I decided it was time to hunt something down. I found the Pottery Barn Grand Phone through a Craigslist seller in Detroit and immediately fell in love with the vintage styling of the phone. After a quick search I found out that Pottery Barn still sells the phone at an ungodly price:

Luckily for me a bunch of people are selling it on eBay for a fraction of the cost. I scored the black option for $25 + shipping thanks to the eBay ‘Buy it Now’ feature (I don’t have time to watch and bid on something).

I received the phone within a few days and am happy to report that I’m in love. IN LOVE. After a quick and thorough wipe down with some Clorox wipes, the phone was plugged in and tested out. Naturally I have the ringer turned off right now since no one I know has the number and the only calls I imagine I’d get on it are from solicitors and I plan on only using it as an emergency phone. But it sure is nice to look at.

Apparently they sell a similar phone on Joss and Main called the Kettle phone – again for a lot more than I paid for mine.

You can find similar ones on eBay and I even found a red one (that I was thisclosetobuying) on Etsy. Happy hunting!