Dining Room
Rainbow Dining Rooms
We love our wicker – but look at these.
Photos: Scandinavian Chic, Spearmint Decor, House to Home
How much fun are they? I expect the hubs would veto.
This Morning
I awoke and decided the following:
My bedside lamp needs to be red instead of orange.
And therefore so does Chad’s.
They are drying as we speak. The one in the front is the red in case you can’t tell in the light.
This repaint job should come as no surprise to any of you considering this post about my desk, this post about jewelry holder, and this post about our bar closet. I like to paint, thankfully it’s not a crime.
Also decided?
We are way overdue for pansies this year.
So while out picking up red spray paint I also scored some flowers for our front porch. I discovered that they are in fact violas and not pansies after bringing them home. I know no difference.
Want to know my lazy secret? I just stuck them in our urns without removing them from the plastic hanging baskets they came in. It will be easier to yank them out when they die. It will happen I am just preparing not to get too attached.
They are a nice improvement to the raggedy Christmas trees we had in the urns earlier. Those guys were getting kind of wonky.
Much more cheerful right?
And finally, also decided…
Someone will be very unhappy when the Christmas tree comes down and her new favorite chair is moved back into the living room.
She hasn’t even tried to eat it. Not once.
Dining Room Guest Stars
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve added a few new characters to our dining room. All scored on a dime of course. For some reason we still consider ourselves way too young for “real” china or other fancery. No that isn’t a real word.
The role of the crazy house plant in the corner will now be played by some eucalyptus and a brass bird.
Eucalyptus is great by the way. My mom used to always have it around the house when we were kids and I never really thought much of it. However, after picking up this bunch from Trader Joe’s two weeks ago I am sold. It lasts forever, smells nice, is tall and bushy and doesn’t change much as it ages. This big bunch cost me $4.95.
The brass bird was obtained after a trip to an Alabama antique store over Thanksgiving. He only cost $3 and for some reason I almost passed him up. How silly I was.
Oh and don’t worry about the crazy house plant that sitting on our thrifted marble table. He didn’t go to the house plant farm in the sky as you might expect after reading this post or this post. Instead he’s comfortably chilling in the living room. He’s loving Lifetime right now as much as I am. Hello – Dan in Real Life, Julie and Julia and the Holiday all in one afternoon!
Next up are our new plates. These babies were scored from the Goodwill in Raleigh for 99 cents each. I bought six because the 7th and 8th plates were badly chipped which would have driven me crazier than I already am.
They even look great paired with our existing Pottery Barn plates which were wedding gifts.
You’ve probably seen these plates a million times before. They are the Willow pattern by Johnson Brothers. These are newer plates with new stamps, not antique or even vintage by any means but over the years the cloisonné inspired pattern has stayed the same which is why we love them. You can buy new sets of this dinnerware on Amazon for about $25. It’s definitely not a bank buster, but a 99 cent deal on plates is still good in my book. In fact, someone tried to buy them from me in line while I was waiting to pay at Goodwill. They offered to pay me a dollar a plate if I’d let them buy them instead. Crazy thrifters.
And finally we’ve paired them with four new red spotted ikat napkins. $3.99 at World Market.
These napkins are really cute and versatile – I like to think that red fabric and rough spots can go with absolutely anything. Period. Plus at $3.99 you’re not wasting a lot of money to try them out. Final endorsement: they measure 20″ x 20″ which makes them the perfect size for sewing into a pillow, which is my favorite thing to do – after spray paint.
Close-Ups: What’s In Our China Cabinet
Our china cabinet is one of Amy’s favorite pieces of furniture in our house. It was a practically free find that I spotted on the side of the road, from out the Jeep window, after our millionth unsuccessfully trip to the flea market. Pretty much saved the day, maybe the year, maybe the entire dining room. (editorial comment inserted by Amy: yes, it was totally like Richard Gere at the end of Pretty Woman, umbrella and all)
I suspect she really likes it so much because she gets to keep shopping in order to fill it up. (editorial comment inserted by Amy: yeah, so?)
Remember the silver we’re now collecting?
At least everything in there that wasn’t a wedding gift cost us about $4 max. It’s a good hobby – thrifting.
What’s in your china cabinet? Have you looked in there lately? It’s almost that china cabinet time of year, or so the wife says.
Four Venti, Non-Fat Pillows Please
We made pillows out of coffee bean bags.
About a year ago, when passing through Black Mountain, NC I stopped at a fabric store and stumbled on these goodies. They screamed of Chad Whited and were only $1.99 each so I picked up three of them for future use around the casa not being completely sure of where they’d go. The don’t-buy-it-unless-you-know-where-to-put-it rule didn’t apply here since I was more than three hours from home and they were such a steal.
My first thought was to do something like this and recover a small ottoman or pouf - but then the green stripe had me thinking that these could be the perfect solution for inexpensive dining room lumbar pillows.
Since the green matches something else in our dining room so well.
So after a year of being folded up in the closet we finally turned these little gems into pillows. And we’re thinking they look pretty flippin’ sweet.
Alls we did was cut out 8 12×20 inch rectangles from the bags and surge the edges to stop the fraying.
No, you didn’t miss the part where we bought a serger. These were made on the weekend trip that will forever be known as Pillow-Palooza 2011. I went home to Alabama this past weekend, lots of fabric in hand and my mom made me helped me make seven pillows in one day. It was ca-razy. And no, I don’t watch that show.
So – cut ‘em out, serge the edges if you have such contraption and then sew them together with a regular sewing machine leaving a little hole for stuffing. We sewed the carcasses this weekend and then I came back to NC and stuffed them on the couch while watching this.
Lucy looked pretty confused as to why I was adding stuffing to a pillow considering her pillow projects usually come out looking a little something like this.
or this.
All in all these were super-easy-peasy to make and renewed my interest in those magical little things called sewing machines. We’ll see how far that feeling takes us. Plus the materials were a cool four bucks and we have one bag left over. No caffeine freak out required.
Our Favorite Room via Sadie + Stella
This afternoon we’re virtually hanging out with the two Lindsays behind Sadie + Stella - an awesome design blog that just so happens to be based here in North Carolina. So check out the post we authored for them this afternoon. It’s all about our favorite room of the casa. Here’s a hint – it rhymes with shining broom.
In other news I cannot stop listening to this in my car, I just bought a little version of one of these for my new and improved desk and no Wendys has not written back yet.
