falalalala.lala.la.la.

oh my goodness oh my goodness it's almost CHRISTMAS!

I just love Christmas. And now that I have a house, I love decorating for Christmas. Well, I got to decorate last year in our apartment, and that was fun... but this year is even better.

Here's a cute little banner that cost me a whopping $1 to make:

I just bought a couple sheets of scrapbook paper at Hobby Lobby, cut out triangles (I was all professional and stuff and actually measured them) then hole punched the edges and threaded them though some twine. 

Here's a close up of the paper, since it's hard to see in that picture:

I'm not a really big fan of bright red and green, so I stuck with this light blue pattern with white polka dots (reminds me of snow) for the letters, then alternated with this subtle Christmas-y pattern one. I drew the font with a Sharpie based on a cute font I saw online.

Our stockings are kinda goofy and childish (we picked them up on sale last year), and I would really love to replace them.

I want some pretty, neutral-y ones, like these: 

These would be sooo cheap to make if I could sew! But alas, I cannot... all this cute stuff I keep seeing on Pinterest is making me want to learn, though. Hmmm....

I would also like for us to have a pretty tree skirt. Right now we're using an old white tablecloth, and it doesn't even reach all the way around the tree. Why is it that all the tree skirts I find in stores are (a) bright red (b) super shiny gold or (c) velvet? I'm just not a bright red or shiny gold kind of gal, and the texture of velvet gives me the heebie-jeebies. 

Is it so wrong that I want a sort of plain one like the lovely quilted cream-colored one that I was going to have monogrammed from Pottery Barn? It was so sad. I had it picked out, thread color and all, but waited to see if it would go on sale and...they discontinued it. Grrrr.

I've also been working on some ornaments. Here's one I made from a ribbon. 

If you feel like making one (they're pretty easy), here's the tutorial, courtesy of Martha Stewart.

I also made a very special ornament for my dear, sweet husband...although I may like it more than he does. Behold, the snitch!

"I open at the close."

Yeah, I love me some Harry Potter. I didn't come up with this idea on my own, here's the link to where it came from. 

I can't wait til next Wednesday at approximately noon when my last final is over, and I am finally finished with this miserable semester and can enjoy my Christmas break! I'm planning to do lots of house stuff over the holiday so we'll see how that goes. The downstairs bath is coming along nicely so I'll hopefully have pics up soon. :)

this little light of mine.

This house is full of brass. It's yellow, it's shiny...and it's everywhere.

Light fixtures, faucets, doorknobs... it's in pretty much every room. I am not a fan.

My metal of choice (for this house at least) is oil-rubbed bronze. It's that brownish-black wrought iron looking metal that everything in Pottery Barn is made of.

Like this pretty pendant light:

I don't know if you've ever shopped for light fixtures, but they aren't cheap. This little beauty pictured above is $300. Yeah, I know. For one light fixture. The cheapest oil-rubbed bronze pendant light I could find at Lowe's was about $70. Since I need to replace basically every light fixture in my house, you can see how this would get expensive very quickly.

So, I decided that I should salvage any that I could by spray painting them. I saw someone else do this on a blog, and it worked out well, so I decided to try it out on the pendant light in my front entryway.

Here's what it looked like before.

The yellow walls in this picture look super gross since I had to enhance it (it was dark). They're actually a lighter, golden yellow...but we're going to paint them a stone color anyway. 

The rest of the pictures are at my parents' house, in case you're paying attention to the background. 

Anyway, about the light...the glass would not come out. It was sort of tragic. But I was determined to make this happen. So I painstakingly taped up each weird, curvy little panel (front AND back) with paper and painter's tape:

This is the paint we used. It's about $8 at Lowe's. 

They have several other metal finishes as well.

side note: I just love my mom's fall tablecloth. 

Her bright Fiesta dishes look so pretty with it :)

Spray painting: the trick is not to go too heavy. Patrick is a more experienced spray painter than me, so he showed me how to apply a nice light coat so it wasn't all drippy. He would start spraying the paint on the newspaper, then move the stream of paint carefully over the metal. This helps it to be a smooth coat. 

After a second coat of paint and a little Windex, this was the result: 

aaaand, here it is hanging in our entryway:

I'm so happy with the result! I plan to use this trick on several other light fixtures in our house, as well as a mirror in the bathroom and maybe some other hardware...it's such a cheap fix!

ps. just wanted to share a cute little craft I made the other day: an earring holder made from a $2 Goodwill picture frame (that I painted white) + some burlap that I hot-glued to the back. I like how it turned out :) 

I need to clean up this dresser and arrange it a little better, but it's definitely an improvement from having earrings laying all over the place. I'm thinking about attaching a ribbon to the back of my earring holder and hanging it on the wall, but I haven't decided yet.

pps. Here's our Christmas tree, which makes me really happy :)

It's real! If you notice on the floor to the right, we have a pitcher that we keep full of water, along with a turkey baster for filling the tree stand. We discovered last year this is the easiest way for us to water the tree.

I just love Christmas! I have been pinning lots of fun Christmas crafts on Pinterest lately. Hobby Lobby, watch out...I have scoped out your sales online, have a list and a coupon, and I'm coming to see you tomorrow. You have been warned. ;)

color scheming.

It has taken me forever to come up with the color scheme for our house. Well, maybe not forever, but nearly 4 months. I wanted so badly to paint as soon as we moved in. The colors in our house aren't ugly, per se...just kind of blah ones. The living room is butter yellow, the kitchen is really pale blue, and most of the other rooms are either white or sort of an awkward mauvy-putty color. Oh, how I wanted to paint...but my mom said, "Wait Elizabeth! You don't know for sure what you want now. You have to get to know your house first." and, of course, as always... mama knows best :)

Our house has its own little fun personality. It's really charming. There's wrought iron, high ceilings, real hardwood floors, not one but two fireplaces AND an amazing archway connecting the living room and dining room.

Please ignore that hideous chandelier.

Now that we've lived here over 3 months, I feel like I've finally gotten to "know" the house. Cheesy? Maybe. Oh well. I always have and always will continue to personify, well, everything.

Our house is not a bold, "look at me" house. It's not a really fancy house. It's got too much history to be super modern. Our house (to me) is a bit shy and lovely at the same time, with little treasures throughout that make it special (yes, I will probably weep when we eventually move).

That being said, here's the basic color pallet (with a few extras thrown in) that I've chosen for our home.

So, the main things to note are the neutral colors (grey, brown, cream) mixed with some soft accent colors (warm yellow, soft aqua, various shades of green). Not so much the rusty colors. This color collection is called "Rustic Refined" by Sherwin Williams. We aren't using these EXACT colors, but we're going for the same feel. Stone colored walls with little pops of aqua. A soft yellow dining room + our awesome rustic-y table from World Market.

And I'm carrying it throughout the house. This is the kind of house that just flows really well, so although every room won't be matchy-matchy, they'll all have the same soft, neutral-yet-pretty vibe.

I can't wait to see how it all comes together!

p.s. Thanks to my sweet and creative friends Lauren and Kersta who were at my house last Wednesday and helped me solidify my paint choices :)

old house, new ideas.

Hi. I'm Elizabeth.

I never ever ever thought I would start a blog.
Reasons not to blog:
1. I don't do a lot of super interesting activities.
2. I don't have time.

However, as Patrick and I have been working on our house the last couple of days, I keep wanting to post things on Facebook that we're doing. I was going to start an album about fixing up our house and the crafts and recipes I've been attempting (thanks, Pinterest). Then I realized...this is what people blog about. People don't (well, they shouldn't) make Facebook albums of this magnitude.

So, blogging it is.

You should probably know some things about our house, because I'll be talking about it a lot. It's a townhouse located in west Nashville. It was built in 1972, and not much has been done to it since then. We have a main floor with a living room, dining room, kitchen, and half bath. Our upstairs has 2 bedrooms and 2 baths. We also have a finished basement that is really cool with lots of potential, but it kinda creeps me out when I'm home alone. Oh, and we have an extra fun little patio courtyard. It even has a small tree. We share a yard and pool with our neighbors, but that's ok with us since we don't really have time for yard work these days anyway.

We moved into this house in late July/early August, and even though it doesn't feel like we've done that much yet, we really have. We had to replace the HVAC right away. We replaced all the yucky, fire hazard kitchen appliances with pretty stainless steel ones. We've also re-routed the dryer vent, installed an alarm system, and a few other various "need to do" projects.

Now it's time to make this place look pretty.

We're tackling the half bath first. Here's what it looked like when we moved in:

Meh.

I don't mind the white tile/hardwood combo. I also don't mind the black marble counter. I can work with those things. I like that they give it character. The faucet and light fixtures, however, have got to go. We're painting the walls light grey, and I'm using yellow, white, and black accents. This will (hopefully) end up tying in really well with my color scheme for the rest of the house (I'll post about that later).

Anyway, the spackle is still drying from the removal of the big 80's style mirror, so while we're waiting to paint I'll show you the craft I made. I wanted a yellow piece of art to hang in the bathroom that was (a) cute (b) cheap and (c) preferably meaningful. So, when Home Goods and Target did not have a satisfactory decoration, I decided to make something on my own.

I took a plain, $4 canvas from Hobby Lobby, applied some self-made letter stickers, then painted it yellow-golden-ombre. Peeled off the stickers, touched up any mistakes with white paint, and voila! Home-made art. How does one make letter stickers you may ask? Well. Let me tell you. I couldn't find any letter stickers at Hobby Lobby that were big enough for this project. So, I bought some full-page labels at OfficeMax (it's basically a big white sticker the size of a sheet of paper), printed big letters on them (like, size 200 font), cut them out and there you are - custom stickers.

I loooove how this turned out! In case you don't recognize the quote, it's from one of mine and Patrick's favorite hymns, "Come Thou Fount". The last verse is:

"O to grace how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be.
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love,
Take my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above."