Kitchen Prettiness

As the weather finally warms up, it's so nice to be able to bring some colorful spring blooms into the house.  Here's some pretty pictures of the flowers that I currently have in my kitchen.

The orchid was a gift from a friend over 2 months ago.  It's doing remarkably well.  I make sure that I only water it a tiny amount once a week.

The hydrangea I bought from Trader Joe's on Saturday.  You have to water it everyday or it will wilt.

The flowers above were part of a tablescape that I did for a dinner we hosted.

The red roses were a Mother's Day gift from my lovely boys.

I'm thinking about putting a shaped mirror above the sink.  It's looking a little bare.  Of course if I was to do the kitchen over again, I would have a full on marble backsplash and counters.  I've been toying with doing a simple subway tile, we'll see.

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I love the view from the kitchen through to the bookshelves in the music room.  It's so bright and cheery with all of the different colored spines.

Hope you enjoyed this mini tour of my kitchen!

Inexpensive art using Waterlogue app

Well I have wasted way too much time today playing with my new Waterlogue app!

I decided to print some of my masterpieces out and hang them on the wall.  The real question was, would they look as good or real once printed?  I have to say I've been pleasantly surprised.

I bought some good quality 90lb watercolor paper (not too thick that it wouldn't go through the printer).  I cut the paper down to 8x10 to fit.  I then printed it out using the photo on fine paper setting figuring this would give the best color.

There are quite a number of different settings that you can choose on the app.  It took quite a few minutes to figure out which look I liked best.  Some of the settings give more of a photo look which isn't what I was going for.  The bottom two pictures are using this setting, and if you notice, they look almost too realistic from far away.

I like the effect best in the picture above.  Not too realistic.

I just stuck it up there in the picture above, because there was a nail hole.  But I think a series of them going down the stairway might look quite nice.

Or maybe one large one next to the plant?  I wonder how much Kinkos would charge to print off a big one, and whether it would look pixelated?

But what I think would look really cool would be if you could somehow pause the process of painting mid way through and get something a little more abstract.  It's hard to explain, but if you use the app you'll see what I mean.  The pictures below are screen shots I took before the paintings were complete.

Here's a breakdown of how much my three pictures cost:

Waterlogue app $2.99
Watercolor paper $4.99 for 15 sheets.
3 basic black frames with mats $6.99 each.

Is it weird that I have pictures of my house in my house?  Yeah, probably.  I did try the app on pictures of my kids, but it just made them look creepy.  I think I'll keep playing with it and see what else I can come up with; maybe vacation pictures will be more appropriate.

Beni in the Living Room

Do you ever look at a room and think that there's something off with it but you can't quite put your finger on it?  Do you then proceed to try to remedy the unfathomable situation by changing absolutely everything in it, one piece at a time?  Yep, happening with me right now. And looking at blogs and Pinterest does not help one bit.

Case in point, my living room which has been a work in progress for 16 years.  The trouble is I bought all of the pieces at different times, without a plan.  So nothing really goes. Yes, I love the eclectic look but even good eclecticism is designed and deliberate.  Often a good room design starts with a rug.  I think I've been through 5 different rugs in my living room alone.  I always think that the next rug is going to be the savior of the room; the one that pulls it all together.  I'm usually satisfied for a short while but then a new trend comes along and I fall for it.  My latest obsession (among millions of other bloggers and pinners out there), the Beni Ourain rug.

I love the look of these rugs in pictures.  They look both stylish and laid back at the same time.  They can make a traditional formal room look less stuffy and a bohemian eclectic room look more grounded.  My favourites are of course the original ones from Morocco, but these come at a huge price tag.  We're talking thousands of dollars.  They're perfect because they look handmade with lots of variations in the patterns.  Us average folk have to make do with the mass produced unfortunately.  West Elm have their version called the Souk Rug.  Pottery Barn did one a few years ago which I love the look of.  And Anthropologie have one called the Flotaki Diamonds Rug.  This is the one that I bought.  And I bought it at a heavy discount, of course.  I paid $350 plus shipping and tax for an 8 x 10 that originally retailed for $2000.  Now for $2000 you'd think you're getting a gorgeous rug that will be the envy of all of your friends!  Well, can I tell you, I'm mighty disappointed.  It just doesn't do it.  So I think it's going back, unless anyone out there in Salt Lake would like to buy it from me.

Here's a picture of my living room with the old rug which is the Brandon Rug from Pottery Barn.

It's not so bad.  Actually, it's a really nice rug.  Oh, and I got a new pendant light, which I think is really boring but it was cheap and does the job.  What I really wanted was something fabulous and unique, but c'est la vie.

See!  Now everything else looks crap.  Especially my sofa and chairs.  And the table and those silly side tables.  Aghh!

Umm, now looking at this photo I might convince myself to keep it.  But if I don't love it, am I just fooling myself?

Yes, that is a huge armoire in the living room.  It houses a TV, XBox, speakers, record player, stereo, a gazillion remote controls and quite a few dust bunnies.

Who has a blooming drum set in their front room/parlour?!  Not many design-minded people I know.  Mary McDonald (famous LA designer on the show Million Dollar Decorators) didn't even let her client have a grand piano in the living room.  But unfortunately, space is tight and there is nowhere else to put it.  Plus it is kinda cool looking.

And look, I got a new plant.  Yep, another design cliche.  But it is awfully pretty.  Let's see how long it lasts.

Here are some inspiration photos of Beni's that I think look great.  It's funny, when I look at my pictures I'm almost convinced to keep it.  But in real life, it is really shaggy, hairy, woolly.  And sheds like a motha (that was a quote from a review on Anthropologie's website, not my words. I should have heeded their warning).

Sources here

Why can't my room look those rooms above?  Not fair!  What do you think?  Keep it or ditch it?

Peacock Mirror

So progress is slowly being made on tjuzing (zooshing) the downstairs.  I've spent the past week painting various pieces of furniture. There was an unfortunate incident with the glass cabinet that was in the family room.  We had to move the furniture out onto the deck so that the floors could be refinished.  Even though we covered the furniture, some water got in and ruined the finish of said cabinet.  Can't say I was sad because I always thought that the natural wood was too dark anyway.  So you could say it was kind of ruined accidentally on purpose.  But what color to paint it?  I really didn't have green on the radar until I heard that emerald was Pantone's color of the year.  I like emerald, but I wanted the green to be reflective of the chandelier in the kitchen and the green in the drapes (I like it when a colour is repeated).

The picture below is probably more reflective of the actual colour.

I also bought a new mirror to go over it.  It's the peacock mirror from Z Gallerie.  I like how it brings an ethnic boho vibe to the room.  It really should be bigger, but unfortunately the budget doesn't stretch to the really large and fancy one from Wisteria.

Here's an inspiration picture that helped me decide on the color and the mirror.

I think it's the same mirror, maybe they just touched it up with some gold paint.

Here's some other pretty peacock mirror images.

Sources here.

Library/Music Room Update

This room is taking forever to finish!  I think it's because it's such an awkward space.  Everything seems to be in a corner.  Fireplace, piano, chair, drum kit, you name it, it's in a corner!  And having two massive pocket doors and a wall of windows doesn't help.  But I think I'm slowly getting there.  I just hope the family don't buy any more musical instruments because I'm running out of places to put them.  Anyway, a big decision I made last week was to put some doors on the bookcase.  We have way more paperbacks than nice hardcover books, and it was just looking too messy.  Plus now I have somewhere to hide the guitar amps when not in use.

Here it is with the tulip table that I bought a couple of years ago just for this space.  I think it actually looks really pretty, but it's not very practical if you want to open the bookcase doors.  So back upstairs it went.

I'm still considering spray painting the curtain rod gold.  Yes, I know, enough of the gold already!  But I really like the look of brass curtain rods and because the window is bowed, I had to make a curtain rod out of PVC pipe.  I should probably do a tutorial on that one because I'm sure there are many people with bowed windows that don't know what kind of curtain hardware they can use.

I'm not sure about the dead space between the curtain rod and the top of the window frame.  Maybe with the rod painted it won't look so odd to me.  I may even see what it looks like with matchstick blinds, but that again depends on whether I can hang them with the bow.

Roman got a new drum kit for his birthday/christmas.  I swear he chose the finish and wasn't influenced by me at all.  See that boy has good taste.  It's way bigger than his old drum kit, besides being a jazz kit which is smaller than regular kits.  But it still manages to take up the vast majority of the room, especially because he has 4 huge cymbals.  And it is really loud!  Hope the neighbors don't complain.

Call me a glutton for punishment, but I'm thinking of entering Apartment Therapy's Room for Color Contest again.  I know, it's just a popularity competition, but I do have fun doing it.  And although this room isn't perfect, I do think it has something unique about it that may appeal to the Apartment Therapy readers.  So wish me luck.