My very generous mother is a quilting fanatic – her basement is full to the gills of fabrics, machines, and cutting boards.  Here’s what her sewing room looked like a few years ago…

Isn’t that unbelievable?  She has SO much fabric!  And of course, Celeste the kitty keeps her company often.

My mom has been sewing for probably 35 years, and she truly is a pro.  When I was younger, she made dance costumes for hundreds of little girls.  There were sequins and spandex all over the place!  Now, she focuses more on quilting.  It’s her form of art.  At least, that’s what I think

For the past 10 years, mom has been quilting projects for friends and family, often giving away quilts as gifts to commemorate special occasions like graduation, marriage, anniversaries, or births.  Not all of them get there “on-time,”  which is to be expected when 5 out of 8 cousins get married within a year and a half of each other!  I don’t think any of us mind waiting, though.  The quilts she makes are beautiful!

After waiting a little while, it was finally our turn for our wedding quilt.  My husband and I decided we wanted something with batik fabrics – they look like watercolors sometimes and are very beautiful and modern:

and a pattern that was a mix of modern and traditional, sort of like our house!  Here’s the pattern we chose:

I asked my mom to be a little creative with the border and make some changes, and obviously different colors will make it look quite a bit different, but I’m excited!  It will be a king sized quilt so that we can use it on our bed, so it will have 16 blocks instead of 9.  I’m guessing it’s the largest quilt my mom has made!

Here’s som photos of the fabric we chose:

And some progress being made…

Eeeek, it looks great, doesn’t it?  I’m so excited!  I know it will be a little while until my mom is finished, but I can’t wait to see the finished quilt

Today, I’m going to share about where I spend probably 65% of my day: my desk.

You’re excited, right?

In general, I love working from home.  There’s some obvious bonuses: I can stay in my PJs until noon, there’s always snacks available, and I don’t have to deal with office gossip or endless chatter and distractions.  But there’s some downsides to it too.  For instance, I often feel torn between getting work done, and cleaning the house.  That’s a big one for me.  I’ve found that I just CAN’T work if my house is messy.  It drives me batty.

I’ve also discovered that in order to be productive and continue to work at home, it’s important for me to have a dedicated space.  I share an office with my husband, who really only uses it for a few hours on Saturdays, so basically, it’s all mine.

Even more important than having my own space, though, is having an ORGANIZED space.  I love organizing.  Unfortunately, I’m not very good at it, and I’m always trying new systems or ways of keeping my space, and my life, organized.  Nothing is perfect, and neither am I, so I just go with what works…until I find something better!

Here’s the current state of my desk:

Wow, all of those cords going every which way below my desk?  UGLY.  Same with the stackable in boxes on the top right.  Yikes.

Let’s go in for a close-up, shall we?

That’s better. At least I can pretend all the unsightly cords don’t exist, right?

1.  My new Kassett boxes from Ikea!  They’re slightly too deep for the cubbies, but I figured I could do one on the bottom and offset it with one up top.  Right now, the one on the bottom left has stationary and envelopes in it (I write a lot of thank you notes for my job) and the top right one is still empty.

2.  My handy dandy 500 GB  external hard drive.  I got it on Black Friday a couple of years ago for $50 or something ridiculous like that.  I partitioned it so that half of it is for storage (mostly photos) and half is for backing up my laptop hard drive.

3.  A picture of my younger sister and I at Versailles from my trip to Paris in college.  It’s one of my favorite photos of her and I because that trip was such an adventure for me, and I loved that I got to share the last week with my sister and my parents.

4.  A random assortment of things: a small journal I was given by my supervisor, a blue glass bird that belonged to my husbands mother, an origami flower I made, and hiding in the back is a little tin that used to be a candle that was my grandmothers from one of her trips to Asia.

5.  A picture of my cutie-patootie niece in an old green frame a friend gave to me.

6.  A large red wooden pencil that says ” Mrs. W_______” that belonged to my mother-in-law, who was a school teacher.  My husband gave it to me, and I thought it was just right for my desk

7.  A beautiful glass frame with pressed flowers in it, holding a picture of my older brother and my niece.  It’s a picture I took at my grandmother’s funeral.  This picture means SO much to me.

8.  A small frame with my sister’s senior picture (I need to get a new one of her and her husband), my favorite box of stationary from my dear friend Linnea that she gave me in college, and an Eiffel tower ornament my mother gave me after our trip to Paris.

9.  An electric pencil sharpener that I should probably move since I never use it…and a stack of books I’m either currently reading or using for work, including: In Defense of Food, In the Name of Jesus, Peppermint-Filled Pinatas, a Bible commentary for Genesis, and one of my favorite prayer books my friend Cindy introduced me too, Face to Face.

10.  My stack of plastic “in boxes”.  Each of them has a different label that I use for sorting items or my “next actions”, for all you GTD folks.  In theory, I should have probably about a dozen more, but I’m not sure I could actually handle that.  Currently, I have four.  They include House (which is currently overflowing), IVCF (job stuff), Computer (anything I need to type up or complete online that comes to me in paper form), and Inbox (which is for general tasks)

11.  A hilarious mug that says “Lefties are better lovers!” from my husband, who happens to be left-handed.

12.  Some random notes to myself or from my husband.

13.  A pretty empty picture frame.  I need to find a picture for it, because it’s been sitting empty for quite a while.

14.  Scrap paper and a random CD that needs a home.

15.  My new Target lamp!  I mixed and matched the base and shade so that it would fit on my desk.  I need to find a different bulb, though, because it peaks out above the shade.

16.  My old Manhatten desk from Target – they don’t make this style anymore.  But this one is fairly close.  It has three drawers, and the middle one is a keyboard drawer where the front folds down.  The hutch matches, and is also no longer available, but Target has a few nice options that are similar.  I really wish I had a desk that was a bit more right-hand friendly, and had a wider keyboard tray so that I could also put my mouse on it – something like this.

17.  A small black plastic container to hold pencils.  I’d love to find a cute mason jar at Goodwill to replace this.

18.  The main event, my 15 inch MacBook Pro (here’s a newer one, even though the permanent battery is just about the worst idea EVER), on top of two large dictionaries.  Why?  Because buying a monitor is not in the budget, and I needed to raise the screen so that my posture wasn’t awful.  It looks ridiculous, I’ll admit to that, but it’s functional and free.  Hiding behind my laptop is a large bottle of hand lotion that I snagged at Whole Foods the last time I was in Minneapolis.  I’ve got really dry skin in the winter, so this was essential to have close at hand.

Below my desk is a small file box, and next to my desk is a wire basket for trash.  My chair is just a basic office rolling chair, hopefully someday replaced by something a bit more elegant and comfortable.

And that’s everything!

Thanks for taking a tour of my desk.  I hope you enjoyed it!  Probably my favorite thing right now is all of the green – I love green!  It’s so fun and punchy, and very appropriate for spring.  Next on my list would probably be the pictures of family.  Since they’re all 4+ hours away, I like to have little reminders of them close by.  I definitely need to get a picture of my parents and my nephew though!

What’s your favorite thing about your desk?  Either at home or at the office?  Do you keep pictures of family and friends? Are you super organized, or is yours covered with paper and really an “organized mess”?  Do tell!

Seriously, I am shopped out.

Small-town Iowa doesn’t offer much in the way of selection for pretty much anything except sweet corn in the middle of August.  I’m stuck with a Walmart, two local furniture stores with outdated styles, and two interior decorators that charge too much for custom designs.  Several consignment stores and a Goodwill round out the offerings, often with spotty selection.

So I was excited to visit a few stores during my time in Chicago.  I even planned out my stops so I could hit them all up.  I had a few items I was looking for, and I was also interested in browsing. Here was my list of hopeful purchases:

• lamps for our master bedroom
• a new (smaller) lamp for my desk in our office
• fabric or drapes for our master bedroom windows
• bath rug for our master bath
• hardware for our first floor bathroom (toilet paper holder, towel bar, and two nobs)
• storage boxes for the office (I’ve been scoping out some from Ikea for a while…)
• coffee table for our living room
• serving tray for dining room to corral all our dining table goodies and use for transporting food from kitchen to dining room
• and completely unrelated, a new pair of jeans since all of my current ones are either ripped or not fitting well (*cough cough*)

Quite the list, and only 4 hours to complete it.  Here’s where I went and what I scored:

• Target – I love me some Tar-jay.    I scored a cute little lamp and shade here for $20 for my office.  I also found some potential lamps for our bedroom.
• TJMaxx – 1 pair of guess jeans!  A bit on the pricey side, but they fit really well and were long enough!  Woot!
• HomeGoods – Holy cow, talk about home decorating overload!  I walked away with a bath rug, some candlesticks, and two decorative glass jars.  A lot more damage could have been done here, but I resisted…
• Ikea – It’s been a few years since my last visit to the Swedish superstore, and I was (predictably) overwhelmed.  This is where my feet started hurting…I had fun checking out the fabrics, drapes, and hardware, but only ended up snagging some sleek storage boxes for my office.  I have to say though, I was definitely inspired by the Ikea kitchens.  They’re pretty nice!
• Anthropologie – I’ve never been, and I was excited to find out there was one in a nearby mall.  Oh the beauty!  If only I could afford something there.  Probably the best I’ll ever get is a scarf or necklace   No purchases made here…
• Z Gallerie – I’ve window-shopped their online store, but this was my first time in brick and mortar place.  I have to say, I LOVE this place.  Affordable and stylish.  I definitely found tons of stuff here to like.  Unfortunately, most of it is a bit more mod and I haven’t quite figured out how to blend that with our traditional house.  Tips?
• Crate & Barrel – Oh man, talk about decorating lust.  This place is loaded with beautiful furniture, linens, and entertaining items.  I was hoping to scope out a nightstand I’d like to save up for, but they didn’t have it on display

By the end of my 4 hour spree, I was exhausted and tired, and frankly, a bit overwhelmed.  I used to love shopping.  But I felt like I was drowning in a never ending rush of choices and options.  It was on the one hand very exciting, and on the other, rather disconcerting.  The tyranny of choice and consumerism was very apparent.  And in the midst of my spree, I was reminded of my desire to keep things simple.  No, I don’t need 5 different place settings for various holidays and occasions.  No, I don’t need xyz item brand new or right now.  No, I do not want my house to look like an Ikea magazine threw up in it.

All I really need is a roof over my head, some food, and good friends.  Everything else is just a bonus

Pictures of everything coming soon, I promise!

One of the things we’ve desperately needed for a while is a duvet cover for our down comforter.  When we got married, we really could not find anything we liked and ended up registering for an entire bedding set at Macy’s.  But we never really liked it.  Plus, it was ridiculously over priced.  So, for the last 18 months, our comforter has been naked.  No duvet in sight.

Naked comforter

This, however, was not a good long term solution.  Apparently, the natural oils from your skin, sweat, and any left-over cosmetics begin to stain the fabric of your comforter and can break down the fibers in the comforter.  A quick Google search turned up this article, and several others about down comforters and the need for duvets.  We have a goose-down comforter -mmmmmm, it’s lovely! – and we’d love for it to last a long time, but you’re only supposed to have them cleaned ever 3 years or so.  So, in order to make it last a life-time, we needed to invest in a duvet.

One added bonus to having a down comforter is that you can easily change the style.  Duvet’s are like a pillowcase for your comforter – they are both protective and add some pretty decoration to your bed.  You can find inexpensive ones at many different stores, and I imagine it wouldn’t be too difficult to make your own.

The hunt was on for our new duvet.   Our budget was around $150, including shipping.  I looked at all of my usual haunts: Amazon, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond.  There were some good contenders and  a good selection, but reviews for my favorites weren’t very positive and encouraging.  I knew I wanted something high quality, but not exorbitantly overpriced like the $400+ duvet we registered for at Macy’s back in the day.  I also wanted something that was fairly classic and could adapt to changing styles, yet would fit in our modern bedroom.

After a good deal of searching and considering several options, I finally found this at West Elm:

And I loooooooooved it.  Simple, clean lines, but also not too modern that I couldn’t completely change the style of our bedroom in 5 years and have to to replace it.  It’s an organic pleated voile duvet – what is voile? – and I ordered it in white.  Maybe that seems ridiculous since the comforter is already white, but it’s classic and can go with anything.

The best part?  It was within our budget AND on sale!!!

I placed my order and patiently waited, and yesterday it arrived in a box, neatly packaged in a little carrying pouch, which will be great for summer storage.

I decided it would be a perfect time to change our sheets (definitely overdue…) and make the bed up all nice with our pretty new duvet.  Here’s her debut:

Isn’t she pretty?  Ignore the wrinkles, apparently ironing would have been a good idea, but who has time for that?

I am, of course, no incredibly aware of the sparseness of our bedroom.  We have hand-me-down endtables as nightstands that are about a foot too short, and the bed is in sore need of either a bed skirt or a true bed frame.  Obviously, neither is necessary, but wouldn’t it look better than the exposed corners and seemingly “floating” bed?

It’s funny how one new thing leads to another, isn’t it? 

I’ll freely admit that I am obsessed with Amy Butler.  First, it started with a love of her beautiful fabrics, which I used to recover the cushions on our porch furniture:

Then I found out that Amy B started designing decor items, like rugs:

But now, my Amy Butler obsession can go even further – towels!

Besides being just absolutely beautiful, the towels are organic as well.  They’re easy to come by too – Bed Bath and Beyond carries them, and for a decent price too. I may need to stock up on a few pretty towels during my upcoming trip to Chicago

I love this idea – taking vintage tea cups and making a clock!  I’m not sure if I love it enough to do it myself, though.  We’ve got a random assortment of tea cups with no real significance to them, and I bet a trip to an antique store and Good Will would give me enough to make my own DIY clock.  But where in the world would I put it??? Would it be totally weird to put in a bedroom?

What do you think?  Cute, or too much?

Taken from Sweet paul: time for tea? via How About Orange

I’m not really big into holiday decorating for anything other than seasonal and Christmas.  I don’t do Halloween or Fourth of July, and I definitely don’t do Valentines Day.  Say what you want, but I just don’t like all the kitschy stuff related to those “holidays”.

But I did find a few cute ideas online this week, so I’m going to share them with you – most of these are quick and easy – and some are even tasty!  Enjoy!

From The Inspired Room

From Minnesota Mom

Homemade fudge packaged in cute boxes with DIY labels – from Censational Girl

Paper heart garland from How About Orange

We have a plate rail in our dining room.

A photo from our final walk through before purchasing our house.

I consistently struggle with what to do with the plate rail.  Should I put plates on it? Pictures? Nothing?  It goes around the entire room like a skinny stripe at eye level, and while it looks pretty, it makes decorating awkward.   Furniture needs to be just the right height, otherwise it looks incredibly misplaced.

Currently, I have a smattering of odds and ends on the plate rail: some tea cups and saucers around one side of the room, which is way more country than my typical style, and a little collection of photos and a pretty platter on the other side above the piano.

But when I saw this post over at Little Green Notebook, I wondered if it might offer some inspiration:

Picture rails are hung a bit higher (usually near the top of the wall) than plate rails, and then the pictures are hung from the rail.  The picture above shows a slightly lower picture rail, almost the same height as my plate rail!  As soon as I saw it, I thought to myself, “Finally! something that is similar!”

I’m not sure if I would actually hang pictures from our plate rail, but I like the idea of a collection of frames at different heights.

Or, I could hang photos just above the plate rail, like in this photo.  I like how this is very clean and simple, not cluttered or fussy.

Or a more punchy dining room with a similar idea.

I think all of these options are much more interesting than the typical row of plates I’ve seen in plate rail photos online.

To me, these always look like a parade of plates or accessories.  It starts to look tacky and cluttered.

Now that I have a few more ideas and I look back at our dining room, I’m reminded (yet again!) of how much I want to paint that room!  The forrest green makes the room feel like a cave at night, and while the golden yellow is nice and cozy, we have that color in abundance elsewhere in the house.  I think it will end up being something a bit lighter – either an ivory, or a pale gray green/blue.

Question for the crowd: Do you have an architectural features in your home that have stumped you?  The plate rail has always been difficult for me, what about you?

For wanting to paint our master bedroom?

I mean, the room is freaking HUGE. (this is from when we went house hunting)

And it has the same color of paint EVERYWHERE, including the vaulted ceilings.

It’s not a bad color – a nice soft sage green.  But, it’s kinda boring and ho-hum to me.  I’d kind of like something a little bit closer to turquoise, a la my favorite two inspiration pictures:

But, it would take FOREVER to paint our room.  And I’m not sure I could convince DH to pay someone since he’d probably be more than fine keeping it the way it is.  I know it’s not a huge change, but I love the look of the slightly blue/green turquoise with the salmon/orange and white, plus all the natural colors.  Feels very soothing and calming.

Maybe some day…

Earlier last week, before this took the blog world into a mad craze, I discovered an AMAZING resource in the form of one very crafty and thrifty blog – Knocked Off Wood.

She takes popular furniture pieces, like this canopy bed from Pottery Barn…

And creates floor plans for the DIY carpentry enthusiast!  Or beginner

Her plans include more than just a picture, though.  She’s got dimensions, cut lines, recommendations for wood and finishes – she’s thought of it all!

I’d love to try making any of these that she has plans for:

A sleek book shelf that I think would look great on our second floor.

A great console table or buffet.

This cute little craft organizer that’s very customizable.

Or if you’re super advanced, try this island table!

It’s originally $5000 from Williams Sonoma, but you could build it for probably $200 (not including the granite counter, of course!)

What a great way to save money AND have a wonderful piece of furniture that you built yourself and could pass on to future family members!

Is there some piece of furniture that is way outside your budget but you’d like to take a stab at and build yourself?  Or maybe you’d just like to dream about building something?  Is it a simple table, shelf, or a more complicated entertainment system?  Do tell!