All Around The House

When I started this blog, I did it with the intention that it would be a place to document the activities of my family.  However, I realized that my family does not do something blog-worthy every day.  Instead of just blogging here and there, I thought it would also be kind of fun to just share things about myself with you and hopefully have the opportunity to learn more about my friends that read this as well.  I'll be blogging about different things like my own personal top ten lists, recipes, hobbies, etc.  Please feel free to share your favorites things, thoughts,  and opinions with me as well.  

I don't know about you but I love seeing how people live.  I'm the kind of person who loves to go to open houses even when I'm not looking to buy a house, just to get ideas for decorating.  I LOVE going to the Vesta Home Show each year.  When we go for walks in our neighborhood or are driving down the street, I like when people have their windows open so you can get a little peek into the way they live.  Basically, I guess I am like a harmless, non-creepy voyeur.  :)

I thought I would give you a peek of some of the items around my house that I just especially like.  I am also going to attach a Linky at the bottom of my post.  If you would like to show us ALL AROUND YOUR HOUSE, just use the Linky to do so.  

I love springtime and when the weather starts to warm up and people start going outside again.  I also love when my flowers start to bloom.  Now I definitely don't have a green thumb but every year we landscape and then I try to keep the plants alive.  I was excited to get home from church today to find this in our front yard:

I am so excited!  I did not kill our rose bushes!  Blooms are about to pop open everywhere!  Another one of my favorite places at my house is on our front porch

I love to sit out here when the sun is going down with a glass of wine or a book and just relax and enjoy the nice weather.  

Now this is random, but I love the light fixture we put in our entry way.  

I like it because it doesn't resemble a boob.  Have you ever noticed that it seems like every single hallway light fixture looks like a giant boob?  I have and it drives me CRAZY!  This is the least boob like fixture I have seen so I snapped it up at Lowe's and my husband and our handy friend Doug put it up for me.  

This frame also hangs in our entry way.  I wanted a big frame that would take up most of the wall and I found this one at one of my favorite stores, Classic Trends, in Arlington.  I ordered it with custom colors and they had it ready for me a few weeks later.  It holds a 16X20 pic so I took a few of my favorite shots of Ava to Sam's Club and had them blown up.  I believe it only cost between $5-6 a print.  Not bad, huh?

I believe this is my favorite wall in the our house.  It is in our living room.

My friend Jenny helped me pick out and arrange a variety of frames in different sizes and prints on our mantle.  I ordered the vinyl lettering for over the mantle from rightonthewall.com and then Kevin, my mom, and I applied it to the wall.  Mom also helped me hang the curtains which was a pain in the butt.  The pillows on our chaise are from Kirkland's with the exception of the monogrammed one which I had done at Sassafras in Arlington.  

Two of my favorite things in my kitchen are the coffeemaker Kevin got me for Christmas--LOVE IT!

and having space between my kitchen cabinets and the ceiling so that I can use that space for decorating too.

I found this antique rocking chair at The Happy Heart in Arlington and fell in love with it.  I knew I had to have it for Ava's room.  I had not yet figured out how I was going to decorate her "big girl" room yet, aside from the fact that it had to be mainly purple (Ava's favorite color at the time which she has recently changed to pink--isn't that just like a woman?!).  I ended up building her entire room around this chair.

I painted her walls a deep purple and then my mom and Kevin taped off a striped border around the top of her walls and I painted the stripes a blush pink.  You can see the border in the next pic along with some frames that I made for her wall.

Along our hallway I have simple black frames with our wedding pictures

This is Ava's art wall in her playroom.  She likes having a place where she can change out her art.  These are her current choices:

And I have an obsession with pillar candle holders.  Some of my favorites:

From the kitchen

From the living room

From our bedroom

And one of a pair of sconces that I have hanging in our bedroom.  I just really like the mosaic detail on them.

There are still quite a few changes that I need to make to our house.  I didn't show you anything from our bathrooms because I am about to start working on redecorating them.  Then I can do a before and after bath makeover blog!  

Show us what you love around your house!