I'm back!

So that's a little moreso what I was thinking after my fantastic evening run (worst days = best runs, amiright?), and a little less what I was think about blogging, but here I am nevertheless. I wasn't planning to post anything until I had a few projects completed - I figured you'd want to see finished projects instead of half-completed chaos - but, I got my daily email from Joss & Main and am just drooling over the Colville Studios Sale. I just had to share it with you all.

I. Want. All. Of. It. Who want's to lend me $22,514.95? No? Maybe next time...

In other news, I haven't disappeared forever, I just got really insanely busy at work and haven't had the time to sit and think of words to write to explain the things I'm working on at home. There's been a lot of updating going on and several projects started. It'll be here soon. I promise. In fact, I've got a teaser all ready to god for next week. So please, please stick around!

A Brief Intermission

I know I promised a finished guestroom post today. I had every intention of finishing up the room last night, taking some nice pictures this morning in the daylight and getting it up for all to see. I had the comforter and sheets already washed, I had a title picked out, I even picked up my sister's fancy pants camera while she was over at my mom's making a birthday cake for her boyfriend.

Big mistake.

I somehow failed to realize that a certain precious niece would be there at my mom's. Please tell me that this little one wouldn't distract you. I dare you.

I also realized that as much as I want to finish the guestroom without spending any money, that just won't be possible. I'll need to get a couple lamps and side tables. I'll need to get trim for a piece of art work. The piano bench needs recovering. All of these things take money and shopping time. Sounds like something for a Saturday afternoon!

Fortunately, since I knew I wasn't going to get the guestroom wasn't going to get finished, I went to Target on my way home and picked out curtains options for the living room. More on that next week. And hopefully the final installment of the guestroom saga. Stay tuned!

Let's Talk Layout

I'm gonna cut right to the chase here. Room #2's layout stinks. We honestly didn't even try. It used to be my music room and everything fit just fine. In fact I had a cute love seat in there and everything. Then my parents gave me a full size bed to turn it into a guest room. I got rid of the love seat and replaced it with the bed. Everything still fit fine. Then Husband moved in, we had two showers and a wedding, and we never bothered to do anything with Room #2. So here's what it looks like now:

Pretty terrible huh? The good news is that most of the item that are cluttering up the room can be moved out. Husband has a recording studio in the basement (He's just that cool.) so at least the keyboard will end up down there. The piano may end up down there someday too. The extra furniture will get Craigslisted, and the extra wedding stuff will get put away, donated, or thrown out. For now We'll be dealing with the bed, dresser, and piano. I'll add in a lamp and a night stand too. Like this:

Ah. Much better! It may still be a little tight between the bed and dresser, but the room makes much more sense this way. There will actually be room for two nightstands each with a lamp. There's also room for a floor lamp near the dresser and piano. Right now, there's only the ceiling light and an unreachable floor lamp that's not even plugged in. This room will be much cozier for guests. Husband should have an easier time getting dressed too now that his dresser is next to the closet. 

Friday I'll share the final "after" shots with the new room layout and some styling. For now, here's a preview off the new layout. And in case you missed it, check out the before here.

Identity Crisis

The room that we're going to call Room #2 for now is suffering from an identity crisis. I know because I'm suffering from one myself. I got married a couple months ago and having been going through the name changing process. So I'm still Megan Zegers, but I'm also Megan Lopez. It's complicated and confusing. So I know how room #2 must feel being not 2, but 4 things all at once.

Right now Room #2 is...

• A guest room
• Husband's dressing room
• Extra storage for paper products, furniture, and miscellaneous wedding related items
• My former music room (because I thought I'd learn to play piano and write songs. Ha!)

It's like HGTV - how they purposely make the rooms look as bad as possible. Ha!

All Room #2 needs to be is...

• A guest room
• Husband's dressing room
• Extra storage for paper products, furniture, and miscellaneous wedding related items
• My former music room

Okay, so that's still a lot of function for one small space. The way I'm going to get around this is to disguise the room as a guest room. No one even has to know that it's extra storage or my husband's dressing room. Except that I just told entire Internet world about my plan. Oh well, it's still gonna look nice.

Now since we're not sure when we'll be selling the house we don't want to spend much, if any, money on this room. It just needs to look neat and be functional. For function I'll adjust the layout. For neatness, I'll do some styling. This project will be a one week three-peater. In other words. I'll have this project done in one week and there will be three posts on it. I know, three posts in one week! Try to contain your excitement! Next up we'll talk layout.

At least one of us likes the room as is!

A Tooth Extraction & Target Excitement

The past couple of days have been eventful to say the least. If you'd like the full story, keep reading. If not feel free to skip down a few paragraphs to the pretty pictures of all the new things I'm in love with at Target.

Friday night and Saturday I had some wisdom tooth induced pain. This is nothing new, they've been coming in for years. Every few months it hurts for a couple days, I take some ibuprofen and it goes away. Exactly what I did this time too. Except this time, it didn't work. By Sunday afternoon I was taking 2 ibuprofen every 2-3 hours just to make the pain bearable. Sunday night, we went to my in-law's for dinner and a round of Cranium - we had to end the game early because I was in excruciating pain. I deep-breathed as husband drove us to Target to get something more potent.

When we got home, I took my medicine, put on my pj's and curled up on the couch with husband and an ice pack. I started to notice a growing lump on my cheek and he confirmed that my face was swollen. By the time I went to bed it looked like I was hiding a golf ball in my cheek. I woke up Monday morning in less pain, but the entire left side of my face was numb and the swelling had gotten worse. My boss let me work from home and I promised her I'd call an oral surgeon.

Not even exaggerating. It was just that bad. (Excuse the runny mascara, I was still in bed. No shame.)

I was able to get an appointment for Monday afternoon to get my tooth extracted. I've never been in the hospital, never been put under, and I was seriously nervous. I was going to try to make do with Novocaine only, but when I got there, the doctor said my tooth was too infected (hence the extreme pain and swelling) and the Novocaine wouldn't work. We tried, and it didn't work. All of a sudden 3 assistants came in to get me put under. I felt like I was being rushed into the ER for a life or death situation. Scariest part of my day, by far! Soon I woke up in a bed in a little room and they brought husband in to see me. All the built up stress finally got to me and I cried because it just felt so good to have him with me after everything.

So now here I sit, unable to work because I'm unable to drive and I look like a mess. I'm too tired from the pain killers to do much of anything (i.e. home projects that I could photograph and write about on this blog), so I've been watching HGTV and looking at pretty things for the house online.

When husband and I went to Target to get a more potent OTC pain meds on Sunday night, despite the excruciating pain I was in, I just couldn't help but check out all the gorgeous new items in their Threshold Collection. I wasn't able to spend as much time as I would have liked, so last night, I spent a little time browsing their website. Here are my fourteen favorites:

Kitchen and Bath

1. Set of 4 Red Batik Kitchen Towels

2. White Honeycomb Vase

3. Metal Stool with Wood Top

4. Large Ikat Print Shower Curtain in Blue/Green (There's a Red/Gold one in stores that we're thinking about getting.)

5. 3 Tier Acacia Serving Tray

6. 16 Piece Bridgeport Gardens Dinnerware Set

7. Stoneware Serveware Collection

Living

8. Round Hammered Metal Accent Table
9. Brass Animals (I've already been given permission to purchase these when they hit the shelves!)
10. Decorative Pillow with Red Piping
11. Washed Wood Lamp Base
12. Green Stripe Lampshade
13. Yarn Wrapped Rhino
14. Oversized Ombre Oblong Pillow in Blue
*All images from Target's website.


I love that Target is finally catching up with the Ombre and Ikat trends, as well as the wood mixed with white or metal trend. They've always been pretty on target (pun intended) colorwise, so it's nice to see that they're made these designed elements truly affordable. The line doesn't officially launch until March 17, but I've seen a lot of, if not most, of these products on the shelves of my local Target already. If you want to see more, you can go to Target.com, search "Threshold" and filter by "newest". You can also check out their Lookbook for items that may not even been available on their website yet.

So who wants to go shopping? (After I look less chimpmunk-y of course...)

Hello Handsome

A few weeks ago I welcomed a new man into my home. Nope, not my husband. This handsome piece of wood:

So how did we meet? I actually picked him up off the street. A street that happened to be right next to one of my favorite salvage shop. I hate to give out my secret, but since they get new items in stock daily, I suppose I can tell you all that Hammond Salvage is a great place to find used and vintage anything. This place is stuffed full of furniture, accessories, jewelry, dishes, fabric, art and frames, lamps, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Back to my story. When I pulled up outside the store that evening, I immediately spotted a fantastic mid-century modern style dresser on the sidewalk outside. It looked sturdy and only had a few nicks and scratches. All of the drawers worked wonderfully, and it was exactly the size we needed. It didn't have a price tag though, so I figured it must be pricey. Similar dressers I found on Craigslist were $200-$300. For example:

$365 on Craigslist

$345 on Craigslist

$295 on Craigslist

Expecting my dresser to be priced that high, I moved on and worked my way through the rest of the store. I looked at other dressers, fabric for curtains, and lamps. I still couldn't get my mind off that dresser though. On my way out, I decided to ask the owner how much she wanted for it. Drumroll please? 

It was only $45! Sold! Well not exactly. Being the married woman that I am I had to text a picture to husband who was at work. Then convince him to go look at it even though it wasn't love at first sight. (What do you mean you don't want this fresh fella in our home!?) Then remind him that it was everything we ever wanted and more, and that we'll figure out a way to get it home. Then promise him I'd clean the shoe brushes and old man underwear out of the drawers before we brought it in the house. (I only wish I was kidding. I also wish I had a picture. Hilarious.) He reluctantly approved and this baby was ours.

My parents took my dad's truck to pick it up the next evening and we spent the next day cleaning it out (very thoroughly!) and stocking it full of our DVD's and Wii games. I love that it fits our space so perfectly, that the drawers seem to be make for DVD cases, that there's a special drawer with dividers that we can use for "junk drawer" type stuff, and that I can get under it with a vacuum  I love the gold detailing, and the waved drawers are growing on me. The TV viewing height is just right and I can still hang a couple pictures above it. We also found out that it's made of solid walnut. Bonus!

Shallow top drawer with compartments to organize "junk drawer" type stuff. The tag on the left told us it was Walnut.

Plenty of DVD Storage! (We'll eventually combine our movies. Marriage is a process!)

Needs new handles!

More drawers for DVD's behind the cabinet doors.

Built in shelves for Wii games and workout DVD... for now.

Gold accent on the bottom and space to clean underneath. Ignore the cords. We'll clean those up someday. 

There are a few touch ups that need to be made. Any suggestions on how to go about doing that without sanding and re-staining the whole thing?

It's Curtains For You

Or at least we hope. Can we end this curtain search once and for all!? We, yes husband came with, have visited at least 8-10 stores on line and 3 in person and still have not found a fabric we can live with. All we want is an ikat print in teal, green, blue, with a white - not cream - background, and a hint of burnt orange or red. Is that too much to ask for? Are we being too picky?

Okay, so maybe we are. Like I mention in this post about our top 20 home interior projects, I've never had curtains in the living room. We really do need them now. Not even for privacy (although it couldn't hurt to be able to pull some drapes over the window every once in a while), but because it will soften the overall look of the room and bring the tall ceilings in a little bit. We need them for the homey cozy factor. 

When we originally started to piece together our vision for the living room, we planned on it being teal, blue and green. Colors we both love. Then somehow, even though I've never liked it before, I fell in love with red. Maybe it has something to do with this gorgeous room from Our Fifth House:

Our Fifth House

Then we found this awesome print in the Old Town neighborhood of San Diego while on our Honeymoon.

We knew it wouldn't go perfectly with our vision for a teal-ish living room potentially with red accents, but it was our favorite of the bunch and it still had some of the accent colors we were looking for. So now we're on the hunt for curtains that will go with that print and bring in all of the colors and style we love.

Since I'm not quite talented enough to design my own fabric, nor do we have the money for the 10-12 yards of this custom fabric that I'd need to sew them, we know we'll have to settle. So far we have 3 front runners.

Option #1: Crazy Zig Zags with Pink!

Waverly Panama Wave Desert Flower from Fabric.com

We like this option because it goes with our Honeymoon find the best. I'm just not sure if it might be a little too much to have on 4 windows in our main living area. There's a flowered pattern in this same color scheme but husband says it's too feminine.

Option #2: Too Tuscan?

Waverly Mayan Medallion Adobe from Fabric.com

We like this option because it has a lot of the color we like in it. Husband would probably be fine with it, but I think it may be a little too Tuscan and could complete with our Honeymoon print and the black and white rug we'll someday purchase.

Option #3: Keepin' It Classy

Braemore Tribal Find Ikat Chevron Aquamarine

This option is probably the safest. If we ever decide to change our accent color, we wouldn't need to change our curtains. It's also the fabric seen in the mood board for this room. So, I know it would still mesh well with our Honeymoon print. It's also about $15 cheaper for 12 yards than the other fabrics. (Every dollar counts!)

I guess the real dilemma here is whether we're committing to having our Honeymoon print featured in this room or if we'd rather showcase it somewhere else. What would you do?