Thursday, March 03, 2011

Bathroom's coming along!

It took me a moment to get adjusted to this beauty with her sleek clean lines and additional height. However, it was her soft-close door and drawers that really sold me on her functionality, not to mention that she's holding my beautiful, new white onyx sink! She may look a little plain jane right now but with a nice new chrome door handle and couple of  cute knobs, I'll have her looking beautiful in no time.


You can see I've already added a few decorating touches here and there. :) It's those extra "little" touches that help make a house a home. The simple things like adding a couple extra rolls of toilet paper out in a seagrass basket.


A bottle of bottle spray, a couple of washcloths, and a few touches from the beach...


 A starfish dish becomes a soap dish...
a bar of lavender thyme soap carries you away,
if only for a moment...


even a small seashell glued to the top of a fingertip towel bar
makes a grand statement...



{sigh}

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

How I survived another Ohio winter!

Have I mentioned that as I get older, I really detest winter? The only thing that seemed to get me through this one was thoughts of this.


I cannot even begin to count the number of days I spent daydreaming, envisioning, and researching for a what was simply supposed to be only a new facelift, consisting of a fresh couple coats of paint. {Hey, if you gotta be held hostage by the weather, you may as well dream of sunny, summer days, right?}

 For several years now, I've struggled with the how and what way to decorating our home. There were way too many themed styles and choices that I like for me to simply choose just one, and then, try to stick with it. It took me a long while for me to finally figure out what it was that I desired for our older ranch style home, yet I knew I wanted something that remained a bit true to our home's history and that of the area. So, I finally deciding to go a bit "lake house-ish" casual and I'm so surprised that I'm loving the more simplified version of paring down to only a few necessities and upgrading the quality of the simple little things that make life, well, a bit nicer and a more luxurious.

The biggest difference made to the room was created simply with paint. I choose Valspar's Cincinnati Hotel Aby  {and obtained another gallon in a beautiful turquoise for quart price! I'm waiting patiently to use it somewhere in the room as an accent color.}I'm loving all the light colors! I mixed the wall color above with some of my white ceiling paint to help it blend in better, then, painted the upper walls with two coats, before priming and painting over the existing wood paneling!



{Yes! You read that right? I said "paneling". Brown, dark, man cave... bleeeeck!!! My redneck hubby's version of "wainscotting" LOL! Here are some before photos taken a few years ago when I tried my darnest to decorate around it! http://partlypaper.blogspot.com/2008/08/ced-2008-its-all-in-details.html  Lots of new changes!}

I, also, purchased a few new bath/hand towels, washcloths, chrome shower curtain hooks/bar/towel holder. New tub/shower faucets, vanity faucet, new onyx vanity top, and the materials to build a new vanity for our bath. I so enjoyed those days when we could actually get out and do a bit of shopping! Well, until it came time to get to work, LOL! Have you ever tried to re-docorate a bath in the a one bath home? A couple days later, and several times of taking the door off and putting it back on, I'm happy to say, now it can stay!

Hopefully, I'll have a new vanity and sink to show you soon! ;)