Dreaming

Over the weekend the husband and I went to look at a house for sale near us. It has been fully remodeled and has a 26-acre peach orchard. Never in my life have I been in a house this clean.

The kitchen and dining room was huge and open and gorgeous. Talk about a dream kitchen.







The living room had high vaulted ceilings and a floor to ceiling rock fireplace.



There was a nice size master bedroom with a huge bathroom with steam shower.





Clawfoot tub in guest bathroom.



Both sides of the hallway leading to the master had floor to (very high) ceiling bookcases.



The finished basement had an awesome "man cave" and tons of storage.



And the best part: Part of the land is along the Colorado river.



Sigh.

Hiya, hoya

Moments ago I walked past Sadie's food bowl and noticed a sweet smell. "That's odd," I thought.

Then I realized that my hoya, which is sitting on the shelf above her bowl, is blooming. Sadie likes to think that she's the most neglected thing around here since Lachlan arrived, but in reality my houseplants are the ones at the bottom of the totem pole. And this poor hoya has had more than its fair share of neglect. It's been moved around from place to place, with no permanent home, since 2008. Yet it hangs in there and every now and then it throws a guilt trip my way by producing a mass of the most gorgeous little flowers with the sweetest smell.



Every time I see these flowers I marvel at how gorgeous they are and how they look like they're made of plastic because they're so perfect.



And then I feel bad for not watering the plant for the last month...

Still waiting on Goober

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a good New Year's eve/day. Ours was good but low key. We're just sitting around waiting for Goober. I guess s/he didn't like the ETA of December 30, so now we're just trying to pass the time until the big arrival.

In the meantime, the husband got the last of the artwork up in the baby's room, and I finished organizing as much as I can without having a clue of what I'll need and where I need it...



I still need to add two significant pieces of art to the room, but they aren't framed yet so I may have to shuffle things a bit down the road.

But for now the room is clean and comfortable, and the relative lack of clutter is so nice and calming.



I love my reclining glider. It is so comfortable, and it is positioned so that I have a great view out of the window of our pasture and the cliffs in the distance.



In fact, it's so nice that I think the husband and I might have to arm wrestle for it.

Belgian oak sideboard

About two weeks ago, I told you I recently acquired two awesome pieces of furniture from an antique store outside of Denver. The first was this old cart that was used in a Thomasville furniture factory to move pieces of furniture from one spot to the next in the assembly line.

This is the other piece. It's a 1920ish oak sideboard from Belgium, and I am thrilled to pieces to have it in my life. After we remodeled our house, I had this long wall right near the front door. I've looked for more than a year for an antique something of the right size to put on this wall. I had finally given up when I came across this awesome find.



It is about 4 feet high and 8 feet long and is the perfect combination of storage space for kitchen items I don't use very much, and also for many of the cast iron pots I have that are weighing heavily on the rolling shelves in my regular kitchen cabinets. The top of it provides the perfect surface for displaying our many "things" and also a nice landing spot for mail, keys, and cell phones. 



I love that it's so simple, with just a bit of detail on the arch of the doors. I particularly love the key to the cabinets! And I am still giddy over the amazingly good deal I got on it. It turns out that they have a new shipment of goodies coming in next month and they were having a huge sale to clear out their existing inventory. I got this for basically the guy's cost to buy it and ship it here. I couldn't buy half of the wood to build this for the price I paid. Man, I love a good deal!!



The wood is very dry, so I'm spending a lot of time oiling it before I break out all my knick knacks for the top. And now I'm plotting what to do for the space on the wall above it. I have a ton of paintings and other notable items I've collected from my travels, and the other day I got the perfect idea of what to do to display them. The brilliant Linda over at Lime in the Coconut installed gallery shelves in her house to display all her goodies, and I'm thinking I might just steal that idea! I'm hoping to talk the husband into building some shelves out of the antique oak boards we have left over from our project on the front porch.

Reunited. And it feels so good.

At long last, my favorite purchase of all time is back in my life. It's an old tribal runner I bought from Rahim at Nomad on one of my trips to Kabul. I loved it then and I love it now because the colors remind me of my Simy.



After almost 4 years stored in mothballs, it will now take its place on my side of the bed, right near where the Sadie Bug rests her little head at night.

A breath of fresh air

Thank goodness we have some fairly warm days ahead in the weather forecast. This house could really use a breath of fresh air, and I can't wait to open up all the windows and get some clean spring air in here.

This time of year I think all houses start to get a bit of a funk about them after being closed up all winter. But when you add a flock of chickens to the mix, things get pretty funkified! I finally had to move the girls to our bathroom so that I could close the door and leave the exhaust fan running. Now when I ask Sadie, "Where are the baby chicks?" she goes roaring back to our bathroom and bonks her nose on the door!

I've always loved the idea of a house with a huge wall of glass that can be opened on a nice spring day to let the outdoors in. This house by Thomas de Cruz Architects and Designers, found via Good Measure, hits the nail on the head, I think!

Factory 20

I almost fell off my chair this morning when I discovered Factory 20 via a post at Hello!Lucky.

Here is just a very small sampling of the items I am obsessed with. (Can you tell I love items for storage??)















I think that library two-sided bookcase table above is my favorite! So simple, but so functional.

Also, I had a request for directions on how to make the seed pots I posted yesterday, so I'll be posting a tutorial tomorrow. I had planned to do it today but I need to take a few more pictures in the good light this afternoon.

New to follow

I'm already behind on all the blogs I follow, and now I've come across several more to add to my list!

First up is mossière, a photo blog of pure eye candy (in a style that is right up my alley!) by Alyson from Unruly Things. She has a growing collection of gorgeous photos in what she calls her scrapbook for scientific/industrial inspiration, including these great pics.

And then Times Online (from the UK) had to go and publish a list of the 50 best design blogs in the world. Many of those listed are already at home in my google reader, but there are so many new ones I'll have to check out. If you're looking for some new/fun/inspiring blogs to follow, here's a good list to start with.

Bathroom remodel

Whoa. I'm really impressed by this bathroom remodel featured over at Design*Sponge! It makes me want to get back to work on my own bathroom remodel. If only I could finish all my Christmas shopping and present wrapping and cookie baking...

House smut: Whitmore Farm

Location: Whitmore farm, Emmitsburg, Maryland
Found: Renovation Style Summer 2009, via Whitmore farm, via a hot tip from a friend.

House smut preview

I love looking at photos of stunning houses. But man, oh man. I am an absolute sucker for stunning houses that come with good "before" photos! If you are, too, then I think you'll especially enjoy this week's House Smut feature: a renovated log cabin that was built in 1764. And if you can't wait until Friday for the full feature, here's a small sneak preview.

Tune in on Friday for more photos of the amazing transformation of this old cabin.

House smut

For the past few months, I've been collecting photos of some of the most dazzling houses. It started as a simple quest to collect ideas for my current house, as well as the design of a future home we may build, but it quickly turned into a library of photos that's bursting at the seams.



I've collected photos of a lot of great houses, so I'm introducing a new feature here at the blog. I'll call it House Smut. 



House smut posts will be pure eye-candy for all you discerning house enthusiasts out there. I'll put the spotlight where it belongs--on the houses--with no text to distract you other than the important information such as the location and architect (when I can find this information) as well as the original source where I came across the images (if applicable).



There will be a mix of exterior and interior photos. Sometimes I may just do a "themed" post, such as great staircases, fabulous bathrooms, or clever storage solutions. I hope you can find ideas and inspiration from these houses.



I'll be posting house smut every Friday. As if that didn't already make Friday your favorite day of the week, you should know that I'll be posting even more eye candy on Fridays. Details on that tomorrow.

Wood box shelves

My entire life these days is consumed by saltillo tile. But in the back of my mind I'm still kicking around ideas for storage, especially for the master bathroom and my office/studio. I thought about using old wood boxes--my local antique mall has a ton of them--mounted on the wall, but I wasn't sure if that was too far out in left field to be practical.

And then I came across this photo and decided maybe I'm not that weird.



Photo by Sara Remington, found via Style Me Pretty.

Geninne's studio

Wowzers. I'm totally inspired by Geninne's art studio in Mexico. (And also inspired by the fact that she and her husband built their house and live 9,842 feet above sea level!)




Found via Apartment Therapy and Sophie Munns blog.
See Geninne's blog for more inspiration.

Zeke Leonard bed

I discovered Zeke Leonard over at Design Sponge.

I am infatuated with his work, which uses reclaimed wood objects and things he finds in dumpsters. This bed is one of my favorite pieces, although some of his benches and lighting fixtures are pretty spectacular, too.



The bed is made of reclaimed red oak that had been church pews, and the headboard is an oak branch found in the woods. The legs of the bed and the reading lamp are made from reclaimed oak from hand-hewn square beams that were made more than a century ago. Love it.

Iron tool chest

I really like the idea of using salvaged items in new ways. This old iron tool chest would make a great little table at the end of a couch, or could even be used as a nightstand.



From Bobo Intriguing Objects.

Big Fork, Montana guest house

The outdoor "living room" at this Montana guest house is bigger than the indoor living room. That's my kind of place. The house was built using a lot of reclaimed material.



I could sit for hours on this porch.



Followed by hours on this daybed by the fireplace.



And here's a fun detail that shows how you can salvage just about anything. These wood baseboards come from an old corral. Anyone who's ever had a horse will recognize the half moon shapes in the top of the wood caused by a bored horse spending hours chewing on the boards. What a clever use of them!

From Mountain Living.