Decor | DIY | Florida Living
We got a tiny taste of fall in Gainesville this weekend (as in, for a couple hours one night, the AC did not kick on), but it was enough to motivate me to decorate our front door for my favorite season. I’ve got some tips for how you can get your front entry looking festive, too!
It’s back to school, which means it’s back to piles of artwork on my kitchen counter. I love that my kids are getting their creative juices flowing at school, but it’s not feasible to save or display every handprint animal or perfect spelling test that comes home. And when one of their papers “accidentally” ends up in the garbage can hidden under last week’s half-eaten bag of spinach, they always seem to find it.
To help solve this problem, I’ll show you how I took two old wooden screens and repurposed them into kids’ artwork displays.
Whenever I’m looking to buy big ticket items for the house, I usually wait for a holiday sale to roll around. Luckily, some of the best sales are over Labor Day weekend. And, while I feel a little guilty celebrating, say Memorial Day, by shopping, I have no qualms about celebrating Labor Day by spending the fruits of my hard-earned labor!
I’ve collected some of my favorite items on sale this weekend below.
This post contains affiliate links for your shopping convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.
one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine
My husband operates a junk removal company, which has given new meaning to the phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” For the past year, his home office hasn’t been a priority as we’ve been fixing up other areas of our house. He’s been making do with two mismatched desks and a torn up chair. Then one day he came home with an old table that I thought it would make the perfect desk for his office.
So, here it is before, in all its shiny orange glory:
And, here it is after, a modern farmhouse desk!
Here’s what I did:
Among the rites of passage into adulthood is the day when your parents sell your childhood home and all the “stuff” they had been storing for you gets moved into your garage. For me, this included the obligatory boxes of photo albums and yearbooks, Cabbage Patch dolls, and notes my best friend and I wrote to each other in the 9th grade. Some things went right back into storage. But what to do about the furniture? Would my childhood bed really fit into my grown-up home?
Decorating with “old” (or antique or vintage) furniture can be tricky. There are definite pros to using hand-me-down furniture. First and foremost, it’s free. Plus, older furniture is usually made of real wood with finer craftsmanship and more character than what we see in stores today.
But what if grandma’s dining chairs just don’t fit your current design style?
Should your obligation to maintain a piece of family history outweigh the joy of seeing your home styled to your liking? I think the answer is “No.” But, you can take a cue from Tim Gunn and “make it work.”
I used a number of antique pieces in our guest room and gathered some ideas on how you can incorporate older furniture into your home in a fresh way:
I’m not too easily intimidated, but man, I sat and stared at our built-in shelves for almost three months before I put anything on them. I wanted a look that was collected yet cohesive. But where to start?
Over the years, we collect so many books, photographs, and trinkets that have meaning to us. Our first reaction can be to stick all those things on a shelf and call it a day. That can look very cluttered, though, which for a Type-A personality like me, can be anxiety-inducing. So, my strategy was to pick out some of my very favorite objects, identify what they had in common, and stick to that palette. In this post, I’ll share with you how (after almost a year) I finally won the battle of the built-ins.
Easter is almost here, and that means three of my favorite things: (1) Cadbury eggs, (2) my dad’s sauerkraut, and (3) my grandmother’s china. We’ve started hosting Easter lunch at our house, and it’s the perfect occasion to pull out my grandmother’s ivy leaf china. It was the inspiration for this vintage garden tablescape. Because this tablescape uses neutral colors, you can easily re-create it with any dinnerware.
We spent six months renovating our house – gutting the kitchen, refinishing the floors, painting every surface. But, some of the changes that had the biggest impact were actually pretty minor. If you’re not in a position to take on a big home renovation right now, I’ve compiled some small updates that will make your home feel fresh – without taking a big hit to your wallet (or your sanity).
When I was designing our kitchen, I really wanted some sort of open shelving on either side of our range hood. Although we could have ordered shelves from the cabinetmaker, I wanted something more casual (and cost-effective). So, we decided to make our own shelves.
This project did not take much time or expertise to complete. And, I’m not much of a handyman, so if I can do it (with the help of my much handier husband), then so can you!
I named this blog “Our Hammock House,” not because we have a hammock at our house (although that sounds relaxing and we really should get one), but because our house is in a hammock. So, what does that mean?
