the new guest room

my goal for the guest room was to take a modern hotel room and give it an eclectic "world-traveler" vibe. the space also had to be comfortable for guests, but with low maintenance fabrics that could easily be thrown into the washing machine for cleaning.

these two pictures were my inspiration:



kristin cavallari's living room (shelterpop)

using those pictures, i came up with this mock up for the room:

here's the guest room before:

the headboard is partially moved away from the wall because
i remembered (mid move) that i needed a "before" pic.

the area between the bed and the closet

and here is the guest room after:

i like that the overall effect is simple but sophisticated. i kept the original lamp, nightstand and bookcase that were in the room. i practicallly STALKED the painting over the bed for a few months before snapping it up for a steal at a store closing sale last fall.

i've never been to paris, but i love the idea of the millions of anonymous lovers that have strolled past the eiffel tower over time.

my mtv inspiration for the room had a zebra-print coffee table/ottoman combo. of course, we didn't need a coffee table in the bedroom. but, i still wanted to bring in that look and a splash of color into the room with this pillow cover. i grouped it with a tan and chocolate lumbar pillow cover that i found on etsy. i looked long and hard for machine-washable throw pillows in styles that i liked before i settled on these two dry-clean-only versions. hopefully none of my lovely guests will decide to fall asleep and drool on them instead of using the bed pillows.

yes, i'm a little uptight about my throw pillows. my rule is that they are for decoration purposes only. you can lean on them, and prop 'em up against your back to get comfortable. but if you want to take a nap i will gladly bring you a real pillow, even if you're on the living room sofa. i think it's a manifestation of my germaphobia. i used to get so bothered when my husband would knock the throw pillows from our bed onto the floor every night and then just put them back in the morning that i finally found a permanent home for them in our bedroom sitting area.

since both of the pillow covers were a bit on the pricey side, instead of spending more money on pillow forms, i reused the square throw pillows from the original comforter set. to get them to the right sizes, i cut open one end and took out the right amount of stuffing before putting them in the new pillow covers. for the lumbar pillow, i had to cut out about half of the stuffing and then squish the rest of it into a rectangular shape.

a guest room wouldn't be complete without a mirror. this one is a target find that was $50 when i first saw it. i loved the classic look and i also really liked that it "mirrored" the arched windows from my inspiration picture. what i didn't love was that price.

after a couple months of stalking i was stoked to find the mirror on clearance for 50% off. i wanted to do a happy dance right there in the aisle. instead, i took a picture. unfortunately you won't get to photographically share in that moment since i took the picture on my dearly departed blackberry.

here is the other side of the room. the curtain rod is from ross and the glass vase is from marshalls.

here is a close up of the curtains. the curtains and headboard are ikea hacks that i talk about in more detail in this post.

every guest needs a spot to hang up their jacket/purse. so, i installed a cheap little hook from hobby lobby underneath some artwork that i picked up on clearance at a local boutique that was closing one of its locations.

it took a while to pull together, but i'm really happy with the end result. if you're ever in houston, stop on by for a visit. everything will be freshly laundered and ready for you.

have you ever stayed at a hotel whose decor you wanted to bring home? and am i the only one who is germaphobic when it comes to throw pillows? don't even get me started on hotel linens...

guest room preview

in the effort to get the house all spiffy and nice for thanksgiving company, i made a final push to finish up on a project that i first started waaaay back during labor day weekend.

i finally finished the guest room!  in my defense, i've actually been in the home stretch of this project for a while now. but with an 8 1/2 month old babylove, even the smallest of tasks is hard to tackle after an 8 hour workday and then getting home and feeding, changing and bathing her. i get exhausted just thinking about it.

here's the before shot:

yes, i could have straightened up first...

and here's a little sneak peek at some of the work that went into the room:

the guest room was the only bedroom in the house that didn't have any kind of window treatment.  i knew that i wanted some classy looking curtains in the room, but i didn't want to spend a ton of money on them. so, i created custom trimmed curtains with the help of some inexpensive ikea curtain panels and the following items.

iron on hem tape and patterned ribbon

 

the original headboard in the room is a pier 1 purchase that has been with me for a few years.  i bought the matching nightstand, side table and bookshelf with it as well.  the set was originally in the master bedroom before we moved it over to the guest room after we bought a new bedframe.  i still really love the original headboard, and hope to use it again in the future, but it didn't quite fit with my image of this room, which was of a modern, eclectic hotel.

so, we stashed it under the bed and i got to work creating a new headboard that i saw on my favorite home diy blog.  i have to admit, i was a little leery taking on this project.  i have notoriously bad luck when it comes to putting things together, but i decided to give it a try anyway.

stabilizing board

i'm guessing that the youngster's version doesn't make like a 504 boyz song anytime you touch it, but with it pushed up against the wall and held in place by the bed, hopefully no one will notice that little detail {fingers crossed}.

can't wait for y'all to see the finished room!

love this cool doorhanger that was "borrowed" from a local boutique hotel

thanks for the memories

thanksgiving has come and gone and it was a whirlwind of activity.  we hosted both sides of the family at our house for the first time.  i love the fun-ness of having people over and hanging out. but as my dear, sweet husband recently pointed out, i also have the type of personality that gets me all into a cranky frenzy when preparing to have people over.

i decided that the best way to keep myself from going over the edge was to take a logical approach and prepare for everything ahead of time.  armed with my menu and grocery list (all stored in my whiteberry) i hit wal-mart on the sunday before thanksgiving.  i picked up all of the food items that i would need and also got a much needed oil change.  gotta love multi-tasking at wally world.

at this point, i was feeling ahead and the game and like i had a handle on things.  until tuesday night, when our air conditioner decided to stop working.  normally this shouldn't be a problem in late november, except that i live in houston, tx, home of the purple sprite crazy weather.  supposedly a cold front was going to hit by turkey day, but all i could picture was 15 of our relatives sweating to death in our hot ass house and the holiday being ruined for everybody.  i had taken the wednesday before thanksgiving off from work, so after a frantic call to our home warranty service and a few fervent (shouts out to DP) prayers, i had an appointment to have someone out to the house that afternoon.

wednesday morning i dropped babylove off at daycare and went by my neighborhood heb to pick up all the drinks for thanksgiving. i was planning to make some sangria to go along with the usual sodas and waters.  even though i'm grown with a child of my own, i always feel like my mother is silently counting my glasses whenever i drink "adult beverages" around her.  with sangria, at least i could disguise it with a bunch of fruit and stick it in a nice little pitcher.

i also needed to buy one of heb's cajun seasoned turkeys, which ended up coming with a bunch of assorted items as part of the combo loco. usually, i love combo locos because not only is it fun to say "combo loco", but, everyone loves free ish. however, i REALLY hate when the items are not all grouped together in the same spot.  here i was on a Mission to get in, grab my turkey and drinks and get out, but there was no way that i was leaving free items on the table, even if the free items were an foil pan, some salad dressing, iceberg lettuce salad, store brand sodas and ice cream, frozen asparagus tips and some store brand stuffing.

so, after schlepping all over the store for my items, i was back home by noon and ready to start cooking. i had baked the cornbread for the dressing and boiled sweet potatoes for the casserole just as the a/c guy showed up.

when i tell you this guy had me SO worried that thanksgiving was gonna be a bust!  he just seemed generally out of it and unsure of himself and was puttering around for like 2 hours before he finally found the problems.  besides the freon not circulating properly, apparently some duct work blew out in the attic, so we basically had a stream of nicely chilled air blowing out through this giant hole and disappearing into our hot ass attic.  lovely.

a/c guy wasn't authorized to repair duct work, but he was nice enough to rig up a covering for the hole with a bunch of trash bags and some duct tape. very macgyver-like indeed.  needless to say, this was a bit nerve-wracking being so close to quitting time on the last business day before a national holiday.

while he was working, i cut up the fruit and combined all the ingredients for the sangria.  apparently it needs to marinate chill overnight for all of the flavors to be at their best.  once the a/c guy left, i decided to run by hobby lobby to whip up my DIY table runner.  i had drawn inspiration from a couple of blogs that i frequent, so i was feeling very creative.  i had already used metallic spray paint on some gourd vegetables and a couple of leftover halloween pumpkins to use as a centerpiece, so i found this cute gold and black fabric to match that theme.


veggies

plus spray paint



equals fabulous. eat your heart out BHG!

late in the afternoon, i was starting to second guess myself about the amount of food that i had bought.  i'm used to cooking for two, but more than that-not so much.  after some googling, i ended up making another run to heb for a second, smaller turkey (which was, of course, followed by me hunting down all of my free combo loco items).

i got back home with all my loot and then decided that i needed to make more sweet potato casserole.  at this point, my feet were hurting from standing all day.  with my well-orchestrated shopping plan in ruins, i didn't have the heart to go back to heb where the cashiers could probably recognize me on sight, so i slunk over to fiesta instead.

by wednesday night, things were back on track and i made plans to start the final food prep the next morning.

the thursday morning cooking was pretty uneventful.  i did have one last minute snafu and, yes, ANOTHER trip to heb after i discovered that the foil pans that i had baked the side dishes in were a little too big to fit into the base of my chafer set.  picture me 5 minutes before the store closed with my huge foil pan from home in one hand in the aisle literally testing out the smaller ones to make sure that they would fit. not a pretty sight.  once i got home, i then had to transfer four pans of food into the new ones, which i was still doing when guests started to arrive.

check out the spread:

front entryway

for the non-turkey eaters

winner for best repurpose of free loco salad goes to...

 i forgot to take a pic of the sangria, but trust me, it was good!  i really had a great time getting my black martha stewart on and spending time with family.  and after 3 years of marriage, a bunch of previously unused wedding presents (like our margarita pitcher set, fine china and silverware) all saw the light of day.

hope y'all had a good one!

guest room mood board

i’m a very visual person, so when i start decorating any room in the house, i always create a mood board (a technique i picked up from yhl).  before i started using mood boards, i used to send all these different e-mails to myself from each store’s website so that i could remember items that i liked.  but, since this was a little confusing and hard to keep organized before, i hate to think of what a mess it would be now on baby-limited sleep.  i would also (and still do) create shopping lists at each of the home décor store sites that i frequent. 

if a brick and mortar store exists for whatever i have chosen, i usually end up picking it up in person.  but, i actually really hate shopping and hate crowds even more, so online browsing definitely beats hoofing it around town to a million different stores in my free time.
  
for the mood boards, i use powerpoint to copy and paste pictures of the items. since i do about 99% of my home décor window shopping online, i also embed a link back to whatever websites that i found them on so that i can easily keep track of price changes and availability.

without further ado, here's the guest room mood board:

method to the madness

one of the items on my labor day weekend to-do list was renovating my guest room. i managed to get a lot done, but i have to admit that i am still not completely finished. this was my first project post-babylove, and guess what i learned? a) babies don’t like the sound of a drill b) babies don’t like competing with home decorating for mommy’s attention, or c) all of the above. if you guessed “c”, you win the prize.

thankfully, my husband was able to keep her pre-occupied for most of the day. but it was still very slow going just because i am the murphy’s law magnet when it comes to anything do-it-yourself related.

hopefully, i’ll be able to reveal the completed room this month, but until then, here’s a little peek into how the design idea for this room came into being:

i really love the décor eye candy that a nice hotel room provides. my husband and i did a lot of travelling last year, and at each place that we stayed, i tried to figure out what it was that i liked most about the rooms so that i could recreate it in our guest room back home. even though i like the basic “blank slate” that hotels provide, i knew that i also wanted to add details to personalize our space and give it a comfy feel.  i loved the casual comfort and local décor in this cabo san lucas hotel room:

the peek-a-boo window looks into the bath area

view from the other side

but i also really like the ornate feel of this room that we stayed in for a friend's wedding.
 
my guest room reno kind of stalled out for awhile as i tried to figure out what i wanted to do with the room. then, since the space was fully furnished (although not decorated the way i wanted) it got totally pushed to the backburner when i got pregnant and started planning babylove’s nursery.

i ended up deciding that i wanted the guest room to have a modern but eclectic “world traveler” vibe.  i also prowled the internets looking for ideas. things really started to gel for me when i found these two pictures:

the first picture is by designer waldo fernandez and WOW! i am in love with the colors and the contrast between the clean lines and bold geometric patterns and the livable furniture.

the second picture is kinda sucky because it’s a picture that i took with my phone while i was watching tv. i was laying in bed one night watching the the dvr'ed last episode of the hills when i literally had to rewind, then pause, put down my sleeping baby and take a picture of this lovely scene at kristin’s alleged house. even with the source list, i don’t have a major television channel bankrolling my decorating budget, so i wasn’t going to simply buy everything that she had.

for me, half the fun of recreating a room that i love is being able to find similar items and get the same look for a fraction of the price.  kinda like this, but for your home instead of your wardrobe.  hotels have deep pockets and get price breaks for buying in bulk so there’s usually no way that i’m trying to buy the exact items that they have.

so that's a little overview of how the design of this room came together.  once the room itself is together, you can see if i was able to pull it off.

labor days

for a while after i had my little one, each day was consumed by everything baby-related.  by the time i had fed, bathed, dressed, changed, fed, played with and put the baby to bed, i would look up and my entire day would be gone.  things started to get a little better….until i went back to work.  then i ended up a sleep-deprived zombie shuffling through each phase of my day until crashing in bed each evening.  five and a half months in, i’m happy to report that i’m FINALLY getting back to normal and feeling more like myself.  which means i’ve got a ton of projects planned for my new-old house that had fallen by the wayside during my baby growing/birthing.  my physical energy level still hasn’t quite caught up to my mental, so for this upcoming holiday weekend i’ve picked just a couple of projects that i hope to get done without pooping out.


redo the guest room
our guest room has come a long way.  for a good year or so after we moved in, it was that room where the door basically stayed closed because i was too embarrassed to let anyone see the stash of boxes, unopened wedding gifts and random stuff that we had in there.

get rid of some clothes
i already have a little box of clothes that i’ve been meaning to take to goodwill for the past i don’t know how long.  before i got pregnant, we had planned on doing a big overhaul of the closet in our master bedroom and i’ve been using the fact that it hasn’t happened yet as an excuse to hold onto a bunch more clothes that need to go as well.  after reading this post i might try to add a few more things to the box.

laundry
i have several piles of clean laundry lying around that i need to hang up and put away.  my husband, who has a ton of clothes, is really great at doing the laundry (read: he is great at operating the washer and dryer). from there, the clothes usually end up living on the couch or the guest room bed until he needs to wear them.  i’m a little guilty of this as well, but  in our defense, the current closet setup kind of sucks.  hopefully after the reno it will be more functional and easier to use.  in the meantime, i still need all the clean clothes off of the bed so that i can make my guest room nice and lovely for all of those nice, lovely house guests that we hardly ever have sleep over.

that shouldn’t be too much for me to get done in a three-day weekend, right?

wishful thinking