With Silver Bells and Cockelshells?

Or pretty maids all in a row? I love to garden. I don't do it enough. I think this is something that I learned about myself when we moved into our first home. I didn't know how much I liked to garden. I planted 50 tulip bulbs in our front flower bed and obsessively checked and photographed their progress. I then realized, hey, I like planting things and watching them grow :-) In our new home, in San Antonio, we inherited these beautiful rose bushes. After a lesson from my Mama on how to trim and care for them, I was certain that I killed them! I had cut them back to sticks and just knew that we were going to have to dig them up and plant new ones this spring. Well, clearly Mama knew what she was talking about and they came back and more beautiful than ever. My husband and I are constantly commenting on how big the roses are getting...we're kind of nerdy about the yard like that. They are so beautiful and fragrant and I just love them! We've always kept a little herb garden. This year I am growing flat leaf parsley, cilantro, rosemary and sweet basil. Last year my basil plants were as tall as my shoulders and I pulled from them every week! It is one of my favorite herbs!

This year my husband and I have embarked on gardening vegetables. I'm not sure how this is going to turn out but so far so good. Below are our tomato plants that are doing awesome! Truthfully, we would need to plant tomato plants in our whole backyard to accommodate for how many tomatoes we eat in this household. We love 'em!

We've also planted carrots, onions, and poblano peppers.

I can't wait to see how we come out of this deal.

Speaking of gardens...

All of you Nancy Meyers enthusiasts out there...Do you obsess over the garden in It's Complicated? I do.

Sigh...maybe someday, but for now we'll see how we do with our little 4'x4' garden.

Do you enjoy gardening? What do you grow?

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My Latest Project

I've got lots going on these days, but this project has by far taken precedence! Actually, I'm not even the lead designer on this project!

This new client has, well, completely taken over.

Frank and I are so very excited to begin this new chapter in our lives. This photo is an old one, our very first photo actually. I am 16 weeks now :-) Only 4 more to go to find out if our little blessing is going to be a son or a daughter!

Our world is about to change in more ways than we can even fathom right now. We are feeling very blessed, excited, happy, scared...you name it!

Since God's design is the only perfect one, we are excited to be a part of this project and look forward to watching it come together :-)

If you think of us, say a little prayer, we would be so grateful!

Living Room Before & After

Hello my lovely readers! As promised last week, I bring you another recent living room project that I've been working on.

This home already had some groundwork laid in the form of beautiful, some antique, pieces of furniture inherited from their grandmother. Most of what we did for their transformation was update the upholstery on many of the pieces that were inherited and this, naturally, made the biggest impact in the space.
In this image below, you can see how the room looked before I was brought in. Lots of gorgeous furniture and upholstery frames in mismatched fabrics. You might remember the sofa from my sneak peek a couple of weeks ago.

In the image below you can see our updates.

We reupholstered all of the pieces in the room with bright, fresh fabrics. We added drapes to, not only, soften the hard lines of the plantation shutters, but bring a little color on to the walls. The drapes are Vintage Plumes in Birch from the DwellStudio collection for Robert Allen. The fabric is stunning!
The clients have this beautiful custom seagrass rug in the space and I wanted to soften and break up the expanse of it, which I did with a white cowhide. It is super soft under bare feet.
In this image, you can see another angle of the room.
Those little slipper chairs were so cute, they just needed a little face lift. We reupholstered those in another DwellStudio for Robert Allen fabric, Dotted Trellis in Dove.
Here is the sofa that you might remember from last week's sneak peek. The frame of the sofa is absolutely timeless, the fabric however, not so much. The sofa is by Century or Henredon, I can't remember which.

We reupholstered it in a fabulous textured fabric from Threads by Lee Jofa. I had the throw pillows done in a soft, snow leopard chenille by Waverly and a plush, high performance velvet by Robert Allen. We also had the sofa treated with a stain protectant to help maintain that beautiful white color with her little guy running around :-)


Here is a closeup of the nailhead detail on the arm. I love this detail and how the nailheads are horizontal instead of vertical, it's unique.

The sweet, little bergere chairs by the fireplace got a little update as well.

We reupholstered those in the same plush snow leopard chenille that is on the sofa pillows. It is really, really soft.

This classic lyre back desk chair received some new duds as well. Boteh Camel, also DwellStudio for Robert Allen :-)...We really liked that new collection!

Here is another detail of the great texture on the sofa, my favorite, nailheads, and the fabulous colors in the new drapery panels.

Our new fabrics gave their inherited furniture a whole new life in a happy and fresh new space.

A very sincere thank you to the Himoffs for trusting me with your home.

Your living room is beautiful!

My Art & A Fun Space

I am not a big do-it-yourselfer when it comes to work projects, around my own house yes, but not for work. This isn't because I don't feel like I can do it, I just really appreciate the quality of work from people who have perfected their craft and that is what I like to provide for my clients. This little space, however, belongs to a family member, my sister to be exact, and well, you know family gets special treatment ;-)

My sister is a hair stylist and has her own space inside of a large spa/ salon building. Because this is a leased space, we were very limited with what we could do with it and also how much she wanted to spend on it. We needed to do 2 rooms for under $500, yikes! So, that budget equals quite a bit of DIY!

My sister is young and hip and I really wanted the colors and vibe of her space to reflect that. I opted for a fresh and vibrant color scheme with trendy patterns and fabrics. The space, again, is a leased space so we weren't looking for longevity. The new design feels very Tory Burch.

I upholstered the wall, behind where she stands, in a cool, acid green greek key graphic. I then made a center panel out of orange faux leather and piped it in midnight blue grosgrain ribbon. The orange faux leather has the texture of a handbag and gives you the idea of Hermes.
I then centered a Hollywood Regency style sunburst mirror in the center. When you are in the space, this mirror and the mirror that the clients are sitting in front of are parallel to each other and produce that interesting eternity effect.
We painted the walls an intriguing high gloss midnight blue. They are sleek, inky and very now. I accented with gold touches throughout the space. The gold on the deep blue is timeless.
I painted the sides of the custom art gold.

So, that brings me to the art. I don't know why but I was inspired by this Duralee bag that is sitting in my sample closet and I thought "that would look awesome on that wall that I don't know what to do with!". Something about the colors just made me think this would be fun. With our budget, a new piece of art would have been hard to find, not impossible, but hard. I decided to just paint a canvas. I really love to paint and wish that I had time to do it more often. It is cathartic for me. My husband knows this and has always encouraged me to create more art. One Christmas he bought me all of these wonderful art supplies...paints, pastels, canvases, a wooden easel.

Using the Duralee octopus as sort of a guideline, I free-handed my interpretation on the canvas in pencil.

See all those paints below, that was part of my Christmas gift. It makes me happy.

I painted over my sketch with an inky midnight blue acrylic that looks blue in some light and black in others.

I think that it works great with the space and my sister likes that I made something for her :-) She is always asking me to paint something for her.

The panel on the back wall was a little DIY too.

I, first, drew out the pattern in AutoCAD to get the dimesions and scale accurate.

I glued the grosgrain ribbon to the faux leather.

I mitered the corners of the ribbon to get an exact 90 degree angle on the pattern and to make it look more custom.

Ta-da!

I think the space turned out fun, updated and fresh...and most importantly, we made it work with our budget.

I'll be back next week with another fun living room project.

Have a great weekend!