David Hicks; My Kind of Garden

Nick normally buys all the garden books, but this weekend I bought one for my library, David Hicks; My Kind of Garden. The collection of gardens in this book is amazing. There are great garden structures, water features and overall designs. We are already using one of the images to impact our water feature. This is a great add to any library.

Upcoming Auction Purchase

While checking my local auction listings for this weekend, I found this pair of chairs. Now they will need to be reupholstered in new fabric, but they have some really great lines. Not sure what I will need to pay for them, but I think it is worth going to see if I could win. Wish me luck.

I have that Chair.

While window shopping on one of my favorite online stores Pieces Inc, I found something familiar – my dinning room chairs. I purchased a rough dinning room set early this year with four dinning room chairs. I have not done any work to my chairs yet, but it is good to see how nice they can look when cleaned up. I was going to do a sherbet color on the cushions and spray paint white. Seeing this online makes me want to work on mine this weekend.

Capri Inspiration

My friend found this hotel in Capri, and the images of the décor are absolutely beautiful. The hotel is decorated like someone’s home, not like a hotel. I love all the neutral cool colors with the mix traditional and modern elements. I am printing these off and every time I make a decorating decision, I am going to look at these ask if it would work at this hotel. Forget the views outside, I would be indoors enjoying each room.

Guest Room - pulling it together

I have been working on my mood board for the guest room and found this image from Kate Spade of exactly how I want the finished room to look and feel. I love the yellow with the gold and green. It will go nice with my Kate Spade duvet and my bamboo bed and dresser. I have a gold gilded mirror to hang between the two windows and I am going to beg my mom to let me have the club chair in her guest room to finish the main pieces of the room. Now I need to add the small punches of green and pink. I am searching for a matching pair of ginger jar lamps to use as bedside lighting and some great artwork for the walls. It looks great in my head and as I pull together all the images it is starting to look good on paper too. This is only the first draft so I have some refining left to do. I think I have too much yellow and need to find the punch of pink.

Nice Closet.

I am working on putting together my mood board for the guest room and have been looking for images that use yellow, green, and gold (hint). I found this article in the June issue of Harper’s Bazaar of Aerin Lauder’s New York apartment closet. She combined her dressing room, closet and home office into one room. I love the wallpaper and the large gold desk. I need to find either some artwork or fabric that can provide the same impact as the wallpaper for my room.

Image from Haper's Bazaar. Photographs by Anders Overgaard.

My handy work

Here is the finished dresser. We purchased drawer pulls from Restoration Hardware last night and moved it into the master bedroom. I am really proud of the final product. Also it feels good to finish a project. I only wish it was on the to do list so I had something to check off.

Weekend Project - Nick

While I have been working on the dresser, Nick has been planting our side yard. We have a deal, I get to decorate the inside to my tastes and he gets to landscape outside to his tastes. Both of us are very opinionated so the deal does not always work, but this side yard is all Nick’s work and vision. He has about 60% of the work done and so far it looks great. Before, this area was a muddy mess so I am sure all the neighbors are happy to see some plants. The final element to the side will be a white fence to enclose the yard, but that will be a couple’s decision and design.

Weekend Project - Dresser

I love the weekend for the beautiful weather and the time to work on projects. This weekend I repaired a dresser I purchased last year and was using in our guest room. I started the repairs last summer with replacing the drawer pulls and painting it white (it was burnt pink before). Well, I did not do quality work before, so I sanded, filled dents and painted it a semi-gloss white. Later today we are going to get some new drawer pulls and move into the master bedroom.

I think I mentioned before that I like faux bamboo furniture. The white dresser is exhibit A, and this is exhibit B, the same dress in black. It is a sickness. Notice the chairs.

The Viceroy

I loved our hotel room at the Viceroy. I took more photos of our room than I did at the beach. Oh well. The bathroom was the best with floor to ceiling carrera marble. I would stay there again in a heartbeat, but ask for a pool view because with the beach view the road is really loud.

How I met Kelly

While going through my tare to find images for the guest room mood board, I found these images of Kelly Wearstler's work in House Beautiful 2001. This article was the first time I read about Kelly and instantly fell in love with her work. The article is about her office in a LA Spanish-style bungalow. The interior in a little more restrained than what is in Domicilium Decoratus, but you can see all her classic touches. Tomorrow I will post our Viceroy hotel room for some more Kelly inspiration.

PS - I should go through my tear more often, who knows what else I could find.

Focus

Decor8’s mood board contest has given me the idea on how I can focus my decorating projects (and that long to do list). I need to make mood boards. I have a very well organized file box of tear images and a library of major design magazines since 2000 so ideas are not the problem. It is aligning all the ideas into a cohesive room, which I think the mood boards will help me accomplish. I will start with the guest room since I think I can do all the work in that room without Nick’s help since he is focused on the yard for the next few weeks. I will post my board once I have a first round created.
Image is from Flicker (not a contestant for the Decor8 contest).

The To Do List

Today while Nick was weeding the beds and I was getting sun, we created a to do list of projects for the house and yard. It is six pages long! We made very little progress the last six months with the wedding, but I had no idea we had so much more work to do until we sat down it wrote it all down. There is a lot of work a head of us!!
Image is of the Russell & Hazel To Do Post-it note collection from SeeJaneWork.com. I think I will be using a few of these over the summer.

The Library at the Viceroy

The library at the Viceroy was my favorite room. I have been drawn to yellow all year, and this room uses the perfect shade of yellow for the walls, curtains and upholstery. In photos the room looks a lot larger than what it really is. It is more like a small lounge off of the larger green and grey foyer, restaurant and salon. I wish we could have spent more time in this room, but it was reserved for most of our stay and I was only able to sneek a peak when we were leaving.