Bye Fan. Hi Chandelier

I hope you are not sick of hearing about our living room, because I'm back today to talk about it's newest addition...a chandelier!! 

The room started with a fan and while I like ceiling fans and certainly enjoy the cool breezes they create on a hot summer's day, sometimes a room just needs something a bit more special. You all have seen this space take shape over the last year, and with each layer we added the modern (ish?) inspired ceiling fan just felt more and more blah and out of place.

If you've ever worked at putting a room or a house together, you know that each element is like a piece of the puzzle and the more you force a fit, the more frustrating it can be.  I had a general idea of what I would love, but knew that I would know it when I saw it. And I was right....Last weekend we headed to Chattanooga for a little family hang-out and popped into one of my favorite spots - Southeastern Salvage, where I saw the light. A 36" wide x 36" high, 8 arm chandelier with a dusty putty finish.

Standing in the store we loved the finish and feel, but we questioned if the light was too big, specifically tall for the room. We have 10 foot ceilings in this space so we thought it would work but knew we would have to hold it up in the room to see for sure. So, the next day we did just that. Brent and his assistants got busy removing the fan...

And then he and my Dad attempted to hold the light up with all of the protective covering on it (for ease of returning if it didn't work out) so we could see if the scale felt right. Trouble was, with all of the extra wrapping around the light it did appear to hang too low. So, we bit the bullet and unwrapped the beast to get a true sense of what the light would look like in the room.

Thankfully once stripped down the height was fine and the light felt proportional and fitting for the room.

We are loving the finished look the chandelier gives to this room! 

There are two more items on this room's to-do list: Find/buy a leather chair (Brent wants recliner) and design/buy built ins for the back side of the room. Neither of these are at the tip top of our priority list so I truly feel like this will be the last time we talk about this room for a while. Insert all other rooms in our house saying a silent prayer that this is true.


All photos are my own. 

Chit-Chat ((feb 17'))

Every now and then I thought we could break up the normal design/house related posts of 2017 with a little chit-chat about nothing and everything. Sound good? Ok, great, let's start.

I found eucalyptus at Trader Joes and I'm addicted.

Not only does it smell amazing but each bundle is only $2.99 and has been lasting over 2 weeks with some water in the vase! You may have noticed some eucalyptus on my coffee table in this blog post and on the center piece of my breakfast table in this Instagram photo.

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Photo from Jack & Ella Paper

A few weeks ago I ordered this grocery list and now I actually look forward to meal planning and grocery shopping!
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I love ramen.

I've always loved the packs of ramen you get in the grocery store (terrible for you I know...) but after visiting Japan a few years ago my love for ramen went to the next level. Lucky for me, Brent stumbled upon Hajime - Homemade Noodle Bar and the ramen is SO good and reasonably priced too! Atlanta people - GO!

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s o c i a l     m e d i a     Favorites:

Instagram Design Account: namdangmitchell

Instagram Stories: LivingwithLandyn 

Blog: Chris Loves Julia

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About a month ago Brent and I started going to Passion City Church in Atlanta. Great music and relatable messages. We really like it.

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For year's I have been using NARS bronzer which is pretty pricey. But because I'm pretty makeup simple minded, I've never been brave enough to try something else. Well, lucky for me (?) I forgot my bronzer on my trip to Orlando last month and ended up borrowing bronzer from my friend Melissa. Welllllll, that bronzer I loved and guess what? It's $6.49 AND IT COMES WITH A BLUSH that I also love.


Do you guys like posts like this? Let me know......Happy Valentines Week! xoxo

Unless otherwise noted all photos are my own. 

Tree Swing

Croix is officially a walking member of society. He went from taking a few teeny tiny steps when bribed with an iPhone, to basically running! He loves to show off and practice his new skills pretty much constantly and his favorite place to do so is outside. Lucky us, winter 2017 has been pretty mild and most days it feels more like April than February, so in the afternoons you can find us in the driveway, the grass, the neighbors grass or even the street (holding my hand like the little cherub he is of course) (hahahaha).

As fun as it is to watch him explore, we thought he might enjoy a swing.  He loves to swing when we go to the playground and having his very own in our yard would be a way to take a fun break from all the walking falling and running while still enjoying the outdoors. We've talked about creating a whole play area in the side yard in the future, but in the interim a single tree swing sounded fun and charming, so we started researching and found this little swing on Etsy.

Can you even deal with the cuteness?

We installed the swing right into a magnolia branch (does it get more southern?) using these metal I-Hooks Brent picked up at Home Depot.

The swing came with everything else and the whole install process took about 5 minutes.

 Happy, charming and makes Croix laugh uncontrollably - check, check, check!

All photos are my own. 

Living Room Updates // Coffee Table + Curtains

Before Christmas we checked off 2 more boxes on the living room front, making this space one giant step closer to D O N E.

At this point I'd say it's safe to assume the other rooms in our house are definitely starting to give the living room the side eye. Ok, on to the details....Up first....

A Coffee Table

A coffee table had been high up on our priority list from day one. The coffee table we had purchased from Scott's Antique for our last house was not big enough for the new living room set-up, so we sold it on Craigslist and kept our eyes open for a new one. Trouble was, with every option we saw, we became less and less inspired. We had either seen it a thousand times or it was too sharp (Croix), fragile (couldn't use it as a table when we eat our dinner in the den for fear of spills) or it was the wrong size. We know how we live and we didn't want to invest in a piece that would feel too fancy or too dangerous or too run of the mill.  In addition, with a new tiny, mobile family member to consider now we wanted to be mindful of a selection that would be pretty, functional and safe-ish. So, as is typical right around the time we stopped talking/looking for a coffee table we found one without even trying.

One Saturday afternoon before a UGA game we ran over to Publix to grab some homemade pizza ingredients (yes, the pizza oven is up and running...more on that later....) and popped into Nadeau, a furniture store in the same strip. We were casually perusing around when we came upon the coffee table.

I'm not going to say it was definitely the donut detailing that stopped me in my tracks, but this detail didn't hurt. Not only did we like the color and details but it was the right size and the right price so we bought it, loaded it and Croix has been walking around it, knocking anything and everything off of it from that day forward.

Curtains

There are a lot of windows in our living room. Two high ones on either side of the fireplace and then an entire wall of windows/doors with glass that looks out to the patio. We love all of the natural light but in the late afternoon the sun that streams through is so intense that it makes it uncomfortable to sit in there, especially to watch TV. So, curtains have also been high up on the priority list for sometime. Trouble is, it's real hard to pick curtain fabric when you don't have much direction for the overall vibe of the space. I didn't want to commit to curtains and then box myself in to bringing the rest of the room together around them. So, we kind of sat back and let the room organically evolve and then by late Fall the room was really starting to come together with our new built-in doors + succulent wall and giant art for over the couch so I felt comfortable moving forward with curtains. 

We headed to several fabric stores and hung up our favorite swatches on the walls around the windows to see which one would be the winner. 

In true "us" fashion those swatches hung there for um....months. Ugh, yes months. BUT finally we narrowed down our favorite and our in-family seamstress  (Brent's Mom, Cindy) got busy making them for us. 

We planned to use the metal rod hardware we had used for our living room curtains at our first house, however when we went to install them we quickly figured out that wouldn't work. The span was too long and the weight of the curtains was literally pulling the brackets out of the wall! Oooooh the joys of home improvement projects. At the end of the day it was the fact that 3-4 smaller rods had to be screwed together to achieve the length we needed. We ended up finding a wood rod that is a lot more sturdy because it's broken up into only two pieces that meet in the middle.

We ended up going with a nubby rough cotton weave. The color is very similar to that of the walls so the curtains add layers of texture and interest without overwhelming the room with another statement.   The ceilings in this room are 10' high so in order accentuate the height we hung the curtains right under the crown moulding for a little drama. We also ordered enough fabric so the curtains could actually close all the way. This is especially nice in the late afternoon when that sun is pouring into the room.

Slowly but surely this 2nd house of ours is coming together. As much as I sometimes wish I could just blink and it would be all done it's pretty fun watching it take shape, layer by layer, piece by piece.

All photos are my own.