Halloween Scene 2018

Ahhh, this is one of my favorite weeks of the year! Halloween on Wednesday, my birthday on Friday and what I personally deem the start of the holiday season!

Oh yeah, oh yeah...so exciting! 

To kick off this fun week I thought I'd show you guys the Halloween Scene we have going on around here. 

With every holiday we like to build on the decor we already have to keep things fresh (and to keep from spending a zillion dollars) so this year we added a life-size skeleton to the front porch. 

We also added these cute black and white speckled pumpkins (Target!!) + this marble pumpkin I picked up last year to the mix. 

My Mom joked the skulls on and around my fireplace were dinner guests who experienced my cooking. Ha! 

The rat is a new add this year. Picked him up at the Pumpkin Patch. Love him.

Tonight we officially carved our jack-o-lantern and this is Croix's fake smile he gave so he could get through this whole picture thing and run across the street and see the ghost hanging from our neighbors tree. Ha!

Croix has really loved the Halloween season this year! He notices the decor everywhere we go...."Look, look...Halloween!". We can't wait to get him all dressed up in a few nights. He's going to be so excited to go around the neighborhood with his buddies! 

All photos are my own. 

Arnold Estates - Model Home Styling Gig

If you follow me on Instagram you know I had the opportunity to stage a model home a few weeks ago for a local home builder - Heatherland Homes. This was my first time tackling this type of job and I have to say it was really fun!

If you've ever bought or sold a house you know how important styling can be. A new house, while fresh and clean can come across cold and honestly overwhelming for a lot people, so styling out a few rooms is a great way to help people visualize what the house could look and feel like if lived in. Obviously, staging a whole house would be a bit overkill, so the game plan here was to focus on the main areas - Foyer, Dining Room, Kitchen/Butler's Pantry/Breakfast Room, Living Room and Master Bedroom and Bathroom. We had a budget to work within and we pretty much knocked out the majority of the selections/ordering/buying in one weekend. It was a whirlwind, but I love how everything turned out.

Let me show you around.....

Foyer:

The foyer is two story, so we wanted to create a dramatic moment with a center table and big centerpiece as you enter the home. It's a big space so we added a cute little bench we found on Craigslist at the end of the wall by the garage entry. A few hooks + baskets later and this space felt welcoming and happy.

Dining Room:

As you continue on through the house the dining room is on the right, with the Butler's Pantry beyond, separating the Kitchen from the Dining Room. We wanted the Dining Room to feel a bit more formal and the natural light that floods in is the icing on the cake. 

Kitchen, Breakfast Room and Living Room:

It's an open floor plan so you can see right into the living room/breakfast room from the kitchen. For anyone with kids you know how ideal this is! 

The Living Room feels so cozy and happy - one of my favorites for sure! I love the vertical planking the builder incorporated on the fireplace wall. It adds a nice layer of interest and the perfect background to build around with furnishings and decor. 

The natural light is so great in this space, I had to show all the angles. I think the layered rug look really works for this big room. I love the additional interest and texture it adds. Instant warmth!

The breakfast space is the perfect size for a small table and chairs. 

The kitchen has good bones - light colored cabinets are always a great palette to start with. We added some pretty bar stools and accessories to give the space a bit more personality. 

Master Bedroom:

Love that the master bedroom has it's own fireplace!

Master Bathroom:

The master bath is another space that has nice coloring and good light. We added some fuzzy rugs and this cute little bench moment by the tub. 

 The planning, buying, staging and photographing was a lot of work and you better believe my side-kicks Brent and Croix were along for the whole ride. Not sure why Croix is shirtless here, but by the end of the weekend I'm pretty sure he thought this was his new house, haha! 

The house is in McDonough, GA and worth a tour if you are in the market! This was a fun opportunity and one that I hope to get the chance to do again!

All photos are my own. 

Pool Update - The Selections

How appropriate, that as summer slips farther and farther away our pool gets closer and closer to the finish line? Good thing that sucker is going to be heated! Ha! Oh, well such is life and in all seriousness we are just excited to  have a beautiful, finished back-yard, no matter the season.

Things have come a long way since the big hole you saw last post. The guys finished up the plumbing/electrical and then the shockcrete was installed which really made things start feeling real.

The shockcrete made it easy to see the all of the details come to life that we had envisioned - things like the tanning deck, the stairs, the bench across the back of the pool, the little columns at the entry to the pool and even the slots where the waterfalls would come through into the pool were easy to spot once this layer was installed.

A few weeks ago the stone work began and it was literally like Christmas morning every time we came home from work to see all of the progress that was made!

As for the selections we went with a gray flagstone, some of which is installed "on face" where you can see the whole rock and some is stacked. For the tile that lines the pool at the water-line we went with a dark gray slate to blend in as seamlessly as possible with the flagstone and the pool. The big decision we had to make was the specific color we wanted for our Pebbletec - which is the surface for the interior walls of the pool aka liner. There are a ton of options for the Pebbletec and it's a pretty important decisions because it determines the color of the water.

Categorize this under the things you don't even know you care about, but once we knew there were options we realized we had opinions on the matter! In the intro post I mentioned we wanted our backyard to have an English garden lagoon vibe, so we knew we wanted to the water to have more green undertones as opposed to aqua. So, we decided to go with Emerald Bay:

Photo from PebbleTec Website

Pebbletec has an app where you can see what color your water will be at specific depths.  Our pool will be 3 1/2'  all the way across (with the exception of the tanning deck) so it was great to see the color we would be seeing.

Photo from Pebbletec Website. 

The Pebbletec hasn't been installed yet, but we are excited to see it all come together! Still on the agenda to figure out...the fence. At this point trying to figure out what will look best with a Christmas wreath hanging on it. :)

All photos are my own.