Decor
DIY
Lifestyle
5. Show off that Palm Springs style with bright colors and/or cabana stripes. If there's any one thing you can do to make your back yard feel the vibe, it's by simply adding at least one of these two things. I mean, have you seen pictures of The Saguaro? It's full of color! Sunny yellow, aqua blue, hot pepper red, citrus orange, even hot pink...any crisp, saturated, strong hue will do. If you're afraid of going too far with color, consider adding in a few pops of color with throw pillows. Cabana striped towels or even outdoor curtains are also an inexpensive way to add all of the vacation feels. I like the ones shown below from Society 6.
6 Ways to Make Your Backyard Feel Like a Palm Springs Resort
It's no secret that I love Palm Springs. To me it's the ultimate luxury vacation full of warm sunshine, beautiful swimming pools, amazing mid century architecture everywhere you turn, and an old Hollywood vibe. I've only been there one time, but it's my goal to visit often and to stay in as many swanky hotels, motels, and airBNB's as possible. The Parker, Ingleside Inn, Monkey Tree, Avalon, Dive, and Colony Palms Hotels are all on my dream boutique hotels bucket list. Since we definitely aren't going this year and summer is fast approaching, I figured I would bring PS to us in the form of a backyard makeover. We've needed some new items for awhile so this year it's time to invest. I'm longing to make our backyard feel as luxurious as possible, so I've ordered a few things and we're working on some updates to our little yard. Stay tuned for how it all comes together. In the meantime, here's a preview of how I'm making our space feel like a Palm Springs resort and how you can, too.
Photo care of www.loveandloathingLA.com
1. Get a cute patio umbrella with scalloped/Greek key style edging. Every high end resort in Palm Springs has a pool and while we can't add a big hotel pool to our backyard, we can certainly add the poolside vibe that automatically makes you feel like you're on vacation. A midcentury resort style umbrella like this one is just what it takes to do so. The one I've picked out is from Overstock, but there are many places that sell gorgeous umbrellas for all sorts of budgets these days. World Market, Target, Overstock, and Joss & Main are just a few that have a wide variety to choose from.
1. World Market Umbrella 2. World Market Umbrella 3. Joss & Main Umbrella 4. Target Umbrella 5. Target Umbrella
2. Add a sophisticated lounge chair (or more!) to go under your pretty umbrella. There's more than one way to recline in your backyard, but a lounge chair is definitely the best way to feel like you're actually by the pool, even when there's no pool in sight. We already have one that just needs a good sanding and a new coat of stain, but you might like one of these:
1. Joss & Main Lounger 2. Target Lounger 3. Wayfair Lounger 4. Joss & Main Lounger 5. Wayfair Lounger
3. Congregate around a fire pit with your family and friends, roast some marshmallows, and sip on a cocktail. I fell in love at first sight with this firepit from Wayfair. It's fueled by propane, which is better than your standard wood burning fire pit if you live close to your neighbors and want to avoid inundating them with unwanted smoke and campfire smells. Don't forget to include a seating area around the fire pit in order to promote extra relaxation for your guests. I picked out these fun retro web chairs from Target for now because they are what my budget currently allows for and they are even cuter in person.
1. Wayfair Propane Fire Pit Table 2. Target Project 62 Propane Fire Pit 3. Target Project 62 Wood Burning Fire Pit
Yep, another view of The Parker, what can I say?
4. Add a hammock for hanging out on a lazy afternoon. Whether you add it to a sunny corner or a spot in the shade, just make sure it's a bit out of the way from the normal hub bub of the space to allow for peaceful napping. I love the macrame bohemian style hammocks, but my husband has been wanting one that has some cushy padding. This striped one from Amazon does and it's also got a matching pillow that comes with it, although I'm sure I'll want to style it myself with something a little more interesting. I love, love, love this macrame one from Etsy, though.
5. Show off that Palm Springs style with bright colors and/or cabana stripes. If there's any one thing you can do to make your back yard feel the vibe, it's by simply adding at least one of these two things. I mean, have you seen pictures of The Saguaro? It's full of color! Sunny yellow, aqua blue, hot pepper red, citrus orange, even hot pink...any crisp, saturated, strong hue will do. If you're afraid of going too far with color, consider adding in a few pops of color with throw pillows. Cabana striped towels or even outdoor curtains are also an inexpensive way to add all of the vacation feels. I like the ones shown below from Society 6.
Also, the flowers you plant, either in beautiful planters or directly in your garden, can provide that strong pop of color. In Palm Springs, you see a lot of beautiful hot pink Bougainvillea flowering everywhere. If your area of the country is not suitable for Bougainvillea specifically, you can definitely replicate the feeling with a different variety of flowers in the same color family. Such varieties as impatiens, geraniums, and azaleas are good options for where I live in the Pacific Northwest. Find out which flowers work best in your neck of the woods.
6. Add a bit of bohemian flavor with rattan. Boho and midcentury modern go hand in hand in Palm Springs, so if you're really looking to add this kind of resort style to your own little backyard oasis, you might like to complement your outdoor furnishings with a little rattan. We will be doing so in the form of an egg chair that my in-laws gifted us with last year. There are plenty of rattan options out there as far as outdoor furniture goes, though. Here are a few really cute ones.
Now let's put it all together. Are you ready to see what I've done for our home? Stay tuned for a peak into our outdoor oasis coming soon!
Decor
DIY
5 Ways to Make a Tiny Room Feel Bigger & Tre's Teen Bedroom Makeover Pt. 2
And we're back with Part 2 of Tre's bedroom makeover and pretty excited about the final result! In fact, my husband and I might even be a little bit jealous that it's not our room. If you need a review of Part 1 of the makeover, click here.
As we touched on in Part 1, Tre's room is quite small (about 9.5' x 9.5') and seemed to become even smaller once we added a full size bed to the middle of it. We inevitably needed to come up with some solutions for furniture and storage that would not take up too much more space in the room and that would make the room feel larger. Here's five ways that we did it:
- Elevated the Ceiling. Okay, we didn't literally elevate the ceiling, but we did provide the optical illusion of a higher ceiling by doing two things. The first thing we did during Part 1 of the makeover was to install wood slats to create an accent wall. The slats provide a vertical line that draws your eye up to the ceiling and therefore makes the room seem taller. Another way we did this was by installing the window treatments as close to the ceiling as possible. The actual top of the window is about a foot lower than the ceiling, but by installing the treatment as high as possible, it both makes the window seem larger and draws your attention up creating more visual space at a higher level.
- Installed "floating" furniture directly to the wall. Once we had the slats installed, we created a wall unit of sorts by installing a floating desk, shelves, and a nightstand directly to the wall. I'm so lucky to have a dad that can build anything so he helped us out with the construction. He always does an amazing job and goes above and beyond what I expect him to do. Thanks, Dad! The desk, shelves, and nightstand are all 2' long. It seems small for a desk, but Tre usually does most of his work for school on his laptop so he really doesn't need much more room than that. It should work well for him for now. Having the furniture installed directly to the wall keeps it off the floor and therefore allows more space for travelling around the room.
- Eliminated traditional bedroom furniture that he no longer needed and put it in unconventional places. As I mentioned in Part 1, we purchased this bed from Ikea, which was a good fit for this room because it has drawers in the bottom. This made it easy to get rid of his dresser and to reduce the number of pieces taking up valuable floor space. The drawers in this bed are great because they are very large and actually provide a lot more room than his previous four-drawer tall boy dresser. Not pictured in these photos is his closet. It is a long closet with two sliding doors on it. We decided to put the closet to an unconventional use by installing a shorter bookcase that houses all of his books in one side of the closet. He also has a fish tank on top of the bookcase, which obviously requires natural light at times, so we took the door off of this side. We left the door on the other side so he has a place to hide his hanging clothes, shoes, and laundry hamper along with the inevitable mess that can happen in a closet regardless of the age of the owner 😊.
- Used baskets and containers to store all of the little stuff away. As you can see, we also kept one bookcase in the corner. Tre's got a lot of framed photos, books, and trinkets, so he needed a place to store them. I purchased a few baskets so that all of his doodads and thingamabobs could easily be corralled. In a small room, it's very important to keep small things hidden away or else the space becomes quickly cluttered.
I styled the bookcase for him when he was gone at his mom's house for a few days so I wasn't sure how he was going to feel about me adding in some of his kid stuff like his batman piggy bank and stuffed puppy that used to be his dad's when he was a kid. He hasn't mentioned it yet, so I think he's okay with it. Both the bookcase and this surfboard were in his room pre-makeover. The surfboard is actually a shelf that used to be mounted on his wall, but we thought it looked cooler standing like this on the floor.
Baskets, baskets, and more baskets are the way to keep it looking organized, even if it's not. The big basket on the floor has all of his stuffed animals in it. The baskets in his floating nightstand house extra masks, phone chargers, his wallet, etc.
- Installed wall sconces instead of table and/or floor lamps. In another effort to maximize usable space, we kept the lighting off of the desk and nightstand. Table lamps are always a given for me, but there just isn't room to put them on these valuable surfaces in this instance. The wall sconce closest to the desk performs double duty by providing reading light when he's in bed or also when he's working at his desk.
To style the room, I got him bright white new bedding to offset the dark green walls. Of course I also used a throw pillow from my shop! The "Eat, Sleep, Game, Repeat" art is Tre's favorite and he got really excited when he saw that I got it for him. He's like any other kid his age and is completely obsessed with video games.
Neil and I were originally thinking that we might surprise Tre with a flat screen TV for this wall. In the past, we've been seriously against tv's in the kids' rooms. However, we thought it would be a nice treat for him given the tough year that he's had to deal with. We quickly reassessed this idea, though, based on the amount of time he wants to spend on his tablet and decided he has plenty of screen time without adding a TV to the mix. We therefore kept this world map that he had before the makeover, which is actually quite special because one of our very good family friends gifted it to Tre when he was little and then my dad made this beautiful hanger for it.
Just to refresh our memory, this is what the room looked like before...
And this is what it looks like now...
Tre seems to be happy with it and that's all that really matters. (Our cat, Kenji, seems to approve of the room, too!) Tre's about to turn 13 in April, which oh my gosh, makes me want to cry. He's at the age now where all he wants to do is hang out in his room with the door closed. I remember being that way when I was in my teens. Hopefully he still loves us for a few years longer. Maybe making over his room will help prolong that time a little longer. 😄
If there's ever a chance that you read this, Tre, your dad and I love you so much!
See links below for sources!
Ceiling light fixture: Amazon
Wall Sconces: Amazon
Bed with Drawers: Ikea
Etsy Video Game Downloadable Prints: "Eat, Sleep, Game, Repeat" & Xbox Console
Duvet Cover: Amazon
Bed Sheets: Target
Cloth Baskets: Home Goods
Small navy blue baskets: Ikea
Green metal desk container: Ikea
Runner Rug: Target
Paint: "Retreat" by Sherwin Williams
Turkish Kilim Pillow: Velvet & Shag
Roman Shade: Select Blinds (Color is Nautical Navy)
Shelf Brackets: Amazon
Decor
Friday Favorites - 3/4/21
So we made it to Friday, folks. Let's celebrate a little bit, why don't we, with a little round up of some of my favorites from a good healthy dose of internet perusing this week.
How about these gorgeous drawer pulls? I have a few builder grade bathrooms that still have no drawer pulls at all whatsoever. They're like a blank slate just waiting to be decorated. I really don't know how I stand it. 😀 These ones by BestHardwareStore on Etsy would do just the trick.
At some point I'm inevitably going to tire of the birch tree stencil I did on the wall in our front entry. Decor ADD is the affliction I live with. This lovely art deco vibed removable wallpaper by Spoonflower would easily tide me over for a year or two.
I'm totally in love with basically all macrame wall hangings right now. This one by The Full Circle Finds has all of the vintage charm that I'm known for falling victim to.
I may or may not have just purchased this mid century inspired geometric downloadable wall print by Gigi Thomas Designs already. Stay tuned to see if it shows up in my house somewhere.
Jess Bunge, the editorial director of the Emily Henderson blog, made over her living room a couple of years ago and I just can't get over it. Click here to be inspired by her tour and perhaps drive your husband crazy with all your new ideas to decorate your own living room like I would do.
Speaking of husbands, I'm sure mine's waiting for me to come annoy him with some crazy hairbrained design schemes of my own. I've been quiet for a while. Enjoy your weekend!
Decor
DIY
Our Mid Century Modern Home Office Makeover
First of all, let me just preface this post by saying that this home office makeover took place in 2019 before COVID times. Before one to two people started working at home full time. These photos are therefore a reflection of a much calmer, cleaner, more organized space that certainly isn't quite so much any of these things right at the moment. I have to say, though, it does look really pretty in these photographs and it's nice to remember what it can be when it's at its best. 😏
So back in 2019 we embarked on the bigger than we (and by we, I mean I) realized project of replacing the builder grade flooring throughout the majority of our house. We added the really nice wood laminate we picked out to the majority of the downstairs and the upstairs hallway and left the bedrooms upstairs carpeted with flooring to be decided on and replaced at a later date. However, we quickly decided that it would be well worth it to go ahead and continue the flooring from the hallway into our home office. The picture above is the best before pic I could find. Normally this room was wall to wall furniture, office supplies, and junk. It was really hard to believe how much stuff was crammed in there until we took it all out. Anyways, we already had this nice drum light shade and the one accent wall was painted a dark grey color, which unfortunately, at times, read more purple to me than the intended grey. As these room makeovers often start for us, what better time to repaint than when the furniture is all moved out? Also, let's add new baseboards, take off the doors to the closet and add better storage, make a cool accent wall, etc.! This is why my husband loves me so much. 😆 Sometimes I just get a little carried away. To start, I created a mood board. As you can see, it says, "Take 2", which is standard for me because I normally go through a few iterations and even after the iterations, it never ends up exactly as I planned.
So we (and by we, I mean my husband) began the makeover by installing the new flooring. That's a portable a/c unit in case you are wondering. We don't have central A/C because we live in Western Washington and A/C is just not typically utilized more than a couple months a year here.
Once the flooring was installed, we moved on to the closet.
As I mentioned, we wanted to take off the closet doors and install shelving to make the room seem a bit larger and better organized. I originally wanted to paint the main accent wall in the room black, but my husband wasn't as keen on it as I was, so we compromised and I painted the closet black instead.
We purchased two open bookcases from Target to use inside the closet. Putting furniture together is just like Legos, only not quite as fun.
Since black was a no go on the main accent wall, I had another idea. My husband loves mid century plaid so what better place to add it than the home office? We ended up using this cool Spoonflower removable wallpaper. I think it definitely gives the space an old school "study" vibe. Also, check out our sexy new crisp white baseboards.
After the wallpaper came the fun part, installation and styling.
I already had this large work surface that my dad helped me build a few years ago. It's resting on Ikea shelves and is positioned in the center of the room so that my husband and I each have our own separate little desks against the wall, too. The small desks are where we have our computers situated now.
This is our little visitor's chair situation, which actually now predominantly acts as a kitty napping station. We got this floor lamp from All Modern and the mid century modern chair from Amazon. The marigold curtains are from Target.
The rug is from Rugs USA and the desk lamp is from Target. The Mad Men print is from Etsy.
I purchased this Palm Springs photo from Etsy. It was downloadable so I just had to print it and frame it. On the shelf we have this cute little record player so we can enjoy a little Frank Sinatra when the moment feels right. Ha!
All in all, we are very happy with this room. Since the pandemic started, I have logged many hours working here and it feels like just the best coziest spot in the world to tackle all of a day's work. We are very lucky to have our own little office space separate from the rest of the house and we don't take it for granted at all.
Thanks so much for stopping by and checking it out!
Decor
DIY
Tre's Teen Bedroom Makeover, Pt. 1 (a.k.a. How to Install a Modern Slat Wall, Pick Paint, & Decorate with a 12-year-old)
This is the before pic of my step son, Tre's, room. To be honest, I was quite proud of this space when I took this pic. Tre had been gone for the weekend at his mom's house so I took the opportunity to go in there and clean it up properly. You know how kids are about cleaning their rooms. They tend to clean it just enough for us to give in and be satisfied in the moment, but it's never really clean until we get our hands on it ourselves. Isn't it cute? It's his baby/little kid room and even though I'm only a step mom, it hurts my heart a little that we are moving on from it. Growing up is hard for parents, too. In actuality I think that the clean room was the catalyst for everything that happened after. Once it was cleaned, there was space to determine what was and wasn't working still. What definitely wasn't working was the twin size bed. Tre is 12 and will turn the ripe old age of 13 in April. I'm not crying, you're crying! He is super tall for his age (like 5'6" now!) and his twin bed just wasn't cutting it for him anymore. His father therefore decided it was time to clear out this tiny room and make space for the biggest bed that we could fit, a full size. Neil and Tre spent a day cleaning out the room and it became abundantly apparent that not all of the conventional furniture was going to fit in the room once the full sized bed was put in. Enter Neil's genius idea, a bed with drawers! We could now eliminate his dresser, which unfortunately is not pictured, but was situated directly across from his twin bed right beside his desk. Neil therefore made a trek to Ikea and picked up Tre's brand new teenager bed with drawers. Now I had been thinking about repainting the room for a while. It had been this blue shade since Tre was a baby and it just needed to be freshened up. What better time to paint than when all of the furniture is moved out? This is when the room makeover began to really take shape.
As you can see above, Tre picked the greyish green color Retreat by Sherwin Williams. A little advice about paint... Always get the best paint that you can afford. Because I've had bad experience with other paint brands in the past, I usually always buy the most expensive version of Sherwin Williams I can find because I can count on it and know it will go on well and will wear well. However, on my trip down to Lowes (they now have SW there) on this one fateful day, I was informed by the nice man in the paint department that another brand of paint (that I will not mention, but it starts with a V), which is less expensive, is actually made by Sherwin Williams and would therefore be just as good. It was not. I had to put up three coats before I decided that we needed another coat and that it needed to be actual Sherwin Williams paint for the final round. The other brand would just not match up between the cutting in along the edges and the roller painting and I didn't want to waste any more time with it. To the store I went (actually, I think it was Neil) to grab another gallon of paint, expensive Sherwin Williams paint this time. Apparently, I had to learn the lesson I already knew about paint quality all over again.
Also, a little advice about working with 12-year-olds. They need to be guided when making decor decisions. Tre waffled between greens and blues when asked what color he wanted his room to be. I therefore thought it would be easiest if I gave him a select few paint swatches to choose from. That way, I knew that we would both be satisfied with whatever color he chose because I actually chose it first as one of the options. I left him alone with paint swatches for a while and when he had decided, he brought me the one he wanted. By the way, it's the exact one that both my husband and I would have chosen ourselves. Win/Win! It is a good moody dark neutral. We did have some debate about whether or not to paint the whole room this color and if it would be too dark, but in the end we agreed to do it as the slat wall would end up offsetting it and toning it down a bit. In my opinion, I think sometimes it is best to just go for it because decisions like this can create the biggest impact.
Now for the fun part. Slat wall! I had seen this application done online a few times before (thank you especially to @miainteriors on IG for a good part of all that inspo) and always knew that it was something I wanted to try. Luckily Neil and Tre were on board for it. We used 2" cedar boards and just cut them to length with our chop saw (they come in 8' lengths and needed to be trimmed to fit above our baseboards on our 8' tall wall) and used a brad nail gun to attach them to the wall. We don't own a brad nail gun ourselves, but were able to borrow one from my dad. We also don't have an air compressor, so we rented one from Home Depot for $25 a day. And let me tell you, there is nothing more fun than using a brad nail gun! Needless to say, an air compressor and any kind of gun that nails things are now on our tools wish list.
One thing you should know when you are measuring the wall to determine how many slats you will need is that a 2" slat is really a 1-1/2" slat. We did not know this and did not even bother to check when we started nailing. We therefore ran out before we got to the end and Neil had to make an extra run to Home Depot to replenish our supply.
Behold, the finished slat wall!
This project goes really fast and is very satisfying. It's a good ego boost for one's home renovating soul.
Next task was painting the baseboards. I don't know who decided that the unattractive orange wood color would be a good idea when they designed this house plan, but that's what we got. Unfortunately, I should have planned a little bit better because when I got to the slat wall, I had to use a small artist's paintbrush to get between all the slats, which was a little intense for my liking. I obviously should have painted them before the installation. More lessons learned. By the way, I also feel that it would have been nice to paint the baseboards the same color as the wall. I really like this technique, but didn't think it would go over well with everyone and therefore decided that tried and true white would look nice, too.
Check out this hip new lighting. Boob light be gone! Can you believe we still had a boob light in our house? Don't worry, there's a couple more left in another room, so we won't be missing that one too much. I acquired all of these new light fixtures from Amazon.
Okay, that's it for this round. Stay tuned for the next part of the makeover where we tackle the window treatment, new bedding, and some new custom built-in furniture. It's going to be good! I will also provide a full list of links in my next post of all the accessories we used.
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