Shedding New Light

Remember when I said my super sweet hubby bought me an awesome Valentine's Day gift for the dining room? Well, it's all finished and ready to be revealed! But first, a little background information.

Ever since we moved to the new rental house a couple months ago, I've wanted to get a different light fixture for the dining area. This is what was there when we moved in:



A contemporary-style silver chandelier with alabaster glass shades. Or in other words, "ick." (You can see another picture of it here - second to last picture.) So I started paging through a stack of old Pottery Barn catalogs to get some inspiration and found this beauty:



Gorgeous! But expensive. So the search continued for something similar... then I saw this post from The Lettered Cottage and loved the Pottery Barn knock-off chandelier she created for only 75 bucks:



And so, this is where my hubby comes in... for Valentine's Day, he bought me the supplies I needed to make my own Pottery Barn knock-off chandelier! Woo-hoo! He sure knows the way to my heart. :) Here's the final results:







So much better than "ick." I love it! The chandelier and shades came from Lowe's, and the jute trim came from M & J Trimming. I attached the trim with a few dabs of hot glue, and ta-da! A stylish chandelier for about a quarter of the price... in yo' face, Pottery Barn!

I also made a make-shift cord cover with a bit of burlap I already had. Wrap it around the cord, and hot glue the ends.



Hot glue is my new best friend.

Look What I Found!

This is why I love T.J.Maxx. Cute stuff, cheap.

I have a mild obsession with pillows and baskets, so it's no surprise that I came home from T.J.Maxx yesterday with, you guessed it, a pillow and a basket. The big basket might be one of my favorite T.J.Maxx finds ever. I've always wanted one of these baskets from Pottery Barn:



But there was one thing holding me back from buying it... the $200 price tag. Are you kidding me?! Even if I had that kind of money, I'm not sure I could feel good about spending $200 on one basket. Insanity.

My $29.99 price tag was much more realistic. :) Chunky woven goodness.



And a new down-filled throw pillow for $16.99... fluffy striped goodness.



On a side note, it is sunny and nearly 60 degrees today. In February. In Ohio. Uh-mazing. The Lord is good!

Valentine Roses

As if my husband wasn't sweet enough for running out on a Sunday night to get groceries by himself, he felt he needed to be even more of a perfect man and come back with a dozen white roses in hand. :) How lucky am I?



He already bought me another awesome Valentine's gift (which I'll blog about later... it's for the dining room and not quite finished yet!) and apparently I have yet another gift coming tonight. Wow!



I hope all of you have a Valentine's Day (and husband!) as wonderful as mine!

Family Photos

For some reason, I've rarely incorporated family photos into my decorating in the past. I think it's due to the fact that I have a horrible habit of never getting pictures printed. They get lost in my camera card, eventually get transferred to the computer with the millions of other pictures that never got printed, and then I forget about them altogether.

But all that changes now!

Jesse and I have been married a year and 7 months, and just last week I printed wedding and engagement pictures for the first time. We have over 800 wedding photos and about 130 engagement photos so obviously I didn't print ALL of them, but just a couple handfuls of my favorites.

I love gallery walls, so I rounded up a bunch of matching wood frames and hung a collection of sepia photos of me and my man.

For a simple way to display photos without a frame, stick a few in the corners of a mirror.





Gone are the days of my camera being full - from now on, I'll start printing and enjoying instead of storing and forgetting. :)

P.S. All of our wedding and engagement photos were taken by the lovely Lisa Christine. She's awesome beyond words!

Color Spectrum

This little wall cupboard of mine has seen a lot of colors in its days!

It started out black...



Then for a short while it was white. So short of a while that I don't even have a picture of it.

Then it was mustard yellow...



And now it's a cheery shade of blue!



My favorite color by far... so far. :)

Happy weekend everyone!