Matching Night Stands

Alan and I found the perfect matching night stands. Not only am I excited that they match each other, but they also match the bed perfectly.

We could not have matched them any better if we had tried. We found them at Target. Here are all the details on them. And actually they aren't even night stands.

That's right; Target calls them a console table. Which actually works out perfect. A lot of the other night stands we were looking at were too small in size. Because of the huge wall the bed is on, and the fact that it is a king bed, we needed something that was wider.

There is some assembly, but it only took a minute and was easier than some of the IKEA furniture we have put together.

Alan loves that he now has two draws to dump his pocket stuff, especially because I was originally talking about a night stand that had no drawers. I like that the bottom is open, but still has a shelf to decorate. Obviously, they are not styled; we just threw what we had on the old stands on these.

The room is starting to fill up. Just so that you don't forget, we started here in June after we moved in.

Since then, we upgraded the queen to a king, got the bed shipped in, and now have the night stands. We also bought a dresser about two weeks ago. We finally picked it up this past weekend and last Sunday we started stripping that white paint off. I will update on that process soon, because what a process it is! After a bottle of gel stripper and a can of spray stripper, all the paint still isn't off. Let's just say we found pink paint under the white. So we need to buy more and try again this weekend.

But until then, what do you think of the night stands? 

Loving This: Old Try

I first heard about Old Try from Design*Sponge. After reading about them there, I headed over to their website to check them out more. That is where I saw this print and about died.

A Yellow Hammer, literally. Roll Tide. You know I ordered it immediately, I was that excited. And when it came in I couldn't wait to hang it.

We picked the wall right before the living room.

The print is 13" x 20", but we bought a frame with a 12" x 18" mat from Michael's. It left the perfect amount of boarder showing on the print and all of their frames were 50% off at the time.

Even more then the print, I love the story Old Try has on the page to go along with it. They say...

"The yellowhammer is Alabama's state bird. And as an elementary school kid, I never knew this story: In the War, men of Huntsville arrived in Kentucky later than those troops who’d been fighting for weeks. The men had bright yellow on their uniforms, whereas the other Confederates’ colors had faded. The Huntsville company became known as the yellowhammers. And the state got a bird, and the University found something to rhyme with Rammer Jammer."

It is the perfect print for us. Of course, we live in Alabama, but more specifically Huntsville and we both graduated from the University of Alabama.

We even get a nice view of it from the kitchen.

I love that it is a nod to Alabama, especially the University, but not in the typical crimson and elephant kind of way. And I like that the colors are slightly different than the one online. Because it is a letterpressing, each one is unique and the ink can have variations. That just makes it that much more special.

Roll Tide.

Wedding Pictures on Display

Our entry hallway was dark and bare. So we decided to hang some wedding pictures on that big empty wall. The hallway to the right goes to the guest room, guest bath and office.

Looking the other direction into the kitchen and living room. The doorway to the right is the garage and laundry room.

Here is a better look at the wall that needed the pictures. I just picked some of my favorite pictures from the day and various frames from Walmart. They ranged in price from about $5 to $15. And arranged them on the floor until I found the layout I liked.

The nice thing was these frames came with cardboard attached to them. So instead of making templates out of paper, I just used the cardboard and taped them to the wall in the layout.

I marked where each of the nail holes was and just put the nail there for the perfect placement.

After the nails were in I took down all the cardboard.

And put the pictures up. Easy as pie.

We may eventually add more frames with wedding pictures to these. The problem is there are so many good ones, it is hard to choose. It took me forever to just narrow it down to these eight. Eight out of hundreds!

Now every time we wall by it makes us think of that day. I love it.

Photos in frames by Austin Gros and Genevieve Pierson.

Free Art

Our dining room wall art that you saw in the update is a mixture of pieces. Some are new, some were gifts, and some of them I made. One of the pieces that I made is the key art on the bottom left.

I had a bunch of these metal keys, which came on each wedding gift that someone got us from Pottery Barn. I saved all of them because they were just too cute to throw away. They even came in a few different styles.

I also had a frame from Walmart that had enough of a space in between the back and the glass to get a shadow box effect. It is not very deep, just enough for the keys to sit comfortably and not touch the glass.

So I already had the keys, the frame, the hot glue gun, and sticks, therefore this little crafty art project turned out to be FREE. I got everything together and laid out a pattern that I liked.

I should also mention that I taped a white piece of paper to the back of the frame. That is what I am gluing the keys too. The back of the frame was a tan color and you could see the hardware that was holding the flap to it, so it had to be covered. Then all it took was a little dab of glue on the back of each key to hold it to the back of the frame.

And done, it probably took me about 15 minutes to do. I bet I could have been done sooner, but I was watching Sarah 101 on HGTV while I was crafting.

I like that it has some depth instead of just another flat piece of art. And now every time we look at it we can think of all the great times we had last year with family and friends at our wedding and showers.

Dining Room Update

We have really been working hard on the dining room. We love cook and entertain and because the dining room is connected to the living room and kitchen it was important to us that we got it into order. Here is how it looks now.



Compared to how it looked in June when we moved in, we have gotten a lot done.

First, we brought in a chevron rug.

Then we put up some pictures and frames that we already had at the house.

Then we put up the same curtains that are in the living room from Target.

After we had the picture wall up, I wasn't really feeling the big picture in the middle.

That is when we ordered this amazing Manhattan Poster, so we bought a frame to get ready for it.

The frames needed a little rearranging to account for the different sized between the two. We also decided to hang the most unique wedding present that we received in with the frames.

A ram head!! That's right, a ram's head from Z Gallery.

My college roommate, Paige and her husband sent us this amazing head and we love it.

 

Seriously, how sick is that? It looks so good mixed in with all of the frames.

The wall is now all filled in with the Manhattan Poster.

Then we added four of the chairs that we got for ten dollars, bumping our seating up to six.

And we switched the brown upholstered chairs for two grey tufted ones that we had in the guest room.

The nail head trim on the back adds some more interest.

Here is how the dining room looks when you stand in the living room.

We are still debating if we want to change the color or the seat of the wood chairs. But for now, the room is working great for us. What do you think?