Getting Ready For Christmas

re you ready for Christmas?

I'm not even close.

Like, not even remotely. It seems like we should still have several weeks before it actually get's here!

Big Sigh

I'll get there eventually right?

I know I did a post earlier in the month of decor with Christmas colors, but I feel like I'm obviously not inspired enough yet, given my current state of denial about the Christmas season being upon us. So I present you with more Green, with some White & Red.

One thing I am ready for is to start some of my new projects! Next Month!

I cannot tell you enough times how much I love this small tile.
gorgeous, and I love the mid century modern rocking chair

why does it seem like this is a hard color to commit to and yet it's just so lovely - especially with black & white accents so yummy...


I am loving this grass green color...
I love this - my tastes tend towards less fussy furnishings, but this is just so great...
this is is like my idea of a perfect office space...oh if only my office desk looked this spare...but the rug just makes this room doesn't it?

I love the exposed painted brick! The texture makes this room so much better than it would be otherwise...
If you've seen my couch, you know why I love this...not to mention this location is such a great room with a view...
the red brick is awesome.....
again, a fancy room I really like - I think the chairs make this work for me...along with the red walls...
this is a great room, but the thing that makes it soooo nice is this ginormous painting....


LETS GET READY FOR Christmas!

Confessions

ids - for the record I still don't get the whole Twilight thing. I tried.

I tried to read the book and it bored me to tears. I tried to like the movie and it just leaves me kind of cold. (Don't hate twilight lovers...I'm not bagging on your enthusiasm...just feeling confused as to why this whole thing alludes me).

Have I become so jaded that I cannot relate in any way to this story?

So many women seem to love Twilight. And many women seem to love what's his face (the dude who plays Edward Cullen...see I even had to google his name - Robert Pattinson). And now many women seem to also love this Jacob character in the movie (and I frankly think you'd have to be dead not to be impressed with those abs). But I still just don't get it.

I'm not even a hard core Twilight hater. Not at all. There are women who hate the books and the story line who feel that it represents a terrible example for young girls. That all the story really is about is this girl who doesn't even exist or doesn't even know how to exist outside of being an object of affection for two boys who frankly, neither one of which, are much good for her. What are her personal goals and ambitions? I am at least enough of a feminist to see that this line of argument has some valid points even if I couldn't care less enough to care more. If you know what I mean.

Can I just say I find Robert what's his face kind of freaky looking? Honestly.
what is going on here? Okay pasty white skin and red lips are for vampire effect I guess so I'll disregard that for now (though I am not a big fan of that look) - but let's look at his bone structure. Honestly he looks mildly deformed. Nose weirdly too wide for the face. Bizarre jaw line - it looks like someone smashed and squished him. Smacked him flat and broadened everything out in proportion to reality and then hit him on the top of the head and slightly unnaturally shortened everything. Doesn't it? Please twilight/edward lovers tell me what it is that I am not seeing here.

This guy seems to be on a lot of girl's 'celebrity list' and I am just confused by it.

Who is on my celebrity list? These dudes:



Two photos of Brad Pitt? Well yes, please.

For YEARS I have begged my husband to confess his celebrity list to me. I can never quite get him to totally fess up, but this week I got him to at least somewhat admit that these ladies would probably be on it:


I think he thought he would get in trouble or something. For the record he has never gotten in trouble with me for saying he thought someone was attractive. I think it's normal to notice if someone is attractive or not.

Which is perhaps while I feel slightly abnormal not understanding this whole Robert Pattinson thing.

Maybe it's my age. Maybe he is just way to young for me. When I was much younger these were the guys on my list: I love this era of Andrew McCarthy. (Ducky was funny, but I did not have a crush on him...I did desperately want to BE Andy/Molly Ringwald though...if only my parents would have let me buy that Carmen Ghia I wanted)

I know, I know you're suppose to sort of hate this character in pretty in pink. What a jerk. And I do hate him. And secretly love him the entire time. Then I went on to love him in Sex Lies & Videotape and The Secretary. Delish.
Some things never change. When I was a teen, Matt Dillon always played the bad boy. And I loved him for it. I had such a debilitating crush on the young Mr. Rob Lowe - it's hard to explain what this man meant to me.

So for the record, I am perfectly capable of having a celebrity crush - but "Team Edward" or "Team Jacob"? I'll have to take a pass.

Welcome Home

elcome!


When we bought our house the door was completely white. And totally boring. It's the original 1950s door though and so I've never been really keen to change it because it has a lot of character - and it has this cool little peek door you can open to see who is outside without having to actually open the door. Shortly after we moved in I changed the house trim to green and painted the door green. A few years later I got tired of that and painted it black, along with the trim. Which I liked until this year when I got bored with it again (notice a trend...)

So this year - after briefly flirting with idea of getting a whole new door (and quickly realizing that finding something as cool as what I already have would be virtually impossible) I painted it Red. Don't you love how that turned out? I'm really digging it.

Lately I find myself doing this thing where I drive down a street and look at a house and think things like "I really wish you'd paint that part of your house gray and change the front door to red" or "I really wish that was more of a yellowy stucco instead of straight up beige...it would vastly improve the look of that 70s Mexican style architecture you have going on there" or "Wow wouldn't that 60s cut out work look awesome in bold Hermes orange against a stark white paint job on that house?" Unfortunately dear reader, these people are not actually asking for my advice. I'm afraid none of those paint jobs will probably ever take place. So I offer some general advice and possible ideas here:

In almost every case I can think of, a door painted a contrasting color to your house will just look better. And in almost every case I can think of, a bold color will really add something awesome! Even inside the house there are ways to add color to doors that make your decor more interesting.

Some great examples I've been collecting:don't you love that red against the gray and black? so modern
Okay this is blue and the house is sort of blue too, but it's such a great bold electric blue! Wouldn't this color of door look awesome on so many houses? There are a bunch of white/beige stucco homes across the street from me (the houses on this side of the street are 1950s built on the other side of the street they demo'd an orange grove and made a subdivision in the 90s) - sometimes I look at all those beige doors and wish someone would do something like this! Especially if your house was white, this would look really cool I think...

this is awesome sauce - but hard to do. But in this case, with the white siding and the turquoise shutters it looks so great. Probably best with a Victorian though. wow - what a great green. I love the high gloss on this too.

you know, the back of the door doesn't have to be the same as the front, they can be two different colors. If you have something you'd rather not paint in front of your house (or if you belong to one of those wicked home owners assoc.'s that won't let you have a personality) you could always just paint the interior.


I sincerely hope the front of this door is painted the same color as the back, because it looks amazing. Come to think of it - purple front doors on some of those houses across the street would be great too...

everything here is so neutral and burberry-esque and then along comes this lovely baby blue door to save the day...


Okay yes, this is just black. but see how great it is against the white walls and the wood floors? Normally I kind of never like rooms with gray walls, but I do like this room, which I can mainly attribute to the green french doors

doesn't yellow and gray look lovely here? This gray is more of a charcoal, which is what I ended up doing in my back yard with a red french door, I'm kind of loving the charcoal grays on exteriors with bold doors:
My first thought was to do these doors and the trim in an Orange, my family was casting a veto vote before the paint was even dry so I had to go with the red (which I ended up really liking anyway) but It think the orange could look really great with charcoal too -

See? Told ya.

I love this red sliding door in a high gloss surrounded by all this earthy wood, it adds so much great drama
okay this is bold, but I like it. In a house with a lot of vintage or just a lot of personality - this is really a great idea
Love, Love, Love! Last, but by far not least.

You never saw the house tour?

It's hard to believe but someone told me yesterday they came on to my blog looking for the house tour at Apartment Therapy and they couldn't find it. Well - I know it's here somewhere. But from here on I will have a link on the sidebar so that if someone comes to my blog looking for it they can quickly find it.

Or if you stumbled upon this blog post looking for it, the house tour is also linked HERE. Once you get there just click on the links marked "Enter House Tour".

This year we spent a lot of time, effort and energy (not to mention cash) on our back yard remodel. (and it still isn't completely finished by the way). Yesterday we had one of our Sundays where we invited people from the ward over. When I finished counting up we had more than 80 people here before the day was through. And really it is no problem having that many people over. Which is kind of amazing. I am super happy with how it has turned out so far and look forward to getting it totally finished and tweaking some of the details.


Here is the fire pit with the back door open - usually when we have a party now we just leave the front door of the house open and the back door open - you can see the fire pit all the way from the street. In the second photo the Elders are making s'mores. I now have a s'more kit in my pantry so that people can make s'mores whenever they want.



I'm looking forward to new projects in the coming year!