The Painting

Growing up, my parents always had an ocean painting hanging in our house. It moved from house to house, from room to room, but I always admired and loved it so much. For as long as I can remember, I've told them how I would LOVE to have it someday (little stinker).

Now that our living room plan is slowly but surely evolving (with the black doors, etc), I have flat out asked if I could have it. I know, bad kid right? At first they said no... but I sweetly begged (haha) and they said YES!

(I may be jinxing things because I don't actually have the painting yet, but we're working out how to get it to me in NC from Texas.)

I grew up thinking the painting was done by my great-grandmother but I was surprise to hear it was not because 90% of the paintings around me growing up were done by her (or my grandmother).

My great-grandma Sykes was a great painter and my parents have been giving me some of my favorite paintings of hers on milestones. I recently was given this painting for my birthday, it now hangs in my office:



This ballerina painting was given to me on our wedding day. I have always loved her and it was an awesome surprise! My great-grandmother Sykes painted a lot of still life and landscapes but also painted a lot of women, and those are my favorite.

(This is the ballet painting hung in our CA home. It now is in our master bedroom.)

Anyway, back to the original painting I was telling you about. Here is a picture of it:



It's so beautiful! The blues and grays and hints of greens, and the little birds. You just get lost in it. I love it so much. My grandmother purchase this painting in the 60's and I'm interested to hear more about it.

As you saw in the mock up, it will hang above the two black chairs in our living room.



I'll see it and admire it every single day, just like I did growing up. THANK YOU Mom & Dad, I will treasure it forever!!

Taking a $$ Break

As I'm sure everyone reading this blog knows, it's expensive to furnish/fix up/make your home feel like your home. Of course I'm biased, but I think it's a great investment - in your own happiness and (sometimes) in equity!

But sometimes you have to take a break.. and that is so me right now! I'm finishing up our master bedroom and as you know just finished the powder room and laundry room. I did all the rooms on a tight budget, but I'm ready for a break from spending.

Luckily, there are a lot of things that need to be done around the house that are pretty much free. So that's what I'll be working on during the month of July!

Here is my list:

+ Finish black doors (paint already purchased)

+ Paint New TV Stand/Dresser

+ Pinch Pleat and Hem (already purchased) Curtains for Living Room - I will be doing a tutorial on this!

+ Paint Trim: Kitchen, Staircase, Family Room, Upstairs Hallway

+ Make a painting for our family room (with already purchased canvas and paint)

+ Sew Family Room pillows (again, fabric and forms I have on hand already)

Knowing myself, I won't finish everything in the list all at once, but it will keep be busy and spending-free for a while :)

Here are some inspiration pictures I have saved up for the above projects..

Paint detail for a dresser for our TV:

[ via ]

The perfect pinch pleats from Erika:

[ via ]

I have no idea what I want to do for a painting. Something somewhat large and abstract. Perhaps inspired by....

[ siiso ]

[ sally benedict ]

All of these things won't take a lot of money, but you better believe they will be done with a lot of love! :)

Black Doors

Guess what friends. I have started a new project. (I have really bad ADD when it comes to projects around the house. I will start something and then it takes months to finish. Partly because I am blessed with a busy work schedule, but I do think ADD has something to do with it).

However, last week I did start this project and I'm so excited!! I'm in the process of painting the french doors in our living room black.

It all started way back when with this picture from Cottage Living (not sure the issue date):



In process...



If you remember I was going to paint the back of the front door black, but I felt if I did the french doors it would give more balance in the room and be more interesting (with the panes).

The after..



JUST KIDDING! This is the mock up I did in Photoshop. But hopefully it will look similar (better).

The painting I added to the mock up is very special and requires it's own post. I don't have it yet... but stay tuned. I will tell you about it!

(also on my TO DO list are the curtains)

Pinterest To The Rescue

Pinterest lead me to a great idea for our guest bathroom! Ever since moving in, I've wondered what I should do about the shower curtain situation. The shower/tub requires a extra long shower curtain, but I didn't love the idea of something plain and white.

First, let me show you what the bathroom looked like when we moved in:



It's hard to see, but look over to the left. Someone spent a lot of money on a custom floor to ceiling curtain and valance around the shower..... in the 90's. That came down the day we closed.

Here is the bathroom now (yeah, not much has changed. I have yet to paint over the faux finish. Sorry to my parents, in-laws and Kirsten who have had to deal with this fugly bathroom.)



In a perfect world, I would actually do something similar to what was originally in our house. I love the look.. here is an example:

[ liz caan interiors ]

Awesome, right? In fact the bathroom layout look somewhat similar to ours. But let's be honest, I'd rather spend the money on nice tile for the floors than custom drapes. And we do plan to have a baby someday.. those fancy drapes seem like they'd be a headache during bath time (not to mention we give Charlotte baths in this bathroom which can get kind of messy).

Anyway... the purpose of this post is that Pinterest came to the rescue with a great idea (why didn't I think of this??)



I even own a plain white shower curtain that I can use, so all I need for this project is a little bit of fabric (and a new rod). Sweet!

Since we keep things real around here... who knows when I will get around to this. But it's nice to know I have a plan! Thanks again Pinterest for being awesome.

Too Good Not To Share

West Elm has been KILLING it lately (lately meaning the last couple years). Which is good, because I think their sister company Pottery Barn is at it's lowest low.. but that's another story.

Anyway, I'm OBSESSED with the new Allegra Hicks collection.



Here are my favorites...

These pillows are beautiful. They remind me of Judy Ross pillows but at a fraction of the price!


Love the chair, love the fabric on the chair, love the pillow on the chair. Ah!


I love that they are selling the fabric, too. This one is such a great neutral:


pssst. They are having a great sale right now too. Again, here are some faves:

I love a good pleat..


I also love a good ruffle (ah this pillow would be great in my office!)



Great frame and linen mat.. if you don't love the art you can switch it out! (I like it)

Baby Boy Nursery Board

This board was really fun to design. I don't often get asked to design nurseries, which is a bummer because I LOVE doing them! In fact there was so much I wanted to put in this design it didn't all fit in the board :)



If I had to describe this nursery, it would be rustic/contemporary/masculine. Definitely an eclectic mix!

And the pieces that didn't fit in the design board..











As a courtesy to my e-Decorating clients, I do not post sources on my blog. If you would like information on something featured in the design board, please email me at bryn@brynalexandra.com. If you would like more information about e-Decorating and design boards, please click here. Thank you for understanding.

A new favorite artist

I came across these prints on Etsy (featured on the front page) and I adore them. They aren't just pretty pictures... this artist, Jennifer Steen Booher, finds what is essentially trash and arranges it into beautiful art. I mean it when I say it's quickly become a favorite.

Amber Sea Glass and Beach China

Beach Combing Series no.34

Beach Combing Series No.16



Aluminum, Seaweed, Driftwood, Periwinkle

Blue and Green Sea Glass

I often get the question "how do you find such great stuff on Etsy? What do you search for?" Truth is - I don't really search at all. Almost everything I find is on the front page. I visit Etsy almost every day (sometimes a couple times a day) for e-decorating clients, so I see a lot :)

Our Home's Dirty Little Secret

We have been in our home for a year (wow!!!) and I have just started tackling a BIG project. See, our poor home has a dirty little secret:


Dirty, banged up, in-bad-shape trim. Literally throughout the entire house.

In a perfect world, I would pay someone to come in for a couple days and paint the trim and be done with it. We quoted this out when we had our ceilings scraped, but it's expensive! Typically it's more expensive to have the trim done than to have an entire room painted. Which is understandable, it's time-consuming.

But if there was ever a job that was easy to save money by DIY-ing, it would be painting trim. The entire project just costs your time and a gallon of paint!

I started the lonnng process of painting the trim in our home this past Saturday. It was easy and I got (almost) the entire living room finished. I was blessed with a steady paint hand, so luckily I don't need to bother taping.



Look at what a difference a coat of fresh paint makes!! The newly painted trim is on the left and the old, banged up trim is on the stairs.



It's the little things in life. The fresh, white trim makes me so happy.



Glossy and smooth... love it.



These are the only two things I used for painting trim:



This paint is the best paint I've ever used. It's waterbased but covers like an oil. I just recently discovered it and I am so glad I did. It's worth every penny.

And the color I used for the trim:



After updating the laundry room and our master bedroom (which is almost done), I'm working on projects that are free/super inexpensive until I can save my pennies to do tile in our two upstairs bathrooms.

To keep me motivated, I wrote out a trim to do list:




This post brings up a question I've been wanting to ask. You can see details of our hardwoods in the pictures. I have plans to someday either re-finish the hardwoods or replace. The hardwoods are engineered wood, and I'm pretty sure they are floating. They have never been refinished before but are in pretty bad shape. I hate the color, but I do love the grain.

So my question is - has anyone had their engineered hardwoods refinished? (I've been told you can do it, but only once). What can I expect for the cost? Also, I was planning on putting unfinished hardwoods with the same grain in the kitchen, and having the old engineered hardwoods and the new unfinished hardwoods stained at the same time so they will match.

This is waayyyyyy later down the road (a couple years?), but I'd love to hear anyone's experience with this because I'm wondering how much I should save/budget. My other alternative is to scrap the refinishing idea and just tear up what we currently have and put in something inexpensive and new where the current hardwoods are + the kitchen. (maybe even a nice laminate since we will eventually have a child in this house and there will be toys, etc. And maybe install it ourselves if it's easy). I'd love to hear any experience you guys may have!!! Thanks!

Charleston, SC

Phew! We just got back from Charleston, SC for a short weekend away for my husband's birthday. We left Sunday morning and got back Monday evening.

Charleston is such a beautiful city full of amazing food and breath-taking homes.. two of my favorite things. But let me tell you, it was HOT... like real feel of 105 degrees. Way too hot to walk around the city, which was a bummer. But it didn't stop us from doing A LOT.

We got into Charleston around lunch time and started our mini-trip off with Sunday brunch at High Cotton (sooo good).





We walked around the city after brunch but got pretty overheated, so we retreated back into the AC until our dinner reservations at Husk. (I kept asking myself... HOW did they do it back in the day with the heat and their long dresses and suits and no AC?!?!)

Husk was a great restaurant and I was flipping over the design.









My pictures didn't do the restaurant justice - seriously click here to see how gorgeous it is!

Monday morning we took a carriage tour of the Battery area.. it was so amazing! I took a million pictures of gorgeous old homes and architecture... here are some:






















I loved Henry, the guide horse.

I will tell you what NOT to do - tour the Calhoun Mansion. We passed it on the carriage tour and the guide mentioned it's open for tours. Given it's history, we thought it'd be really cool to check out the inside of an old mansion. Well the new owners are apparently billionaire hoarders. I am pulling this off of Trip Advisor.. it's exactly how I felt: "It is best described as cluttered, tacky and junky. You can no longer enjoy the Tiffany original decor and chandeliers for the new owners myriad of eclectic things that do not belong in this grand piece of Charleston architecture. It is sad and a shame. The longer the tour lasted today, the sadder and madder I got."

After the tour we ate our last meal at Hominy Grill. Just like the rest of the food on the trip, it was amazing!

It was a great little vacation and I'd love to go back!