Flea Market Finds & More Black Bedroom

When I went to the Raleigh flea market with Jamie and Nick, I picked up some small little things.

Those things included a small pen drawing of Mozart or Bach's silouhette (can't tell which), two little copper buffaloes* and a small stone votive holder. Oh, and a Pokemon Charizard card (for free).. it makes me smile because we sometimes call Charlotte Charizard (and Sharpie). I have a feeling our future kids are going to have silly nicknames, too.

Anyway, yesterday I added my little buffalo and stone votive holder to a chair I have in our master bedroom and snapped some pictures.






This is the extent of decorating in our master bedroom to those of you asking for more.

* I love buffaloes. I was born in Boulder, CO home of the CU Buffaloes. My parents had this CU padded stool in our home growing up with a buffalo on it and I loved it. My grandfather also did his undergrad at CU (the cool desk one). So anyway, that's why I love buffalo.

Covert Operation : Mission Accomplished!

It was a little risky doing this during the day, but mission was accomplished and Char and I had a great nature walk. I loove them. :)











What kind of tree are these branches from?

Side note: When I originally asked about the Docksta table, many of you mentioned it's very wobbly. I learned if you screw in every single bolt and screw with an electric drill, it will not wobble. I also sprayed the bottom with a protective clear spray paint so it won't get dirty.

Covert Operation

I have three bottles ready to be filled.

During one of Charlotte's walks, we are casually going to stroll down to the front of our apartment complex and snip three huge branches off the gorgeous pink blooming trees.

Mission may or may not be accomplished. I'll keep you updated.


ps- I love my new Docksta table. Will feature later.
pps- I swear I do work during the day. In fact, I'm very blessed to be quite busy with new Charlotte clients.

In Our Home: Green

What better day than St. Patrick's day to show you a new little addition to the APT. I recently picked up three succulents at IKEA, and filled a vintage green goblet I had with one of them.





A sweet bit of green that makes me smile in our one and only bathroom.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I married into an Irish family, so it's fun to have a day to celebrate their heritage. I'm not a big drinker, but I am a big eater so I'll be enjoying a lot of corned beef tonight. Please be safe if you do go out and celebrate like the Irish!

Jennifer saves the day!

WOW. Don't you love bloggers? My girl Jennifer over at The Newlywed Diaries made a comment about the garden stool in my patio design board post. I originally got the image from Target where it was $170 and sold out. I was thinking of DIY-ing one with spray paint, but I emailed Jen to see where she got hers for $30.

TJ Maxx! There is one pretty close to me so I headed out and sure enough, there it was in all it's $30 glory.

And here it is all lonely on our patio:

Dream Scheme and the APT in Progress

It's safe to say our apartment is where beige has come to die. Beige floors, beige walls, beige tile, even beige ceilings. And unfortunately our couch is beige as well. At first I thought I could do the neutral thing, but it's slowly driving me crazy. I could do it if the walls were white. But they are beige.

Do you want to see it's current state?







Some things to note:

+ I love our black curtains. I got them from smartbargains.com. They are blackout, which will help in the summer when it's a million degrees outside.

+ I love love love the light we get in this apartment. It makes the beige worth while.

+ That is where Charlotte spends 96% of her days. There or the chaise.

+ Still no dining room table. Why haven't we gotten it yet, especially since it's only $150??

+ Thank you apartment complex maintenance man for installing my drapery and pendant light. You rock.

+ See the big box near the fireplace? That's our extremely broken dining room table base that weighs a million pounds. Not sure how we are going to move it.


Moving on to the "dream scheme" part of the post. See, I haven't been able to get this color scheme out of my head. I stare at it everyday on my inspiration board while sitting at my desk:



The purple, the green, the tiny bit of pink.

And voila, here it is in room form:

{ scanned by the lovely autumn }

I absolutely think this color scheme will work in our beige-overloaded apartment. Especially with the black.



Zoom in a bit... I'm completely enamored with the mirror(s).



Yup, I think it's a definitely DIY project in my future.

I think this whole plan can have a nice start with this pretty pillow from Fabricadabra:



So that's where I'm at with the APT. Thoughts? Comments?

As Promised...

Mr. Sun sort of came out... came out enough to allow me to take some better pictures of my art wall.










Some notes...

+ If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll remember I found the vintage steel dresser from the Rose Bowl Flea Market. It was a bit too vintage for my client's taste, so I offered to buy it from her. I'm very glad she accepted :)

+ All but one of the paintings (the unframed piece) were painted by my grandmother or great grandmother.

+ The little watercolor print to the left of the TV is from a little Madeline book, one of my favorite book series as a child.

Tulip Table

I'll be honest, I'm leaning towards the tulip table. Poor pedestal table, I'm really not giving it a fair shot, especially since I've had a love affair with the IKEA table for so long.

I gathered even more images of the beloved Saarinen Tulip table.. too bad we can't afford the real thing.























I really appreciate everyone's advice about how dirty the IKEA base can get. I think a couple coats of a clear glossy or semi gloss spray paint should do the trick.

In other news, the unpacking is coming along slowly but surely. I already have a few of my favorite things out...



But speaking of unpacking, I should be getting off the computer and back to work. Have a great weekend!

To Dye or Not To Dye?

I have an internal debate going on right now... so why not ask my readers for their opinions?

It's about drapes for our black bedroom. First, let me explain what I'm thinking... black walls obviously:



The bedding will be neutral in whites and ivories and maybe some colorful throw pillows.

I'm planning on throwing in this embroidered blue fabric into the room:





I love black and blue together.

So back to my internal debate. I can't decide whether or not I should go with green or neutral curtains.

I'm using these drop cloths for curtains. The genius idea comes from The Lettered College.



So option number 1 is to dye the curtains a kelly green color to result in something similar to this:



I have never dyed anything before but it seems pretty simple. I was planning on a box of kelly green with maybe a bit of dark green.



But I keep thinking - would neutral be better? The original canvas color with kelly green trim? Sort of like this:



So what do you think? I'd love your opinion!

Inspiration Board

For a while I've wanted an inspiration board but when I had a 9-5 along with my side decorating gig, I never had time for one.

Erika of Urban Grace Interiors has a huge one that long ago become my favorite:





Here are some of my other favorites...

{ish and chi}


{Lonny Mag}


{Michelle Adams}

When we first found this apartment, I grumbled a little at the built in desk, how college-apartment is that? However, I turned lemons into lemonade and am working on making it the center of bryn alexandra interiors... because I don't want to get in the habit of working from the sofa (as nice as it sounds).

Luckily, the built in desk had the perfect rectangular nook for an inspiration board. See the "before" here:



I went to Hobby Lobby to pick up corkboard, black burlap, some glue and ribbon.





Then you just wrap and glue your fabric over the corkboard, and it's as simple as that. Then I glued on the ribbon trim outlining the board.

I hung the board onto the wall with no-hole picture hangers (as seen in the above image).

Here is the after, although I should say "work in progress" because I don't have any inspiration pieces yet other than the magazing page I tore out to demonstrate the use:







It's not 100% finished. The fabric isn't as tight as I would like so I am going to try to re-apply the fabric with spray adheasive. It's hard to DIY when all of your DIY tools are on a moving truck ;)

I'd also like to get some vintage buttons to cover the corners were the ribbon meets, something like these:



Do you like the lamp on my desk? Doesn't it look like it's from Restoration Hardware? Guess where it's from....... IKEA!



And the price tag is only $25. Run, don't walk, to your nearest Ikea and pick one up!

The lucite boxes on my desk are also from IKEA. They are actually for the bathroom but when I saw them I knew they'd be perfect for my desk to hold post-its, pens and misc. desk items.


You get all those pieces above for only $8!

(click on the IKEA images to go to the product pages)

So our boxes are supposed to arrive mid next week, I'm relieved. I enjoy unpacking much more than packing.