Pots and Plants

Adding plants to rooms can make a big (yet weirdly subtle) difference. They add color, can purify the air, and make a space feel less stark. This weekend I invested in some greenery to put into great pots that I bought from Etsy and Ikea.

I had my eye on this turquoise pot on Etsy for a while (you can actually see it on my Pinterest). The price was originally a bit steep but the seller eventually put it on sale and I scooped it up.

I just put some potting soil in it and planted some little succulents I found at Home Depot. I've become a big fan of succulents over the past few years—they're really interesting to look at and don't require much attention or water.

 

Then I gave the same treatment to an Ikea KARDEMUMMA plant pot I had in the guest room.

So now I'm just gonna let 'em go and watch 'em grow.

Chevron On!

That chevron fabric is finally on my danish chair! I can't take the credit though—I have a mom who's a very talented sewer and she offered to do the cushions up all nice and fancy for me.

We had quite a bit of fabric left over, so I cut a place mat for Henry's bowls.

Now he can eat in style (and maybe save some of that kitty water from getting on the floor).

Kitchen Complete!

Yes, friends, the kitchen is finally done! I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

kitchen before

kitchen after

 

Robert cut and stained the windowsill himself!

Source list

Cabinets, sink, and appliances: Ikea

Faucet: Home Depot

Counter tops: Lowe's

Backsplash: tiles from Floor and Decor (installed by Robert and Jonathan, grouted by Robert and Jen)

Pendants: Amazon

Rock My Socks

We have a little project ADD going on over at the Schubach house. Along with finishing touch-ups on the kitchen, we're also trying to get the office in order. And I'm determined to finish my friends and family wall sometime in the near future. Things are happening, they're just happening a little...slowly. Well, to make things interesting, I'm throwing another project on the pile. It's actually something I've been wanting to do for over a year--a succulent rock garden on one of the back sides of the house. Now that fall has fallen on Florida (it's way too brutal to try to do projects like this in the summer) I'm determined to get this thing going.

I already planned out where the garden would go quite a while ago (its this nondescript patch of weeds/grass that sits under the back windows of the office and our bedroom). This past weekend I started the process of killing off the weeds/grass by putting tarp and newspaper over the area. You can also use weed killer, but we try not to use pesticidy kind of stuff in our yard. The tarp and newspaper should suffocate the weedies over the next couple of weeks and then I can more easily dig them out.

Then I'm going to put a combination of small pebble rocks and large landscaping rocks throughout the area with some drought-friendly plants in between. Maybe something like this:

Or this:

(but without the water element)

 The small pebble rocks and plants are no problem to purchase, but I'm having a hard time finding some good, large, boulder-y rocks for the garden. Rocks like that just don't occur naturally in central Florida and I haven't seen anything like them at local home improvement places. So I've been scouring Craigslist to see if anyone has some large rocks they want to unload. Anyone know where to score some good rocks?

Rock pictures from here and here.

Friends and Family Wall

I've been wanting to do a friends and family photo wall on one of our blank hall walls for a while. Now that we're done painting everything (woohoo!) I can finally put my plan into action. So without further adieu, some inspiration from the world wide web:

As you can probably tell, I'm drawn to neutral walls with eclectically colored frames. I'm thinking I'll look for a few vintage frames and then use Ikea's RIBBA frame as filler.

Love the RIBBA frames--they're inexpensive ($4.99) but the mat that comes with makes them look polished. And you can spray paint them whatever color you want (they come in black and white).

Well, I'm thinking this and finishing up the office will be the next projects in the queue after we're done with kitchen touch-ups...

Frame photos from here, here, here, here, and here.

Geometric Rug Roundup

Our living room floor is feeling a little bare these days—we have laminate flooring throughout the main living area—so I've been doing a lot of research on area rugs lately. I find myself really drawn to geometric rugs—I feel like they can add interesting patterns into your decor and add a pop of color (or not if you want to stay neutral) here's a little roundup of what I've been looking at (and some that are just cool):

 Clockwise from top left: West Elm, Target, Overstock, Overstock, Overstock, Shades of Light

Kitchen Update (It's Been A While!)

Why, hello there. September is just flying by, no? Flying by so fast that I realized I haven't posted anything to ye olde blog in, like, 20 days. I do have an excuse for not posting recently, though--I was out of town all last week for work in Boston (and then went on a camping adventure with my friends Jennileen and Noelle south of the city!). Anyway, enough excuses.

Stuff has indeed been happening on the kitchen front. First, we got counter tops about three weeks ago. The installation went smoothly and was done in a few hours. We decided to go with the grey quartz from Lowe's that we had our eye on. It's the "Alloy" color from Lowe's Allen + Roth line.

Here are the counters in action:

After that, we were ready for backsplash tile. We decided a while ago that we would just go for a simple white subway tile. We looked around and found the best price at our local Floor and Decor Outlet--21 cents per tile, which came out to around 50 bucks total. I like that.

Then it was a matter of deciding whether to attempt tiling ourselves (which we've never done) or asking the contractor we've been working with to do it. The contractor's price--$400--was a too steep for us, especially now that we're almost to the end of the project and really trying to save where we can. So we looked at some tutorials online and decided to give it a go. Also, our good friend Jonathan came over to help us. He is wise in the ways of tiling and many other handy house things. We owe him many beers for helping us out over the years.

After a couple weekend sessions of tiling, Jonathan and Robert had most of the backsplash done. Here's a peek:

Now we just need to grout and finish up some of the edge pieces.

So I would say we're like 98% done with everything. We even have running water and electricity! All the electrical work was finished while I was out of town, so I came home to find working recessed lighting and our bar pendants hung up:

It was pretty great. Now it's just a matter of pulling together some finishing touches--putting a sill on the window, hanging blinds, buying a new trash can, etc.

(And you may or may not have noticed, but I've just been showing pieces and parts of the kitchen in my recent pictures. I'm waiting till we're totally, totally done to show you the complete thing. You know, like the big reveal they do on those HGTV shows. Humor me, folks.)