Inspiration vs. Reality

Hello! I hope you all had a great weekend. I am very much looking forward to our long, July 4th holiday weekend coming up- though this year I am excited about three days dedicated to house projects rather than the lake! Life sure is looking different these days :)

I am starting to realize that gathering everything to decorate a home can take quite a bit of time.. and research! I am still figuring out exactly which direction I want to go with our decor (French-Country-Cottage-Farmhouse-Industrial pretty much sums up my dream house).. and as you can imagine, combining all of these looks to be a cohesive home has proved challenging. There are so many talented artists, designers, and sources of inspiration now, that I think it makes it even MORE difficult to make a decision. Everywhere you look is a new beautiful piece of furniture, or a fun spin on something you perhaps hadn't considered before (hello- WALLPAPER for an example.. there are so many amazing ones out there now!). Not to mention every room you see on Pinterest or HGTV is immaculately styled and professionally photographed to give us unreal expectations.

As I have mentioned before, just like most 20-something's, Richard and I are on a budget, and many of these sources of inspiration just aren't reality for us right now. Don't get me wrong- walking into a Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware makes me go as weak in the knees as the next girl, but you know what I find has been even more exciting recently? Scoring items that I love at a great price! I still look to Pottery Barn, Pinterest, magazines, etc. for inspiration, but now, before I convince myself that I have to have that adorable basket even if it does cost $75, (this is what college Lisa was great at) I do some research first and make sure I am making a wise decision. Here are some of my most recent purchases that I am particularly excited about:

 As soon as Richard and I bought our house, I started looking at rugs. There are no carpeted rooms in the house, so I knew we would be needing several. I kept seeing these natural rugs in dining rooms/living rooms and I loved the look of them, so I started keeping an eye out (Who knew rugs were so expensive!!) Thankfully, a blog I follow, Jenna Sue Design, did a big kitchen reveal (HERE) and she linked up to a jute rug at Rugs USA. I love her style, so I checked it out and it was almost too good to be true- at the time it was 70% off and they always offer free shipping and have a generous return policy. I pretty much ordered it immediately and haven't looked back. In fact, I think I will probably be ordering more for other rooms in our house! I just love it. It has a great natural look, is very soft and has tassels on the ends, which I really like.

I recently purchased the light on the right and cannot wait for it to arrive! If it is as gorgeous as the picture looks, I think I will want one in every room!! After seeing an episode of Fixer Upper (my favorite), I was on the hunt for a rustic, wooden chandelier for our kitchen.  I wanted a lantern type light.. but not one that looked TOO industrial, because the light will be going above some semi-formal chairs, so I wanted to looks to match. A google search led me to Wayfair (which is a great website that does offer some good prices).The chandelier pictured on the left was a good starting point for what a wanted (as far as style is concerned), but the measurements were too big, and so was the price tag! I think I must have searched on ALL of my go-to websites, and found the chandelier on the right at Amazon! To me, this is like hitting the jack pot. I like the less expensive version even more and it is a fraction of the cost! I can't wait for it to come in! I will update with pictures as soon as it does!


Blinds also took QUITE a bit of research before we decided on which ones to go with. I knew I wanted bamboo shades... inspired by beauties like this:

 SOURCE     

SOURCE

The windows in our living room and dining room, where these will be used, call for 35" wide x 74" long panels. I checked out several website, and found that THESE were going to give us the best bang for our buck (around $45.00/panel). Other websites/locations that I checked out (justblinds.com, blinds.com, Lowe's) either didn't give me the look I wanted, or started out at a minimum of $80 a panel and went up to well over $100! We have received the blinds already, and I love the look of them! I will say that sometimes, you get what you pay for. This was obvious in the screws included in the mounting hardware. They stripped after trying to screw them in with a HAND screwdriver! They really were terrible- but thankfully for us, we have tons of extra screws lying around, so this didn't bother me at all.. and definitely wouldn't justify paying TWICE as much just to get some better quality screws.

I can now honestly say that I get truly excited about bargain hunting- whereas I used to just find something I liked and buy it right away. I enjoy the research process of it, and often times find something that I like even more than the original inspiration! Some of my automatic go-to's when doing some research/ price comparisons are HomeGoods, Target, Ikea, Amazon, Overstock.com, Etsy (love supporting small businesses!), and local thrift stores, antique malls, etc. I look forward to continuing to stock our home and updating you along the way!

Thanks for reading! On to some (BIG) projects soon and I can't wait to update you!

Some Exterior Updates!

I'm sorry it has taken me so long to do another update- that can partially be attributed to the fact that we are simply in the "planning" stages right now, and maybe a little bit due to my lost camera cord for the past week!

So while the planning stage doesn't make for interesting blog posts, it does make Richard and I very excited about the future of our home!! We have a much clearer path of where we are headed and realistic timelines of when some major changes will be happening!!

In the meantime, we did make a little headway on our front entryway and back patio this weekend. Fixing up our back patio is pretty high on our priority list because we eat outside most of the time in the summer/fall and there are some major eyesores that have been driving us crazy. Here is the original state of our patio: (excuse the ladder)

So it needed a little sprucing up. First on our list was to replace the (barely hanging on) siding. Someone clearly wanted a quick fix for this in the past and it wasn't done terribly well. Thanks to my majorly talented dad (he's a builder- insert singing angels), we Richard and Dad were able to get this knocked out in one afternoon! I don't have any pictures during the process, because my mom and I were on another task (see below), but here is  a before and after shot: (sorry for the picture quality, these were just snapped on our phones)

MUCH better! We still have to paint the siding (probably white to match the trim), but this is still a major improvement to the cheap, vertical paneling in the before picture. We are also planning to pressure wash everything and I cannot WAIT to replace those sliding glass doors with french doors! 

While Richard and Dad were working on this, Mom and I decided to tackle the front landing and walkway with the pressure washer to brighten it up a little.. I also forgot to take a before picture (I am really going to have to start carrying my camera around with me everywhere), but here are a few pictures in the process:

Wow.. what  difference. I have officially found my new favorite household chore.. the instant gratification of pressure washing is the best! I think I honestly thought the grout on the landing was grey before mom and I started cleaning. Just in Jeffers/Kirksey fashion, as soon as we got about 1 foot of the walkway cleaned, something broke on the pressure washer and we weren't able to use it anymore, but as soon as it is fixed, watch out world- I will be pressure washing everything in my path! It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

It may not seem like much, but after (what feels like) WEEKS of planning, it was nice to finally see some changes!! I am meeting with the cabinet company today (YAY!) and working on paint colors next week! 

Thanks for reading! And as always, on to the next project!

Finding Joy

Well.. we are finally 100% moved in to our new house! Is everything in it's place- absolutely not. In fact, our house looks like a tornado came through. We have no idea where anything is, boxes are everywhere and most tragically, our washing machine and dishwasher are broken! We are living off the bare minimum right now, and you know what, I am 100% okay with that. We are slowly but surely digging through all of the boxes and getting things in their place. I won't lie.. there are times that I look around and see this:

And I get overwhelmed and throw a pity party for myself.. but then I remember there are so many things to be thankful for in this world- my husband and I just bought our first home, we have a precious dog that we both love (Murphy, pictured below), and the list could go on and on! You just have to take time to find beauty among the mess. Here are a few things that have put a smile on my face this week:

Our puppy Murphy always keeps us laughing! He is the sweetest thing.. but definitely still a puppy so he is always getting into everything.

How can these beauties not make you smile? Fresh flowers instantly make a home feel more inviting (even if there is no furniture and boxes are stacked to the ceiling).

These may not look like much, but when I got this package in the mail yesterday I was SO excited! One of my goals in our new house is to keep our closets more organized and I cannot wait to put these little baskets to use! At our previous house, my belts, scarves, socks, etc. were just thrown into the top of my closet and were a serious eye sore. I am hoping that if I dedicate a proper place for everything, I will stay organized long term rather than temporarily straightening and then going back to the mess within a week (I have a bad habit of this). When I saw these on Joss and Main they seemed like a perfect solution- and at less than $25.00 for a set of four, I couldn't pass them up! I wish I had bought more sizes!

Similar Items

HERE                         HERE (On Clearance!)                         and HERE 

Just writing this post has made me more joyful and thankful! Thanks for reading, and as always, on to the next project! Hopefully we will have some progress to share soon!