Dining Room Details

Hi friends, 

I recently shared on instagram that I have been adding some fun new elements to our dining room and ya'll were all in for a post, so thank you! We actually purchased our dining room furniture 6 years and 3 homes ago, but to this point have never truly dressed it up with window treatments or a rug. 

Over the summer I started brainstorming exactly what we wanted to add to this space, and a few things were for certain. I knew we wanted to add some sconces on either side of our china cabinet, to create more light. We already have two oyster shell chandeliers over our dining room table. I also knew we wanted to add paneled window treatments, hung with lucitie and brass hardware. 

Once these things were nailed down, I reached out to a friend of mine who is local, explained what we were hoping to do and our direction, and she helped us create this beautiful vision board. Shout out to Sarah Scott Designs! If I were fancy I would have links for you, but I'm not so I'll just share where we purchased these items. Our sconces are the minimalist diamond bar shaded sconce, from Shades of Light, and the lucite window treatment hardware was purchased from Ballard Designs. 

As far as a rug goes, our home has an open floor plan, divided only by a column, between our dining room and living room. Our current living room rug is still in pretty great shape (to have been moved and stored 3 times now, and crawled all over by our baby) and while we know we will need to replace it in a few years, right now it is staying. That being said, our dining room rug will need to work with both our current living room one, and future one. Which is proving to be a little tricky. I absolutely love the look and feel of an oushak style, so we are still shopping around, and waiting until our window treatments are installed before making any big decisions or purchases. 

I actually found a really beautiful creamy white linen fabric locally, for our window panels and the trim you see on the board is by Robert Allen. When we ordered the trim we knew it was back ordered, and our goal was to at least have the treatments installed by the holidays, but the trim has since been pushed back even further. With that being said, we may end up going in a different direction in terms of trim, possibly even something with fringe and placed horizontally. 

I am thrilled to be using my seamstress again, who is incredible and local. She has now sewn pieces for our master bedroom, laundry room, nursery, and playroom. She is so talented and I know will do an amazing job in our dining room as well. 

As far as productivity goes, we have installed the sconces, and our window treatment fabric and hardware has arrived. We are at a little bit of a stand still while we wait on trim, but I'm still aiming to have at least our window treatments completed by the end of October. We shall see! I'll keep ya'll updated on how this room is coming along! Thanks for stopping by! 

September Excitement

Happy Wednesday! 

Are you the kind of person that loves to have something to look forward to? Because I totally am. I mean, even tiny little insignificant things, I love to look forward to something. So here's my little round up of what I am excited about right now. 

1. Weather this week

Today and tomorrow's weather is the perfect introduction into fall. A cool breeze in the morning finished with a warm afternoon. It's perfect and inspired me to order my first pumpkin spice latte of the season, which was delicious. 

2. Fall T.V. 

Ok, let me first start by saying I am not a huge T.V. person. However, it seems like all of the shows I do enjoy, start back up in the next couple of weeks, and I'm pumped. Like wrote it in my planner to record them, type of pumped. This is us, a million little things, coming right up. I am also looking forward to checking out the new apple TV "Morning Show". 

3. Closet clean out 

So I periodically clean out my closet every couple of months, and last weekend during the hurricane I had a little time to do my next purge. Even though I am always getting rid of things, it felt so good to really simplify my fall/winter section. My options for what to wear are even smaller now, so bonus that makes getting ready even easier. Fun fact, I do still have quite a few things that I wear all the time that are now 8 or 9 years old. 

4. Getting organized 

September feels like a breath of fresh air right now. I've really been trying to take the time in the last couple of days to sit down and plan out our calendars until almost the end of the year. Travel dates, preschool events, family birthdays, well checks, holiday fun etc. Before fall truly sets in it feels good to get a jump on it! 

5. Date Night 

My husband is going to be off work this weekend for the first time in two weeks, and we are hoping to squeeze in a day date or date night to see the new Downtown Abbey movie. I absolutely loved the series and have been looking forward to seeing the movie since they first announced it. 

What have you been looking forward to lately? Any fun things on your radar? 

Tickled Pink

We are officially off to preschool this week! We were both tear free all morning until we were on our way and this little light of mine came on in the car, and I looked in the back seat to see Everette holding up her finger as her light, and could hear her singing all the words. Then I surprised myself and started tearing up, because it was time to let our little light shine. 

I have always loved the first day of school, in fact my husband used to always send flowers to my classroom on the first day of school to celebrate. So this elementary turned preschool teacher, knows just how much all teachers appreciate a small little gesture to kick off the school year, because by the time your child shows up for their first day, those sweet teachers have all put in so much work to even get to open house. 

We wanted to especially love on our toddler teachers this year, let them know just how much we appreciate them pouring into our little one every day, and how tickled pink we are to be in their class! 

This was the easiest, most fun idea to bring to life. Everette loved helping Mommy shop for all the pink things, and we found them all on a quick trip to target. I absolutely loved these marbled pink water bottles when I saw them. We also included lip balm, a pink face mask, chewing gum, and then tossed in a tiny starbucks giftcard. 

I reached out to my sweet friend Zelle, and one of her many talents is helping create invitations or labels for exactly this. I told her we were going with a "tickled pink" theme and she created this label for the bags. She also created Everette's back to school sign to match as well. 

We truly are tickled pink to be headed off to preschool this year, and to get to love on some sweet teachers! 

Goodbye Summer, Hello Hurricane

We're only the first few days into September and yet summer already feels a little bit like a distant memory. This past weekend was Labor Day weekend, but instead of cookouts and beach days, it was mostly spent with weather watching and hurricane planning, at least here in our coastal city. We learned last year, just how much more stressful living through hurricanes are, with a baby. So much more to consider with little ones, but at least this year we won't be packing our yeti full of frozen breast milk in hopes of salvaging it. 

Today was our scheduled student open house at preschool, but we will now wait until next week for our first day, with this hurricane looming. Our weekend was spent with a mixture of hurricane prepping, and first day of school prepping which is an odd combination. 

I've had this week, today in particular, marked on my calendar for months with so much anticipation for my little ones first day of school, ever! She is so ready, and I really thought I was too, but the closer we inch to it, the more my stomach starts to churn. 

When I taught first grade I always liked to serve jitter juice (green punch) to my little ones on the first day, to help them get rid of any of those first day jitters. I'm starting to think I need to enjoy the mommy version of jitter juice right before our first day. 

Didn't I just give birth to her like last week? Didn't I just hold her for the first time yesterday? The truth is, if she's big enough to head to preschool, my baby isn't such a baby anymore, and that's what gives me the jitters. Even more so than this hurricane. 

She is going to absolutely love it, and I can't wait to see her do it all, but I'm in no hurry.