You could get a bunch of Malms.

See what I did there? I adapted Judah Freelander's "Meet the Parents" excellence into a reference to IKEA furniture.

I'm sure you have clever moments too but it would be really nice if you would just recognize that this is a pretty funny thing.

Last week Mark and I went to IKEA because we were in serious need of a couple dressers. We needed one to act as a TV console and one to be my dresser. I guess we really didn't need our TV console to be a dresser, but we did need to to be as cheap as possible, because that's how we roll, and the cheapest thing we found was the TARVA at IKEA.

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It's all about the naughty knotty pine, baby. (It's really not. I don't like knotty pine. It reminds me of a cabin in the woods, which I would say is the exact opposite of my design aesthetic.)

So we also needed a dresser for me to keep my clothes in. Right now, all my foldin' clothes are in our guest room dresser, which can get sort of awkward when we have overnight guests. When we got there, we realized that if we nix the cute dresser I had picked out, we could get two matching dressers instead. Thus:

"Don't you want a cute (but pretty cheap) stylish dresser?"

"You could get a bunch of Malms."

So we got a bunch of Malms, where bunch equals two.

We bought some knobs to church them up a little. We'll see how this ends up.

We bruild and stained/painted the TARVA already. The knobs are on their way, but long story short, we are copying what they did on this nightstand (but making it blend with our blonde wood floors and adding a little shabby chic-ness to it, because you know it's gonna get a little shabby anyway, so let's just own it):

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Curtains have been purchased, or the one where I'm reminded that I am my mother.

Today I had a really enlightening conversation with my dad. He was telling me about my mom (after I told him how I scheme and dream all day about what I want to do to my house to optimize every room) and how she gets this look in her eye then says something like, "you know, I've been thinking, and we really have to do something about _____." Something of course that to my dad looks perfectly fine as it is, but to my mom needs to be tweaked. Then she'll sprinkle it into conversation however she can and do her best to convince my dad that the only two options are to do what she wants to do, or do something expensive and hard. (In this case, move a chandelier to be centered over the table, or move the table to be centered under the chandelier, which would require the purchase of a hutch to balance out the room.) Keeping things as they are is never an option.

I just read this back and have an awareness that my story isn't going to be funny to you at all, but as he was telling me all this, I was laughing. Hard. Laughing with my head thrown back, tears stinging my eyes...because I am totally my mom. It happened a long time ago, and one in a while I'm reminded. (I can't think of a better person to turn into.)

After agonizing over curtains for the master bedroom, I finally just bought these at Z Gallerie. I wish they had them in black, but gray will work. It will. If I need to embellish these with a little black ribbon along the seams...well then...we will see. This was a major accomplishment for me, because it means one less first-world problem I have to jabber to my husband about incessantly. Now to find a curtain rod...

Powder Room Facelift

Yesterday during two nap times, I made over the downstairs powder room. Thank you nap time! I have been wanting to do this forever.

I had previously painted the walls and trim white. When we took possession of the house, the powder room was tan. Kind of a dark, blah tan (like the rest of the house). I could tell by looking behind the toilet while we were tiling that it had also been yellow and blue in past lives.

Anyway. I painted it white and had always planned on painting wide horizontal stripes and replacing the meh mirror.

I bought the mirror a while ago during one of my more successful Home Goods trips (huge and $19.99!) It was white, but a little banged up, and not in a good way. I painted it a tannish gray color and planned to paint the cabinets in there to match, but after getting the gray stripes up on the walls yesterday (using Frog Tape, the love of my painting life), I decided the mirror needed a glossy black finish instead. I'll do the cabinets glossy black as well, and bring in a few pops of color. I think it will have more of a Hollywood Regency look to it once I'm done. I also painted the ceiling, which I've never done. This one needed it, and I think that will be part of my painting routine from now on. Recently I've been forcing myself to paint the trim white every time I paint a room. I just keep adding more and more work for myself!

I'm also going the Hollywood Regency route with our bedroom, which is coming along, slowly but surely. So far I have painted the walls and bought some of our bedding. Mark also bought an amazing wing back chair at a garage sale that I'm going to re-cover and put in there. But more on that later. Here's our tiny powder room. Very hard to photograph:

I'm so in love with this mirror, black. It was made to be black...don't you think?

Right now as art, I have some Thomas Paul Aviary fabric framed.

View looking into the room. I like how the gray stripe acts as a kind of backsplash. I'll be painting those cabinets black shortly. Going to use the Glidden door and trim paint that supposedly leaves no brush strokes...anyone tried it?

Little house update.

Since my house is somewhat clean, I thought I would take a few blurry, poorly-lit photos to document our progress in the adventures in decorating (and a few of the baby, too).

We've done a little more in the kitchen - added hardware to the cabinets, installed a butcher block top on our island, and made new curtains. We also painted our kitchen chairs black and stripped the tabletop back to wood. We still want to replace the rest of the counter tops and are debating on what to do with the table. I'm not quite happy with it yet:

In the family room, we brought in a bookshelf and made some new throw pillows. You can see that I'm bringing a little red, which I like. I like that the family room is the most colorful room on the main level. I think it makes it more casual. Please note the cardboard deer head. I also have plans to paint the cabinet white to coalesce better with the shelf:

And in the living room, we bought a piano and a side table for the entry way. We also hung a large mirror and some black and white family photos. I wish I could photograph this whole room at once, because I'm liking it a lot more lately.

I like this little vignette. Isn't the elephant tea pot cute?

Then of course we got this little guy, who gets more cute and fun everyday, even today, when he got up and said, "get ready suckers, because I'm about to cry for four hours!!!"