Keyway Before and After - Part I

It's amazing how much our house has changed since March 2008. And we're still not done...probably won't ever be! I'm sure as soon as we finish our to-do list, I'll find something else to replace, recover or repaint...

Notice the ugly plant window..

After with new paint and window

Living Room in very beginning

Living Room a few months later..

Living Room now (minus shower gifts)

Dining Room as it was staged when on the market

Dining Room After

Family Room as it was staged

Family Room After

I'll go into more detail on these rooms and show more pictures after I post Part II (bedrooms and bathrooms).

Palmer Weiss

Palmer Weiss is a San Francisco designer who is originally from Charleston, so she has a great mix of traditional design with a fresh California twist. I like her story of becoming a designer. She worked in business for a long time before changing gears and starting her own design firm (following in her mother's footsteps). I hope to do the same one day.

Window Transformations

It's amazing what 5 - 10 yards of fabric and some hardware can do for a room. In the last six months I've had the pleasure of assisting two friends with choosing fabric for their windows. Here are the before and afters! 

Megan's dining room window - Before

Megan's dining room window - After

Megan and I settled on this fabric to pull in the red, green, brown and gold from her downstairs rooms, and complement her black furniture. I think it turned out great! 

Megan's living room window - Before

Megan's living room window - After

This greenish gold fabric worked well because it didn't compete with the patterned PB rug and had enough shine to add a touch of formality to the room. 

Megan's bedroom window - Before

Megan's bedroom window - After

This damask fabric brought pattern into the room and created a dramatic statement when hung right under the tall ceiling. 

Nicole's living room sliding doors - Before

Nicole's living room doors - After

As you can tell, there were many changes in this room including the sofa and flooring. More on that in a future post! 

Create Cottage Style In Any Home

I wanted to share this great slideshow that someone must have created for me and my blog. I found it tonight on one of my faves, myhomeideas.com. It's a great site for decorating ideas featuring photos from Southern Living, Coastal Living, Sunset, and Cooking Light (Cottage Living pics can still be found on here too!). Check out the slideshow here. 

Atlanta and Pillows

I went to Atlanta about a month ago with Nicole to visit our friend Lindsey, who is expecting her first child in July. Here are photos from a few of the great homes stores we visited.  

Terra Cottage 

Loved this store. It carried lots of Pine Cone Hill and had a whole wall of Dash & Albert rug samples. 

Urban Cottage

Wish I had taken a photo of the main room, but I only got one of the buffet that I loved. I found out the store owners manufacture these and they're surprisingly affordable. We may order one later this year. 

Armour & Co

Loved, loved, loved this store! A great mix of clean lines with rustic touches and fresh colors. This style would work in any room, from small cottage rooms to large rooms with tall ceilings. Great pillows here, but none under $200. More on pillows in a minute.

That weekend I was on a mission for pillows to go in my living room. I have struggled with finding the right pillows in there for months and it frustrated Donald to no end. Why couldn't I just find pillows at Pottery Barn and be done with it, he would ask. But I couldn't find just the right color, fabric or pattern at PB or anywhere else I looked. Well, I didn't buy any in Atlanta either, but I did seriously consider these, which had been marked down from $400 to $75 each! At the time, it seemed dirt cheap compared to the $250 to $700 (yes, $700) pillow price tags I had seen.   

But I am happy to report that the pillow search is now over (for now anyway)! I found some at PD's in Franklin last weekend. Blue pillows - $15 and off white pillows with shell pieces - $39. 

Oh and you may be wondering what happened to the Dash & Albert rug in this room. Well, the trip to Atlanta got my creative juices flowing and I decided that it would look better in the dining room. So we switched them out when I got home that Sunday night. I think it looks much better. 

Annie Selke

I wanted to share my recent discovery of Annie Selke, the designer behind Pine Cone Hill and Dash & Albert Rug Company. Before I knew of her cottage style brands, I saw a home she designed in a recent issue of House Beautiful. I was immediately drawn to all the blue and beachy casual feel to the home. And I loved the nontraditional use of a striped cotton rug and cotton fabric on the chairs in the dining room. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that I put together that the designer used her own fabric and rug lines in that home. I realized this when visiting Pembroke Antiques on Hwy 100. I was drawn to the bed linens (a lot of blue) and also noticed the store carried the Dash & Albert rug line that I had admired in magazines. I mentioned this to the lady helping us and she picked up the same House Beautiful to show me that they carried the designer's products....and that the store could order any of the rugs we saw online. I was so excited! As soon as we got home I researched the brands and discovered Annie Selke. How cool that she is not only a talented designer, but also has developed her own popular (and well published) bedding and rug line, and has partnerships with Calico Corners and Vanguard furniture. That's success! And, I think it's cool that her work has a unpretentious casual feel that's refreshing. 

Needless to say, we are now the proud owners of a Dash & Albert rug! It was surprisingly affordable....$385 for a 9x12.  

Check out Pembroke (such a cute store!) for smaller versions of the rugs and a good selection of Pine Cone Hill bedding and pillows. 

More Annie Selke designs

About Annie Selke

Click here for the Dash & Albert site

Click here to see her Calico Corners line

Oh and what do ya know...a March 8 article on Annie Selke in the Chicago Tribune! I seriously just found this!

Cottage Living

I was extremely saddened when my favorite mag Cottage Living ceased production after it's December 2008 issue. I have subscribed since I bought my townhouse in 2005 and realized the magazine reflected my style perfectly. Each issue was treasured then, but even more so when Donald and I bought our first home, a cottage, last year. Saying it's arrival in the mail made my day is an understatement...Donald got a lot of entertainment from the production I made when he pointed out its arrival. He grew to like the mag too though, he even started flipping through it before I got home! I have torn out so many pages over the last four years. Thank goodness I have kept up with all the torn out pages and just recently compiled them in a 3-ring binder. 

Some of my favorite issues ever have been published this year. In December (right before I found out about the end of CL) we began to transform our kitchen to look like the one below, from the final issue.  

And just this past weekend I find out that another fave, Domino, is being shuttered too! How wrong is it that the magazines who "get" how the average household lives (pretty modestly) get sent to the graveyard in a recession when the mags with stuffy, expensive, same-old, same-old interiors get to live on? 

So, with that said, I want the style I love to live on through this blog. Cottage style to me means functional, comfortable, a mix of old, new, modern and traditional. Here I will post some my favorite photos and ideas I've found, as well as projects I am working on at home and for friends. I welcome any questions you have for your own home. Just don't be surprised if my answers are pulled directly from a back issue of Cottage Living. 

 

Cottage Living Kitchen

My Kitchen Before 

Kitchen After

The pictures don't tell the whole story. We also added paneling to the ceiling (popcorn ceiling before) and a new stainless pendent light fixture. And I fretted over the bottom cabinet color for weeks! However it's still a work in progress....we still need new countertops, sink, and oven. I will post more photos as it continues to morph into the kitchen of my dreams. The copied kitchen of my dreams that is.