Sweet Hotel Living

Greetings from the Dirty South: Alabama!  I'm here for NINE WEEKS for an Air Force School, and while the temperatures outside might be enough to make you cry, the digs are pretty great.  Here's my new pad.

Itty Bitty Kitchen

This is the little kitchen that comes with all the dishes you need, plus a stovetop and a fridge.  I THINK there's a garbage disposal as well.  The downside is no oven, which I find I use a lot of as I learn to cook, but that's ok.  The single server coffee is pretty sweet.

Comfy-ish

My living room consist of this little love seat, desk, flat screen, and nice big window.

Bedroom with a nice cushy bed and...another tv!  Mr. Move-a-Lot will NOT let me put a TV in our room, for good reason.  I watched TV last night and stayed up way too late.  Lesson learned.  Well, probably not learned.  More like "Lesson realized."

Walk in closet?  Yes, please.

Here's some of my favorite (and not so favorite) design things already in the room.

I love this square lamp and the lines carved out of the base.  It reminds me of those stones in The Fifth Element.  I feel like saying "MULTIPASS" every time I look at it.  I am digging the rectangle lampshade that dares to be longer than it is tall.  There's a tall one in the living room and a small one in the bedroom

These curtains are nice and shimmery and have a slight blue/tan/brown palette that doesn't yell at you, but subtly suggests some color.

I love this brown blanket - sleek and shiny.

What am I NOT ok with?  All the pictures of jets.  I get it, it's the Air Force, but come on, I'm not even a pilot!  Planes planes everywhere.

I haven't put a lot of personal touches, because I'm still in a "neato it's a hotel!" phase.  Which, by the way, the BEST part is that I have a maid come and clean up after me.  FOR NINE WEEKS.  Heaven.  I did put some picture of the Move-a-Lot families out and about.

My only real personal touches as of yet.

So, any recommendations for making this place more homey over the next nine week?  I'm thinking of putting something OVER the pictures, like a gauzy scarf or something.....any more ideas?

Scary or Cute? I say Cute!

I've been vulturing around wall decals for a while, and frankly, I find most of them cheesy.  I am sure they look fabulous in all of your houses, but I haven't seen anything that I really wanted to put on a wall.  I'm not into cliche quotes, I don't need hearts all over my walls, you get the idea.

Then, on a random "I don't really need anything but here I am" trip to Target, I found these little birds-on-a-wire on clearance and immediately pictured our guest room done up in gorgeous tans and browns with big birds where the headboard is supposed to be (and isn't).  Of course, I bought them for $10 and found that the big birds on a wire were actually teeny tiny birds on a wire that wouldn't fill an eighth of the space I wanted.

But fear not! I found a home for them.  I love the idea of guests pulling down a cheap little blind and finding a surprise!

What surprise is lurking in this window?

Birdies on a wire!

A closeup.  I'm in love with these little birds that will watch over my guests.

My concern was that they were a little too creepy in a "we're watching you" sort of way, but I think they are kinda adorable.

Have you ever done a little surprise in a room for people to discover? 

Inspiration from DC

Moving from city to city can be taxing, but each city brings with it design inspiration!  Here's just a few things I've found that inspire me.

This kitchen makes me want to cook

This (above) is Julia Child's kitchen, current on exhibit at the Smithsonian (you may have seen Amy Adams go visit in in Julie and Julia).  I love the green, love the layout, and love love love the hanging pots.

Presidentially ethereal

 This one is the actual bedroom of George Washington.  We visited his house at Mount Vernon the first weekend we were in DC.  I love this white airy look.  The walls are actually a light blue, and I'm telling you, this bedroom could be right out of the pages of Elle Decor.  Note: He actually died in this room, but I assume they washed that comforter.

A good tip for anyone

My folks have already visited and we went to the Smithsonian American History museum where we saw a lot of war memorabilia.  Now, since Mr. Move-a-lot and I are in the military, we pretty much keep our house free and clean of military stuff (separation of house and work!) but I love the look of vintage posters and I love how completely inappropriate this would be in our entryway.  Which means I have to have it.

Earhart was a browncoat!

I love the legend of Amelia Earhart.  The mystery, the intrigue, love it.  And I also love fashion and the show Firefly which was tragically cancelled. (More about that on my personal blog here)  But it looks like Amelia was perhaps just forward thinking in her style, cause this jacket is just effing cool.  Yeah, it's not really about design per se, but I would wear this in my designed house all the time. 

So, in just a month, I've found a bedroom, a kitchen, a hallway decoration and a jacket to wear.  Not too shabby!

What inspires you in YOUR city??

Shower curtain first - all else follows!

Perhaps you remember this post on my personal blog about how I redid the bathroom in our old house in Massachusetts.  Or perhaps you remember it being featured on Fresh Home Blog (yay!)

I have found that the EASIEST way to make a bathroom your own and begin the design process is to pick a shower curtain.  Luckily, there are ridiculously awesome shower curtains to be found everywhere.  I think of a shower curtain as a huge piece of art that I can actually afford and don't have to buy a frame for.  And can get wet.  And folds up nicely.  What could be more fantastic??

We are renting a house now, and inherited this not-so-cute bathroom with peeling striped wallpaper and fabulous (sarcasm here) vanity with that fake marble look.  El gross.  Oh yeah, and a wallpaper border that people seemed to be obsessed with.

The original.  Um...ew.

I'm pretty sure I can sweet talk the landlord into letting me peel and paint at my own expense (hello, makes your bathroom nicer for free!), but wasn't sure where I'd want to go with color.  So, I relied on my "shower curtain first, all else follows" rule to give me an idea of the color scheme I might want to choose.

I picked up this awesome, bright, floral (but not TOO floral - this is the bathroom my husband gets ready in in the morning!) curtain from Room Essentials at Target (on clearance for $10.48!).  I was walking around Target and even though I promised Jon that I wouldn't do any decorating stuff for a few months until we got settled, I saw this on the clearance end-of-aisle shelf and couldn't resist!  Big yellow and black flowers - gorgeous.  It's called "Pineapple flower".

Bathroom "art"

So now the bathroom looks even worse because the flowers and stripes are clashy.  And not in a good "I think I'm a designer" clashy.  BUT, if I waited to post pictures until every room was done....this would be a boring blog.  If I had my way, I would paint the bathroom the dark color - black or navy of whatever it is (haven't decided) but that's probably too dark for the landlord (although he IS in Honduras....).  Neutral is going to have to be the way to go.  Crap....now that I'm typing this, maybe I should have picked a curtain with a more neutral color floating in it.  NO NO, I'm sticking with the flowers.  I'll find something.

Recommendations?  Perhaps just a white on the walls?

Rent This House! Dining Room re-do

Oh, how I wish we were not moving to DC.  For several reasons, but this new dining room makes it even harder to pack up and move!

Dining room before

Dining Room after

Another view

So, to go from stuffy Victorian dining room to fresh, airy beach dining room, we had to paint over wallpaper.  Yeah, I know.  It's not the best solution according to...everyone. BUT, we are moving FAST, and pulling wallpaper is very time consuming.  It turns out that painting over the wallpaper is an ok solution if the paper is very securely fastened to the wall, which this was.  It's just UGLY.  And has no alibi.

First, I peeled off all little tears in the wallpaper and sanded off any loose edges.  Then, I took a damp sponge and wiped all the walls down, but then decided to sand the walls down to give the primer something to adhere to.  Not sure if I should have done that, but Mr. Move-a-lot suggested it, so there you go.  I then got Kilz oil-based primer and gave it two good coats.  I didn't worry about taping TOO much, only around the gorgeous crown molding on top, because I have to encapsulate all of the door and window casings anyway during the de-leading process (I'll post about that at some point). The oil based primer smells pretty horrible, so I taped myself into the room and used a homemade air scrubber that Mr. Move-a-lot built to push most of that stinky air out of the window (and away from Baby Move-a-lot) which helped a lot.  One the walls were good and primed, I put two coats of Soft Sage, by Glidden on top.  Gorgeous. 

The hutch in the dining room had really great and pretty doors on them....that were all covered in lead paint.  Rather than try to encapsulate sections of the doors, we opted to just remove and discard them.  Sorry, lovely doors!  I painted the hutch the same Soft Sage (it was previously a dark red to match the wallpaper) and I think it makes a lovely display case and without the doors really opens up the room some more.

If I was going to live here, I would do more decor-wise.  As it is, I just bought some sheer white panels at Walmart for $5 each to hang in the windows and set out some flowers that people had brought to our going away party.  I would love to hang some weathered frames on some of the big blank spaces in the walls, but I didn't want to put holes it my pretty new walls.  We did buy a light fixture (Hampton Bay Brushed Nickel Five-Light Chandelier) for $40 because there was no light in this room.

And, totally not the point, but how much do you love this color combination?  Purple and light green (well, technically Soft Sage, by Glidden).  I love discovering new color combinations that I wouldn't normally use. 

I'm sad it won't be MY dining room, but how lucky are our new renters?  I hope this makes up for the pink carpet in the hallway......

Friday Tip Day

The great thing about being a Move-a-lot?  Getting to try new ideas in new spaces all the time, especially those I've been wanting to try for a while.  But, I often forget new things I've seen or colors I'd like to try because I look at so much design stuff.  So, today's tip is to start a design folder.

I'm an old-fashioned girl who likes the feel of paper, so I print pictures and tear things out of magazines to keep them for our next adventure.  Here's my folder:

And here's just a few of my collection.  (Currently OBSESSED with the outdoor space picture)

Look at that amazing hanging light in the bottom center picture!!

So, whenever we hit a new place or finally decide which room is going to be the guest room, I can pull out the folder, skim through all of these pictures and pick something I think is pretty neat to try.  And, if it doesn't work, we just move a few years later :-)


Have a great weekend!

Waiting for a space!

I LOVE to bookmark great sites that sell cute things, even if I'm not ready for them yet.  One day I will be!  We're moving soon, so it's not the time to buy new things, because we don't even know where we will be living in DC, but how cute is this?

Perfect for a bathroom, right next to my uber-magnifying mirror.

A nice guest room print to hang

See all the prints for sale here, and just try to pick only one!  KEEP CALM GALLERY

Just a bit of awesomeness

I love the look of vintage, but I don't like to buy old things that don't mean anything.  I recently saw an office of a designer in a magazine, and he had stuff in there that was neat, but didn't have any connection to him, other than he thought it was neat.  For me, I like to buy things I have some type of connection to.  Which is why I bought this great sign from Etsy.  Now, to hang it in the new house or the new office??

Note: Just the long sign, not the framed mirror/window is what I got

Rent This House!

Mr. Move-a-lot and I foolishly bought a house that we fell in love with in Boston, although we were pretty sure we wouldn't stay there long.  And we were right!  We got orders to move to Washington, DC, so we decided to rent our lovely house for the next 30 or so years.

However, a house built in 1900 has a lot of things to do.  Aesthetically, structurally, this house had some issues. Here's some before/after pictures of our house, as well as some information on everything we had to do.  I love the idea of "staging" a home, so I tried to make it look at nice as possible before renters came through!

Full bathroom: redid the floor, painted, changed vanities, and decorated.

Bathroom before

Bathroom after

Guestroom #1: Painted the wood paneling and painted all the brown trim white.  Decorated

Guest room before

Guest room after