Yo Home to Bel-Air

When we purchased our house we knew we were buying in one of our favorite parts of town, but little did we know that the actual name of our neighborhood is..... Bel-Air. Boo ya! Unfortunately we don't live next door to Phil and Viv Banks, but we have had fun meeting a few of our super cool neighbors. So every day I can't help but play this little number in my head on the way to the casa...

That was the extended version if you hadn't already realized. So... if you see me cruising around with dice in my mirror just go with it.

The Musical Muse

Matt and I went to an awesome charity even last year to benefit victims of the Nashville flood, where some local well-known's took chairs left abandoned in the wreckage and gave them new life.  After I battled it out in the auction, we became the proud owners of a painted chair by the Flaming Lips. This funky, awesome chair is now the muse for our music/office room.

We figure, this is the one room where we can really let our crazy hang out! Embrace the bold. Let color take charge! Boom! So, with that in mind, I ran by my condo yesterday on the way to pay a visit to the new casa and grabbed some teal and green goodies for inspiration. My condo has quite a bit of these lovely colors, and I thought they might have to find a new home since we are going more neutral throughout the house, but alas the music room saved the day!

Who knows how or if these items will come in to play, but they have certainly gotten the wheels turning. I can picture a collage of images, including the Beatles picture above, atop Matt's (and now I guess mine, yippee!) piano...displayed beautifully on teal walls. Bring on the drama, mama!

I especially love the touches of green! I have four of these green tiles in my condo that could bring the same cool effect. I mean if I'm going to have one crazy room, shouldn't I go all out? Too much?

On the other side of the room I would love a day bed! This way it could function as both couch and extra guest bed. We hope to have lots of visitors...hint, hint. Wink! Something like this would be rock star. You know a rock star in the music room. Only fitting.

Matt's parents have graciously let us use a twin bed, that will eventually be Matt's (and soon to be mine, yippee!) niece's bed, so I would love to DIY our own bed frame we could keep. So I'm on the hunt for two twin headboards for the daybed of dreams! I think neutrally rugs and window treatments will keep the room from going over-the-top.

But, if we really wanted to go crazy... I do secretly (and now, I guess publically) love this rug from West Elm.

Quite frankly, I am a little nervous about biting the bullet and actually painting the walls. I might get everything else in place and see what my next move should be. Or maybe I should just give myself a little pep talk and grab my paint brush. The pressure is on!

Engagement Town...

...is a happy place! This weekend 60 of our Nashville friends and family graciously gathered to celebrate mine and Matt's upcoming marriage. We feel so blessed to have such a wonderful family of friends and actual family here in Nashville (and those that travelled to party hardy).

My dad's family hosted the event at my cousin Will Ed and his wife Rachel's beautiful home. I was so excited I couldn't contain myself. I excited myself right in to a cold today. But it was all worth it! Matt and I put our party pants (or party dress in my case) on and enjoyed A&M specialty cocktails, bacon wrapped shrimp and some delicious jambalaya and grits.

Our sweet families came to kick off this exciting time. We are so thankful for all their support!

The Moore/Morton (mom's side of the family) clan was there with bells on!

The Moore/Settle (dad's side of the fam) was there in full force!

And the Woods crew partied all night long!

We hung out with our friends and family until 1:00 in the morning, enjoying every minute of it! I really like this whole getting married thing. Big fan....Huge!

Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate with us! We like you....a lot!

In other house news...

The old owners left us a garage full of junk. Hmph. At first glance it looked like there were 400 DVD's just waiting for us to adopt. On second glance...empty cases. Who does that! Got our hopes up and everything. However, we did find an old door hiding in the rafters. We are thinking this could make an awesome swing for our back yard!

More to come in that arena. I also can't decide which to tackle first. The stairs or the dining room. Oooo or maybe the music/office room. This is to fun.

A Table Tale

Well I finally finished repainting our dining room table! You know how when you finish one thing you suddenly notice the one million other things you want to do? Now all I can think about is what to do with those chairs, maybe we should paint the walls too and holy smokes this room has a long way to go.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me share with you the tale of the table. Once upon a time, Muddy and Duddy (my grandparents) owned a dining room table which they painted avocado green. I believe that color was popular back in the day, but it just wouldn't fly in the 10's (is that even how you say that?).

So when Mom and Dad Moore (my parents) inherited said table they painted it a lovely shade of white and gave it a home in our lake house. Once we sold the lake house the table found its way to a storage facility and it accidentally warped. Oops. So...when we excitedly announced we got a house and had no dining room furniture my parents graciously pulled the long lost table out of storage, had a carpenter fix the edge and brought it up to Nashville for us!

When we unloaded the table in our dining room we knew it would need a little TLC!

So off to Home Depot I went to grab something to sand with and some new white paint. Next to the grey walls, you could really see that the current color had a lot of yellow (which was great because it was in a yellow room), but that made it look sort of dingy and dirty in our dining room. So I picked a cooler, blue-er white for a crisp, clean look.

I grabbed a sanding block thinking it would save my hand, but I actually think I would have liked regular old sand paper. The blocks would be perfect for a smaller job, but I was quickly running out of sanding surface. After getting after the edges as much as I could, or I guess until I got bored, I geared up to paint. It is amazing that two whites can be so vastly different!

 

We decided to go ahead and paint the leaf so everything was uniform, but we will probably leave it out unless we know we are going to have company. So when you all come for dinner, in the leaf will go! Another thing I discovered was that I needed to paint the legs first! The first go around I tackled the top first, because I was antsy to see results and that resulted paint right in to my hair.

After the first coat the table was already looking immensely better. After two more coats, we were ready to dine!

Please excuse the moving boxes; we are a work in progress! As I was saying before, now all I can think about is painting (and recovering) the chairs and the walls! I am worried if I paint the chairs white too, the room will be too light and beachy and not dramatic enough. So then should I paint the walls a darker shade of grey? Or could I create the same effect with dark drapes? What if I painted the chairs grey? Too crazy?

Something like this...

I am perusing for inspiration today so bring on the ideas! I guess that is the end of the table tale. I think it was a pretty happy ending.

Twizzlers and Taffy

Now we know that this isn't something we had to do right away, but in one of our million trips to Home Depot we decided we needed an instantly gratifying project. Since so much of the house won't be put together for three and a half very long, long months, we really fed in to our generation's mentality of "I want it now" and decided we had to have new kitchen hardware. NOW!

So we settled in at the hardware section and compared all the options. To be on the safe side we grabbed a couple knobs and pulls, tossed them in to our buggy and decided we needed to see them on the cabinets to make a decision.

Remember our kitchen from the tour you went on last week last week?

The old hardware wasn't too bad, but it just wasn't our style. I believe the hardware was supposed to look rustic and woodsy, but to me the pulls looked a little twizzler-like and the knobs looked oddly like stretched taffy. As if I don't love sweets enough, that was just not going to help my plight for healthiness ( I mean I do have to fit in to the ole wedding dress). Every time I walked in to the kitchen I was surrounded!

Is it just me? Am I candy obsessed? Probably. Definitely.

So after testing out a few styles we landed on a more traditional knob with matching pulls. Not that I don't like interesting design pieces, but I have ideas to bring in the funk later. Just hold tight.

So off we went removing the old twizzler hardware. We even had a good friend stop by to see the new crib, so we obviously put her to work. I tried justifying her labor of love by promising to give a little blog shout out .... so thanks Kathryn Tuck! 

So there we have it! A quick little fix that is not only cheap (it cost us around $30) and easy, but is also much more nutritious for me! Except for all I can think about right now is twizzlers!! Reminds me of childhood.

Tonight I am putting the final coat on the dining room table my parents brought us (the one that was my grandparents). Paint really fixed that puppy up! I didn't know if it was possible.... but it worked! Update coming soon!

Blind Ambition

I can see you! I'm sure that's what our neighbors were thinking when we started moving in! Well probably not, but that's what it felt like. So first things first, blinds! I have my eye on some pretty stellar window treatments, but for now, blinds will have to do. I guess it is phase one of our window treatment plan.

So...off we go to Home Depot (our new home away from home) to blind hunt. After a lengthy debate in the store between white (faux wood) blinds and dark (real woods) blinds, we decided to take one of each home and do a trial run! Even though I knew this would mean yet another trip to the Depot I figured we would be back anyway.

So off we went with our mismatched set of blinds and a few other items we picked up for some future projects. Back at the ranch, we took turns holding up the different sets of blinds and spouting off our pros and cons of both the white and the dark wood.

After much ado....we finally landed on the dark for the living room and dining room! I thought it brought some warmth to the grey walls, and would look great with the neutrally/Restoration Hardware look we are going for, and I thought the white might look a little too beachy keen. Since these are a touch more expensive than the faux white blinds, we decided to save a few pennies and put the white ones in the bathroom and bedrooms.

When I say we, I really mean Matt, because he did all the installing.

I can't wait to get all moved in, close the blinds and take a killer weekend nap! They may look a little dark right now, but I think when we get a neutral rug change out some of the furniture they will really look great!



While we are on the window treatment subject, we also got this roman shade for a little privacy on the kitchen door.

We have a couple more things to figure out the blinds , but we are well on our way to privacy! In other news.... it has been raining in Nashville for days and I'm DYING to sit on my patio. Come one sunshine!!

Around the House

It's virtual tour time! I will be holding up my hot pink umbrella so that you don't get lost (you know like tour groups at Disney World) and will have any necessary touristy things (like a disposable camera) in my fanny pack. So...let's go!



I know it can be hard to grasp the flow of a house from pictures so I made this handy-dandy floor plan (of only the first floor for now) here. I even included some furniture just to help orient us as we begin our journey. Who knows if this is where the furniture will actually end up...but those tiny couches and beds just make me smile. Don't know what it is about digital furniture, but it seems happy. And yes, I obviously included our cars.

Ladies and gentlemen....the house.

Well there she is in all her glory! Of course the second floor is missing, so it's not quite ALL her glory. I guess just like 75 or 80% glory. Now for the real photos.

When you walk in the front door, one day you will hopefully be greeted by a precious Boston Terrier. For now, you are welcomed by our living room. Don't mind the visitors in the firts picture (I was too excited to wait for them to finish installing an outlet and got snap happy).

Before I can curl up in front of the fireplace and read a book with my hot tea we have to get it scoped out. Hopefully we will be up and burning by next fall. To the right (if you are still standing at the door) is the dining room and kitchen. One of the things that attracted us most to the house was the openness of the downstairs. We think it will work really well for the way we think we will probably live. I love to "cook", but I hate to miss out on any fun...thus the openness makes me one very happy girl!

If you walk towards the back of the house you will see a staircase (I have pondered some ideas about the stairs here, but still don't know what the plan is). To the left of the stairs is the guest bath and what will be our guest bedroom. Matt is currently squatting in the guest bedroom so we can work on the ole master and move up there together post nuptials. To the right will be our office/music room (which is pretty much identical in size and shape to the guest bedroom).



If you head upstairs you will find a laundry room, bathroom and master bedroom. They are petite and cozy and I can't wait to start making them feel like home.



Then we come to my favorite room. The outside. So I guess it's really not a room...but there is a great patio I can't wait to paint and have a million cookouts! Watch out summer! And no that is not the wrought iron furniture I just painted.... just some left overs from the seller that I am about to attack with a can of black spray paint!

Well there you have it! I will lave loads more pictures as I start to tackle my mile long list of projects! I hope you enjoyed the tour! And I have to go to Home Depot again. Adios bloggers!