Baby it’s cold outside

Posted on December 28, 2013 by Frame by Frame Style

And…. we’re back! It’s been a busy holiday season for BJ and I, but despite being busy, we had some time to continue working on our home projects. I just ran out of time to keep you updated! I’ve added “write more blog posts” to my list of new year’s resolutions this year.

Now that the holidays are winding down and we’re looking to the new year, we will once again change our home decor. The in-between seasons are always a fun time to decorate. They are sometimes a little challenging, but allow for a decent amount of creativity. Here is how we decorated after Christmas last year.

I like to use decor that will translate from one season to the next. Before Christmas, I picked out two new vases, corks and cranberries to dress up our kitchen island. I chose the cranberries for their rich warm color, perfect for fall to winter decorating. The corks are a nice earthy color, another warm color that can be for fall or winter.

When choosing a candle in our decor, I almost always go with an led candle, unless I have no plans to light the candles. The candles in the picture below are led and have a timer on them. Every night they come on at the same time and go off at the same time.

In our winter decor this year, I want to add some more greenery. I like this idea I found on Pinterest to roll candles in faux snow. I also like the birds because we have a few wooden birds that look like these. The pine in the vase might be a little harder to pull off because we do not have any pine in our yard and pine is hard to find after Christmas. The stores sell off all of their Christmas decor and move on to spring decor too quickly.

DIY: Add faux snow to candles for a new look.

Here’s an idea for a way to use branches from a real Christmas tree. Before you throw the tree out, cut off a few branches and display them in a nice bucket with a few lights, pine cones and berry sprays. DIY winter decor || Lover.ly To decorate our kitchen chalkboard, I like this idea for a “baby it’s cold out here” sign. We still have several months left of winter and it will be cold outside. So, why not have this sign in your house after holidays?

Love this sign for winter decorating

For more ideas, search “winter decor” on Pinterest. There are so many fun things you can do with winter decor. Be creative! You don’t have to put away all of your favorite decor items from Christmas. Keep a few winter items out and use them to celebrate the season a little longer in the new year!

Enjoy!

The New Guy

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Frame by Frame Style

Meet Bentley, the newest addition to our family. He is a spunky gray tiger cat who loves to play and have fun.

Bentley has kept us on our toes since the day we brought him home. He’s already made a few changes to our decor. He was a little curious one night and knocked over a milk jug vase we had hanging out in our foyer. Thankfully, Bentley was okay, the milk jug… not so much.

Lesson learned. After the milk jug, we picked up and put away any remaining breakables that Bentley might be able to reach or knock over.

We forgot what it was like to have a kitten in the house! He can be quite sneaky sometimes.

So what does Zoey think of our new family member? You might say Bentley is still growing on her.

Although Bentley hasn’t warmed Zoey’s heart (yet), he has brought us much joy. He is very loving and when you pick him up he purrs, and purrs. He also loves to snuggle and give nose bumps. I think he is going to grow up to be a lap kitty, but first he has to grow out of his playing phase. Bentley is like the Energizer bunny, going and going and going. He only stops to take a quick break and then he is back on the move again.

Keep an eye out for Bentley in future photos.

Summer Time and the Decorating is Easy

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Frame by Frame Style

I love great clearance finds at Target. With back to school season right around the corner, that means summer seasonal items are now on clearance. I love perusing Target for clearance items during these seasonal switches.

Tip: for those who are not familiar with where you can find Target clearance sales, they are sometimes found in the aisles, but they are also on the back side of the aisles. Below is a diagram of what I mean by the “back side of the aisles.”

targetaisles

My latest Target clearance find is this tall teal vase. It was originally $29.99 and I bought it for $14.98.

Sometimes you can hold out on these finds and come back a few days later when the prices are marked down even lower. However, you take the risk that the item might not be there when you return.

As soon as I saw this vase, I thought it would look great on our dining room table. I really enjoy decorating the dining room table for each season and I thought this vase would look great with some late summer decor.

I picked out the vase filler below to put in our Crate and Barrel glass vases to compliment the teal vase. The filler is a mixture of floral, greenery and seashells.

After I added the filler, our Crate and Barrel clear glass vases looked like this:
fbfs_seasondecor_5

For the teal vase, I chose a simple flower arrangement of three sunflowers, two yellow and one white. Because the vase is so tall, if you use big thick flowers you can go simple and let the flowers lean on the edge of the vase. If you want a fuller look, you could add more sunflowers and some additional greenery or filler. You could even leave the vase empty because the color will let it stand on it’s own.

Our completed table is bright and colorful. I’m really enjoying the color combination of teal, orange, yellow gold, white and green. I love this color combination.

Have you ever found a great item on clearance and couldn’t wait to bring it home? What’s been your favorite find?

Fantastic Foyer

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Frame by Frame Style

Hello everyone! We hope you had a great Fourth of July! We had a great time celebrating with family this holiday.

So, you might be asking, what have we been up to lately? Well… a lot, actually. Keep your eye out for new posts coming soon.

Up first is our recent foyer updates. A few months ago, we started designing a larger layout for our existing foyer photo collage. We finally finished the collage and also added some artwork and and a mirror to our foyer. Since we brought in our (very heavy) 22ft ladder for the collage, we decided to go ahead and hang our artwork and mirror before we put the ladder away again.

You might remember the paper templates I created to map out where we would hang out new additions to our photo collage. Not only did they help us to visually see how we planned to hang the photos, they also served as a way to tell where to place the nail on the wall. Once we hammered the nail hole using the paper template, we removed the paper, put the nail(s) back in the wall and then placed all the photos.

In order to hammer on the wall, we first removed all of the photos and left their nails in the wall. I took a picture (seen above) of all the photos so we would remember how they were arranged. While the frames were down, I swapped a few of the photos for new. After we finished hanging the frames we got out our trusty level.

And here is our finished collage!

Thanks to a friend who told me about the Kirkland’s Friends and Family sale a few months ago, we found a great inexpensive mirror to hang in our foyer and help distribute the light from the window. Here is the empty wall before the mirror:

And after:

From the upstairs guest bedroom there is a nice view of the stairs from our new mirror.

In addition to the mirror, we also found an inexpensive painting to hang above my office door. I love the scene in the picture. It’s raining but the bright red umbrella looks so cheery. My mom also said that the couple in the photo remind her of BJ and me. 🙂 I would definitely wear that coat.

Here are a few more photos of our updated foyer, including BJ’s Formula One vintage wooden photo. I posted a photo of it on our Instagram.

How do you dress up a large wall? With photos, artwork, or both?

It’s Rugtastic!

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Frame by Frame Style

Along with our subtle decor upgrades to the fireplace, we also recently added a decorative rug to the living room.

We shopped a few different stores including Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn and West Elm, before we settled on a Threshold rug from Target.

What we discovered in our quest to find a suitable rug was that several stores seemed to have very plush, comfy feeling rugs. However, if you lift up their rugs you will uncover a nifty secret: carpet padding. Some stores display their rugs with carpet padding underneath to make the rugs seem more plush. With this tidbit of knowledge, we decided on the Target rug we picked out because it was a nice, yet lesser expensive option that we could simply add a carpet pad to.

We have plenty of leftover carpet padding from when we replaced the carpet in our dining room. If you do not have extra carpet padding lying around, you can check your local carpet or home improvement store for carpet pad remnants.

Once we brought the rug home, we roll it out in the living room and BJ took a few measurements to cut a piece of the carpet padding to fit the rug.

Zoey, aka our “project manager,” also took a few minutes to assess the rug from the couch to make sure it was okay.

Next, we lined up the carpet padding on the back of the rug. BJ cut the pad about an inch short on all sides so we could tape it in place.

We used Gaffer’s tape (which is often used for lighting and film work) to tape the rug to the carpet, but you can also use Duct Tape.

To ensure that the carpet pad stays in place, we taped it on all four edges.

Here’s the “before” of our rug installation:

And here is the “after:”

With the pad underneath the rug, the carpet, and then another pad under that, standing on our new rug feels awesome. It’s super plush and soft. The carpet pad under the rug also adds an extra layer of protection in case we spill something. It keeps the stain from going through to the carpet.

By adding a carpet pad under your rugs you can make a lesser expensive rug feel extra plush!

Enjoy!

Fireplace Spruce Up

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Frame by Frame Style

Happy Saturday! I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend so far. We’ve been busy working on DIY projects and plans and I will have new posts to share with you soon.

Before we dive into our latest projects, I wanted to share some small decor upgrades we made to spruce up the look of our fireplace.

I found this large blue vase and sand blasted milk jug at Target during their Threshold sale a few weeks go. I’ve had my eye on the blue vase for a while and when it went on sale, (and I had a coupon) I couldn’t resist bringing it and the milk jug home.

After we added the vase and milk jug to the area in front of the fireplace, I decided to swap the flowers in the tall vases for white dahlias.

The yellow bloom twigs in the large blue vase came from Michael’s.

I like varying depths and dimensions that the vases add to the space. And Zoey’s blanket basket is still close by so she can sleep in one of her favorite spots.

Seasonal Switches

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Frame by Frame Style

Christmas has come and gone and every year I find myself wanting to keep some of our Christmas decorations out a little longer. In a fun and not tacky way, of course!

Well, this year I found a way! The table runner and placemats that I bought for our kitchen island are still out and will remain out until Valentine’s Day. They are red and white and work perfect with red decor for Valentine’s Day. And why not snowflakes for V-Day? It’s a winter holiday after all and BJ and I love snow.

We even incorporated our twinkling winter berry outdoor lights into our indoor decor. They really make our dining room glow! If they didn’t have frosted cranberries on them, I might keep them out year! They are so pretty.

How do you decorate for the changing seasons. Do you have decor between Christmas and spring or do you go straight to spring?

The Blanket Basket Acquisition

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

When you’re a cat owner/lover, you quickly learn that your stuff, is really your cat’s stuff. Your original purpose for items when they come into your home may not stay that way for long.

Take this basket:

We bought it with the intention that we would use it for blanket storage. Now that we have a bigger couch, we can have extra blankets available for guests or to snuggle up with on a chilly evening.

But since this is really “Zoey’s house,” as we often joke, our blanket basket is now Zoey’s basket.

But that’s why we love her. She is a keeper and definitely brings joy into our home.

Does your pet claim particular items as their own?

The Days Are Just Packed

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

And we’re back. After a brief hiatus we are back and working on projects again.

Lately, the days have been packed with work and life. So before we get into our next project, I want to take a step back to earlier this week. Valentine’s Day was Tuesday and BJ spoiled me as usual. 🙂

A few days prior to Valentine’s Day, BJ and I were grocery shopping and we walked past the flower display where I pointed out the cute “baby” tulips. So on Tuesday, this was delivered to me:

I surprised BJ with a Reese’s Tiger, Reese’s Hearts and M&Ms. The tiger sings a song about Reese’s peanut butter cups to the tune of the “Peanut Butter Jelly” song. It’s super cute and Reese’s cups are BJ’s favorite.

Tuesday night we went to dinner at one of our favorite Italian restaurants. We ordered enough food that we continued our celebration again and enjoyed the leftovers on Wednesday night. Later this weekend we are going to continue our Valentine’s Day celebration with a couples massage and dinner at a local winery and restaurant.

So now on to our project. If you’ve checked out my Pinterest page DIY, you might’ve noticed the photo of the “towel tree.” When I came across this photo, I immediately thought this would be a great way to solve an issue we face when guests come to visit. We never have enough places to hang towels.

We only have one towel rack in our bathroom. At times, we might have up to 5 adults visiting us and using this bathroom.

The plan is to use a vinyl wall tree design as a background to place hooks to hang towel. The tree will look something like this.

Now imagine that tree with hooks to hang towels on. Once we finish it will give us more space for our guests to hang their damp towels. And instead of a bunch of random towel racks it will be a fun towel tree.

More updates and pictures to come.

Another upcoming project we are working on is part home improvement, part celebration. We found this fun centerpiece at Pottery Barn and our plan is to fill the bottom with wine corks. Instead of going out and buying wine corks, we want to fill the bottom with corks from wine we enjoy drinking. But we can’t really do that on our own (at least not quickly). And why not share this fun project with our friends? It looks like there will be several wine and game nights in our future. 🙂