Hydrangea Time

After Luke was born (2 weeks ago today) I pretty much hibernated inside the house & in our back yard for a week or so- snuggling & trying to keep him fed.  Then one day as we were heading out, I noticed that our hydrangea had bloomed without me noticing.  Like crazy:

...So of course I had to take a few inside...

I love the old-fashioned appeal of hydrangea...  My grandma used to have a ton of limelights at her summer cottage.   I had just enough time to cut a few and am heading out today to grab more...

The thing I love about hydrangea is that there are so many I don't feel guilty for picking them...

I have all different colors (guess our soil PH is pretty inconsistent)...

I love the blue...

Here's a picture of Christian taken 2 years ago bringing a bunch in...

...They (both him & the flowers) were much smaller back then.   I never thought the hydrangea would get taller than me!!

my timer's up- baby's crying- so i'm out  but i cannot thank you all enough for all the well wishes and notes...  your friendship means so much to me.

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

My Little Lovey...

... is here!!  He was born last Monday (May 21st) in the afternoon and weighed 7 lbs 8 oz.

{There is no better feeling on this Earth than the moment when you first hold your baby}

...And here he is all cleaned up and in his nightie:

His name is Luke David & we are so in love with him.

 {Here he is with his Daddy- David.  We've barely put him down all week.}

Anyway, I just wanted to share our news with you & hope you're having a great week!  I'm not sure when I'll be back in -  I'm really trying to devote all of my attention to the family right now- but when I am I've got lots to share on what we've been doing around here. :)

And a note on the exhaustion/ coping level-  I have to say that with my husband home for 1 more week, we're doing pretty well.  Life with 3 boys is DEFINITELY an adjustment but so far, so good.  Right now, we're tag-teaming & it's really manageable but I'm a little nervous about when real life & work picks up & we're not only focusing on the family & life at home.  I'm trying not to think about it right now & to just recup & relax...  On that note, I'm also sooooo excited to get to work out again.  I gained 60 (!) pounds so I'm ready to RUNNNNN... :)  (I gained 60 with each of my other pregnancies too =  FUN.  not.) 

ok, I'm off.  Have missed you all!!



If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

The Nesting Continues...

This baby needs to come soon because my house is under attack.  (by me) 

{Most recently, I went after the lower level family room.  It's now cream/ white instead of blue.}

The room has gone through a few different phases over the 3 years we've lived here...

{I had an old ship painting from my son's nursery when we first moved in so hanging it made the place feel sort of coastal - which it isn't.}

At first I went with blues & orangey-golds & beiges, using the things from our old house.

Later I added in some more little coastal paintings I already owned and a crazy faux bois lamp.  ( I love this lamp & realize it's one of those pieces that doesn't appeal to most people but that I just have this strange kitcshy love for.)  ....

The room never really sat right with me, mostly because the fact that the coastal things in it didn't fit the house.  One day about a year ago, craving a change, I brought in one of my favorite rugs & tried out some teal curtains & it was just very wrong.  Totally not the fun happy space I wanted.  I think it only stayed like this for a few hours before I changed it...

 ...To this:

{I was getting there with the green addittion.  Green's my favorite color & more than that, to me it fits my house because we're surrounded by trees and have lots of windows in our house.  The outside is the backdrop for the interiors.}

In this pic below, you can see a couple of the windows in the family room's workspace during the Winter:

{photo by Helen Norman}

For a while now, I've been ready to say goodbye to the blue & bring in more white & green.  We just haven't had the get-up-and-go to actually do it... Until I neared 9 months of pregnancy.  OF COURSE that's the perfect time to attack the basement!  (I really love my husband for humoring me.)  We finished adding shelves to a little built-in book area...

Getting the book situation under control has helped immensely. Our family loves to read & not only read, but keep & collect the books we love. So... that's a major storage issue for us. We have books crammed everywhere. Adding the additional shelves in the nook has been life-saving (for now ;)

I'd like to make some botanicals with the kids out of the plants in our yard for the two frames above. 

{Maybe something like the ones we made for the playhouse}

SIDENOTE: Another thing I should probably explain is my obsession with botanicals & plants in general.  I've always loved them, and as a little girl, I had flower presses & enjoyed collecting pretty things to press.  When I was a little older (maybe around 12 or 13) I got very into researching herbs & flowers & plants.  I collected (still do ;)  books on them & the various medicinal uses for plants along with the folklore & & legends that surround them.  I actually have an "Herb journal" where I've collected all of the different information from various sources about the herbs I had access to complete with my own photos.  (Yes, I'm weird, I know this.)   Remember my zit cure, here? (pic below)

{Please don't be scurred.}

In high school I began making (and selling!) things I made out of herbs & oils.  (Lip balms, lotions, teas, natural body sprays, etc...  In college, my best friend & I sold more of the same things & expanded into pillows & clothing.  SO...  the reason you see lots of botanical artwork & nature-inspired spaces in my work is because it's something I'm really passionate about & it comes out, especially in my personal spaces & textile line. 

And now back to the family room....  It's finally getting to where I'm happy with it.  It just feels so much more in keeping with our house:

{While we have lots of vintage educational charts around the house, these two are actually reproductions from The Evolution Store.  I went with cowslip & anemone.  I'd gotten it narrowed down to five options and let my 4-year old pick.  (What 4 year old can resist the name "cowslip?" ...And we have peonies (from the anemone family) in the backyard.)

And for the rest of the space...
I want to add some BRNO chairs around the table & I'm looking for the perfect ones with old-looking brown leather... Similar to this but not quite: (This pic looks like suede to me.)

My Gustavian desk is going black (it's a few pics up & is currently pale aqua)  & I'm slipcovering my Madhatter Chairs in a natural linen & flanking the hutch with them:

{Madhatter Chair}

Everything else just got a bit restyled & of course that'll sort of continue.  I'll take more pics when I can.

On the pregnancy front:  Having contractions but nothing strong enough to constitute labor yet.  With my past two pregnancies, my water just broke with no warning, so that was fairly straight-forward.  This contraction thing is a little different for me so I'm wondering how this one will be.  Here, our  whole family saying hurry up! hi!! ;) to the new baby:

And it's bigger than it looks here.  my husband & I have big hands ;)

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

"Pretty Little Things" Fridays

Life's so hectic & busy that I often forget to slow down enough to appreciate the little things.  And it's the little things- the simple pleasures- that get me excited & make me appreciate my life.  If you've been reading Pure Style Home long enough, you probably know that consistency in blog posts isn't really my thing, but I thought it would be nice to try to post about little simple pleasures on Fridays.  I'm home with my boys on Fridays & only have a few spare minutes to do posts, so I thought "Pretty Little Things" would be a nice way to share a little something good that I've come across during the week or have going on at my house. 

This week, my simple pleasure is being able to bring in massive pink floppy roses from my garden:

{They smell like Heaven!!}

The roses echo the old-fashioned black & white cabbage rose wallpaper in my kitchen nook...  Eating breakfast (mm-mm pancakes!) with the boys and the little white pot of roses on the kitchen table just made me happy.  So simple. So easy. 

What simple pleasure have you indulged in this week?

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Progress in My Boys' Bedroom

Over the holidays we did a little bit of work on our boys' (Christian-4 and Justin-2) bedroom.  We moved Justin to his "big boy bed" and it's been a bit less than smooth at nighttime.  He started climbing out of his crib a little while back & after whacking his head on the floor a couple of times, we knew it was time to switch him out of the crib to a bed.

{Putting together the new beds}

The boys' room is teensy and we recently reduced the size of the closet so that we could fit two twin beds in the space.  We have no room for extras in here, and instead of dressers, both boys have drawers for clothes under their twin-sized trundle beds from Ikea:

The closet is directly to the left of where I was standing when I took the pic above and it used to take up more than half of the left wall.  You can see in this before pic that the chaise could just fit sideways in the nook: 

The room feels so much bigger now and here's a pic of how Justin's twin bed fits in the new larger nook:

{right now the bedding is just in cream & I'm adding Euro shams and quilts at the end of the beds for some color...  }

The striped rug just happens to be in here right now & we plan on replacing the carpet with seagrass because there is a hole in it from where we removed the old closet.  (Justin's bed hides it nicely in the meantime.)  I'd like to layer a big cowhide in here for a soft play spot.

Below is Christian's bed on the other side of the room.  The art is up over here and I wrapped fabric around a Euro sham (in my Filigree Chevron in Autumn} & tossed fabric (Fern Star in moss) at the end of the bed to get an idea of how it will feel with the pillows and quilts.

I did a lot of thinking on the Ikea beds.  Christian originally had a similar black Ikea bed in his other bedroom and we really liked the clothes storage & trundle bed feature.  (They can get their own clothes out & help put away the clean ones because the drawers are right on the ground= awesome.)  Christian's black bed took up a bit more space (both visual space & physical space) as it had side & back rails and two of them would really cramp the new bedroom.  The two new beds together were also $100 less than the 1 black bed with rails so we ended up saving too by not having to buy another black bed.   (It took all day to put them together btw...  we love Ikea's wordless directions ;) 

I've thought about adding upholstered headboards to the beds in my filigree chevron fabric (and leaving out the Euro shams) but the arrggggg window isn't centered so the headboard would overlap the window.   I'm playing with ideas for shapes that might suit it better but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle...  That left bed does look especially lonely though.

We're installing these fixtures (by visual comfort) above both boys' beds so that will help:

...Except they're in burnished brass:

...And artwork & color on the bed will do a bit more to add interest...  I think I'll wait & see how it all looks installed before I make any headboard decisions.  The globe mobile is a Christmas gift to the boys from my good friend Elise, who also owns the Design Center of Northern Virginia.

{Justin is thrilled to be hanging out on his big brother's bed while he's at preschool... ssshhhhh!}

We keep their toys & books in this oragngey-reddish piece I found years ago (for around $27) at a thrift shop:

{Again, I love how they boys can clean up on their own - okay with me telling them over and over and over- and we have baskets for toy storage underneath.}

...Anyway, there are still a bunch of details to finish up before I'm really in love with it, but the boys are thrilled with their new room for now.  We're hanging the rest of the artwork & lighting this week and I'll be sure to keep you posted!

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

If you are interested in any of the fabrics mentioned, please visit my online fabric store http://www.purestylehome.co/

Milk off the Shelf

THIS is what happens when your house is under construction, you make dinner with the kids and your spouse is working late for the night:

...Was wondering this morning how in the world we could have finished off a whole gallon of milk yesterday?  (The kids got oatmeal with water for breakfast.)...

...Until my assistant came in and asked me why the milk was on the shelf???

(I really didn't even notice it there.)  Ah vell.

Off to the grocery store!

ps- I'll be sure to post a few progress pics of the rooms we had redone!  (Undecorated as of now)

Fern Window Boxes

This past weekend we added window boxes on a whim.  I've always wanted them and they were on sale at the garden center so we went for it.  I loooove quick projects and this one was simple.  (Especially for me watching while Dave was up on the ladder ;) ;)

So far, I've been caring for them through the windows and I went with ferns because they do so well with the moisture from that air.  I'm completely blanking out on the other plant I chose but I loved it's almost flourescent color & white blooms.

The plants are so pretty from the inside too.  You can see them from the window and it feels like they're in the room with you.  We recently switched the boys' rooms so now they're sharing a bedroom and the second bedroom is a playroom.  (Over the summer when we stayed with my dad they got used to sharing a bedroom and wanted to keep it that way when we got home.   I love seeing them so excited to be together.)  Christian's "job" is watering the plants because he knows mommy runs a plant hospice.

Over the next few months we taking down a closet in the boys room to make room for a big boy bed for Justin.  I'm planning on doing duvet covers out of one of my fabrics, "Filigree Chevron" and I can't wait to see how they turn out!

We're going to my friend & photogapher Helen Norman's farm this weekend to shoot my new line of fabrics.  The crazy amount of rain we've had has but a bit of a {literal} damper on our original plans which included lots of field shots, but Helen's property has so many beautiful spots I'm not worried.  My  first textile collection is completed and I have 14 different designs with multiple colorways in each pattern for a total of about 60 different fabrics.  I plan on adding a few new designs seasonally.  I've pulled a ton of inspiration images and can't wait!!  love the idea of stacking the fabrics inside a piece of furniture like this one:

{image from theselby.com}

Enjoy your day!!

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

How we do Floor Plans

A few of you emailed yesterday asking about how we do our floorplans.  We draw them by hand.  When we're surveying a room, we photograph it and measure it.  Everything is measured & noted: windows, ceiling height, baseboards, electrical, etc.  

Back at the office, my design assistant, Meghan, creates a scaled drawing of the room & makes a couple of copies of it.  They're then placed in the client's binder for me to work on.  I'll play around with different furniture arrangements.  Like I mentioned yesterday, some furniture plans are obvious while others have many solutions and can be tricky.

I'm not a big tech-lover and am very visual & tactile, so I prefer to move little furniture pieces around & draw on the empty floorplans myself.   One of my favorite tools is  "The Board."   It's a magnetic furniture plan kit.  I attach the floorplan to a magnetic board and the pieces of furniture are magnetic.  Once I've decided upon a furniture arrangement, I trace around the magnets in pencil or draw in the pieces and it goes back into the binder. 

I create a list of everything on the floorplan that needs to be found for the room.  Once I have the list & the floorplan, I can start specifiying products for the room.  I like to use a mix of new & vintage or antique pieces in most spaces so it's a time-consuming process.  At this point the floorplan is more of a guidline for what we're looking to do, and as I find the right pieces- in showrooms, shops, online, etc-  the exact dimensions are noted & the "messy" pencil floorplan is edited for the final floorplan.

Once I've finalized everything that will go into the room and where it is, Meg draws the final floorplan for the client's presentation.  We give our clients a design folder to keep and everything on the floorplan corresponds with the photos on the design board:

As you've probably noticed, much of this could happen in CAD, but for now it's all done by hand here. There's a certain charm to hand-drawn plans that I love.  I'm not sure we'll ever make the switch but if we do, I know I'll still be printing out the floorplans and using the board and drawing on them myself.  It's just part of how I work.

Anyway, I'd love to hear about your process for furniture plans & let me know if you have any other questions!!



If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.