update on... yoga room?

hi all!  i am happy to report i'm feeling soooo much better than last weekend and back up to [most of] my usual tricks!  i'm healing slowly but surely and it will still be a little while til i am feeling totally 100% normal, but i'll take this little victory of not having taken any pain killers all weekend so far!  it's definitely summer here and our AC-free house is turning into a sweat lodge.  ugh.

after lots of work, we are finally done with the living room!  i'm so so so excited with how it's turned out.  just last weekend i posted that we took a little trip up to one of my favorite stores and bought an awesome new piece.  it's finally up and it's the perfect finishing touch of the living room!

so there it is!  the best part - it's just little clips that hold up the pictures/coasters/books/postcards/menu from our wedding, so we can change them as many times as we want!  and knowing how bored i get with my surroundings... it will be often.

the top half of our awesome find, with pictures from a bunch of our trips,
postcards we used as save-the-dates for our wedding, coasters from some
european pubs we love... 

the bottom half, with the cocktail menu from our wedding reception, an
old wine label, snapshots from prague, my parents at a college dance, and
a book called 'secret love letters and the legend of the lovers from prague,'
and a picture philip drew :)

successful uneventful weekend

effortless, original. annie hall.

happy sunday all!  it was a glorious weekend here at the scarano-isbouts household.  we kicked it off with a (surprise!) saturday morning off of work for me, which was much needed.  on the way home from work, we stopped at our favorite liquor store to pick up some wine.  in california last weekend, my sister introduced me to the amazingness that is boxed wine.  it's quite the trend now i hear; it's cheaper, bigger and lasts longer (that's what she said!) than a regular old bottle of wine.  so we were browsing around some of the boxes of wine and i happened to find one of my favorite open-up-just-because bottles in boxed form.  SCORE!  so we ordered a pizza, cracked open a box of wine and put on annie hall (one of my all-time favorites).  perfect night.

shakespeare & co in paris

so saturday morning was, as usual, cleaning day.  philip washed the car and i gave the kitchen some much-needed attention.  mom came over in the afternoon and we did some serious shopping.  so i know you will all think i'm crazy... but i'm going to let you all in on a secret.  for cheap cheap cheap, fun home decor, check out hobby lobby.  don't shop online, you definitely need the browsing factor.  the first time my mom brought me i thought she was a lunatic - that's for old lady arts and crafts supplies.  but i was wrong.  there is a lot of crafty supplies but there is also some AWESOME finds.  after a few very successful hours shopping (photos of my finds below) we went out for sushi and saw the newest woody allen, midnight in paris.  SPOILER ALERT: best movie ever!  i love owen wilson as the woody-substitute, and the trip reminded philip & i so much of our trip to paris two years ago.  obviously, no time travel, but otherwise that was me in paris!  all throughout our trip, i constantly dragged philip around to cafes, bars, bistros, bistros, anywhere that was a hotspot for the lost generation of the 20s.  we had wine on the streets outside of chez georges and flipped through stein and hemingway novels at shakespeare & company.  it was absolutely brilliant.  for those if you who don't know, i'm a huge woody allen fan.  i just love his movies, and his dialogue is fantastic.  and even when you think his movies can't get any better... i just learned that alec baldwin is starring in the next woody allen - shot in rome!  my head just exploded.  ANYWAY, after the movie we went back to the house and indulged in more chicken wine... and mom ended up staying over :)

this morning, while nursing our hangovers, we did a bit more shopping.  and MORE great finds!  first stop was world market, which you all know how much i love.  i definitely picked up the best find of the weekend... a gorgeous mirror, photo down below.  then we ventured further down to home goods, which i have heard such good things about from bianca and my step-mother-in-law.  more scores!  but the best part is, i'm finally starting to feel happy about the living and dining rooms.  things are finally coming together now, looking more settled in.  i'm just so happy.  and we finished the weekend off with some homemade mojitos at our neighbor's house in their gorgeous backyard.  and blogging.  simply lovely :)

now what?

happy sunday, all.  i was planning on blogging after i returned from our coffee date this morning with the kremhellers, but cleaning turned into living room re-organizing which turned into us trying to mount our television on the wall... you know how it goes.  so here i am, sunday afternoon, and i hate my living room. hate it.  it's like this puzzle where the pieces obviously go together, but you just can't figure out how.  and you also don't have a table big enough to put all the pieces together on, which is truly my problem.  we have two big problems: the giant radiator that keeps the living room heated. but it's right in front of the window.  and it's the length of the window.  the second problem is the television.  because i don't want it mounted on top of our fireplace, we have to have it on a piece of furniture in one of the corners of the room.  which doesn't leave space for any other furniture besides the couch.  needless to say, it's not working out for us too well.

anyway.  we are trying a few things out so we'll see what happens.  for now i am trying to focus on the other half of that room, the half i can control, the dining room!  right now it's basically a blank canvas, which is really exciting.  we already have the color scheme set up (remember my favorite tablecloth?) and the furniture of course, so it's just about the walls.  i have a few ideas of what to do with one wall though... and thought i would share it all.  sorry if this post seems a little off but today has been stranger than strange and i am partially doing this to distract myself.  so i want to hang six photos from our travels; i want them all black and white and i would like them all to be hung portrait style, but philip wants two landscape photos in.  i can't decide.  and obviously, we can't agree on which photos.  so this is where you all come in :)  well not really, but i thought i would share the dilemma with you all.  here are the photos in the running:

prague castle

paint party!

what's better than getting an email from your friend late on sunday night inviting you to a party on saturday?  finding out it's a paint party -- where the fun is painting said friend's living and dining rooms but also drinking the beer this friend is bribing you with.

and that's pretty much what the painting party was on saturday.  now, i know what you are thinking.  why mix painting and booze?  but if you knew my friends... you'd know why (kidding!).  but seriously, it went really well.  philip and i moved most everything out on thursday and friday evenings after work except the big things - cabinet with television, bar, couch and dining room table.  philip and i were up bright and early saturday morning getting ready for company.  we covered everything up and made a huge pot of decaf babushka blend (my new obsession -- for those who don't know, i'm strangely obsessed with anything russian) and got to work.  mom and her friend vince arrived and my girlfriends were there shortly after and we got to work, set to the tunes of my awesome painting party playlist to keep us motivated :)

starting to move things out

taping up the mantle - check out the paint swatches! 

half of living room in the entry