look what i got!

it's always nice to come home to your own place after a long trip, especially after a red eye flight. and especially when it's cold and rainy outside and you just want to cuddle up inside with your kitties.  and especially when you have to go straight from the airport to take your brother to the hospital. not cool.

anyway, imagine my excitement when i came home to two packages filled with goodies for my living room! huzzah!

first, i opened this lovely darling.  this is the first thing i have ever bought straight off of pinterest, but it was super affordable and with free shipping from nordstrom, how could you not?

polka dot pouf ottoman, $78

after my new ottoman was all set up, i ripped open the package containing these delights.  i needed some new pillow covers to breathe life into my living room where i have been dying for some color - and these affordable covers can be found in just about every color or pattern under the sun, thanks to pillow makeover via etsy.  they slipped over some pillows that i'd had laying around in drab browns and earth tones and instantly made me feel happy.

elephant pillow cover, $15

red chevron pillow cover, set of 2 for $30, orange ikat dots pillow cover $13

green chevron priced with red chevron [above], right pillow cover from a salvaged home

living room today!

loving all the color and how the room is coming together... all i need now are a few colorful throws and i'll be totally in love.

that couch is going to come in handy with all this rain - i am planning on hiding under the blankets and catching up on the mindy project and new girl :)

happy wednesday!

til next time - xo

the couch...

a little angry with me today.

'you are diabolical,' my husband said to me today.

see, we got a new couch.  the couch i wanted :)

not that i made him, or we only got the couch i liked.  pi wanted to get a new couch too - but he wanted a new couch in addition to our old couch.  i, on the other hand, wanted to throw the old one out in to the hallway.  the thing is that we have a gorgeous, fancy couch.  we bought it from arhaus before we were married when we were moving to brooklyn.  it has lasted us five great years and is still in decent shape. 

but i've been feeling like it is time to move on.  it’s not super comfortable for us to snuggle up on, it’s small, and it wouldn’t really be practical if we had a lot of people over or just wanted to be able to not worry about the fanciness of the couch.  which is why i have been rooting for us to get rid of said fancy  couch and get a new one all together.

but pi loves the fancy couch.  and, what’s more than love, is that we spent what was, at the time, a small fortune on it.  so he wants the couch to stay.  this meant that, in order to keep the fancy couch, we would have to still buy another couch to fit around the couch that we currently have, it would have to match the sofa style we already have. 

old fancy couch.

new super-comfy uber-practical couch.

but that didn't exactly happen.  we purchased our new lovely corner-piece couch, thinking we could potentially make it work along with our old fancy couch.  and it turns out, there was just no way that we could make it work.  we tried every possible way to get our new couch and old couch to mesh.

taking the couch apart during the first re-arrangement.

then the tv had to move...

he's still smiling here!

well that doesn't work...

...and neither does this...

so, at the end of the day, the old couch had to go away.  i tried to banish it to the hallway, but that would not happen.  so we compromised.

here is the new living room and dining room area.  it may look silly to you, but we like it, and this is our compromise to keep us both happy today. 

couch in my dining room.  love it.

still need to hang stuff on the wall.

 marriage is a compromise, guys.  we successfully bought a new couch and kept our old one.  and i'm pretty happy with the results so far :)

pinspiration #4: pillow covers

i don't sew.  that's exactly what i said to the woman cutting my fabric at joann's last week.  she looked at me like i was kind of crazy, which i understand.  who buys fabric, and then, while it's being cut, says they don't plan on sewing at all?  the woman tried to tell me about ways to iron fabric together like a hem but without sewing, and i told her i still wasn't going to do that. 

see, i had found this pin on pinterest:

and i was determined to give it a shot.  all i needed was two yards of fabric (that was just a guess that turned out to work).  i have some very boring pillows and have been wanting to mix it up.  but i am not too crazy about the idea of spending money on fancy pillows (i usually use them as a plate and/or desk), especially because i like to change them up with the seasons.  end result?

well hello there, fancy pillow!

all for two yards of fabric.  plus it took me twice to tie the knot just right.  but i pretty happy with it - i'd say it's my favorite pinterest project so far!

i did a LOT of awesome stuff this weekend with my sister in law n!  i have tons of pictures to share, but unfortunately i am super behind in school with the funeral last week and n's visit - plus we are heading out to new york in just three short days!  so lots to do around here.  i'll be back soon with pictures from the weekend and updates.

til next time...

saturday morning blanks

notice a trend here?  yeah, i'm too busy to blog on fridays.  that's the trend.  last night PI & i celebrated valentine's day, since my birthday is on the obnoxious holiday.  so we went to a fancy dinner and celebrated ourselves.  it was awesome :)  today is filled with - you guessed it! - homework, and then a fundraising dinner tonight.  should be lovely.  

but for now... blanks time!  lauren @ little things posts them every week, and these week they are home themed.  it makes me sad... i remember the days when i used to post about updating our bathroom, decorations, fun stuff like that.  now all i do is complain about politics and homework.  someday.  sigh.

1.  my favorite room in my home is   our living room  because   it's where everyone hangs out.  plus it's the most versatile room in the house, and it's the only one i feel like is done.

2.   my current decor style is   eclectic, mismatched and worldly but i wish it were more    cohesive & pulled together.  it's all over the place, just like me.

3.  i wish i could redecorate the kitchen in my house to make it more our style.  it was updated by the last owner, but it still isn't really my cup of tea.  there's a window over the sink that's too tall, so i stare at the base of it when i do dishes.  the green marble and natural wood just isn't my style either.  but that would be a fortune.

4. my dream house absolutely has to have a  history.  i don't like new houses, or houses that are so updated you can't feel the story of the house.

5. one house item i am willing to splurge on is   a couch. We practically live on our couch, so it's a good investment. We're currently on the hunt for something that is both modern and comfortable, which is surprisingly difficult - many times clean lines = hard lines and we definitely need a comfy couch .

6. a decor trend that i just don't "get" is the farmhouse look.  i like antiques, but i don't get why anyone would want to live in a space that's that rustic and not super comfortable.  i think a home should tell a story about the people who live in it.

7.  tons of candles and photographs  is a little touch that makes my house feel like home.

til next time (maybe even tomorrow!)... 

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 :)

me vs. the living room, round i

happy wednesday all!  it's been a rough week here on irving street, i'm not gonna lie.  the week starting with the passing of my beloved puppy, serendipity.  it is a long and painful story and i'm having a hard enough time shaking off this depression as it is so i won't re-live the story here.  but she was far too young to go away and it was my first experience putting down a pet... so needless to say i am heartbroken.

me & serendipity, circa august 2006

but in an effort to get out of this funk i am going to share some new living room developments!  also, i am jetting off this weekend to tennessee to see my girl anne who i've mentioned before.  she's kind of amazing and i have no intentions of posting this weekend.  so, knowing how sad you all get when i don't post for a weekend (humor me) i will update you today.

as i wrote on osama's death day, i kind of am hating my living room right now.  of course i went on to post about the dining room, but even after planning what photography to hate i was left... hating my living room.  now that it's springtime here in colorado (now that it's may and we have our sprinklers on i think it's finally safe to say that) we don't need to use our radiator anymore.  so we thought we would cover it up with... another couch!  that's what we were really missing -- more seating.  with the day sofa we moved into the living room, we also needed to move the television.  moving a wall shelf from the den, we finally found the perfect place for our television -- on the wall, off of the furniture.  here the new (well, relocated) couch and the television in it's new spot.

relocated from the sunroom, our day sofa looks
perfect in front of the big window & blue curtains

tv's new spot, on the wall, out of the way and
(finally!) out of focus

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

the bathroom: update iii

happy sunday all!  and for us, it has been quite an awesome weekend.  first up on friday night: drinks and dinner at our local pub up the block with layne where layne & philip had a hell of a time ganging up on me for being awful at math.  layne is a high school math teacher and philip is, well, philip.  just for fun, why don't you comment on this post if you know how to find the inverse of the following equation:

y = x + 1

exactly.  no one should be forced to look at letters in a math problem scribbled on a cocktail napkin while drinking a delicious mighty arrow.  and no i couldn't figure it out.  but a good time was had by all nonetheless, it had been ages since we had hung out with layne and the three of us have a pretty damn good time together.  i had to work saturday morning, but when i left for work it's worth noting that the bathroom still looked exactly like it did when i posted the last update.  new bathtub was still in the entry way.  but by the time i came home, the tub was actually upstairs.  philip was hard at work putting up the cement board we are using as the backing for the tile.  the old tile was connected to greenboard, but this stuff is supposed to be much better since it actually repels moisture rather than basically absorbing it and disintegrating.  so the cement backer is a huge improvement.  i decided i should do something productive as well and did a very thorough cleaning of the first floor (the 2nd floor is just a war zone at this point).  blasted belle & sebastian, scrubbed the kitchen, vacuumed until my vacuum actually overheated, swept, mopped, polished just about everything.  i even got out some springy decor: green linen tablecloth from crate & barrel, and some greens to put above the mirror on the mantel where our christmas wreath was.  i have this grate bowl for a centerpiece where i keep two white pillar candles and i filled the bottom with faux moss and leaves, making it look really woodsy.  i love it.  

my dining table centerpiece. understated.

new greenery above the mirror.

i'm really ready to do the downstairs.  that's our next project by the way; as soon as the bathtub and tile is done we will be painting the living room and dining room.  we put up three different paint samples before we left for LA president's day weekend but really didn't love any of the colors.  i added two more samples last weekend and now we can't decide between those two!  

it's between the one on the far right and the one above that!

anyway, i'm really ready to just take everything out of the living and dining room to paint, give it a good cleaning and re-do the rooms.  i'm ready to get some real decorations in there!  we still haven't hung photos or anything because we were waiting until we painted... and here we are, a year after we closed we will be painting.  but one project at a time :) 

all the while, philip was being much more productive, i must say.  i couldn't do much cleaning up stairs, because most of the floor looked like this:

yeah.  so all i really did was clean up our bedroom.  i finally took off our amazing flannel sheets we got as a housewarming present that have literally been on since november when we got them.  i'd wash them and put them right back on -- i think it's the only way we survived the winter upstairs before we got our electric blanket.  but all the while, philip was hard at work on the bathroom.  by the end of the night, we hardly had the energy for anything at all.  i ran out and got chipotle -- the thought of cooking made me cringe.  by we had earned a night off, after all.  we watched the first half hour of gladiator before deciding it was, in fact, bedtime.  9:30pm.  but here's a few shots of the finished (for the day) product:

in the middle - cement board half up.

mussolini, making sure everything was up to code.

reading the instructions while lounging in the lined bathtub.

not a bad start.  next weekend we will actually put the tile up!  i'm beyond thrilled with how it's going so far.  philip is just amazing.  we slept like babies, except for when my snoring woke philip up at 5am, who woke me up.  we got to fall back asleep listening to the sound of spring rain outside.  even out tulips are trying to come out already!  i can see their little green buds popping out of the desolate brown grass in a few places and i just can't wait for spring.  today we had a lovely brunch at our favorite spot with mom, vince, uncle rich & beth before taking a long walk around sloan's lake.  but it's time for me to try my hand at roasted peppers and homemade pizza -- we rented the new woody allen tonight!  enjoy the end of our weekend all, and i'll post again soon.

til next time! 

alaina