AHA! Pendants!

Like organizing under my bathroom sink and Paris Hilton's cheapy looking extensions, I just cannot wrap my brain around how to decorate our dining room. So everyday I look at endless amounts of pictures for inspiration and tear out magazine pages for my house binder. While I've pretty much settled on the window treatment for the gigantuous sliding glass door in the room, I have now moved on to lighting, mainly the chandelier for above our dining room table.

Our dining table originally belonged to my parents, I was so excited to get it because I had always loved it, however it has a little bit more of a tradition feel than the contemporary flare that we are going for in our home. So, I figured I would punch it up with modern pieces, basically your mixing and matching of styles, something that I have come to love in a lot of my inspiration pics. While looking through the website House to Home, I noticed a great alternative to the chandelier that you normally see in the dining room and fell in love. The round pendant lamps look like they would be the perfect solution and will give that room the perfect punch of spunkiness that we're looking for.

I found this one at Crate and Barrel:

Or this beauties from Potterybarn:

And this simple one from Design Public:

Since we have an open floor plan with the dining room and kitchen, I thought this one from West Elm would look pretty in the kichen:

Victory!

This weekend my husband and I decided to finally paint our master bedroom and bath. If a couple has never truly worked together before, I suggest painting a room together. Not only does it do the obvious, which is allow you to spend time together, but it gives a little insight into the inner workings of your significant other. Not only did I learn that my dear husband is very organized and has a specific way of doing things, he has the extraordinary ability to keep on working and cleaning even though his wife is almost passed out on the bedroom floor from exhaustion mumbling, "No more...the room wins!"

So in the end, we managed to get the two rooms done, and it looks spectacular if I do say so myself! At first we were a little nervous about the color choices mainly because they were made spur of the moment under the dismal Home Depot lights. Originally we picked out two colors from one manufacturer, upon walking into the store all giddy about our color choices, the bubble was quickly burst when our paint dude shook his head with disapproval and advised that we go with the ever durable Behr paint. In a frenzy the Mango and I tried to match our beloved color swatches as closely as possible. In the end, the colors weren't exact, in fact they had a little more of a green tone than we expected, however we loved them!

Currently, I am in curtain mode. Yes, I have entered the world of panels, draperies, and sheers. To be honest, I had no idea where to start. The curtains always magically appeared when I lived with my parents, so I started my journey for blackout curtains on my own. Thanks to my ever helpful Nesties, I came to learn that a great place for blackout, or as they are now called, thermal curtains, was JCPenny! Who knew? Usually I run right passed it to get to the mall, but I was amazed by their selection and great prices. After taking an impromptu "curtains for dummies" course from the curtain lady, I finally selected our bedroom curtains...Ta Daaaaaa!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Wendy thermals in Ivory! Yey! I know it's crazy that I'm excited over curtains, but what can I say, I'm weird.

So now that that's over, I'm looking at every site I can to get inspiration on making the space ours and I happened to stumble upon this fantastic side called HousetoHome. It is just filled with pictures of beautiful spaces, I almost had to do a jig in the middle of the office (yes, I'm doing this at work) from the excitement of the find. I found these wonderful bedroom inspiration pics that I just had to share: