Inventing My Color Wheel

This Fall we're planning on tackling the inside of the house now that our first year outside projects have been crossed off the list. Right now the whole house is white, complete with white tile floors, with the exception of our ever so vibrant early 90s style bathrooms (more on that later). So first thing we want to do is begin adding some personality to the space with paint.

Ah, I love paint, so many possibilities. Which means that I usually spend an absurd about of time staring at paint swatches in the paint store, and usually end up tossing half of them by the time I get home. I was playing on the Sherwin Williams site the other day and discovered their little Chip It function, which allows you to create a color palette with any photo you like. It sort of works like your Pin It button for Pinterest. Best part is, they include the paint colors, awesome! Now I can just go to the store and grab those paint samples without staring blankly at the swatch wall.

Since we're starting with the master bedroom, I went straight to my Bedroom board on Pinterest and created some color inspiration pics with Chip It. This house has a cozy, ocean-side vibe going for it, so I'm planning on using a soothing color palette of blues, greens, grays, whites, blacks, with some color pops here and there. For the bedroom, I'm all about moody colors...

Bedroom Image: House of Turquoise

Bedroom Image: Twelve Chairs

Looks like a yummy soft, ocean-like area rug is in my near future. I also found some beautiful ocean images on Pinterest that created some beautiful color palettes that I'm loving too...

Photo by Kevin Russ, via Stocksy

Via Pinterest

Image via Favim

Yes, yes, and yes. An image like one of these would look really pretty as a big print above the bed like in the second bedroom image above. 

My mind is now swirling with paint color options. I'm hoping to stop by the paint store this week and start narrowing down my options. Do you have any favorites?

*Note: This post is not sponsored by Sherwin Williams and/or Chip It. The use of Chip It was for personal use only.

So Long Popcorn!

One of the first items on the to-do list for the new house was to remove the popcorn ceilings and replace them with knock-down. Some people don't care either way about popcorn ceilings, but we're not those people. In fact we have very strong feelings about popcorn in that we really don't like it. It flakes at the slightest touch and dust clings to it, which makes the ceiling look dirty over the years, plus that can't be good for you. To take it down though is a huge mess, so we opted to do it before we moved in. We contemplated going the DIY route, but after talking to a couple of people who attempted the task themselves, we opted to just bite the bullet and hire professionals.

Here are the ceilings in all their popcorn glory...

The kitchen and family room area

Bedroom ceiling

The ceilings had cracks in certain spots around the house from settling, so we thought this would also be a great opportunity to patch those up...

On the first day, the team showed up to prep  the house and start scraping off the popcorn. Everything that was not  ceiling was draped in plastic to catch all the falling popcorn and all the light fixtures were wrapped...

Then it was time to get scraping! They sprayed the ceilings with water and then started scraping away...

We watched them scrape away praying that they wouldn't uncover some sort of damage to the drywall needing to be repaired. Thankfully all the drywall looked great...

Once the scraping was done they sprayed knock-down texture and left it to dry for the painters the next day...

   

Next day, the painters arrived and started painting the ceilings. Within a few hours our ceilings were done!

 

Not sure if you can tell from the photos, but it made a huge difference in the feel of the house. The popcorn felt dated and now with the new ceilings the house feels more clean and modern. Plus thanks to the new paint the house smelled brandy new :-)

Latest View of Success

Image via here

This pretty much sums up my life the past two weeks. Used to be you could not get me out of bed before 8:00 am without me turning into grumpy cat, and now I leap out of bed on the weekends at 6:45 am to start working on what seems to be an ever growing list of things to do. Right now my goal is just to unpack as many boxes as I can, which is easier said then done. My method of unpacking right now is just putting everything away and worrying about organizing later just to get the boxes out of the house (my husband keeps yelling how they attract bugs...no thanks!). Hopefully soon things will start to settle down and I can start actually organizing and working on the house. This photo just reminds me I need to do laundry :-/

Dining Al Fresco

Since moving into the new house I've become fixated on our outdoor area more than anything else at the moment. Perhaps it's because summer is here and the thought of spending my weekends watching my husband cook at the grill and while sitting outside watching the sun go down makes me smile.

Image via here

Over the weekend we had family over to break in the new grill my parents gave us as a house warming present (pretty sweet huh?!). When it came time to sit for dinner, everyone was scattered all over the house finding whatever chair and tabletop they could find since our little patio table with two chairs from our townhouse didn't fit everyone.

Image via here

Afterwards I started day dreaming of beautiful outdoor dining spaces. Tables covered in pretty glassware and colorful dishes, vases filled with flowers from the garden, and candles lighting up the evening.

Image via here

I started going through my Pinterest looking for ideas on seating. I really love the idea of a clean lined table surrounded by casual seating, perhaps even a mix of seating....

It's a work in progress, but this is what's spinning around in my head right now. I've already started bringing all the pieces together. In fact I've already put in a call to my parents to borrow their truck to go pick up the table this week. Hopefully with a few more items we'll have an outdoor dining area to enjoy the rest of the summer!

Table: Pottery Barn
Rattan Chair: Pier One
Folding Chair: IKEA
Rug: West Elm
Seat Cushion: Pier One
Umbrella: Pottery Barn
Lantern: IKEA
Coasters: Furbish
Oil Candles: Crate & Barrel

And We're In!

It's official! We moved to the new house over the weekend and are currently in unpacking mode. It feels so amazing to be in our new home and we feel so blessed and happy to be starting this new chapter in our lives. Before we even moved into the house, the first thing we did was remove the popcorn ceiling, which resulted in the whole house being draped in plastic. There are more photos to come but here's a peek at the start of the plastic tenting...

While the guys were at it, I begged them to take down this weird 90's ledge that was above the sliding glass doors you see when you walk into the home. The ledge was so low it made it nearly impossible to hang curtains and I had no idea what to do with the ledge to begin with...so off it went!

I took lots of photos of the end result, so I promise I'll post them soon. While the popcorn was being removed we weren't allowed in the house and we basically camped out in the back patio. So to entertain ourselves we diverted our attention to focusing on outdoor projects. The one at the top of the list was getting the sprinkler system up and running. Since the house was empty for a while the whole system needed to be woken up, which resulted in a lot of digging to find lost sprinkler heads and this cute little guy to help hold up the pipe collecting lake water for the sprinkler system...

Yep, we now own a plastic goose...it's a boy. We moved in a few days later...

Weird to see your whole life packed into one truck! Right now all the boxes are being unpacked and items set aside that I'm just not sure what to do with yet. I'm looking forward to working on the house and sharing the progress with you all as it comes along!

Hope you all had a wonderful long weekend!

In Love With Life

It's been radio silence for the past couple of weeks here at Journeys of Mangonett due to the chaos that is home shopping, packing, and finding renters for our current place. Midst all the craziness I'm happy to finally announce that WE FOUND A HOUSE!

Yes! The search is finally over! Our offer has been accepted, inspection is done, financing has been started, and now we anxiously await has the closing date draws near this May. 

The house meets our wishlist:

- 1 story

- pool and a nice back yard for Jack

- bigger kitchen

- our own closets!

- 3-4 bedrooms

Not the longest wishlist when you compare it to the wishlists you typically see on those House Hunters shows on HGTV. However the biggest criteria was the home's location, and we are so happy that we finally found it!

It needs some TLC, but the bones are great, which means that I can finally put all of those endless hours of pinning to good use and create something we can grow into over the years. 

I'll make sure to post pictures once the house is finally ours, but I couldn't wait to share. We're already getting quotes for jobs we want to do right away. Let the renovations and decorating begin!

Yellow Mushrooms

Two weeks ago our community association had our building painted (yey!). In preparation I moved all my flower pots into the front yard to let the painters get every nook and cranny. 

When I went to move this big flower pot back, I found this little yellow mushroom growing...

I thought it was so pretty that I had to take a photo of it. I left the flower pot there and since then a few more have grown. They only last about 3 days from start to finish, but they're so pretty I don't have the heart to take the flower pot away. Oh well, just a little longer then.

Rugs from Genevieve

I always tend to be the last one to hear about things, so please forgive this post if you've already heard about the awesomeness that is HGTV's Geneveive Gorder's new line of rugs! 

In my world the perfect rug is my "white whale", and when I say perfect I mean it's chic looking, the size I need, right material, won't fall apart easily, and most of all in my budget. You'd think there would be a lot of options out there, but turns out they are few and far between. This explains why I began clapping in excitement when I saw these bad boys...

Each pattern comes in four different colors and in rug-world the pricing is not crazy for wool rugs with these on-trend patterns. I would really love to see them in person or at least read some reviews on them to see how they hold up. I'm going to keep an eye on them and see what the blogosphere says, here's hoping!

Images from Capel Rugs

New Year, New Projects

Hello lovelies!

Sorry for the lack of posting lately, the past couple of weeks I've been super busy with RBP, which has taken me away from my beloved blogging time. Those who follow me on Pinterest, however, will see that I've been busy pinning when I can!

When the new year arrived I looked around the house and resolved to finally finish all those half-started projects that I have around the house. I have supplies hidden in corners all over the place with the promise to my husband that I will finish them soon even though they end up sitting there for months. To clear up all the clutter I'm starting off the new year by finishing off all of these projects, which of course will lead eventually to new ones, but that's beside the point ;-)

I decided to start off with one of the biggest projects I've been meaning to start, the home office. As of right now, it's very disorganized and full of clutter since I've been stashing away all of our RBP stuff in there. Before I started the business, this space was mainly used to keep important paperwork and the office closet works as half of my husband's closet. I decided to take advantage of the long weekend to start working on the space to make it a functioning home office. 

Here's the battle plan so far...

I was inspired by the bulletin board that Bryn created for her home office...

Using her tutorial here, I already have the fabric, spray adhesive, and cork-boards, but I'm still on the hunt for the metal tacks to create the trim. I bought two so that I can hang them side-by-side and use them to pin up all those little notes that usually end up on the desk.

Next is the furniture. We currently have a desk and cabinet from Ethan Allen that look similar to this one:

Except the drawers are in the same wood as the desk top. I'm planning on painting the black part of the desk white and leaving the wood parts as is to create a sort of white/wood combo and lighten it up a bit.

Last we just need some accessories to finish off the room. Yesterday I took advantage of my day off and headed over to Ikea to buy the Expedit shelf in white and a few baskets to put in it. Over time I'm hoping to add some more lighting in the room (I love those horse-head lamps from West Elm) and a few fun office accessories to curtail all of those paper piles. For the desk I definitely need to get a new chair since our current one has seen better days, and I'll probably change out the knobs on the desk to something a bit more fun. 

So that's the plan for now, I'll take photos of everything as it goes along. Stay tuned!

*First two images from BrynAlexandra and Ethan Allen. Collage created by me*

Brunch at The Forge...

Did I ever tell you that I'm a fan of those online group deals? I'm signed up for all of them, Groupon, Gilt City, Living Social, you name it I got it. Turns out, the commercials are true, your able to try a lot more new things when your getting them at a discount. 

We've heard so many amazing things about The Forge, a hip restaurant located in the heart of Miami. Everyone whose been said that the food was amazing, but the place itself was even more amazing. So when I saw a Gilt City deal for a Sunday brunch at The Forge, I bought it right away and made our reservation...

Off we were to brunch at the Forge! It's located in a beautiful building, but was hard to find since there was no actual sign. Instead we found it because of the pretty carved doors in front...

The food was amazing, check out my french toast! It was one giant piece of bread soaked in an amazing sauce and covered with baked apples. Tony got the eggs benedict which were served on a bialy instead of your typical english muffin...

On to the decor! The dining room was filled with amazing furniture like this awesome chair that I got to sit in. Actually I raced Tony to the table when I saw it so that I could sit in it...whatevs.

There were beautiful light fixtures every where you looked. The waiter told us that the chandelier in the main dining room belonged to a Parisian Opera house and the mirror behind it was brought over in pieces from Italy...love!

One of my favorite rooms was in this one with the stained glass ceiling. For brunch they set up a long table for the families with small children to let the kids paint while their parents enjoy their brunch. The glass bubbles along the back wall are supposed to look like champagne...

For private parties they had this gorgeous white room! I could have stayed there all day casually drinking tea while reading books from the library across the hall...

After our tummies were full and we had plenty of eye candy, it was time to say good bye. They did me in with final touch, the bill, which came in this...

Thank you for a lovely brunch Forge, we'll be back soon!

*Images taken by me*