Oh man. We were supposed to be done with the floor construction yesterday, but the contractor did a no-show. That’s no bueno. In fact this is his fourth no-show, so you can imagine how frustrated we are. Despite our frustrations, most everything is done and I love my floors. They are so pretty. 

The picture shows the progression from carpet to the white oak to the white-stained white oak. It’s as dreamy as I imagine white floors to be. Now if we can just get that contractor to finish and put up the baseboards… argh! Once we are settled, you can be sure there will be a house tour. 

We had a nice long weekend over here thanks to all those who serve our country bravely, but it is back to school and work for everyone tomorrow. Hope you all had a swell weekend and no contractors left you hanging!

Dose of reality. Yes, you may have seen our previous kid room tours (here, here, and here), but this is more of reality. The not styled, very much played in, kid decorated room of True and Brave. I told them to clean it up and this was the result. Looks a lot different from when I clean up, but hey, I guess it was clean. Sort of.

If you read blogs and get frustrated about your own state of messiness, thinking that you can never get things as neat as the homes you see online. I am here to tell you, that at least for me, my home is never as clean as my home tours that circulate. I try to keep it as tidy as I can, but life happens everyday. 

I speak for myself, but I think as a blogger, you can get easily caught up in how you want your life portrayed online. Or as a blog reader, which I am also, you get caught up in the wanting that and wanting this and thinking those things will make you happy. I love reading blogs and I think there is a wealth of inspiration and learning that comes from some of them, but make sure to keep your heart in check. Always be content (and thankful) with what you already have and be honest. I read something from Proverbs this morning that stood out to me, “A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.” Oh man. I don’t want my bones to rot.

Happy Monday! Be wise and discerning in your blog reading today.

p.s. don’t you love how brave laid out her clothes on her bed? hilarious!

Yesterday, my baby sister came over to start her first day as my one-afternoon-a-week nanny. It was nice. I got to do errands and clean up a bit. We have figured out that I need at least a few hours a week for someone to watch the kids so I can catch up on things like emails, cleaning, or errand running. This will help with my sanity a bit and help me get the house from crazy messes to happy messes. Plus, she will get paid with clothes and shoes. Not a bad deal. I would have gladly done that for my older sister, if I had one. The bonus is that she gets to spend time with her nieces that adore her!

The girls have been bugging me to do some baking, so we will see if we can squeeze some in today.

Recently, I was talking to a friend and she told me how her friend liked our house and vintage furniture, particularly our vintage television. Well now, it is not exactly vintage, but we haven’t yet succumbed to a be a flat screen television family.

Our television is about 14 years old and was bought by Ben when he was a bachelor livin’ it up on the east coast. It has moved from D.C. to Texas to California and followed him into married life. It has been great and thus have never thought to trade it in for the ever popular flat screen. It is funny because when most of my friends got married, a television was usually the first thing they purchased, but we didn’t cause we already had this trusty square tube. It has worked fine and dandy and my only qualm is that it isn’t easy to hide. I personally don’t think televisions (flat or not) are that good looking and it is not my preference to mount it on a wall to be a focal point (I would much rather have it hiding in a cabinet).

So here we are today and our television bit the dust a week ago. It became a teleaudio as the vision part when kaput! We have tried different things to fix it, but it just wouldn’t bring back the vision. Now I will admit, I did a little happy dance when it bit the dust because tv’s aren’t that cute (that’s why it never gets photographed), but also because we finally could get rid of another piece of new furniture in our house (most things are vintage and that ikea tv stand was one of the few new items left). Also, I have been saving a vintage, french pie safe to put in place of that stand that would be perfect for the one day we would get a little flat screen. While I would still prefer to hide a flat screen in a vintage cabinet of sorts, propped up on a cool vintage pie safe is good enough for me!

My family came over yesterday for dinner and we had all the boys lug that television out of the house, as well as load the ikea stand in my parents car bound for their house, so we immediately brought the pie safe down. It is now in place with nothing on top. Currently, we have no plans to get a new television because those things are just darn expensive and we have got certain bills to pay before we could make that purchase. We will be tv-less for now and that idea is kind of exciting to us. The only thing we really watched were Spurs games and Food Network, which is what I will miss the most because my girls get super duper excited watching their favorite chefs in action.

So in honor of our television, I thought I would give you a little tour of the family room that it lived in. You have seen it here and here before, but I do change tiny things up from time to time and thought I would share it before it changed slightly again. Plus, I did get a cool vintage piece at the Found & Oh hello friend yard sale (thanks Jenny for the awesome trade!) that I can’t wait to clean up and get in this room.

Without further ado, say hello and goodbye to our television…

The chalkboard canvas holds True’s latest installation and there is my Bravey playing by herself because she was in time out. Next to it is my collection of vintage sap buckets. I always love me a big pop of color!

And yes, that is a white, child sized eames chair there in front of the iron bed/sofa. It is a good looking kid chair!

Our vintage rolling industrial cart/coffee table that holds our family sketchbook, along with an old trash can full of bocce balls, a plant, and a vintage brownie camera.

In the back, you could see our breakfast area and the beautiful sunflowers Ben and True surprised me with on Sunday. We also don’t have proper lighting in the family room, so we use the strung up Christmas lights along the curtain top until we figure out what we want to do. It will probably be up there for awhile.

I really love using outdoor furniture inside, so that pink lawn chair is another one of my favorite things.

A vintage medicine cabinet holds a plant, photobooth pictures from True’s 4th birthday, and a wooden eiffel tower.

And alas, the little cove with a vintage pie safe and no television…

The little cove looks strange and I am not sure what to put on top in the meantime, but it is kind of nice without a television. We aren’t that much of television people anyways, so maybe we may never get one! Heck, I get my world news from all of you via reading your blogs or your emails!

This weekend has been pretty crazy with the yard sale and a wedding on Saturday, then Sunday we had to take True to the doctor because she had a bug bite that had swollen 15 times bigger than what it was earlier in the week (she has antibiotics now), then my family came over for dinner Sunday night and Monday was spent cleaning and purging. Not much time left for resting and tomorrow it is back to work for Ben and we will be counting down until it is time for him to come home.

Oh! And just tonight my camera has decided to act up! Ben thinks I am messing things up to get new things, but that really isn’t the case. I don’t want to have to dish out money for a new camera just yet, so let’s hope that my Nikon d40 can hang in there just a wee bit longer!

How was your weekend? Was it much more low key than ours or did a couple things go kaput on you too?!!

I was honored to be part of Rachel’s Style Your Space e-course (can still get it here) as the other women who contributed are just out of this world fantastic and I hardly think that I deserve to be put in the same company as them. I chose to share what we call “the blue room”. This is the first room you see when you first enter the house and I finally got it all together, so when Rachel asked us to share a room, I knew just which one I wanted to share.

My favorite piece in this room is by far the anthropologie sofa that we scored for pretty darn cheap (in anthropologie terms). It was a sofa that we coveted for a long time, but didn’t have the pennies for, we stalked and stalked it online waiting for the day it would go on sale (about 2 years) and then next thing you knew, it was gone! I called customer service to find out what happened and found out it was put on super sale. So I called all my local stores to see if anyone had it and sure enough someone still did and I even got an extra discount since it was the floor model. It was a steal of a deal and we picked it up that same night and it has been sitting in this front room ever since.

The long table is another of my favorite pieces as it is a vintage beer garden table that we scored at the flea market. It folds perfectly flat and comes with two benches and is perfect for bringing outside for dinner parties. Just a wonderful piece with many uses! I love things like that. Don’t you?

To the left of the table is a vintage wine rack and the chair was something we found on one of our trips to San Antonio. I bought it thinking I would have it reupholstered, but have since decided I like it just like that. Above the table is the painting the girls and I made together. The beer garden table also holds some of my little collections of random things, vintage child chair, plants, an old trash can, old post card holder and vintage post cards.

Another corner with an old bistro table with more pretty things.

I love the Magritte print we have on the wall, which we got on one of Ben’s birthday adventures, the big sign is an old french street sign. A wire basket holds my magazines and some vintage canvas chairs are folded and leaning against the wall.

This little side table is special as it was the first vintage furniture piece Ben and I ever bought. We went to the Rose Bowl flea market for our first wedding anniversary and this table was one of the things that came home with us. Ever since then, our motto has always been out with the new and in with the old!

On top of the table are more plants (because you can never have too many) and an old, tall, wire basket with some vintage bocce balls. I love the color those balls give!

This is probably the room that stays the cleanest, though the girls do manage to bring all their toys in there too from time to time. I dream for the day we could get rid of the carpet (I so wish there was some sort of remodeling contest to get someone to do my floors!), but we got debt to get rid off before we could even think about getting some nice flooring. Until then, I will gladly make do with what I have!

Hope you enjoyed the little room tour. Pretty much everything in the room is vintage, except for the sofa and some anthropologie pots that the plants are in. I am still cleaning and purging the rest of the house, so I am sure more rooms will be popping up here from time to time. In fact, today was spent moving things around in True and Brave’s shared room. Once things settle there, I will be sure to share, but I have this long list of house to-dos for myself. Sometimes nesting is good, and sometimes it drives me crazy!

Have you been fixing up any rooms in your house lately?

Since we have been spending most days and evenings outside working on the garden, the inside of the house has been a bit, well, unkempt. Dishes were all over the kitchen, some even in our bathroom (seriously), and clothes and paper strewn all over the place. Finally, during their nap time yesterday, I did some cleaning and slight rearranging. I was definitely itching for a little change. I feel so much better and now I can see the bottom of our kitchen sink again!

To bring some of the outside in, I cut some hydrangeas and brought them inside. Flowers always make a space more cheerful!

I just did some pillow moving and little vignette rearranging and the girls did a new piece on our chalkboard canvas.

I feel so much better with this slightly changed arrangement. Today holds more cleaning and tomorrow some morning gardening, then a trip to my parents’ house because we have some family in town. On Sunday, our church is having a community picnic after our worship gathering, so if anyone lives in the L.A. area and want to join in for the picnic let me know! We are supposed to invite our friends and well, you all are my friends too! Just bring yourself and we will provide the food. If you are interested, send me an email and I will give you directions or the address. I would love to meet some of you!

Have a happy weekend friends! What are your plans for the weekend?