ok, so the past month has been crrrrazytown!

not in a bad way. just in a busy way. in fact, there are probably a million other things i should be doing at the moment, but i feel the need to blog. i need the diversion. my brain needs to let off a little steam. :) so anyways...

remember how a couple months ago i found a pretty cool vintage capiz light at the habitat restore?

well. it is still sitting in our garage. forever waiting to be installed by my hubby.
but unfortunately for him, i've developed a new light fixture crush in the mean time, and this one costs more than $2.

that's what happens babe. :P

anyhow, i found an image of a gorgeous dining room on pinterest awhile back. check it out...



pretty, huh? i like the feel of it...that mirror rocks, and i'm a total sucker for moroccan inspired lighting!

so you can imagine that i fell pretty quickly when i saw this in world market's new lighting selection!



i think i'm in love. what to do!?

i could totally imagine a couple of these over our dining table! it's not cheap though, but at $69 a pop, it's probably not really more expensive than buying something like this in india would be. that's what i love about world market. a lot of their larger handmade items are actually priced really well...plus they give you sweet coupons on top of it all!

so what do yall think?
i love a global look. though i worry a bit about overkill, because seriously folks...i have an addiction! i think there's probably more indian/ethnic stuff in my house than in any place i've seen in india!
so how much is too much? what's the line between awesome and crrrrazy?! :)

how many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop?!

home decor blogs are my guilty pleasure. i like to breeze through them in the morning while i sip my chai.

so when a few of my favorite blogs (YHL, Bower Power, Style by Emily Henderson, and Making a House a Home) joined together to issue a Pinterest Challenge, it inspired me to make practical use of my pinning. :P plus, me and my friend Laurene had been talking about actually doing some projects for awhile.

we have lots of boob lights in our house...thanks to it being built in the 70s. and i have been on a mission to be rid of them. i got rid of one earlier this summer, and now i was on a mission to be rid of the one in our hallway. our hallway was in need of a little excitement for sure.

i love the capiz shell chandeliers that are so in style right now...but they're kind of pricey if you plan to buy one. fortunately though, there are about a million tutorials on how to DIY a wax paper version all over pinterest and the internet. i won't go into the details of how i did it since the formula is already out there, but i pretty much followed these directions, except i used and old busted out lamp shade as my frame, and i used a circle puncher to make all the wax paper shells. no way i'd have the patience to cut a million circles with scissors. oh, and i used fishing line instead of thread.

to hang it i just used 3 mug hooks, and since it was pretty big i just hung it directly over the boob light and didn't even bother to take it down. i figure protecting the wax paper from any heat coming from the light is probably a good thing.

anyways, our hall way is now officially fancy! (sorry, i forgot to take before pics..but who hasn't seen a million boob lights? i'm sure you can imagine. :P)











i love how it adds some texture and height to the hall.
this project cost a grand total of about $5...and some time.

ok, maybe a lot of time. but once i figured out how to make it work, and got into a rhythm, it probably took about 6 hours. of course those hours were spread out across many days though.

realistically, this is a very busy time of year for me, and fun DIY projects should have been the lowest priority on my list. but once i started it was almost therapeutic. it became my late night obsession, and my way to unwind after a busy day. almost every spare second i had (or didn't have) was spent working on this baby, so my husband will probably be glad to have me back now.

so...2 boob lights down, and one to go. any ideas on what i should do with the last surviving boob light in the entry way?

when i was in like first grade, i remember my teacher telling my parents that i might end up being an artist or something, because i was artistically ahead of most of the other kids in my class.

i was also taller than most of the kids my age.

but then they caught up to my height. i think they probably caught up to my artistic ability as well.
while i used to enjoy painting and drawing, that is sadly something that i haven't done in ages. any minor artistic inclinations i have now only get a chance to come out when i'm working on some kind of graphic design, or maybe decorating my house.

but lately i'd been itching to paint something. in fact, i even went out and got a canvas a couple months ago on a day when i was feeling particularly inspired. but then alas...i got busy, and it sat collecting dust in the corner of my office.

the other day though i ran across a picture that totally inspired me, so i determined to make myself sit down at some point this weekend and finally get to painting!

the inspiration:



is that not totally rad?!
it had me at hello.

so anyways, like i said...my artistic skill didn't advance with me too far beyond grade school... but i thought i'd take a stab at ripping off a watercolor world map...and maybe adding a bit of personalization! ;)

i have lots of friends from around the world. and my husband and i are from opposite sides of the globe, so a world map has a nice significance to me. and i thought i'd also add something to mark those places that are special to us.

so how did i make my creation?
i kind of cheated.

i printed out a rough graphic i had of the world. taped all the paged together to make a poster. exactoknifed that baby up. and then laid it over the canvas like a stencil.



if all turned out well, my hope was to hang my new piece of art over our fireplace.

no pressure!

i really needed it to turn out decent though, because my mantle was in need of a serious switcharoo.

when we moved into our house (2 years ago!), i just put up the same stuff that we had over the mantle in our apartment. which was much smaller.



so it looked a little dwarfed above the fireplace, and blended into the wall a little too much...but alas, i hadn't found anything else i really liked, at a price that i liked. :P so there it stayed.

i'm not good with mantles. i wish i was one of those people who changed it out every season...but that's never happened. at best it just gets some stockings added at christmas.

so anyways. enough mantle babble. are you ready for the grand reveal??!

don't get too excited.

seriously.

lower those expectations.

it's not that impressive.

but...it was fun. that's what counts, right?









ummm. yeah.
so it definitely looks better the further away you get! :P
but i don't hate it.

did you like the little hearts on texas and india?!
i thought it was a romantic little touch! ;)

my husband can't get past the fact though that you can't properly distinguish the state of gujarat in india. but hey let's face it. there's a whole lot of stuff that can't be properly distinguished! you get the basic idea though. i would advise you not to try sailing around the world using this map as your guide. let's just call it an artistic interpretation. ;)

not bad though for a grand totally of about $15 and a couple hours time.

if i had it to do over again, i dunno if i've add all the splattering...it didn't quite achieve the whole effect i was going for. and i'd also blow up the map a little bigger so there would be less white space.

but for now. i say good enough.
i guess it will have to wait until i have another wave of artistic inspiration! ;)

as much as i love decorating and updating my house...i also have a hard time getting rid of things.

not so much in the hoarding kind of way...more in the sense that even if i don't love something, but it's still good and functional, i have a hard time justifying replacing it...even with something that i would love.

maybe that just means that i'm cheap. :P

i figure that by the time we pay off our house, then i should have things perfectly how i want them, because by then most everything will have fallen apart and needed replacing at one point or another anyhow.

all this to say, i have never been in love with the light fixtures in our house. but they aren't hideous or anything. they just have no personality.
but oh, i dream about things with character and texture.

in our dining room, i've secretly been lusting after something like this...



or this...




but alas. not a priority.
and like i said. the ones now work fine, look decent, and i'm cheap.

but then the other day the husband and i dropped by the local habitat for humanity restore...and i found this...

vintage capiz light!



for $2!! yes, that's right... $2.00!

oh, and did i mention that i have this other problem? of not being able to resist buying super cheap things...whether i need them or not! :P so home with us it went!

so now i have some decisions to make.
i love the shape and vintage white capiz against the dark wall of our dining room...
but is the fixture too small for that room? you can be honest with me now.


(this pic is just for scale...so try to imagine it actually hanging. :P)

it might work in our eat in table too. but it's not quite so dramatic there to me. maybe because of the proximity to the trash can. :P



i can't help but think that the irony of this is that someone probably ripped this light out of their house, and replaced it with something more like what i currently have.

i dunno why, but i love it.
maybe i was born in the wrong era.

next month we'll have been in our house for 2 years. it's hard to believe!

i love being a home owner. it's so fun to put our stamp on things.
and one area i've really been wanting to do something with is the curb appeal.

our house was just painted by the previous owners before we moved in. well, most of the exterior is brick, so i'm really just talking about the trims and shutters.



i don't hate the colors. but i'm definitely not in love them either. it's just a little blah. but it's still in pretty good shape, so we're just trying to work with what we've got.

however, our doors have seen a big more wear and tear...not to mention a bit of the old green door color peeking out where we changed the locks. it's enough to justify a new paint job.

now i have always been a fan of bright red front doors. they're just so welcoming, and they give a house an extra punch of character...
but our shutters are sort of between a burgundy and a russet color...so i'm not really sure if i'd like the look of it next to a red door.

so i had the crazy idea...
what about painting the door orange?

ok, it sounds kind of crazy and scary when i say it like that, but i can imagine it in my head without it being so scary.
i'm not talking about a bright orange. more of an earthy rusty sort of orange.

after all, i have that color combo all over my house...burgundys and oranges. inside at least it works.



and can't you just imagine how cool the inside of the door might be if it was an earthy orange and tied in with all the decor? :)



but when i googled images of orange front doors online, most of the ones that came up were on houses that were painted gray...and that were an informal style.

i've been told that if your house is symmetrical, then you have to plan your curb appeal more formally. is our house too formal for orange?



or is it something just crazy enough to be awesome??!

so i need your advice!
sometimes i have these great house ideas that just don't seem quite so great after they soak in a bit...
or it could be just the thing to give our house the extra bit of character it needs...which would be a good step in the right direction as far as curb appeal goes!

now, the landscaping is a whole other issue! :)

ok, so remember a couple months ago when i posted about my brother planning to make me a headboard?!

well, that headboard is now living behind my bed!


for my birthday, my lil bro said he would make a headboard for me out of an old door from our family home.


i love old doors. they certainly dont make them like they used to. this one is probably 50 years old, and there isn't a single nail in it. the door is just pieces of wood locked in perfectly together to make the panels.

anyways. i love it! it's such a special gift!

and to make things even more awesome, he added shelves and back lighting!!



that solves my night stand issues! since our bed fits right in between two windows, there's really been no place for a nightstand with out blocking something. so alas, we have gone without...

and the result has usually been piles of books on the floor, and junk getting lost in the abyss under our bed...or getting dragged under there and destroyed by the under-the-bed monster...aka bindi.

oh, and i just have to brag for a second...the back lighting has 3 levels of brightness that is activated by touch! and guess what we touch to turn it on? the old door hinges! my bro is not only handy, but he's also smart!


and let me just tell you...that back lighting sets an awesome mood in there! my crappy cell phone pics don't do it justice...


so now that i have my headboard, i'm thinking again what kind of art or decor to use to fill in the blank space over the bed. the previous stuff we had there just looks too dinky now next to the headboard.

also, the headboard sticks out about a foot from the wall since it has the shelves and lighting and all back there, so i'm trying to think of multi-dimensional solutions to fill the space as well.

for the moment though i have a few moorish lanterns just hanging there. not sure if they'll stay or not, but i got a super crazy steal on them for $1 each, so that made them look pretty good to me for now!


i had another idea though that may be just really stupid, or it may be totally awesome...that's how most of my decorating ideas usually are it seems. but what if we put a long narrow planter back there against the wall and grew some tall indoor bamboo?? too crazy?? too creepy?

hmmm...i'm open to suggestions.
but anyways...thank you lil' bro! i love you!

i think ikea must dabble in some kind of black magic...
or else they're just really great at marketing. :P
you might go in there for just one small thing, but they'll make you look at every single thing they sell to get to that one thing...which for me means trouble.

whenever i go there i feel like a rat in a maze.
seriously though, the first time i ever went, i felt a small sense of panic.
i didn't know how to get out!
what if there was a fire or something?

i guess i'm getting the feel of the maze a bit more now though.
rats can learn.

so yesterday i went there with some international students.
if anyone reads this who doesn't know me in real life, i have a lot of international friends.
i'm married to an international person, and i work with international students.
so each semester when new students come to the university, we take them to ikea to help them find furnishings on the cheap.

so yesterday i went to ikea not for myself...but for the sake of others. :)
but of course i ended up leaving with something for myself...thanks to the ikea devilry.

the world map pillow came home with me yesterday.


this pillow has been trying to break me down for awhile...ever since i saw it in the ikea catalog a couple years ago.

yesterday i finally lost my resistance and gave in to the trickery.
$14.99 is more than i pay for most pillows... (i like shopping for that kind of stuff in india or super clearance.)

but hey, not only is it a world map pillow...but there's a big X on india! my husband's native home!
and i know just enough hindi to know that it was made by a girl named rina! (signed in the bottom left.)

i think i'm still bewitched!
...but isn't it too cute??

as a kid i remember the huge grandfather clock in our house dinging on the hour.
it's almost like a background character in my childhood.

my grandfather had given it to my grandmother as a anniversary gift...and then my grandmother had given it to my dad.

well, a couple weeks ago this long time family member came to live in our house!


a grandfather clock may not be something that would be my typical style, but i knew that i wanted it to live with us, so i just hoped it would get along with the other things in our house!

anyways, i think the adjustment is actually going pretty well.
we put it in our dining room/den. play nice...


pardon the truly horrific phone pics.
using our real camera means having to sort through all of our ireland and india trip photos...the thought of which overwhelms me at the moment.

but anyways, it's nice to see my old friend here now. i still need to figure out how to hang the weights and all back inside now. i bet my ol' friend google can teach me.

do you have any things around your house to remind you of your childhood home?

ps- i love how any picture taken in our house is sure to have at least one dog sneak into it! can you find the dogs in the pics?

i think we really need this outdoor house light from pottery barn.


not only would it solve our security issue of needing more lighting in front of our house...
but it could also replace those ghetto 70's numbers that we've got going on.

aaaand, it could be a great valentine's gift! ( plus, it won't make me fat, and it won't wilt, and our house will wear it every day!)

3 birds, one stone. :)

not to mention that's it's on clearance...and it's super cute.
pretty please!

with much love from your thrifty and practical wife,
m ;)

confession.
home decor makes me more excited than clothes.
i think i'm officially an adult.

if i had to describe my decorating style, i think i'd call it 'british raj with a modern twist.'
yeah, i just made that up.

but the british part is because i have some pretty traditional pieces...mostly family hand me downs.
the raj part is because pretty much everything else is from india. or world market.
the modern part is because, well, i'd like to think that i make it look cool. :P

we've lived in our house for a year and a half now, and we're slowly getting all the rooms furnished and to our liking. one room that i still can't get quite right though is our master bedroom.


i think one of my biggest issues with it is the bed. it needs some drama.
that headboard is one my mom gave me (that i think she garage saled from my grandma) about 8 years ago when i moved to my first real apartment. i spray painted it, and since then it's moved with my 4 times. it's pretty rough.

thus, draped over it is my wedding veil. one of the only things in the room that i'd say really goes with the whole 'raj' theme. it has some awesome indian embroidery on it. oh, and i guess the green block print blanket on the bed...that's one thing that i smuggled back from indian this time.


well, the good news is that i'm getting a a new headboard!
i'm suuuuuuper excited!
and what makes me extra thrilled is that my big baby brother is making it for me...
out if this!

that happens to be an antique door from my parents old house...i'm in love!
i love things that are sentimental, and also things that are completely unique, so this definitely fits the bill for both! oh, and i love things that are free! :)

he's going to stain it darker to match my other furniture.
so now i'm inspired to make some other changes, and i need your help.

i need to bring a bit more india into this room, and i think some piece of art over the bed is just the place. with a window on each side, the bed is really the focal point of this room

i was on the hunt for a cool wood carving or wall hanging when i was in mumbai last month, but my prey was elusive, and i didn't find what i was looking for.

so now i'm thinking of putting some kind of blown up photo up there.
i need a pic that will inspire tranquility though...and romance. ;)

so i was browsing some free stock photos, and i found some pics of the places in india that we honeymooned! how bedroom appropriate. :)

but what do you think...would any of these look good blown up oversized and framed above the bed to give this room a little more raj and romance?

#1

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#3

or be honest, would something like this look cheesy?
i've tried over and over again for a mosquito net above our bed, but since the husband is from a place where they're actually a necessity, he doesn't find them as romantic as i do. :P
so let's get creative!