My Fridge...

My fridge looked like this:

Until I bought a set of bloom decals, here...



And now, my fridge looks like this:


Hot Husband has this funny idea of not getting new appliances just cause the old ones are ugly. (Silly man.) So, I made the best of my non-matching fridge. Now it makes me happy. This project was pretty easy, as projects go.

Etsy Crush...

I am loving these prints and originals from Etsy artist Nina Moscrip. The colors are incredible, and the drawing style is so intriguing to me. Her prices are great, too. The top one is coming to live with me, because that is the color scheme of my redecorating project. Check them out here.

Spring Cleaning with Simple Mom

Spring is finally here. This past week has been blue skies and sunshine in my neck of the woods, and I am loving it. Next week is Spring Cleaning Week over at SimpleMom. I plan to clean along with her from April 12-April 16, and I will let you know how it goes! I am looking forward to a cleaner, more healthful home at the end of that time. Right now, I feel like my house looks like this:
But at the end, I hope it will feel like this:

If it does, I certainly will deserve one of these:
Care to join me?

A Trend I Cannot Get Behind...

I think that both of these tables are lovely. But the one thing they have in common is the one thing I cannot have in my house. Do you see how they are alike? They are both "lipped" tables. I love the look of this style, but my house gets too dirty. I have been known to vacuum my coffee table. No joke. When I clean, I start by sweeping all the large particles onto the ground to vacuum, then I go back for a finer dusting. These tables would totally mess up my system! They look really hard to clean. Wouldn't dust and dirt get trapped in the "tray" of the table? Perhaps these people live in cleaner houses? Or they are better housekeepers? Am I the only one whose house gets too dirty to own one of these?

Images: 1.) Phoebe Howard, via Brabourne Farm. 2) Pottery Barn Moroccan Tray Table.

The Meaning Behind Our Things

My baby fevah has returned with such force that it shocks even me. However, since I need to get into and through nursing school before trying for a baby, I am trying to focus on and enjoy the aspects of my life that will be gone once we have a kid. This includes getting my house all spruced up and organized. I'm so, so, so excited about that. Hot Husband and I are going through all of our closets and getting rid of anything we don't need.

I am bringing all my old clothes to a local consignment store to see if I can get any money for them, and HH's old clothes are being re purposed as sewing material, or they are being sent to Goodwill. I have started asking myself very important questions about the items in our house, which have helped me clear out a few boxes of items for Goodwill already. These questions are very simple, but very effective:

- Do I love this item?
- Do I need this item? Am I sure?

If the answer is no to both of those questions, the item goes in the charity pile or a trash bag. As I started looking at the things in my house under this light, I was amazed at how many things I was keeping for no reason at all. And I was surprised to find that there were quite a few things that I was keeping because I felt guilty for getting rid of them.

Case in point: a teapot that HH's grandmother had given us for our wedding. I held that thing in my hands for a long time, before it finally went into the Goodwill box. I never loved that item, and I certainly did not need it. I had never used it. But it had been taking up valuable real estate in my cupboard because it was a wedding gift given by a person who is special to us. Even as I am typing this, I feel so heartless for getting rid of it. But I did not have enough room to keep it without sacrificing something I did love, or that which was useful.

"It's just a thing," I finally thought. But getting rid of that teapot made me think about the meaning that we put on the items in our environments. If that teapot had not been given to us at our wedding from someone we love, it would have been out of the house years ago. It was the meaning behind the object that I was treasuring, not the object itself. I realized that I can still treasure that meaning, while passing the teapot on to someone who will love and use it.

How about you? Do you suffer from guilt when deciding what takes up space in your home?

Final Answer...Dining Chairs

After much, much, much deliberation, I have settled on the Henriksdal chairs from IKEA for our dining room. I love the way they look, and at eighty bucks a pop, you can't beat the price. The white covers are removable and machine-washable, too. Still, I must admit that white + food makes me a tad nervous. I'm going to look into Scotch-guard techniques for these suckers.

What I Wanted and What I Got

This is what I wanted, from Circa lighting, about $700. This is what I ended up getting, from Overstock, about $140. I don't know about you, but I don't see a 550 dollar difference. Don't tell Hot Husband, but I'm thinking about spray-painting it a fabulous grey color. Or maybe I'll leave it. I haven't decided yet, and I always reserve the right to change my mind.