Our Dining Room (+ A Winner)

I show you guys snippets of our house pretty frequently in "scenes from the weekend" and the like, but somehow I never get around to posting full rooms... But that's about to change (for one room at least). FD Luxe featured three dining rooms in their November "Feast" themed issue, and ours was one of them, which, needless to say, was pretty exciting. And it conveniently gives me the chance to share a peek at the entire room with you guys.

I loved being at the shoot with the amazingly talented photographer Mei-Chun Jau and writer (and friend) Jessica Elliot...The photos above are from the issue which is out in print now, and the snaps below are some of Mei-Chun's outtakes from the shoot. It was just such a fun and cozy day with those ladies...sort of magical even. I love it when that happens.


















And now for the winner of Jenn's awesome ring giveaway...congrats Mary Beth!

One Kings Lane Design Blogger Tag Sale...

For the past couple of weeks, I've been spending evenings and weekends working on a fun project that I'm so excited to share with you guys... I'm part of One Kings Lane's inaugural "Design-Blogger Tag Sale" launching tomorrow evening at 8:00 p.m. CST.







Nine design bloggers are participating in the sale by offering up items from their personal collections that represent their aesthetic sensibility. It was so fun (and maybe a wee bit intense ;-) coming up with my selections (the collage, the brass candlesticks and the metal bird sculpture above are a few of the items included in my sale).

I am truly honored to be included in this group of hugely inspiring ladies... I can't wait to check out their picks tomorrow night!

Some Corners...

Friends, I'm not going to lie...my house is jacked up. Big time. Almost every room is in disarray. There are very few spots that still retain vestiges of their (somewhat) normal state. Audrey's room, the kitchen, the dining room and the guest room are still pretty much ok, but the rest of the house, well...not so much.

I'm a visual person and a nester. I just am, always have been. Puttering around my house, tweaking things, setting them right, making little arrangements -- this is my hobby, my therapy, my refuge. So needless to say, I'm feeling a little unmoored of late.

As a coping strategy, I'm trying to focus on the wee spots of normalcy. Sort of like a woman in labor that fixates on a single object while she's breathing through a contraction (only without the mind-bending pain). Ok that might have been a stretch. See told you...unmoored.

Herewith some of the spots I'm taking refuge in. Let's call them the "spots of sanity", cool?

The Anatomy of A Breakdown

Have you ever seen the movie Ponyo? The girlies are completely obsessed with it...love it...watch it non-stop. I, on the other hand, am completely irked by it. Specifically, I'm completely irked by Sosuke's mom in the movie, Lisa. She's a complete basket-case, careening down seaside cliffs in her car in the pouring rain, leaving her five-year old son to fend for himself in their house during a tsunami and, upon learning that her husband will miss dinner because he has to work an extra shift on his fishing boat, throwing herself on the floor face-down in a heap of sobs...but not without popping open a can of beer first. (By the way, this is an animated movie, in case you're wondering.)

Come on Lisa...pull yourself together for God's sake!

Every time the girls watch the movie (did I mention they watch it a. lot.) I throw in my two-cents on how lame Lisa is...I just can't help myself.

So it was perhaps the lowest moment of my mothering existence when, after finding me face-down on Audrey's floor sobbing last night, Millie declared, "hey, you're just like Sosuke's mom."

No, if I were Sosuke's mom, I'd be drinking a beer too, thus feeling a lot better than I feel right now.

Why was I sobbing, you might be wondering? Well I'll tell ya (finally...sorry about the long intro). On Monday, just as we were finally settled in, unpacked and organized post-vacation, the plumbing leading to our toilet sort of well...exploded, spewing water everywhere, for a long, long time. Bryan came home from lunch to find our master bedroom, the hall and various other spots in the back of the house (+ part of the living room) under a couple of inches of water.

Good times.

So now we're in the thick of it, weaving our way through a maze of giant de-humidifiers and industrial fans (needless to say, it's loud), watching baseboards get pried off, wood flooring get ripped up, and gumball-sized holes unceremoniously drilled into the walls. Our stuff is turned upside down, the furniture is all caddywhompus...it's quite a sight really. In the meantime, we've decamped to the front of the house, occupying the guest room and an air mattress in the den. This novel arrangement would be sort of fun if it weren't for all the chaos happening around us. (In fact, I would highly recommend camping out in your guest room or living room a few times a year. It's like going on vacation without leaving home, but I digress.)

I held it together pretty well in the beginning, but late yesterday afternoon a trio of happenings lead to my Lisa-esque breakdown: my OCD firmly kicked in, making the mess my house had become completely freak me out, I stubbed my toe hard on a de-humidifier, and then I bumped into my dresser (which was wedged in front of the laundry room door) and knocked off and broke one of my favorite little vases that was perched on top of it. And then I promptly lost it. It was ugly.

image via my lovely friend Stephanie's fantastic blog, let it be.

Thankfully, the sobbing combined with Millie's damning assessment of the situation seemed to prove cathartic, as I woke up today feeling pretty optimistic. Rest assured, I am still supremely bummed about the whole enterprise. My house (that I so lovingly scrubbed and organized and primped and prepped for that home tour a couple of weeks ago) is a complete shambles, oh and did I mention I'm throwing a party for 30 people on Saturday!? But, somehow, things seem a bit less dire.

And on the upside, the whole experience, has me (yet again) re-evaluating my relationship with all the stuff in my house, if not fueling my über-minimalism fantasies -- I'm pretty close to chucking it all and moving into a teeny, tiny abode somewhere... just me, Bryan, the girlies and our ten favorite possessions.

Sounds nice, doesn't it?

Scenes from The Weekend...

We spent the better part of the weekend "managing" the nuttiness I alluded to on Friday. Here goes...

So, we are in the process of getting a pool, which is not in and of itself nutty. It's messy and sort of major, but mostly it's exciting. We've been dreaming/saving/scheming for a pool since we moved to (hot!) Texas over a decade ago, and finally it's happening... We're thrilled, really. But (here's where it gets nutty) several months ago, we agreed to have our house on a little home tour.. It's in a few days, and we have a giant, gaping, muddy, (ugly) hole in our backyard. (The timing on the pool didn't exactly work out like we thought it would, but do these things ever?) And we have lots of windows.

But wait, there's more.

In an effort to sort of "mitigate the ugly" (and alleviate my pending freak-out), my sweet, sweet hubby started moving things around in the backyard last week -- big things, like rocks. And in the process, he tore his bicep and has to have surgery...tomorrow. Oh and we set-out on our annual beach vacation this Friday, which involves a 12 hour drive.

So all those things that had been on sweet hubby's to-do list this week-end in preparation for all this madness, well...moved over to mine (and there was a lot of calling in of the reserves -- friends and neighbors and random strangers on the street that we begged/roped in to help). I can honestly say I have never done more work in a single 48 hours than I did this weekend. Schlepping, hauling, planting, sweeping, cleaning, moving, polishing... It was crazy-town. But on the upside, my house has never been cleaner. Ever. So there's that!

Hope your weekend was slightly more relaxing than mine...then I can live vicariously through you guys... Happy Monday!

On Treasures and Trees and TVs (Or A Few Random Bits)

First up the treasures scored at Round Top: a little piece of hotel "silver" to house sugar cubes (bought with this post in mind) / a fabric remnant destined to become pillows for Audrey's room / some little mounted antlers from Germany / a driftwood stool that I'm planning to spray paint white / a couple of vintage bracelets + some wooden beads/ an old turquoise vase / some great prints and an etching...

But my favorite two finds by far were a beat-up vintage mirror and a kilim rug for my teeny tiny office. They are total game-changers. I never want to leave my desk now...it's a bad scene.

the beloved tree in all its splendor last summer...

Next up, I have to pause to mourn the completely majestic and wholly magical tree that generously shaded a good portion of our backyard. It was dying...pulling up the driveway, about to fall on the neighbor's roof, so we had to (and I am cringing as I write these next words) cut it down earlier this week.

Sadness doesn't even start to describe what I'm feeling...

a few of the things on my spring reading list as featured on Caitlin's blog...

Then there's the matter of our T.V, which completely and totally out of the blue, well... died. It just turned off and never turned back on. Upon hearing the news Audrey audibly gasped and asked how we would watch Project Runway (never mind that Project Runway isn't even on right now...she's a planner that one).

I have to admit, I was slightly panicked too, as despite not being much of a television person, I do love me some tivo'd episodes of The Daily Show and 30 Rock. But mostly I was a little elated. I've been wanting to do a week long "no T.V." experiment for a while but always chickened out, and now we're sort of conveniently forced into it. So far it's been pretty great. We've spent the past three nights listening to music, reading, doing little projects around the house. Things just seem slightly more mellow.

But you never know, a week from now the girls could be in some sort of Yo Gabba Gabba withdrawl (Millie only natch...according to Audrey, she's much too old for DJ Lance), and it could be wheels off around here. I'll keep you posted.

And last but not least (this was a long one, yes?) a peek at what's on the agenda for the weekend...So, so excited about the Wigwam pop-up shop in Oak Cliff.

Some Scenes From The Weekend...

The weekend was filled with all sorts of crazy goodness -- cool, sunny spring-like days, leprechaun traps, sleep-overs, baby cuddling, camel rides, hidden lagoons. It was a bit magical even. But now we're back into the grind of the week, and it's not off to the best of starts... (think nasty head-colds and laundry threatening to take over the house). Boo for Monday. I think Tuesday will be better. I can feel it.

Some Scenes From The Weekend...

It seems like our weekend consisted largely of thwarted plans... We were all set to host a little dinner at our place for a few friends on Friday but had to cancel at the last minute upon the discovery that the Millster had strep throat (which we somehow missed despite her constant grumpiness and frequent declarations that it hurt to swallow...umm yes, stellar parenting). So Friday evening quickly morphed into "cozy movie night on the couch", and it was pretty delightful, I have to say. On Sunday, I was supposed to do another little shoot for Chakra but was thwarted by the gloomy, cloudy weather (sunlight just makes for much prettier photos). Bryan and the girlies had already planned a day-trip to visit his folks, so all of the sudden I found myself with the better part of the day totally and completely free. This is a pretty rare phenomenon... so rare in fact that I spent the first 30 minutes wandering around aimlessly trying to figure out what to do with myself. (I did immediately shut down my computer for fear of squandering my freedom getting sucked into the interwebs.) After a bit of mulling, I ended up tearing through the house cleaning out drawers and cabinets and closets. I was a tornado of productivity. It was a pretty impressive scene, resulting in six (big!) bags of stuff delivered to the Goodwill. (Is it odd that I find taking stuff to the Goodwill a total rush?) But wait, there's more...I also conjured up a hefty pile of clothes to bequeath to my sister and unearthed a few more goodies from my closet to offer up over here in the next week or so (speaking of which, that swell A.P.C Madras dress is still up for grabs!) I capped my ultra-productive day off by watching the Oscars in their entirety. I was up (at least) two hours past my bedtime. I'm living large here friends. So... did you notice that I skipped over Saturday? Well that's because I may have attended Audrey's school fundraiser/auction dressed as Sarah Palin from Sarah Palin's Alaska (the auction theme was "Reality TV") and Bryan may have been dressed as a moose (that I shot). I also may have had a couple of cocktails, which may have resulted in someone bidding for court-side seats to a Dallas Mavericks game...and winning. Yes, all that may have happened, but I'm not saying for sure. Hope your weekend was fantastic (and that you didn't attend any fundraisers sporting an updo, glasses, a parka and a button that said "grizzly mama"...hypothetically of course).