The Living Room Chronicles: Step 6: The Plant Tables And The Plants

Do you remember the time when I went wild for buying pallets? If not, you can read about my pallet-filled-car-drive-through experience here. Well, you will be happy to know that not a single piece of wood from those pallets was wasted. 

Scott loves plants and had always had visions of having a whole plant situation in our living room. We had to leave a little space behind our big Karlstad sectional because there is an air vent there. As soon as Scott saw that space, he knew what he had to do: build some super easy and not-so-sturdy tables out of pallets to house his plant collection. Soon after he decided this, those crafty folks over at YoungHouseLove built a snazzy table behind their own Karlstad sofa. Woo Hoo! This meant we now had fancy plans to follow! I thought that meant we would soon have our own snazzy little table too. But it turns out that even though they did a good job breaking down their plans they were still pretty darn far above our skill level. 

So, it was back to basic 6th grade carpentry skills (maybe more like 1st grade) for us. 

Here is what Scott came up with:

FYI- I took these photos during our packing stage, which is why there are no cushions on the sofa.

Here is how it looked with plants and cushions.

Here are the rest of the steps of The Living Room Chronicles:
If you are interested in some more after photos check out Step 1.

The Living Room Chronicles Introduction Post

Step 1: Move in. Put in whatever furniture we had. Hang art.

Step 2: The Craigslist deal of a lifetime. New Sectional Sofa.

Step 3: New coffee table (Step 3 Introduction found here)

Step 4: DIY remote control holder. A tiny, tiny step, but we are still calling it one.

Step 5: Should we change out the fireplace?

Step 6: The plant table and the plants

Step 7: Finishing touches

Taking It Easy In Blog City

Scott used to love to say "Blog to live. Live to blog" whenever I was working on Never Listless. I haven't heard him say it for a while because life has been too busy for blog city to get much of a role in it.

We just got home from a big road trip to Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Right now, home is at my in-law's house. The whole moving process was pretty emotional and stressful for me. Not being able to move into our new house to start establishing routines and getting settled is pretty hard. But we are very very very fortunate people. My in-laws are about the most welcoming, generous, and thoughtful people you could find. They opened up their home to us. They really opened it up... we have already filled the THREE! rooms that they made for us with all of our junk.

So, here is the reason why I am "taking it easy in blog city": I need a break to unpack, reorganize, establish some routines, and try to get my sanity back after our big move and our road trip.

The photos below were taken after I had spent at least 4 hours total trying to get organized.

ps it should be noted that this is all our junk. The rooms looked fantastic before The Jed Clampet and his gang moved all of their junky bags in.

We are living out of boxes right now and they are EVERYWHERE! It takes an hour just to find a hat for Cora.

I'm sorry that my blog has been filled with excuses, apologies and sadness recently. Over the next few weeks, I am going to try to post 2-3 times, but there may be a random week were only one post hits the pages of Ol' Never Listless. I promise that I'll get back on track soon. I can't imagine how I am going to fit all of the fun changes in our new house into just 3 posts a week.

Here are a few photos from our road trip. These are just the ones that I took on my sister's phone. I haven't had a chance to upload any others yet.

This one is of Cora and her best friend, the snow man. My sister's neighbors have a snow man on their deck and Cora was OBSESSED. When we were inside, she would look out the window to try and see him and ask repeatedly if she could go say hello. Sometimes, she would just wave at him and say hi. There was a kiss or two given.

Here she is just chillin' with him.

My sister took us to a fabulous garden where she lives in Michigan. It was beautiful and there was lots of great stuff for kids. Cora loved it!

There were boats to play with!

Cora became obsessed with tunnels on this trip. This mini door resembled a tunnel enough to get her excited!

Thanks to all of the lovely folks who made our trip extra special (Kelly, mom, Emery, Jeanette, Liz, Charlie, John, Jenni, all of the tunnels, parks, and good food).

That's all for now. I will definitely be back on Monday with a little blogging action for you. I hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

Floor Plans & Ideas: The First Floor, Part 4: Decorating The Stairs

I hope I didn't promise you that I would wrap up the first floor in 4 posts. If I did, it was a lie. It is going to take 5 whole posts to wrap this baby up. And, you never know with me... could be 6!
Let's take a look at the ideas I have for how to decorate the stairs today. 

Here are the plans for the first floor.

Decorating The Stairs:
In our current house, I decorated the stairs with a photo gallery on one side and a random collection of things hanging from clothespins on wires on the other side. I liked it, and may end up doing something similar, but the one thing I want to avoid is hanging thing at "swinging elbow height." It seems like pictures were always flying off the wall with a swipe of the elbow. Apparently, I was pretty clever and I removed the glass before the first swinging elbow came to town so it was never a huge mess.

Here is what I had before:

Get ready for an upgrade because here are some of the fancy things I am thinking of. Although, it should be known that mine will not look anywhere near as fancy.


I love the big mats and simplicity of this stairwell. I won't go with the bugs, but they are pretty cool.

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I like this one because it is cool and eclectic, but it wouldn't work with a baby toddler.

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I'm not going to be wearing fancy backless dresses going up our stairs anytime soon nor am I planning to have photos of rock stars gracing the walls, but I do think the idea of having just a few large photos going up the stairs. Black and white seems like a good idea to keep things simple.

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This one also would not work because of the babytoddler, but I love the similar frames and big mats. It seems like the big mat helps a lot when you have a large grouping of photos so it doesn't seem too busy.

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Brenda Knight photography made up this little guide of how to hang pictures in the stairs. I am going for a slightly bigger look, but I love how nicely she laid this out.

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This drawing, from Design Formula, gives you a nice layout plan and some spacing guidelines so you aren't constantly bumping pictures off with your hands going up and down the stairs.

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Here are the first 3 posts about first floor ideas: 
Part 1: The porch, the foyer, and the garage
Part 2: The bathroom
Part 3: The massage room/ guest bedroom

Now, go decorate your stairs and send me some photos for inspiration, please!

Somebody That I Used To Know

I wrote this post almost a year ago and never finished it. I would have just tossed it, but it is pretty darn applicable today. 

I am no pop music genius. I don't know about the cool new songs until my friends and I all get together. They always know all the new music. Don't worry- I listen and take notes like a weirdo in the corner.

I'm talking about a song that came out over a year ago. In case you haven't heard of him, like I had not until someone told me:

His name is Gotye (pronounced "Go Tea A"). 

He sings a song called, "Somebody That I Used to Know." As you can guess the song is about people you were in past relationships with. He talks about how that person used to be super important to him and now they are just somebody he used to know.

I feel the same way about houses as this guy, Goyte, feels about people he dated.

ps I don't know if this song ever could be classified as a "cool new song."

Here are the lyrics:

"Now and then I think of when we were together" ... "Told myself that you were right for me" ... "But that was love and it's an ache I still remember"

Well you said that we would still be friends

But I'll admit that I was glad it was over

But you didn't have to cut me off

Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing

And I don't even need your love

But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough

Now you're just somebody that I used to know

Now you're just somebody that I used to know

It is like Goyte wrote this song about my love for places I used to live. 

When I drive past a house that I spent a lot of time in I want to run in and see what they have done to it. I have dreams where I am walking around a house that I used to live in.

I want to make sure they are taking good care of the house. I want to make sure I agree with their design choices. I want to see if a mark I left on the wall from doing cartwheels in my room is still there.

It is so hard to imagine someone moving into our house.

But, today, not only do I have to imagine it, I have to watch it happen. We closed on our house Wednesday and a new family is about to move in. 

Guess what is about to happen now?
... a mini photo marathon of some of our early days in the house and a photo of the most important day in this house.

Sorry for the terrible quality photos!

Here is a super flattering photo of Scott carrying me into the house right after we closed on it.

I think this bizarre suit came with the house so Scott decided to try it on while we de-popcorned our ceilings. This was within the first couple of days of buying our house. 

We looked awesome during the de-popcorn process and decided to take some photos to show off our awesome hair-dos and faces. 

My mom came to visit a few weeks after we moved in and I had just bought my wedding dress. I got to try it on for her before anyone else had seen it yet. It wasn't fitted in this photo, but it was a nice moment. 

We celebrated our first Christmas as a married couple in this house. I am wearing scrubs, not an awesome all black space suit. Also, Scott is holding my stomach like I'm pregnant but I was not. This was years away from Cora time. I think I did a self-timer photo and he was trying to make sure I didn't fall after running to get in the photo. 

And here is the most important day that we had in our sweet old house. This is the day that Cora got to meet her new home. We made lots of wonderful memories in that house, but the last 21 months of Cora-filled memories are the hardest to leave.

I will try to be back with my regular blog post schedule next week but we are now in Columbus, Ohio and headed up to see my sister, family and friends in Michigan tomorrow. This have been hectic over the past week. Moving is hard stuff... especially on a 21 month old. 

Does anyone else feel this way about places they used to live?

Packing Up A Storm!

I love the idea of packing. Getting a chance to go through all of my stuff, purge and group things that should be together together makes me giddy. 

My problem is that I start out with the best intentions, doing great work. When the count-down hits 24 hours, I start breaking out the cheap-o plastic bags and throwing everything in at the last minute with a bit of the "I'll deal with it later mentality." This leaves me with 90% of my stuff packed awesomely and the rest looks like it belongs to a crazy lady.

Right now, we have about 36 hours until we have to be totally out and I would say we are about 95% packed. And, the good thing about it is that that 95% is awesomely packed (well for the most part). 

This isn't over yet, but the hardest part has been packing up breakables and being certain that they won't end up in a million pieces. The 2nd hardest part is packing up the last 5%. We had a huge selection of boxes thanks to thoughtful family and friends (and thanks to the fact that I am a box-hoarder). But, we are down to the odd shaped boxes that don't seem to fit anything I have left. Also, the first 95% was packed like with like. We are down to much more random with random.

Here are some photos of our packing madness. 

All of Cora's toys are now in the kitchen. She thinks it is a little fantastic and is really excited about her discovery that she can get to both sides of her kitchen. Excuse the mess, Cora usually cleans up her play area before bed, but things are a bit crazy town over here right now.

Can you believe that anyone has this much stuff? I had no idea we did!

Every little thing makes me sad right now. I gave Cora her last bath at this house. Scott made his last meals (he made bunches of it so we would have left overs for the next 36 hours). 

I hope to be back Wednesday!

Oops! Did I do that?

I thought I was on top of things, but it turns out that that was not the case. Sorry that I didn't get a post up on Friday. I am also sorry that Wednesday's post was only half finished and I didn't notice for two whole days. It is fixed now. You can check it out here.

I am also sorry to anyone who saw me at my doctor's appointment with only one shoe on. I grabbed my shoes and ran out the door. I didn't put them on until I got to the hospital and... surprise! I only had one shoe. So, I got to look totally awesome for about 30 people.

Back to the point... packing is coming on strong and I am using that as my excuse for all the spazzy behavior that happened over the past few days. I cannot for the life of me believe how much stuff we have! Most of it is baby stuff.

This is a little over half of our boxes. WE HAVE SO MUCH STUFF! 7 years ago I drove back to the east coast from San Diego with 80% of my possessions fitting into my VW Jetta. Apparently, things have changed.

We will be traveling next week, but I hope to still get my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday post up.

This Monday our furniture goes, Tuesday we move out and Wednesday is our closing. This is getting pretty real!

ps there is a new Cora-filled-post up on The Etc. Lists!

The Nursery Chronicles: Step 9, Part 2: Finishing Touches

Can you believe it!?! We are wrapping up another Chronicles series (finally)!
In this post, I will just go through a couple before photos and then I will show you how the room looked when we put our sweet little house (can you tell I'm starting to get sad about leaving?) on the market.

Top photo: before we moved in.

Bottom photo: When I tried to DIY a headboard and went pink-tastic on the room.

Here is the photo that the professional photographer took of our house. 

While the house was super clean and tidy I took a few minutes to run around snapping some of my own wayyyyy less fancy photos.

Well, there you go... I think that pretty much covers it. Now, you have seen every angle of the nursery and know about every project. Thanks for coming along for the step party!

Here are all of The Nursery Chronicle Posts:


The Nursery Chronicles Start-Up Post

Step 1: Get rid of the old furniture and try out some more baby-centric duds for the room. Crib, bookshelf, and daybed.

Step 2: Convince my husband to do more painting than anyone would ever want to do in their whole life. Start the painting spree by painting over the headboard on the wall. Get a dresser/ changing table and refinish it.

Step 3: Get some more furniture. Start the decorating: Wire display for pictures.

Step 4a: Put up the book slings.

Step 4b: More decorating: Floating shelves.

Step 5: Decorations, Part 3: Hang art above the crib and all around the room

Step 6: Refinish side table and get an ottoman

Step 7: Paint the chalkboard and mirror and hang them.

Step 8: Put up the curtains. Line the inside of the dresser with some of my extra fabric

Step 9: Part 1, Part 2. Finishing touches.