Guest Bedroom: Creating a Happy Place

I wanted to show everyone how my guest bedroom project turned out. This is one of my favorite rooms because my mom sewed the pillows for me and I picked out the wall color myself and painted it! The bedroom has a totally different feel now. Before I avoided this room and now I walk in just to take a peek! I wish I had a before picture but at least you can see it now!

I looked and looked for the right fabric and when I found the floral fabric in a store in Thomasville it just jumped out a me. I created the entire room design around this fabric. I found the lamps at TJ Maxx and I think they match perfect. The painting is one of my favorite things and it is painted by a local artist, Lisa Lanier.

I moved the mirror that was in my foyer to this room and I like it here so much better.

The Help

The Help is the best book I have read (ok, well heard) in a long time. I just loved it and am too excited to see a commercial for the upcoming movie! I am a member of audiobooks.com (thanks to Jill's good idea) which is just like Netflix for audiobooks. I am looking for new good reads, any ideas??

Congratulations to Brooke and Ben and Good Times in Nashville

Congratulations to Brooke and Ben

I am so excited to post about my sister and her boyfriend Ben getting engaged while we were in Nashville over the 4th of July.

He proposed at their hotel Saturday morning and then we all met for a fabulous brunch at Jackson's Bar and Bistro in Hillsboro Village to celebrate.

We had such a wonderful weekend celebrating their engagement and also got to spend time celebrating Karen's birthday as well. We had a great cookout Saturday night at Karen and Chandler's house and then got busy playing some XBox Kinect Sports. Since Nick and I are not competitive at all, it is probably hard to believe that we left their house full of yummy food with a pair of spilt pants. Needless to say Nick put his total effort into the hurdles when playing against Chandler. On Sunday, we rented an awesome boat and spent the day skiing and wakeboarding and then had a great lakeside meal at Black Pearl Cove

This was my first visit to Nashville during Nick's 2 month time there so I was too excited to also get to see his "Bachelor Pad" as he calls it. His condo has an amazing view from the terrace of the Nashville skyline. Here are a few pics of his pad...

Congratulations Lauren and Ryals!!!

Congratulations Lauren and Ryals!!!

I am back on the Blog and I felt it very fitting for my first post to be in Congratulations to Ryals and Lauren! I am thrilled to hear the news and am already too excited for May!!! You two were clearly meant for each other and are so alike in many, many ways. You truly compliment each other and I can't wait to see you start your life together as Mr. and Mrs. Ryals Stone!!! I have included a few fun pictures to finish out my Ryals/Lauren tribute!

Why not dinner and dancing?

Reading a good book and cruising!

Deck the Halls and Everything Else...

It is finally time to decorate for the holidays in our new home and finally time to post on our blog. Sorry for our small blogcation but I am taking the reins back (yes, me, Kim) and making a holiday themed post. Christmas has been a much awaited event in the Campbell household this year as we have both dreamed of going all out with Christmas decor in our new home and now the time is here. We grinched the last two years on the decor and so we are trying to make up for lost time. Here are some of my favorite pictures and I will comment along the way. Please feel free to leave comments! Merry Christmas!

Oh, Christmas Tree!

We have been scoping out this Christmas tree farm right near our house for months. We went the week before Thanksgiving to check out the trees and make sure they were up to standard for assisting in our de-grinching process. After hours of tree education (how to tell how old the tree is, how to properly water, how to shake, etc.) we knew Busy Elves was the spot where our tree was waiting. We came back to the tree farm on the Sunday after Thanksgiving to do the honors and we came home with this beauty in no time. The bow topper and ribbon we got from a few Christmas open houses we went to at local boutiques here in Albany.

Here is one of my favorite ornaments I got from Hollie in the swap one year...

And the lovebirds I got from Mags in the swap, they match perfect!

This is the hope star that Mrs. Campbell got us last Christmas when I was hoping for a job and a house. It must have worked so it needed to be put on the blog. If anyone needs to borrow it let me know and I can try to pass on the hope!

This is our new Christmas tree skirt I had made on etsy.com. I really love this site and it is so fun to work with people who hand make everything and love it! It is red ticking with burlap.

The new stockings also purchased on etsy.com.

No, I did not have a bow maker!

I am so excited to have finally tied a bow that looks less like a spider and more like a holiday decoration. We also bought these sparkly ornament strands at the Christmas open house and used them to jazz up the wreaths. I love the ribbon and ornaments together because it really catches the sunlight in the daytime and the spotlights make it really shine at night.

Lauren, does this look familiar?

Lauren helped me make this purchase several years ago and gave me the great idea of the bow and greenery addition. It was in need of new greenery and bow so I fixed it up and here is the finished product for the front door.

Here is our house at night. We also wrapped lighted garland around our columns as you can see. The little metal topiaries that sit on either side of the door also got wrapped in the same glitter strands of ornaments as the wreaths to match.

Here is our finished mantle...

A close-up of the right side because I love my pig/bulldog (hard to tell which one)

My R. Wood Christmas plates are finally getting used! These may look familiar, I bought them at the R. Wood sale when we were all in Athens one time. I used them to set the table in the dining room.

Designer Nick is Back!

Nick did these beautiful gold decorations here. We used Meredith's awesome idea to paint the pinecones and they really added to this display.

Here is my poinsettia in the kitchen.

Our foyer decor. I love the mercury glass containers. I wish the picture showed the two on the left better because they are my favorite! You will just have to come see in person.

Merry Christmas, thanks for reading! Come visit!

Making a living room to Live in...

In thinking about how Kim and I wanted our living room to 'feel' we just thought 'comfortable.' We wanted to buy some nice pieces, but we didn't want to feel like the room was off limits in order to not break, damage, or spill. We wanted simplicity with a little style. We wanted brighter colors, not dark and elegant. Dark and elegant is nice, but I think Kim and I are too cheery and we needed our colors to reflect that.

Now it must be repeated that Kim and I had to start from scratch. All of our college furniture was past its prime and was donated to Kim's Junior League attic sale. We hardly had a pot to you know what in, but we did have some wooden folding chairs that got us through the first month and a half in our new home. Those chairs acted as a desk, ladder, table, shelf, and seat. I hated to see some of our stuff go, but I was very excited to start over and make our house our own!

Living room Beginning:

Yikes!, pretty sad, but those are our trusty dusty folding chairs, and boxes to dine on. I believe Pizza Hut Pepperoni Stuff Crust was on the menu that evening.

First addition:

We had these bookshelves built because there was room for them, and it just looked like those open areas on either side of the mantle needed bookshelves! Glad we went ahead and did this before the furniture arrived; big time mess, sawdust, paint, etc. We had bead board installed on the back of the shelves and painted Scenic Drive(smokey, blue/green/gray, or something) This color on the shelves was kind of our launch point for the rest of the room.

After 6 long weeks of folding chairs.....

Furniture begins to arrive. Now, its not like this stuff just showed up, for 6 weeks Kim and I were camped out at Custom Interiors here in Albany with Krista Mock who helped us pull everything together how we wanted. Krista was probably about ready to get rid of me because of my non-professional opinions, but she did give me a nice nickname, Designer Nick. We filed through every piece of fabric in order to get the 'comfortable feel' we wanted.

Starting to take shape:

Light blue Pearl Trellis fabric from Thibaut for the side chairs. Sofa is a very textured weave fabric, kind of cream colored. Bookshelves are empty... need to address that situation!

We chose to accessorize the shelves with stone and green colored items. I like the idea of not cramming too many colors into one space. I like the consistency. It feels even.

Right side shelf, plus our unique 3rd chair. We loved the orange/red Imperial Trellis fabric from Schumacher. We had to put it on something!

We chose the fabric for these pillows because they have every color the room has. It was an exciting find after the hundreds of other patterns we vetoed!

Kim looooves Monogramming

Cool frame from Carriage Trade in Albany, and we finally get to use those engagement photos

We're still not sure about this wall behind the sofa. We love this chest, but the rest of the wall needs a little more flare. It is a little plain.

And, I have to include the owl which is Kim's favorite purchase so far!

Feeling like home, finally:

This is how the people we bought the house from had this room, (kind of a Before pic) :

And here it is today (our version):

We are still not all the way there, but we have made a ton of progress for certain. There will be some fun additions along the way and I will try to update those when possible. We love our home and hope you will visit soon.