Working on Gracie's Room

We have a big group of guests coming to stay with us over the holidays and I've been hustling to get our girls bedrooms more finished/comfortable in time. I actually sort of love having an excuse to get house projects done! Gracie's bedroom needed the most help and I feel like we've made some good headway this month.

I had my upholsterer recover this old headboard in a pretty light blue velvet that I bought at a local fabric discount store called Boca Bargoons (awesome name, right?). The frame is queen-sized though and Grace has been sleeping on a super old full-sized mattress that didn't have any support.

We ended up getting another Leesa mattress for her bed because we've loved the one in our master bedroom so much. And let's be honest, the convenience factor was a big one! The mattress ships (free!) to your doorstep (in a much smaller box than you're expecting) and then you unpack it on your bed frame and watch it grow to full size in about five minutes. It's crazy easy!

Their mattresses are 10" tall and made of three layers of unique foam, including memory foam and another type of foam that's perforated to keep your mattress nice and cool. (IMPORTANT when you live in the desert like we do!). Isn't the mattress itself so pretty? Seems like a shame to cover it up with bedding. :)

We've had our Leesa mattress in our master for about four or five months now and I have to say that I really, really love it (just like these 1500 reviewers). It's the perfect combo of soft and supportive. I don't have the best back - mine goes out all the time - and I feel like this mattress has made a world of difference for me! I've been feeling great lately.

My Grace has the sweetest heart - she loves it as much as I do that Leesa donates a mattress to a shelter for every ten sold. When I told her that she said "Well now I'll really sleep better at night!" Ha!! Kids are the best.

Between the amazing new mattress and bed frame, we're both feeling pretty great about her room situation! Isn't that blue velvet so pretty? We also put up some new art from Kristi Kohut in her room that pairs so well with it! On the other side of the room we hung an old French poster above a vintage dresser I bought off Craigslist and painted. We're getting close in here!

Kids rooms are my absolute favorite to decorate! It's so fun to get crazy with color and pattern - and I love a space with no rules. :)

This post is sponsored by Leesa. The first 50 readers to redeem the promo code LGN75 at checkout get $75 off their order! Stressed about ordering a mattress sight-unseen? Don't be! Leesa has a 100-day risk-free trial period!

Happening Lately

I think it's high time for a old school style brain-dump post! Here are a bunch of random things on my mind lately:

1) We're hiring! I'm looking for another designer to join our team based in my studio in Mesa, AZ. We especially need more helpers that know CAD and the Adobe suite. Please apply! We're a fun bunch and we've got a ton of exciting projects on the books right now and we need all the help we can get!

2) Because we're growing so fast, I'm considering moving my office out of my house this year. It is so convenient to work from home, especially with the baby, but it's also hard to shut it down, you know? Also, I've always dreamed of a retail shop. One of my girls, Megan, used to work for a cool design firm in a beautiful building that had a retail shop downstairs and their design offices upstairs, which always seemed pretty perfect to me. They've since moved and Megan works for me now (and Camelback Flowershop is in the space), but I think the concept is a great one that works well for a lot of design teams.

(pretty Megan!)

(pretty Camelback Flowershop!)

I've been poking around, looking for cool places downtown to fix up. We'll see if anything comes of it, but it sure has been fun to be on the hunt and to dream! All of the spaces I can afford right now need a ton of work, like former banks (with vaults!) and transmission shops (!?), but they all have some decent potential. :)

3) Craigslist is still loving Kayla. She found this BEAUT of a sofa for us that just needs some upholstery love. Can you even handle the lines and those legs??

4) I'm obsessed with this over-sized subway tile we're using in a local client's master bathroom. Wait til you see the satin brass fixtures! Hubba-hubba!

5) My parents sure have a pretty drive way.  I'm so glad I can drive up to visit them and get a little taste of the seasons!

6) Check out these amazing semi-flush sputnik chandies that just got installed in my client's new closet. Lucent Lightshop (a local company that I LOVE and use all the time) came through for us yet again! So good, right?

7) Margot is crawling like a champ and her latest trick is the most adorable clap you've ever seen. If anyone in the room says "Yay!" she immediately starts clapping with fervor! Her tiny, chubbiest little hands kill me.

She's also really getting into books. She makes the highest pitch squeal whenever I put this Richard Scarry book in front of her. She LOVES the giant cat page and kisses it over and over again. It's like she is breaking my heart on purpose. 

8) We call Margot "Bunny" a lot so I immediately wanted a print of this bunny art as seen on the Dwell Studio site. Anyone know the artist?

9) My doctor's office had a super old issue of Lucky in the waiting room and it was such a treat to revisit this great article on Claiborne Swanson Frank. What a gorgeous photo, start to finish!

9) I've wanted a bluetooth Tivoli radio forever and I finally bit the bullet recently and I have to say, it is everything I dreamed it would be, and more! We use it in the studio to listen to podcasts and all sorts of random music (and I mean RANDOM - everything from Dixie Chicks to Kanye to Fleetwood Mac) and the sound quality is amazing. And it looks so pretty sitting out, so, you know, win-win. :)

End of brain dump! It feels good to catch you up. Life is good. Though I feel generally like it is all going by way too fast (how's that for sounding OLD?!). 

Fall Dinner Party!

One of the hardest things about living in Phoenix is we don't really get to experience the seasons in the same way most of the country does! But the flip side is that October marks the beginning of about eight months of perfect weather here. We fling open our doors and windows and we eat out on the porch from now until May! As much as I miss fall foliage and the occasional snowfall, I feel like I can't complain.

It's still fun to celebrate all the pretty parts of the seasons though! I teamed up with Pier 1 to decorate our back porch for a special fall dinner party. They have a ton of beautiful fall decor and entertaining pieces right now, so it was easy to get inspired. This woven napkin was the starting place for my color inspiration. I used a little bit of rosin paper and two different widths of painters tape to create a random, abstract pattern.

Then I painted over the paper and tape with Rose Gold metallic spray paint and then peeled away the layers of tape.

I love the tone-on-tone color happening here!

I think the white dinner plates (such a great basic to have handy!) really pop against the metallic rose gold. I served a yummy vegetable beef stew for this dinner party in the pretty gray bowls, which are the perfect size for such a hearty stew.

We kept all the food inside, just a few steps away, so it would stay warm and protected, and this way I was able to keep the table freed up for a cool center piece.

I picked up a few dollars worth of apples in different colors - from bright green to dark red and all the shades of apple in between.

It's easy to keep these apple votives looking fresh for your party (and beyond) if you give them an apple cider vinegar bath before cutting into them. About half a cup for every couple of gallons of water in the sink is enough to help kill bacteria on the fruit's surface. (This works great for pumpkins too!)

Once your apples have been cleaned, and about half an hour or an hour before your party, it's time to get your apples ready. These little tealights are the perfect size to use for most apples.

A melon baller is also just the right size for creating the space to make these votives. You just sort of press the edges of the melon baller in to the top of the apple to cut through the skin, and then scoop it out at just about an inch deep.

You can use lemon juice or saltwater on the apples as a preservative to help prevent them from turning brown.

It's a surprisingly quick and easy centerpiece! It takes about as much time as making a pretty flower arrangement.

I arranged the apple votives by color, sort of ombre style, down the center of the table on top of three of these adorable wooden cake stands.

It was so fun to have the votives burning especially as it got darker into the evening. It was beautiful!

I love the simple wreath trend that happening right now - it's such a modern twist to a really traditional look. And the bonus is their easier to make this way! Pier 1 has some really pretty silk plants in their fall line that I wanted to use for my sparse wreath to hang above our table.

I used a length of grape vine as the ring of the wreath and then cut 12" lengths of greenery and flowers to make the bottom portion.

Like with any wreath-making project, you just have to layer and then wrap tightly with floral wire. It could not be easier!

So simple and sweet, right? I feel like our house color (Benjamin Moore's Desert Twilight) is the perfect backdrop for the fall colors in the wreath. :)

I had some extra flowers leftover from the wreath project, so I made little bouquets and tags for name cards. I think they look so pretty in the mix happening on the table!

And aren't those hand-blown etched glass tumblers beautiful? I bought 12 because I needed some new everyday glasses, and these were a great price!

I love that a few extra projects can make a dinner party feel so special! I think any of these ideas would work so well for a grown-ups Thanksgiving table! And I'm hoping to make a few more wreaths to give to my mom and sisters. They're so easy and pretty!

And here are a few more fall goodies I spied at Pier 1 - so many on-trend items in brass, marble and warm woods! High fives, Pier 1

Brought to you by Pier 1