Getting my Bearings

We are finally home! After flying to London to Monaco to Morocco to London and finally making our way to Oxford, we are glad to finally be home after a wonderful trip!

After a long time away, I am getting my bearings on being back at home. I started the morning off with a nice walk around the neighborhood as well as spending some time watering my plants, which are doing well despite my absence. 


Thanks to the rain in Dallas during our trip, I was pleased to find that our roses are also in full bloom! 


I picked up a few treasures for our house while on our trip, including this candle from our stay in Morocco...


...another candle from the Double Decker Festival in Oxford, MS (where we visited Annie)...


...and finally this F door "wreath" for the front of our house!


Later this week, I'll show you a few more things I picked up on my trip! Until then, we will be enjoying being home again!

Hello from Morocco

Sorry for the length of time since our last post! We have been traveling quite a bit this month, from New York to Austin to Monaco to London and now to Morocco (all thanks to Rodney's work)! I wanted to pop in just to give you all a peek at our hotel here in Marrakesh, Morocco. 

Poolside view

Another pretty view at the hotel

View on the walk to our room

Greeted with a letter, flowers, and fruit!

Our hotel room, complete with two closets and surround sound! 

Our personal courtyard

Thanks for checking in with us... I promise regular posting will return as soon as we do! :)

Happy Driveway

After returning home from our weekend in Austin with Molly, I spent a few hours playing outside with our neighbors' kids. As you may know, every time I walk outside of our house, I hear "Mrs. Tracy!" coming from our next-door neighbor's yard. It has been so fun getting to know those kids and their friends who come over to visit.

Yesterday, we played outside of our house, drawing pictures on the sidewalk with chalk, playing school at our front porch table, and swinging on the porch swing. Here are a few of the sweet pictures the kids drew:

Rainbow and Sun

Spongebob

Angry Catepillar

Our Yellow House

I have loved getting to spend time with the kids who live on both sides of us! At one point yesterday, there were 9 kids playing in our yard! It is just another thing I love about living in this neighborhood.

Midweek Getaway

One of the perks of being empty nesters is having the opportunity to travel more regularly, even if that means a midweek getaway! Since Rodney travels often for work, sometimes I get the chance to tag along. This week, he was headed to New York City so I joined to enjoy some shopping, good food, and the sights of the city while he worked during the day.

During the trip, I wanted to be sure to hit up a few of my favorite spots in the city, a few of which provided great inspiration for our house! At the top of my list was ABC Carpet & Home, one of my absolute favorite decorating stores and a must every time I'm in New York. ABC Carpet is huge and is filled to the brim with so many wonderful things, including fantastic chandeliers and great furniture. It's also not uncommon to see a celebrities shopping there; this week, I saw a stretch limo parked outside!




While I have many NYC favorites that, I like to return to, it's always fun to find new places to visit as well. This week, I stumbled upon Olde Good Things in Chelsea, which is an architectural antique salvage store. There were so many neat things to discover inside! 




And of course, while we were in the city, we had to visit one of our favorite places to get something sweet! Last night, we stopped by Magnolia Bakery for a late-night dessert. Just another wonderful spot New York City has to offer! 


We have one day left in the city before we head to Austin for the weekend to visit Molly, and I am looking forward to more exploring, window-shopping, people-watching, and good eats!

Our New Home Makes Us Happy

We have been wanting to send out a moving announcement to our friends and family, and I knew that Easter weekend would be the perfect opportunity to snap a picture of us with the three girls while they were all home! I had my mom take a few pictures of us outside our house.


Molly designed a card that says "Our New Home Makes Us Happy" since we are so in love with our house, the area, and the fun things within walking distance from us. 


She also designed labels with our new address. Earlier this week, I stuffed and labeled the moving announcements, so keep an eye out for those! 


After snapping this picture, we headed to brunch at Gather just down the street from us. It is a great venue for parties and receptions, and it is a fun atmosphere overall. They had a great buffet selection for Easter, including pecan french toast, chicken fried steak, biscuits, fruits and salad, a variety of muffins, and much more! It was a great way to spend Easter with family after church. 

Finally Finished

Over Easter weekend, when my parents were in town, we worked on repainting our dining room chairs. (You may remember the sneak peek I gave you last week!) They were previously a wood finish, but I asked my mom and dad to help me create a patina finish for the chairs. My mom has done a number of patina finishes on things in her own home but also found some inspiration from Pinterest to gather ideas for the finish on my chairs. If you're interested in doing something similar, check out her Pinterest page for ideas!


My dad sprayed the base coat on the chairs, and my  mom and I spent Easter weekend doing a paint finish on them. The upholsterer did a fabulous job covering them, attaching the seat cushion, and embellishing them with a solid cording and brushed chrome nail heads. 


Here is a close-up of the great work done by the upholsterer:


Now that, the chairs are complete, the dining room is really coming together. The upholsterer is still working on solid slipcovers for the four smaller chairs. I eventually would like to get a rug to go under the dining room table.  


Thanks again to my parents for their help with this project! We are so glad that our chairs are finally finished!

Sit Back and Relax

Now that spring is here, we are enjoying spending time outside on our new front porch where we have a view of the school across the street and can visit with the neighbors as they walk by. We are working hard to make the outside of our home warm and welcoming!


Our new favorite spot to sit back and relax outside is on our porch is in the chairs we recently purchased. The chairs came from World Market and were 15% off, and I added green monogrammed pillows to make them even more comfortable. 


Our porch has slowly been coming together over the past few weeks as we clear out the boxes from the move and get everything settled. 

I recently dry-brushed our green cement bird bath to make it look as though several layers of old paint were showing through. I also dry-brushed the pot below to make it look more like cement. 


I also dry-brushed the two pots pictured below to make them look appear as a matching set. Then, I filled all of the pots with flowers, plants, or ferns.  


Our front porch is made even more enjoyable with guests, so please feel free to stop by soon!

Lately

Happy Weekend! 

Here's what has been going on in our house lately:

We had a built-in ironing board in our last house, so the small ironing board I bought for us to use in this house just wasn't cutting it. Rodney installed a regular ironing board in the back of our closet earlier this week.


The chairs we have in the two corners our foyer (to use for additional seating when people come over) were painted last weekend with the wonderful help of my parents with a gray-blue paint finish and recovered with new fabric.



Finally, the bedside pine table in our master bedroom was also repainted with a beige-gray finish and switched sides of the room to make room for the new dresser. The before picture of the natural pine is pictured below on the left, with the new finish pictured on the right.


Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!