Sara Michelle - Columbus, Ohio
Since yesterday's fall home tour was such a hit, today I thought I would re-share the beautiful tour of my friend Kelly's house from last fall! I think you'll agree with me that her style and her home are i-m-p-e-c-c-a-b-l-e! You can follow Kelly on instagram at @thebellabean!
Thanks again for sharing your beautiful home Kelly! Such wonderful autumn inspiration!
Hello friends! So excited to share our early fall home tour today as part of the Farmhouse Fall Tour of Homes with 14 other amazing bloggers (and to show you our newly re-painted dining room in action!)
Of course the dining room is the hub of our home, so this is the area that gets the most love in terms of decorating for the seasons. This year I decided to paint ceramic pots the same color green as the walls and bring in some white mums for the perfect fall centerpiece. (I swear I kill mums faster than I can buy them, but they seem to be doing much better inside than outside - who would have figured!)
The white pumpkin candles, leaf plates, and light-up pumpkins are all from Pottery Barn from several years ago. The faux white and green pumpkins are from Smith & Hawken from probably a decade ago (does anyone else miss that store as much as I do?) and the small white pumpkin soup tureen's are from Williams-Sonoma from probably 3-years ago.
This new three tiered stand from Bungalow Home in New Albany, Ohio is the perfect addition to our kitchen! You can display so much with one of these without cluttering up your counter space!
I also decided to add a big white mum to the family room and some additional, cozy blankets and pillows. Just a few pumpkins are on the coffee table, because as you can imagine my sweet 1-year old boy thinks these are the coolest toys ever and loves chucking them across the room ;)
I also have a few pops of yellows, golds, and oranges throughout the kitchen to get more in the spirit!
The best part of all of the fall decor is how the lights and candles come to life and sparkle as the sun goes down. It smells like pumpkin spice and is downright warm and cozy!
I could sit in front of this fire for hours on a cool fall evening (and believe me, this is exactly what I did last night!)
Thank you so much for stopping by! Don't forget to check out the rest of the homes on this week's Farmhouse Fall Tour series! They are so beautiful, you don't want to miss it!
For my milestone 30th Birthday, my sweet husband made me a beautiful dining room table! (How was that two years ago? I'm getting old! Yikes!) I get a lot of compliments and questions on this particular piece, so I thought I would share a review of how I am LOVING it two years later.
First, let's share some of the back story. My inspiration was this lovely table below from Restoration Hardware. Lovely, but pricey! We figured we could make something ourselves that fit our room perfectly for a fraction of the cost!
I knew I wanted a table that could seat 8-10 and that was WIDE enough to fit serving dishes and a centerpiece with a fully set table. That being said, the table is 90 inches long and 46 inches wide. As you can see from the pictures above (taken last Thanksgiving), it absolutely accomplishes that goal!
Evan used cedar wood for the table, which at first I wasn't sure about because I didn't love the orange/red undertones. However, he stained with Sherwin William's "Woodscapes" Stain in the color "River Birch" and any trace of the red undertones disappeared completely. The color is perfect!
Yes, even in the process of making it, I always made sure that there were fresh flowers on the table!
We also designed it to use this bench that I scored from Pottery Barn Outlet a few years ago, since we only had 6-chairs and we wanted the table to seat 8. Worked perfectly!
He made the top of the table and the legs outside in the garage, and then assembled and stained when it was inside. In a super old house like ours, there is no fitting anything through the narrow doors and hallways!
I'm not always a fan of make-it-yourself furniture because it can look a little too homemade in comparison to store bought pieces in the same room (which is how I feel about my desk and TV stand, but I'll share those thoughts another day!), however, this table is definitely my favorite piece of furniture in our house. Believe me, that is saying a lot!
The other thing I love about this table is the durability. We put several coats of poly on top of the stain, and you could do just about anything to this table without damaging it! Very kid, husband, and craft project friendly!
I thought I'd share a "Fall Home Tour" of my old apartment. These were taken in September 2009, to be exact!
Looking back, I have the fondest memories of this apartment. We moved into this home in August 2008, right after getting married. It was my first "grown up" apartment. I had been living at home through grad school in order to save money, so believe me I couldn't wait to move in with Evan and have our very own place to decorate!
The funny thing is, at the time we were living here, I remember that I just could not WAIT to get the heck out of here and move into a house! When we first got married, we didn't have two nickels to our name and we spent several years putting every last dollar into paying off our student loans. So glad we did, but I would seriously just count our pennies, stare at our budget, and plan our income out to the last dollar and it was HARD! Time seriously c-r-a-w-l-e-d until the day Sallie Mae was paid off and we could start saving for a house! I absolutely could not wait.
We may not have had a lot of money, but looking back I'm so proud of the decisions we made and the home we created even though we didn't have a lot of disposable income at the time. Most of the furniture in our place was hand-me-downs that we refurbished, stuff we made, or things we bought at the Pottery Barn Outlet using numerous gift cards we got as wedding gifts. The dining room chairs and white shelves in the bedroom were the only new pieces we bought. We bought them from Value City Furniture (super affordable and have held up extremely well!)
I loved this bedroom... It is still one of my favorite bedrooms I ever had!
I know I couldn't wait to leave this place and the time period when we lived here wasn't the easiest, but I look back at this time with nothing but the most amazing memories! It made us so close and we accomplished some major, major goals. It is a really good lesson to just appreciate where you are at! You may be making amazing memories and not even be aware of it! Try to enjoy the season of life that you are in, even while working toward a bigger dream for the future.
