Horn & Ivory- a new classy Etsy shop

I stumbled upon this super classy Etsy shop today and had to share. at Horn & Ivory the pillows are all handmade and designed with exclusive fabric. My favorite is the hand-painted striped pillow cover. Hand-painted? seriously, awesome. But I am especially loving the 24" square paintings. The colorway and modern motif, has me sold!!

If you need a Holiday...

Once upon a time, 2 girls graduated college with no jobs and the whole world in front of them. What better way to start their new life then a road trip across the United States? With the Honda packed and newly acquired stick-shift driving skills (for one of them), they set off from NC to CA and a lotta places in between.
I could continue to tell you the entire story, but you would need some time and a few cocktails.
The two girls were myself and my bestie/college roommate/ partner in crime Amanda. I learned a lot, had a lot of fun and started my overall journey to Texas (that's another story) on that trip.
What does this all have to do with the photo above you ask? Well, we took A LOT of photos on that trip, but the Holiday Motel photo above was my favorite. Amanda was driving us out of Las Vegas and I snapped this one out the window. I have always wanted to blow it up big, and since I snagged a deal on Daily Candy recently I was able to.
What better place to put it than our guest room? So that's where it now lives. Anytime I need a holiday or a trip down memory lane, I can go gaze. Won't you come join me?



On another note, I picked up that rocking giant S at Junkadoodle last weekend. Pretty sure it's gonna make an appearance at our wedding.

Yard inspiration

contemporary exterior design by san diego landscape architect Grounded - Richard Risner RLA, ASLA

With all the warmer (freakish) weather lately, I have been dreaming of getting our yard together.
Here are a few inspiration photos I found over on Houzz.

modern landscape design by san diego landscape architect Grounded - Richard Risner RLA, ASLA

modern firepits design by miami showroom Phil C

Home Improvement: Starring the Davis crew!

My Dad (Robin), brother (Keynan) and Mom (Sharon) came into town last friday and man, when I rattle off the list that these fabulous home improvement mavens (my family!!) did, your jaw will drop. Are you ready??

• Hung a chandelier over our dining table
• Helped me hang the "together" pendant
• Repaired BOTH umbrellas that the wind broke
• Ripped out an unsightly (and unsuable) light post in the front yard and replaced it with an outdoor outlet on our carport
• Added an outlet on the kitchen island
• Cleaned our gutters
• Organized 3 of our closets
• BUILT TWO 6' outdoor tables
• Cut down a tree and made it into a bench
• Installed lighting in our garage

Jaw dropped yet?? So, what did I do to deserve this awesome treatment?!?!
I HAVE NO IDEA.
They are just that awesome and I can not tell you how grateful I am to them. :)
Have a Happy Weekend! I am headed off to China tomorrow.

Together... and a cool DIY lamp

 

Ben and my Mom did a pretty fun craft together yesterday.  A wooden veneer light fixture spotted originally over on Poppytalk. I just sat back and watched the cooperation between these two. It was a great moment, given the first time my Mom met Ben 4 years ago, she said: "so Ben, what skills do you have to bring to the table?" It has been a running joke ever since. Needless to say, she cut him some slack and I love the lamp that they made!!

Together!!

A little house freshening up

Since it's seems other people have been better at blogging about my house than me (thank you Sam, Tonia, and Ben) I thought I needed to step it up a bit. Well... Let's be honest, I did some flower arranging and cleaning cause Hilary was coming over. But it was fun hacking down the tree in the alley to use. ;)




And check out my rad fiddle leaf fig in the corner.



Ben did the last two pics HDR style.

Night Squiggles

Monday night B and I were driving home (I was driving) and I glanced over to notice that Ben was futzing with his camera. At a red light, he goes... Check this out. He showed me a couple photos that he had shot while we were moving. After a couple more, he asks if I wanna try... YEA!


We pull over and switch places, and proceed to drive the long way home for another 30 minutes. We took around 50 photos and narrowed them down. Here is the link to Ben's Flickr set where he tweaked the color and contrast a little.


Basically, he put it on bulb (lowest ISO setting) and we played around with the manual shutter speed until we got what we wanted. Fun adventure. Rad art. QT with my fiancé :) I'm in.


These four are my fave. We wanna print one kinda big for the house. Any preferences??

Guest Room Update... A work in progress

We installed our supercool tension light in the corner, the Daybed is in place, Chair sans cushion hangin out. All I need is for my print from Suzanne to come in (it will hang in that blank space), and maybe a cozy rug Like this one from Anthro to round out the space.
What do ya think?

**note... Please ignore my awfully styled bookcase... I'll get to that, eventually**

Happy Friday... And replaced by chartruese

I'm home! For 4 days.... But man is it nice to sleep in my own bed. AND I had this Chartruese Russel Wright pitcher waitin for me at the house. I found it on eBay at a stellar price. Have a Fab weekend! Xo

What are these flowers?

We are in Las Vegas and I saw these cutie little flowering desert plants. If they can survive here, surely they can in Dallas?!
If anyone knows what they are, please let me know. I love them!!

Workings of a front patio

We scored some flagstone from Joslyn and Bryan. And it is going to anchor our front yard patio. A little cafe table, a couple chairs, some shade plants and we are in business! So excited.

Almost finished hairpin daybed

You remember our DIY hairpin daybed for our guest room we pseudo finished a month ago? Well we haven't fully finished (still needs staining), but we got a mattress and put it in place for my mom to sleep in this week.



And see that awesome peek of an atomic tension rod lamp under the bed?! Similar to this one . It's blue and awesome and once we find a replacement spring, will go in the corner.

One more photo after it is stained. ;)

Fiddle fig tree

I have been watching marathons of Secrets From a Stylist and on the last one I saw, I spotted a Fiddle Fig in the corner. Normally I wouldn't notice this kind of thing but I have been seeing them pop up a ton of places lately. Including my bosses office, Joslyn's living room, and This month's RueMag.




Then I googled it.... To find that Emily Henderson had used it in her design star finale show, Jonathan Adler rocked a couple in his dining room and Other people love and blog about them too!!








Now I am on the look out for how to fit this fun indoor tree into our decor.

Wallpaper

I've made the decision to wallpaper our guest room/office. Now to narrow it down...

The top runners are from Lucy Rose by Miss Print.

I definitely want yellow. Which brought me to this Saplings print:



With the front runner being Muscat:


I also really liked this Karim Rashid Embossed paper:



What do ya think?

Mod Monday- Landscaping

Since our fence is done, our next project is landscaping. We want to come up with an official plan, but right now we are in pull inspiration photos mode. Naturally, I started flipping through the photo gallery on RanchoStyle because..... they are ALL Cliff May houses. Here are some photos, I like:

Like the bright green little ferny plant by pool

like how the plants have individual plots surrounded by low maintenance "zero"scape

like the exotic grasses and plant selection here

love the clean "zero"scape on this one.

love the bench and light colored gravel

Like the green pots down the side of the house.

Yellow

Yellow is obviously making me happy right now, as I have posted here, here and here. To add to the yellow obssesion I picked up these tulips this morning.  And if you want more... my friend Kelley sent me this link to a pretty fun Blog: {BlackWhiteYellow}. Have a good Saturday!

Finished Fence- and a geeky but AWESOME photosynth

They finished our fence!! except for a couple small things that Ben talks about over on his Blog. That aside, it makes a world of difference. A huge difference in, curb appeal, privacy, backdrop out our fishbowl... really it is amazing! But other than these pictures, you seriously have to click on the link in the bottom photo and look at the living room in 360 and see for yourself. Pretty RAD.

click here to see the 360 tour

Fence update and a Yellow Door

They started building down the opposite side of the house yesterday... I have a feeling they will be pretty close to finishing this weekend. But I am not going to hold my breath. The gate is built and they closed off the one side already. It is a SERIOUS game changer. I feel like the backyard is so much larger somehow. Now I am dreaming of ways to landscape... and scheming how to build a giant picnic table, and a bocci ball court (or bean bags). Whoa, I need to calm down.

On another note, we painted our door yellow (as seen above). Personally, I love it. And it will look even more awesome when we mount our floating numbers from Home Depot (thanks for all the tips!) on a matching yellow framed board. More on that later...

Mod Monday- thrifty find

I had a fun thrift outing with Twitter friends: @sandraevans @chicmodern @porshathomas and my friend Callie this weekend.
We checked out a couple places in the OC, and I found this gem. Ben and I are seriously in need of storage for entertaining stuff, so this is perfection. It needs some work, but it is MOD to the max. I'll keep ya updated as to how it turns out. Consider this the "before" shot.

A Fence,

I can't even begin to explain how bananas the last couple weeks have been. Getting back from China, Jumping into a HUGE project for work, trying to keep up my fitness regimen, and getting ready to start our fence project this weekend (whoo hooo!!). So, my apologies for the serious lack in posts. I wanted to share this picture that we are using as inspiration for our fence from Peter A.Kirsch-Korff. I am seriously swooning, and can't wait for it to go up!
oh, and BTW, Happy St. Patrick's Day! go drink a green beer. :)