The Target Adventure Continues...

As I posted yesterday, I had a fun little trip in Target and found two shops featured which are adorable. Today's shop spotlight is The Privet House. Very charming home decor items that are vintage with a bohemian-chic feel.  I had to take pictures of the accessories that were shown in store. I'm a very visual person, so I need to have pictures for inspiration when I look at doing new things for my home.

I even love their sign, cute font & love the green

I love canisters...wish I had enough space for an entire collection!

So not my style, but I can appreciate it.

Do people decorate with the "&" sign? I don't, but it looks cool here.

This crate is awesome; perfect color and size!

Side view of the crate. I <3 it.

Nothing more.

I see these a lot in stores, I don't know that I would use this to be honest.

Can't you picture this at a summer party?

I've been digging home decor with birds lately, so this birdcage is perfect.

The Privet Shop has a lot of adorable items besides what I was able to take photos of. There are unscented candles and lots of tableware for spring/summer gatherings. Like I said previously, the hubby was already super annoyed that I kept taking pictures so I was only able to take a few before he abandoned me! ;) But I can tell two things I think are great from this collection that will be constant for spring/summer home decor are:

Patterns:

This collection has fun patterns to help accent your home, whatever space that might be: dining, kitchen, living room, bedroom, etc. You will find stripes, animal print, floral and more!

Color:

The new season always opens new possibilities of colors for fashion and home decor trends. And as you see from the picture above, color is most often going to be paired with pattern to give that extra bit of "pop" for Spring/Summer. While color is great to bring in a bit of your personality, it's best to keep it just for the accent pieces which is exactly what the Privet House shop provides...

I'm loving the yellow in home decor & fashion...thinking this might be for me!

I love going into stores and finding inspiration ideas for the home. Even if its not my style (which some of this isn't), I can still appreciate it. Where do you look for inspiration?

Target Adventure Shopping

So this evening the hubby and I had a little date night. I came home from work, late as usual, but then I walked in through the front door & we went back out for dinner at Jason's Deli and then to one of my favorite places in the world....TARGET!! Whop whop. :)

I love going to Target. It's an amazing place to go for inspiration, whether you're looking for fashion ideas, gifts or home decor trends. I haven't been in a Target for probably two weeks (gasp!), so I didn't know they have "The Shops at Target" that they feature from other cities. For example they had a dog shop from a boutique in Boston or a Cos Bar (make-up & nail polish type stuff) from Aspen. But I saw two shops I absolutely loved....The Candy Store from San Francisco and Privet House from Connecticut.

I'm so giddy with excitement! Candy shop. :)

The hubby looking at the options.

Candy Galore

I didn't end up picking any candy out, because let's be honest I really don't need that candy in our house, but the story behind the shop is really cute...

Who else wasn't allowed candy as kids?

Looking so pretty & delicious!

I mentioned earlier there was another shop I loved...don't worry, I'll post pictures from this shop tomorrow. Ryan was SO irritated with me snapping pictures in Target. You'd have thought he was embarrassed by me or something! ;) Oh well, stay tuned for the awesome stuff from the Privet Shop....

Time to Get Organized

I'm a big fan of spring cleaning. In fact, I think it's awesome. Ask the hubby, he hates how I go through our house weekly just throwing out various things of mail that we don't go through (like we're really going to use that coupon to Captain D's, which we haven't been to in like 6 months...really??). Anywho, with an excuse of "spring cleaning" time I seem to get a free pass to do it without harassment and I take full advantage!

This year though, spring cleaning is going to take on a whole new meaning. I'm going to let you in on a little secret but you have to promise not the judge! Promise? Pinky swear you won't judge because this is BAD! Alright, so we have an office but I don't usually use it. It's sort of become my husband "computer room" slash junk room. Whatever doesn't have a home usually ends up here....case in point:

So what you are seeing is Bailey's recliner (yes, the dog has his own recliner. we've had this chair for 5+ years and he loves sleeping on that chair) and a television stand we need to get rid of since I made one that better suits our need (see DIY Dresser Turned TV stand) plus a crap TON of magic cards (hubby's nerdy habit). We have zero storage or organization in this space. And since it was the hubby's space I have never really been "allowed" in it. That's about the change....

I posted earlier this week that we went to iKEA up in Maryland, well..........we bought a new desk set and a huge wall storage unit for this space!! This will help us sort out the random things that need a home. Over the next week we are going to be assembling the items to completely redo the space. I've seen many bloggers' office makeovers, like Shelley from House of Smiths and Kate from Centsational Girl, that are gorgeous. I love the vision they have for their working space and I want that for our home office because it's not just going to be the hubb's space anymore. Nope, I'm invading the space! (NO ROOM FOR YOU! MWUAHAHA!) :)

One of the things that I am certain I'll include is COLOR. I love when I see spaces that incorporate that "pop" of color, take a look: 

These colors are so "my style". I love blues, greens and browns. I strive to have the "beach" or "cottage" feeling. But for this space, I've decided that I want Apple Green to be the accent color. Yeah, that's right. I wanted to get the entire desk Apple Green, but I was shot down. :( (In retrospect, that could be a lot of Apple Green) Don't you worry though, I have already found other ways to bring in this color. I'm very excited to begin working on this revamp! Hope you come back to visit as I post our progress. :)

My Trip to Maryland

This past weekend we went up to Maryland to visit my in-laws. It was a surprise for my FIL because his 50th birthday was yesterday (May 6th). We had orchestrated it with my MIL and I am pleased to report it was a complete surprise. The entrance wasn't exactly as we had hoped because he was actually out mowing the lawn when we pulled up!! Isn't that hilarious....on his riding lawn mower and saw us pulling up. SURPRISE! ;)

He was still surprised nonetheless, even with all the cleaning that was done to the house (not because their house was messy at all, they just moved my MIL into the house so there was TONS of boxes) which means our mission was a success. So as soon as we got there we whisked him away-after a shower-to iKEA! Yup, iKEA folks....I was PUMPED. We spent 4+ glorious hours shopping the home furnishings. I bought this awesome coffee table which rocks....

I absolutely love this coffee table and can't wait to put it together! I also bought some other items for our office, but that's for another post (as it'll be a little surprise)! Definitely spent a lot of money, but it was well spent. After we went to iKEA we had dinner in downtown Frederick. There was a festival going on which made it IMPOSSIBLE to park but we hunted down one garage that wasn't full and tried going to one restaurant to eat. After hearing they had a 2 hour wait we hopped across the street and stole a reservation for a table of 6 at this Italian restaurant (we didn't really steal it, the group was over 40 mins late so the manager gave it to us). It was hands down the best Italian I had in a long time. I had a spinach linguine with crab meat and pesto sauce. Really outside of the box for me, but I enjoyed it very much. My MIL, mom and I shared a bottle of white wine which was divine. :)

Here are some photos of our adventures for the day:

His Aunt Amy just LOVES putting clothes on him. He hates it, of course.

The hubs and I in downtown Frederick.

This isn't the restaurant we went to, but we've been here before...delicious.

Anybody want a treat??

Bailey says 'I do, I do!' ;)

Had to take a picture because these are some ugly shoes that my mom LOVED! Eek! They are UGGs to. :(

For my FIL's birthday we went out to Double TT diner for breakfast and then saw The Avengers. I really enjoyed the movie, it was very funny (Robert Downing Jr is freakin hilarious). I'm not going to share too much details, in case some readers do actually want to go see the movie, but I really hope they have a second movie. We did some more window shopping (after all I'm broke after that iKEA trip) and then headed out for the day. I ate way too much, spent way too much but it was a great weekend with the family!

Neat movie theater, huge space & two entrances to each theater. Nice for after the movie
when you need to go to the restroom (quick get-a-way)! ;)

LOVE IT!

Bailey & I saying good-bye as we head home!

Hope everyone else had a great weekend as well, if you feel like sharing I'd love to hear in the comment section.... :)

Sealed with Love from Grams

I love my grandmother. She is an amazing woman, one of the best I've ever known. I remember growing up in her art room (a legendary room) doing all sorts of arts and crafts watching really old movies (anyone remember Speed or Sound of Music? Yeah....that's right!) for hours upon hours. That's how I spent my summers, in that room creating all sorts of masterpieces. I would dream of becoming an artist just like her; painting and doing ceramics like the pros. Like I said, she's brilliant.

Anywho, she now lives in Key West which is both great & sad. Great because visiting her is really like a vacation with warm weather and beautiful scenery, but sad because I am not able to visit her as frequent as I'd like. Luckily she likes to send me little gifts to let me know how much she still thinks of me. One of the first gifts is my craft desk so I can create my own little art room. Isn't that awesome? (Again, she's the best!)

The latest package included some pretty cool things too:

That's right paper doll collection

Why hello Ryan, have you come to court me? ;)

So many outfits....so little time!

I'm too much of a lady you farmer!

The box the paper dolls came in....so true!

I'm intrigued by this box

Heck YAY. My own stationary with my name on it! <3

Mind you this week was no holiday, it was just a normal week and my grandmother just bestowed these wonderful gifts. That's not what makes her awesome, but the fact that she thinks of me frequently enough to send me these little treasures is why she's awesome. I miss her dearly, but hopefully I'll get to see her soon. I'm sure everyone has one family member that they really love (you love all of your family, but one in particular you enjoy)....so share! Who is it???

All Hands on Deck

.....get it? All hands on deck? I'm getting my deck redone! lol. I'm so clever. ;)

But seriously, our deck is in a terrible state. When we bought our house, 4 years ago, we loved the fact that it had a deck although we seldom use it (apparently the hubby doesn't like to eat outside, wish I had known that before). But over the last 4 years the wood has really fallen apart. We're thinking it wasn't treated right, so we decided that this is the year to work on the outside....first project being our deck!

Here are some before pictures of the deck, nothing grand but it's nice for the size of our backyard...

The entire back deck

Little bench that was built (ignore terrible landscaping, another project)!

Doesn't look too bad here....

Believe it or not this board was actually screwed in & still came up!

You're probably thinking 'this could be cleaned up'!

The wood is ALWAYS wet over here, thinking there might be a problem... :(

Yup, there's the problem. The boards are super soft.

We knew we had to get this fixed but Ryan and I are not handy people like this. I really wish I was and I'm always up for learning if I have the right people showing me how, but this project was something for an "expert". Time to call in a favor! :)

My best friend's husband, Matt, is somewhat of an expert in my opinion. He's super handy and knows how to do all sorts of stuff (plus he's super nice). He so graciously accepted the offer of helping us out on his days off. Here's Matt:

Isn't he a cutie!

And here's the work he's been able to do thus far with replacing the boards on our deck:

All this wood was needed!

Had to use a Lowe's truck to get it home!

It looks so pretty! And SO much better than the other wood.

Another angle

The destruction....

As we thought, there is actually a problem with that portion of our deck. Apparently where the wood is always wet is because the soil is too high and keeps water from rain & run-off against the wood. EEK! The entire frame has to be rebuilt, but alas Matt has a full time job so it needs to wait a week. Stay tuned for the next part of our deck makeover!!