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Archive for the ‘Inspiration’ Category

“What I did this weekend” posts are now posts to help you get through your week. I’ll likely still include things done over the weekend, but I’ll have a little bit of extra (quotes, pretty photos, tasty food, music, good shit) for you. Basically, it’s a weekly ”Random Thoughts with RA.”

I hope you’re enjoying your long weekend and relaxing. Actually, my mind set on relaxing is usually closer to “ain’t nobody got time for that.” It’s something I’m working on.

aint nobody got time for that

Not only is the image found here but  it’s from a post titled “Finding Success in Your 30s.”

The Mister still talks about this performance.

He’s not a RiRi fan but he loves a green screen. It is hard to stop watching.

If you ever want to know “What would Rachael Anne like to do?” the answer is “brunch.” Well, brunch and style someone’s coffee table. Last week, I ate a Crab Cake Benedict at The Green Room in Greenville, SC.

crabcake benedict

It was a poached egg on top of a crab cake on top of a fried green tomato. They serve brunch everyday.

We can’t all be Kevin Durant, but we can likely donate something to the American Red Cross. You can donate to the disaster fund here or to a local chapter. Additionaly, you can always text “REDCROSS” to 90999 for a $10.00 donation.

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We have chain link fencing around our backyard. Our backyard is big folks, so we don’t want to replace the entire thing. I’m not made of money. Additionally, four of our neighbors back up to our fence and I don’t want to let the dogs out. (Get that song out of your head.) Replacing the front of the fence or the section that faces the road would be a huge improvement. So, that’s what we plan to do.

We considered strapping bamboo fencing to the existing chain link. However, the look doesn’t fit our house.

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We’ve looked at the sections of wood fencing at Home Depot and Lowes.

lowes fence

Original photo here

Then, The Mister decided it was cheaper for him and his dad to make a fence. His dad has done such a thing (they have a farm) so it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility. Of course, this caused me to step back and ponder if we could do something interesting.

A home within our neighborhood had a horizontal fence for well over seven years (since I remember first seeing it while dating The Mister). However, they took it down last year and replaced it with the basic wood fence you’re used to seeing. See the Lowes example above. I miss the horizontal fence. This is when I started looking for inspirational photos of horizontal fences. Here is my horizontal fence moodboard.

horizontal fence moodboard

All photos can be found here

I have a few other ideas for the fence that we’re talking out. I’ll share those moodboards later. Moodboards 4ever!

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Today, The Mister is buying the paint for the exterior of the house. It is a big freakin’ deal. We’ve had little squares painted on the house for months. Our travel schedule and the weather are finally allowing the painters to get to our house the week after Thanksgiving. (Please, keep your fingers crossed for us on that.) They were going to do the house last week but we were on vacation. So, now we have to wait. On the bright side, the wait has allowed us to catch Sherwin-Williams Veteran’s Day Sale which is 40% off and better than the contractor price. We had the roof replaced over a month ago, which I haven’t shared photos of.  It’s gray and you’ll see it later.

Here are my inspiration photos for our exterior color scheme.

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Paula Deen’s Savannah Guest House

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This is one of my favorite blog posts out there on The Internets about painted brick. A couple of the photos above are from it.

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Inspiration: Gingham walls

I recently saw this article that included the photo below on Pinterest.

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I like gingham but The Mister is not into painting stripes. It’s not that he’s ever done it nor would I want him to do it alone. Painting is more my thing. So, of course, I searched for photos of gingham walls because they seem to be the jam. I need to potentially build my case.

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Ignore the desk by the toilet, though I too have questions about it.

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Then, we have a Lilly Pulitzer showroom.

It really makes me want to do gingham paint or wallpaper somewhere.

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Recently, while trolling my friend Craigslist I found an old office credenza for $35.00

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I’m sure these pop up on Craigslist fairly often and they can easily be looked over. However, with such simple lines and flat faces it’s a great piece for an O’verlay. O’verlays are  fretwork panels that can be added to furniture to customize the look. Here are some examples from their site:

IKEA Lack Table Overlay Kit

I’d choose this option.

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Paint it and add some pull hardware then you could have something that looks like this.

 

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You better work it!

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Since the kitchen renovation is not going as planned, we decided last weekend to conquer smaller projects to make us feel better. We’re way behind on letting you know what’s going on in the kitchen due to a mixture of me being on the road more than usual, this being The Mister’s busy season at work and depression/upset/disappointment.

Here is our quick kitchen summary: We made our custom cabinet guy fix some of his issues. For example, he thought it was acceptable to rip off our window molding without asking and wanted to cut it around the kitchen cabinet he didn’t properly measure. This is just the tip of the crazy train that we’ve been riding for six weeks. Plus, we had to kick one of his “workers” out of our house and I had to tell him to stop cutting me off and not be rude. It’s gotten out of control. It’s a million little things. It makes me feel especially stabby. We’re now working with someone else to fix the kitchen - correct the stain, get us some doors, molding, etc.

So, lets change the subject. I’d like to paint our front door black. Here are inspiration photos as my Pinterest is full of photos of homes with black doors:

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Would you leave the back of the front door white, as usual? Or would you paint the front and back black?

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Our kitchen cabinets will be installed on Thursday and Friday of this week. We have a lot of posts to write to let you know how we decided on what and what we did. One of the last things for us will be the backsplash. Since Monday was a holiday, I gave you a post on Saturday containing marble backsplash inspiration. We’re still doing a marble backsplash, but we haven’t finalized what size of tile or when we’ll do it. Of course, I’m using this time to try to convince The Mister that we should install tile all round the window of our kitchen. This is after I was already turned down for my idea of tiling all the walls.

Does that sound crazy to you? It sounded odd to me too, in the beginning. Then, I kept finding photos to support my additional tile work. Here are some of them.

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Now, the image that is most like what I’m trying to convince The Mister of now.

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What do you think?

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We’re in the midst of making kitchen decision and still have our backsplash to worry about. We’ve looked at a number of options and plan to do something we can DIY. Should it be DIO (do-it-ourselves) opposed to DIY (do-it-yourself)? Get back to me on that after you look at this eye candy. I tried to focus the photos on just white counters (as that is what we’ve decided to do) and marble backsplashes or vice versa. However, some are all marble.

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Here is the backsplash tile we plan on using.

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Here are photos of a marble subway tile. 

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This is the Elle Decor showhouse’s kitchen designed by Palmer Weiss.

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Our niece is turning one and her party is Raggedy Ann and Andy themed. Personally, I’m very excited about this as I loved Raggedy Ann. This was likely because I was envious of her red hair, but we’ll move on. I’m not in charge of anything at said party, nor do I have any say so. However, I am excited about it and found some inspirational photos:

Some of the photos are from here and most come from pinterest.

My sister-in-law has everything under control – the invitations were adorable. I know there are going to be dolls around for decor, as I brought a few. Some were a little sad looking, including my mother’s chidhood Raggedy Andy.  I’ll understand if she doesn’t use it or puts a “fresher” looking one in front of it.

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We are considering our options for replacing our front porch. Originally, we considered replacing it with a pergola. However, we wanted something more traditional. So, we’ve received some estimates for putting up a gabled roof. The cost is surprising. So, we’re back at pergola considerations. Here are some of our inspiration photos:

Have any of you ever put up a pergola? We’ve looked at some plans and we’ve been told it can be a DIY project. However, because we’d like to be attached to the house, I think we may need a professional.

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